Red Terror (Spain) - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The Red Terror in Spain is the name given by historians to various acts committed "by sections of nearly all the leftist groups" such as the killing of tens of thousands of people (including 6,832 members of the Catholic clergy, the vast majority in the summer of 1936 in the wake of the military rising), as well as attacks on landowners, industrialists, and politicians, and the desecration

Desecration

Desecration is the act of depriving something of its sacred character, or the disrespectful or contemptuous treatment of that which is held to be sacred or holy by a group or individual.-Detail:...

and burning of monasteries and churches. A process of political polarisation had characterised the Spanish Second Republic – party divisions became increasingly embittered and questions of religious identity came to assume a major political significance.

Some estimates of the Red Terror range from 38,000 to 72,344 lives.

Background

Following municipal elections, which saw socialists and liberal republicans win almost all the provincial capitals of Spain, and the resignation of Juan Baptista Aznar

Juan Bautista Aznar-Cabañas

Admiral Juan Bautista Aznar-Cabañas was the Prime Minister of Spain from the resignation of Dámaso Berenguer y Fusté on to the deposition of King Alfonso XIII and the proclamation of the Spanish Second Republic on April 14, 1931.In Aznar's government, there were disagreements between absolutist...

's government, the Second Republic was proclaimed at Eibar

Éibar

Eibar is a city and municipality within the province of Gipuzkoa, in the Basque Country of Spain. The city was chartered by Alfonso XI of Castile in 1346...

on 14 April 1931. It brought to power a coalition from six different parties headed by Niceto Alcala Zamora, a Catholic and a landowner from Cordoba

Córdoba, Spain

-History:The first trace of human presence in the area are remains of a Neanderthal Man, dating to c. 32,000 BC. In the 8th century BC, during the ancient Tartessos period, a pre-urban settlement existed. The population gradually learned copper and silver metallurgy...

. The revolution of 1931 that established the Second Republic and the Spanish Constitution of 1931

Spanish Constitution of 1931

The Spanish Constitution of 1931 meant the beginning of the Second Spanish Republic, the second period of Spanish history to date in which the election of both the positions of Head of State and Head of government were democratic. It was effective from 1931 until 1939...

brought to power an anticlerical government. The relationship between the new secular Republic and the Catholic Church, who resented it, was fraught from the start. No more than fifteen days after the announcement of the Republic, Cardinal Pedro Segura

Pedro Segura y Sáenz

Pedro Segura y Sáenz was a Spanish Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church who served as Archbishop of Toledo from 1927 to 1931, and Archbishop of Seville from 1937 until his death...

, the primate of Spain, issued a pastoral

Pastoral

The adjective pastoral refers to the lifestyle of pastoralists, such as shepherds herding livestock around open areas of land according to seasons and the changing availability of water and pasturage. It also refers to a genre in literature, art or music that depicts such shepherd life in an...

denouncing the new government's intention to establish freedom of worship and to separate Church and State. The Cardinal urged Catholics to vote in future elections against an administration which in his view wanted to destroy religion." Those who sought to lead the 'ordinary faithful' had insisted that Catholics had only one political choice. "Voting for the CEDA

Spanish Confederation of the Autonomous Right

The Spanish Confederation of the Autonomous Right was a Spanish political party in the Second Spanish Republic. A Catholic conservative force, it was the political heir to Angel Herrera Oria's Acción Popular and defined itself in terms of the 'affirmation and defence of the principles of Christian...

was presented as a simple duty; good Catholics would go to Mass on Sunday and support the political right." The constitution was largely sound, generally according thorough civil liberties and representation, the notable exclusion being the rights of Catholics, a flaw which prevented the forming of an expansive democratic majority. The controversial articles 26 and 27 of the constitution, strictly controlled Church property and prohibited religious orders from engaging in education. Not only advocates of establishment of religion but also advocates of church/state separation saw the constitution as hostile; one such advocate of separation, Jose Ortega y Gasset

José Ortega y Gasset

José Ortega y Gasset was a Spanish liberal philosopher and essayist working during the first half of the 20th century while Spain oscillated between monarchy, republicanism and dictatorship. He was, along with Nietzsche, a proponent of the idea of perspectivism.-Biography:José Ortega y Gasset was...

