Les Grands Cimetières sous la Lune (1938; English title, A Diary of My Times, 1938) is a book by novelist Georges Bernanos

Georges Bernanos

Georges Bernanos was a French author, and a soldier in World War I. Of Roman Catholic and monarchist leanings, he was a violent adversary to bourgeois thought and to what he identified as defeatism leading to France's defeat in 1940.-Biography:Bernanos was born at Paris, into a family of...

 which fiercely condemns the atrocities carried out in Majorca by the Fascists and sanctioned by the Roman Catholic Church

Roman Catholic Church

The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...

. Majorca had been secured for the Nationalist rebels by Manuel Goded Llopis

Manuel Goded Llopis

Manuel Goded Llopis was a Spanish Army general who was one of the key figures in the July 1936 revolt against the Second Spanish Republic. Having unsuccessfully led an attempted insurrection in Barcelona, he was captured and executed by the Republican government...

 at the outset of the Spanish Civil War

Spanish Civil War

The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...

. Bernanos states that 3,000 were killed by fascist Nationalists and his book contains horrifying details of summary executions.

"When the Spanish war broke out, Bernanos had been living for more than a year in Palma, Majorca, in very difficult circumstances, and suffering from the after-effects of a motor-cycle accident. It was in Majorca that Bernanos watched civil war, or rather - since the island fell almost at once into the hands of the Fascists - watched terrorism eating its slow way into this little middle-class and peasant community."

Bernanos: "The population of Majorca has always been noted for its absolute indifference to politics. In the days

First Carlist War

The First Carlist War was a civil war in Spain from 1833-1839.-Historical background:At the beginning of the 18th century, Philip V, the first Bourbon king of Spain, promulgated the Salic Law, which declared illegal the inheritance of the Spanish crown by women...

 of the Carlistes and the Cristinos, George Sand

George Sand

Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin, later Baroness Dudevant , best known by her pseudonym George Sand , was a French novelist and memoirist.-Life:...

 tells us how they welcomed with equal unconcern the refugees of either side. According to the head of the Phalange

Falange

The Spanish Phalanx of the Assemblies of the National Syndicalist Offensive , known simply as the Falange, is the name assigned to several political movements and parties dating from the 1930s, most particularly the original fascist movement in Spain. The word means phalanx formation in Spanish....

, you could not have found a hundred Communists in the whole island. 'There was killing in Spain,' you say. 'A hundred and thirty-five political assassinations between March and July 1936.' But in Majorca there were no crimes to avenge, so it could only have been a preventative action, the systematic extermination of suspects. The majority of legal sentences - I shall refer later to the executions without trial, of which there were many more - were merely for desafeccion al movimento salvador: Disloyalty to the Salvation movement, expressed in words or gestures alone."

According to the historian Antony Beevor

Antony Beevor

Antony James Beevor, FRSL is a British historian, educated at Winchester College and Sandhurst. He studied under the famous military historian John Keegan. Beevor is a former officer with the 11th Hussars who served in England and Germany for five years before resigning his commission...

, the publication of the book in 1938, "which described the nationalist terror on Majorca, greatly strengthened the liberal Catholic reaction against the Church's official support for Franco

Francisco Franco

Francisco Franco y Bahamonde was a Spanish general, dictator and head of state of Spain from October 1936 , and de facto regent of the nominally restored Kingdom of Spain from 1947 until his death in November, 1975...

." Writing in 1938, Richard Rees named it, along with George Orwell

George Orwell

Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...

's Homage to Catalonia

Homage to Catalonia

Homage to Catalonia is political journalist and novelist George Orwell's personal account of his experiences and observations in the Spanish Civil War. The first edition was published in 1938. The book was not published in the United States until February 1952. The American edition had a preface...

and Elliot Paul

Elliot Paul

Elliot Harold Paul , was an American journalist and author.-Biography:Born in Linden, a part of Malden, Massachusetts, Elliot Paul graduated from Malden High School then worked in the U.S...

's Life and Death of a Spanish Town

Life and Death of a Spanish Town

Life and Death of a Spanish Town is a book by Elliot Paul about the island of Ibiza before and up to the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War...

, amongst, "the only books about Spain that can be said to be written by people with free (i.e. fundamentally honest, if often mistaken) minds."