, stated "the article in which the Constitution legislates the actions of the Church seems highly improper to me." An injunction to vote only for those electoral candidates 'who offer the most solid guarantees for the good of religion and the Fatherland' was directed at Catholics. In 1933, Pope Pius XI

Pope Pius XI

Pope Pius XI , born Ambrogio Damiano Achille Ratti, was Pope from 6 February 1922, and sovereign of Vatican City from its creation as an independent state on 11 February 1929 until his death on 10 February 1939...

condemned the Spanish Government's deprivation of the civil liberties

Civil liberties

Civil liberties are rights and freedoms that provide an individual specific rights such as the freedom from slavery and forced labour, freedom from torture and death, the right to liberty and security, right to a fair trial, the right to defend one's self, the right to own and bear arms, the right...

of Catholics in the encyclical

Encyclical

An encyclical was originally a circular letter sent to all the churches of a particular area in the ancient Catholic Church. At that time, the word could be used for a letter sent out by any bishop...

Dilectissima Nobis

Dilectissima Nobis: On Oppression Of The Church Of Spain is an encyclical issued by Pope Pius XI on June 3, 1933 in which he decried persecution of the Church in Spain, specifically naming the expropriation of all Church buildings, episcopal residences, parish houses, seminaries and...

(On Oppression Of The Church Of Spain )."

Historian Vicente Carcel Orti asserts that anticlerical Freemasons

Anticlericalism and Freemasonry

The question of whether Freemasonry is Anticlerical is the subject of debate. The Catholic Church has long been an outspoken critic of Freemasonry, and Catholic scholars have often accused the fraternity of anticlericalism. The Catholic Church forbids its members to join any masonic society under...

played a large part in the anti-Catholic acts of the government since they held key government positions, including at least 183 deputies in the Cortes (the Spanish parliament), and thus were instrumental in the making of anti-Catholic laws. As early as March 1933 Abilia Arroyo de Roman had declared at a rally in the Salamancan pueblo of Macotera

Macotera

Macotera is a village and municipality in the province of Salamanca, western Spain, part of the autonomous community of Castile-Leon. It is located 50 kilometres from the capital city of Salamanca.-Local Festivities:...

that Spain was governed by Masonic lodges, intent on 'decatholicizing' Spain, while the Gaceta Regional blamed the Law of Congregations on 'an occult power' which had taken refuge in Spain 'in order to carry out its experiments'.

Since the far left considered reform of the anticlerical aspects of the constitution as totally unacceptable, Stanley Payne has opined that "the Republic as a democratic constitutional regime was doomed from the outset". and it has been posited that such a "hostile" approach to the issues of church and state were a substantial cause of the breakdown of democracy and the onset of civil war. One legal commentator has stated plainly "the gravest mistake of the Constitution of 1931-Spain's last democratic Constitution prior to 1978-was its hostile attitude towards the Catholic Church."
The historian Mary Vincent, in her study of the Church in Salamanca

Salamanca (province)

Salamanca is a province of western Spain, in the western part of the autonomous community of Castile and León. It is bordered by the provinces of Zamora, Valladolid, Ávila, and Cáceres; and by Portugal....

in the 1930s, believes this Republican legislation, in affecting the devotional lives of ordinary Catholics, "greatly eased the task of its opponents. The assault on religion allowed erstwhile monarchists like Gil Robles and José María Lamamié de Clairac

José María Lamamié de Clairac

José María Lamamié de Clairac y de la Colina was a Spanish politician, lawyer, Salamancan landowner, a right-wing Catholic, a Carlist Traditionalist deputy during the Spanish Second Republic....

to pose as the true defenders of the people. Behind the much-vaunted accidentalist tactic of accepting and respecting the legally constituted powers lay a determination to dismantle the Republic and all it stood for. CEDA descended into outright contempt for democracy."

Following the general election of February 16, 1936, political bitterness grew in Spain. Violence between the government and its supporters, the Popular Front, whose leadership was clearly moving towards the left (abandoning constitutional Republicanism for leftist revolution) and the opposition accelerated, culminating in a military revolt of right-wing generals in July of that year. As the year progressed Nationalist and Republican persecution grew, and republicans began attacking churches, occupying land for redistribution and attacking nationalist politicians in a process of tit-for-tat violence.

1933 election and aftermath

Leading up to the Civil War, the state of the political establishment had been brutal and violent for some time. In the 1933 elections

Spanish general election, 1933

Elections to Spain’s legislature, the Cortes Generales, were held on 19 November 1933 for all 473 seats in the unicameral Cortes of the Second Spanish Republic. Since the previous elections of 1931, a new constitution had been ratified, and the franchise extended to more than six million women...

to the Cortes Generales

Cortes Generales

The Cortes Generales is the legislature of Spain. It is a bicameral parliament, composed of the Congress of Deputies and the Senate . The Cortes has power to enact any law and to amend the constitution...

, the Spanish Confederation of the Autonomous Right

Spanish Confederation of the Autonomous Right

(Confederación Española de Derechas Autónomas or CEDA) won a plurality of seats. It was however not enough to form a majority. Despite the results, then President Niceto Alcalá-Zamora

Niceto Alcalá-Zamora

Niceto Alcalá-Zamora y Torres was a Spanish lawyer and politician who served, briefly, as the first premier minister of the Second Spanish Republic, and then — from 1931 to 1936—as its president....

declined to invite the leader of the CEDA to form a government and instead invited the Radical Republican Party

Radical Republican Party

The Radical Republican Party , sometimes shortened to the Radical Party was a Spanish political party founded in 1908 by Alejandro Lerroux in Santander, Cantabria by a split from the historical Republican Union party led by Nicolás Salmerón....

and its leader Alejandro Lerroux

Alejandro Lerroux

Alejandro Lerroux y García was a Spanish politician who was the leader of the Radical Republican Party during the Second Spanish Republic...

to do so. CEDA supported the Lerroux government; it later demanded and, on October 1, 1934, received three ministerial positions. Hostility between both the left and the right increased after the formation of the Government. Spain experienced general strikes and street conflicts. Noted among the strikes was the miners' revolt in northern Spain and riots in Madrid. Nearly all rebellions were crushed by the Government and political arrests followed.

Lerroux's alliance with the right, his harsh suppression of the revolt in 1934, and the Stra-Perlo scandal combined to leave him and his party with little support going into the 1936 election. (Lerroux himself lost his seat in parliament.)

1934 murder of priests and religious in Asturias

The murder of 37 priests, brothers and seminarians by leftists in Asturias marks what some see as the beginning of the Red Terror. In October 1934, the Asturian Revolution was strongly anticlerical and involved violence against priests and religious and the destruction of 58 churches, actions that had been rare until that time.

Turón

Turón (Mieres)

Turón is one of 15 parishes in Mieres, a municipality within the province and autonomous community of Asturias, in northern Spain.-Villages and hamlets:...

, one of the locales of anticlerical violence, a coal-mining town in the Asturias

Asturias

The Principality of Asturias is an autonomous community of the Kingdom of Spain, coextensive with the former Kingdom of Asturias in the Middle Ages...

Province, was a hub of anti-government and anticlerical agitation. The De La Salle

De La Salle

De La Salle is the name of several educational institutions affiliated with the Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools, also known as the Lasallian Brothers, a Roman Catholic religious teaching order founded by French priest Saint Jean-Baptiste de la Salle:* Lasallian educational...

Brothers, who ran a school there aggravated the leftists who ran Turón because of their exercise of religion, specifically their flouting of the constitutional prohibition on religious instruction. On October 5, 1934, the agents of the local rebel government invaded the order's residence on the pretext that they had concealed weapons. A Passionist priest, Fr. Inocencio, now Saint Innocencio of Mary Immaculate, who had arrived the evening of October 4 was about to say Mass for the brothers. He and the brothers were taken and held without trial, then summarily shot in the middle of the night in the cemetery.

1936 Popular Front victory and aftermath

In the 1936 Elections

Spanish general election, 1936

Legislative elections were held in Spain on February 16, 1936. At stake were all 473 seats in the unicameral Cortes Generales. The winners of the 1936 elections were the Popular Front, a left-wing coalition of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party , Republican Left , Esquerra Republicana de...

a new coalition of Socialists (Socialist Workers Party of Spain, PSOE), liberals (Republican Left

Republican Left (Spain)

The Republican Left was a Spanish left-wing republican party founded in 1934.The party was founded in 1934 following the left's defeat in the 1933 election, by the merger of Manuel Azaña's Republican Action, part of Marcelino Domingo's Radical Socialist Republican Party and Santiago Casares...

and the Republican Union Party), Communists, and various regional nationalist groups won the extremely tight election. The results gave 34 percent of the popular vote to the Popular Front and 33 percent to the incumbent government of the CEDA. This result, when coupled with the Socialists' refusal to participate in the new government, led to a general fear of revolution. This was made only more apparent when Largo Caballero, hailed as "the Spanish Lenin" by Pravda, announced that the country was on the cusp of revolution. However these statements were meant only to remove any moderates from his coalition. Moderate Socialist Indalecio Prieto

Indalecio Prieto

Indalecio Prieto Tuero was a Spanish politician, one of the leading figures of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party in the years before and during the Second Spanish Republic.-Early years:...

condemned the rhetoric and marches as provocative.

Early outbreak of violence

Following the outbreak of full-scale civil war there was an explosion of atrocities in both the Nationalist and Republican zones.

The bloodiest days of the red terror were at the beginning of the civil war, when the government failed to control many of its forces, in the aftermath of the generals' rising, and large areas of the country fell under the control of local loyalists and militias. A large part of the terror consisted of a perceived settlement of accounts against bosses and clergy as they lost their powerful position in the social revolution and move towards extremism that took place in the first months of the civil war. According to historian Anthony Beevor: "In republican territory the worst of the violence was mainly a sudden and quickly spent reaction of suppressed fear, exacerbated by desires of revenge for the past" - in contrast with, "the relentless purging of 'reds and atheists' in nationalist territory."

According to recent research, the Republican death squads were heavily staffed by members of the Soviet secret police, or NKVD

NKVD

The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs was the public and secret police organization of the Soviet Union that directly executed the rule of power of the Soviets, including political repression, during the era of Joseph Stalin....

. According to author Donald Rayfield

Donald Rayfield

Donald Rayfield is professor of Russian and Georgian at Queen Mary, University of London. He is an author of books about Russian and Georgian literature, and about Joseph Stalin and his secret police...

, "Stalin

Joseph Stalin

Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...

, Yezhov

Nikolai Yezhov

Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov or Ezhov was a senior figure in the NKVD under Joseph Stalin during the period of the Great Purge. His reign is sometimes known as the "Yezhovshchina" , "the Yezhov era", a term that began to be used during the de-Stalinization campaign of the 1950s...

, and Beria

Lavrentiy Beria

Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria was a Georgian Soviet politician and state security administrator, chief of the Soviet security and secret police apparatus under Joseph Stalin during World War II, and Deputy Premier in the postwar years ....

distrusted Soviet participants in the Spanish war. Military advisors like Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko

Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko

Vladimir Alexandrovich Antonov-Ovseyenko , real surname Ovseyenko, party aliases the 'Bayonet' and 'Nikita' , a literary pseudonym A. Gal , was a prominent Soviet Bolshevik leader and diplomat. He was born in Chernigov into an officer's family.In 1903, Antonov-Ovseyenko joined the Menshevik party...

, journalists like Koltsov

Mikhail Koltsov

Mikhail Efimovich Koltsov , born Mikhail Efimovich Fridlyand , was a Soviet journalist.-Biography:...

were open to infection by the heresies, especially Trotsky

Leon Trotsky

Leon Trotsky , born Lev Davidovich Bronshtein, was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and theorist, Soviet politician, and the founder and first leader of the Red Army....

's, prevalent among the Republic's supporters. NKVD

NKVD

agents sent to Spain were therefore keener on abducting and murdering anti-Stalinists among Republican leaders and International Brigade commanders than on fighting Francisco 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...

. The defeat of the Republic, in Stalin's eyes, was caused not by the NKVD's diversionary efforts, but by the treachery of the heretics.

The most famous member of the Loyalist assassination squads was Erich Mielke

Erich Mielke

Erich Fritz Emil Mielke was a German communist politician and Minister of State Security—and as such head of the Stasi —of the German Democratic Republic between 1957 and 1989. Mielke spent more than a decade as an operative of the NKVD during the rule of Joseph Stalin...

, the future head of the East German Ministry for State Security

Stasi

The Ministry for State Security The Ministry for State Security The Ministry for State Security (German: Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (MfS), commonly known as the Stasi (abbreviation , literally State Security), was the official state security service of East Germany. The MfS was headquartered...

.

"During the first months of the fighting most of the deaths did not come from combat on the battlefield but from political executions in the rear—the 'Red' and 'White

White Terror (Spain)

In Spain, White Terror refers to acts of politically motivated violence committed by the Nationalist movement during the Spanish Civil War and during Francisco Franco's dictatorship...

' terrors. The terror consisted of semi-organized actions perpetrated by almost all of the leftist groups, Basque

Basque nationalism

Basque nationalism is a political movement advocating for either further political autonomy or, chiefly, full independence of the Basque Country in the wider sense...

nationalists, largely Catholic but still mostly aligned with the Republicans, being an exception. Unlike the repression by the right, which "was concentrated against the most dangerous opposition elements", the Republican attacks were more irrational, "murdering innocent people and letting some of the more dangerous go free. Moreover, one of the main targets of the Red terror was the clergy, most of whom were not engaged in overt opposition."

Describing specifically the Red Terror, Stanley Payne states that it "began with the murder of some of the rebels as they attempted to surrender after their revolt had failed in several of the key cities. From there it broadened out to wholesale arrests, and sometimes wholesale executions, of landowners and industrialists, people associated with right-wing groups or the Catholic Church." The Red Terror was "not an irrepressible outpouring of hatred by the man in the street for his 'oppressors,' but a semi-organized activity carried out by sections of nearly all the leftist groups."

As early as 11 May 1931, when mob violence against the Republic's perceived enemies had led to the burning of churches, convents, and religious schools, the Church had sometimes been seen as the ally of the authoritarian right. The academic Mary Vincent has written that: "There was no doubt that the Church would line up with the rebels against the Republic. The Jesuit priests of the city of Salamanca

Salamanca

Salamanca is a city in western Spain, in the community of Castile and León. Because it is known for its beautiful buildings and urban environment, the Old City was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1988. It is the most important university city in Spain and is known for its contributions to...

were among the first volunteeers to present themsleves to the military authorities...The tragedy of the Second Republic was that it abetted its own destruction; the tragedy of the Church was that it became so closely allied with its self-styled defenders." During the war the nationalists claimed that 20,000 priests had been killed; today the figure is put at 4,184 priests, 2,365 members of other orders and 283 nuns, the vast majority during the summer of 1936.

Historian Stanley Payne has called the terror the "most extensive and violent persecution of Catholicism in Western History, in some way even more intense than that of the French Revolution

Dechristianisation of France during the French Revolution

The dechristianisation of France during the French Revolution is a conventional description of the results of a number of separate policies, conducted by various governments of France between the start of the French Revolution in 1789 and the Concordat of 1801, forming the basis of the later and...

", driving Catholics, left then with little alternative, to the Nationalists even more than would have been expected.

Death toll

Figures for the Red Terror range from 38,000 to 110,000. In his recent, updated history of the Spanish Civil War, 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...

"reckons Franco's ensuing 'white terror

White Terror (Spain)

In Spain, White Terror refers to acts of politically motivated violence committed by the Nationalist movement during the Spanish Civil War and during Francisco Franco's dictatorship...

' claimed 200,000 lives. The 'red terror' had already, according to Beevor, killed 38,000." According to Julio de la Cueva, the toll of the Red Terror was 72,344 lives. Hugh Thomas and Paul Preston said that the death toll was 55,000, and the Spanish historian Julian Casanova said that the death toll was fewer than 60,000.

Previously, Payne had suggested that, "The toll taken by the respective terrors may never be known exactly. The left slaughtered more in the first months, but the Nationalist repression probably reached its height only after the war had ended, when punishment was exacted and vengeance wreaked on the vanquished left. The White Terror may have slain 50,000, perhaps fewer, during the war. The Franco government now gives the names of 61,000 victims of the Red Terror, but this is not subject to objective verification. The number of victims of the Nationalist repression, during and after the war, was undoubtedly greater than that."
In Checas de Madrid (ISBN 84-9793-168-8), journalist and historian César Vidal comes to a nationwide total of 110,965 victims of Republican repression; 11,705 people being killed in Madrid alone. Historian Santos Juliá, in the work Víctimas de la guerra civil provides approximate figures: about 50,000 victims of the Republican repression; about 100,000 victims of the Francoist repression during the war with some 40,000 after the war.

Toll on clergy

Historian Julio de la Cueva has written that, "despite the fact that the Church...suffer[ed] appalling persecution" behind Republican lines, the events have been met by much silence and even attempts at justification by some scholars and memoirists.
In the course of the Red Terror, 6,832 members of the Catholic clergy, 20% percent of the nation's clergy, were killed. The figures break down the as follows: Some 283 women religious were killed. Some of them were badly tortured. 13 bishops were killed from the dioceses of Siguenza

Siguenza

The name Siguenza or Sigüenza can refer to:*The Spanish city Sigüenza and the nearby Paredes de Sigüenza*A family of Spanish origin, including the following notable individuals:...

Lleida

Lleida is a city in the west of Catalonia, Spain. It is the capital city of the province of Lleida, as well as the largest city in the province and it had 137,387 inhabitants , including the contiguous municipalities of Raimat and Sucs. The metro area has about 250,000 inhabitants...

, Cuenca

Cuenca, Spain

-History:When the Iberian peninsula was part of the Roman Empire there were several important settlements in the province, such as Segóbriga, Ercávica and Gran Valeria...

, Barbastro

Barbastro

Barbastro is a city in the Somontano county, province of Huesca, Spain...

, Segorbe

Segorbe

Segorbe is a municipality in the mountainous coastal province of Castelló, autonomous community of Valencia, Spain. The former Palace of the Dukes of Medinaceli now houses the city's mayor...

, Jaén

Jaén, Spain

Jaén is a city in south-central Spain, the name is derived from the Arabic word Jayyan, . It is the capital of the province of Jaén. It is located in the autonomous community of Andalusia....

, Ciudad Real

Ciudad Real

Ciudad Real is a city in Castile-La Mancha, Spain, with a population of c. 74,000. It is the capital of the province of Ciudad Real. It has a stop on the AVE high-speed rail line and has begun to grow as a long-distance commuter suburb of Madrid, located 115 miles to the north. A high capacity...

, Almeria

Almería

Almería is a city in Andalusia, Spain, on the Mediterranean Sea. It is the capital of the province of the same name.-Toponym:Tradition says that the name Almería stems from the Arabic المرية Al-Mariyya: "The Mirror", comparing it to "The Mirror of the Sea"...

, Guadix

Guadix

Guadix, a city of southern Spain, in the province of Granada; on the left bank of the river Guadix, a sub-tributary of the Guadiana Menor, and on the Madrid-Valdepeñas-Almería railway...

, Barcelona

Barcelona

Barcelona is the second largest city in Spain after Madrid, and the capital of Catalonia, with a population of 1,621,537 within its administrative limits on a land area of...

, Teruel

Teruel

Teruel is a town in Aragon, eastern Spain, and the capital of Teruel Province. It has a population of 34,240 in 2006 making it one of the least populated provincial capitals in the country...

and the auxiliary of Tarragona

Tarragona

Tarragona is a city located in the south of Catalonia on the north-east of Spain, by the Mediterranean. It is the capital of the Spanish province of the same name and the capital of the Catalan comarca Tarragonès. In the medieval and modern times it was the capital of the Vegueria of Tarragona...

. Aware of the dangers, they all decided to remain in their cities. I cannot go, only here is my responsibility, whatever may happen, so said the Bishop of Cuenca

Cuenca, Spain

-History:When the Iberian peninsula was part of the Roman Empire there were several important settlements in the province, such as Segóbriga, Ercávica and Gran Valeria...

. In addition 4,172 diocesan priests, 2,364 monks and friars, among them 259 Claretians

Claretians

The Claretians, a community of Roman Catholic priests and brothers, were founded by Saint Anthony Claret in 1849. They strive to follow their founder's “on fire” example and help wherever they are needed. Their ministries are highly diverse and vary depending on the needs of the area. They focus...

, 226 Franciscan

Franciscan

Most Franciscans are members of Roman Catholic religious orders founded by Saint Francis of Assisi. Besides Roman Catholic communities, there are also Old Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran, ecumenical and Non-denominational Franciscan communities....

s, 204 Piarists, 176 Brothers of Mary, 165 Christian Brothers (also called the De La Salle Brothers)

Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools

The Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools is a Roman Catholic religious teaching congregation, founded in France by Saint Jean-Baptiste de la Salle and now based in Rome...

, 155 Augustinians

Augustinians

The term Augustinians, named after Saint Augustine of Hippo , applies to two separate and unrelated types of Catholic religious orders:...

, 132 Dominicans

Dominican Order

The Order of Preachers , after the 15th century more commonly known as the Dominican Order or Dominicans, is a Catholic religious order founded by Saint Dominic and approved by Pope Honorius III on 22 December 1216 in France...

, and 114 Jesuits were killed. In some dioceses, the number of secular priests killed are overwhelming:

In Barbastro
Barbastro
Barbastro is a city in the Somontano county, province of Huesca, Spain...

123 of 140 priests were killed, about 88 percent of the secular clergy were murdered, 66 percent
In Lleida
Lleida
Lleida is a city in the west of Catalonia, Spain. It is the capital city of the province of Lleida, as well as the largest city in the province and it had 137,387 inhabitants , including the contiguous municipalities of Raimat and Sucs. The metro area has about 250,000 inhabitants...

, 270 of 410 priests were killed. about 62 percent
In Tortosa
Tortosa
-External links:* *** * * *...

, 44 percent of the secular priests were killed.
In Toledo
Toledo, Spain
Toledo's Alcázar became renowned in the 19th and 20th centuries as a military academy. At the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 its garrison was famously besieged by Republican forces.-Economy:...

286 of 600 priests were killed.
In the dioceses of Málaga
Málaga
Málaga is a city and a municipality in the Autonomous Community of Andalusia, Spain. With a population of 568,507 in 2010, it is the second most populous city of Andalusia and the sixth largest in Spain. This is the southernmost large city in Europe...

, Menorca and Segorbe
Segorbe
Segorbe is a municipality in the mountainous coastal province of Castelló, autonomous community of Valencia, Spain. The former Palace of the Dukes of Medinaceli now houses the city's mayor...

, about half of the priests were killed"

In 2001 the Catholic Church beatified

Beatification

Beatification is a recognition accorded by the Catholic Church of a dead person's entrance into Heaven and capacity to intercede on behalf of individuals who pray in his or her name . Beatification is the third of the four steps in the canonization process...

hundreds of Martyrs of the Spanish Civil War

Martyrs of the Spanish Civil War

Martyrs of the Spanish Civil War is the name given by the Catholic Church to the people who were killed by Republicans during the war because of their faith. As of July 2008, almost one thousand Spanish martyrs have been beatified or canonized...

and beatified 498 more on October 28, 2007.

In October 2008, the Spanish newspaper La Razon

La Razón

La Razón is used as a name for newspapers in the Spanish-speaking world including:*La Razón , Argentina*La Razón , Bolivia*La Razón , Ecuador*La Razón , Peru...

published an article on the number of people murdered for practicing Catholicism."

May 1931: 100 church buildings are burned while firefighters refuse to extinguish the flames.

1932: 3000 Jesuits expelled. Church buildings burned with impunity in 7 cities.

1934: 33 priests murdered in the Asturias Revolution.

1936: just a day before July 18, the day the war started, there already have been 17 clergymen murdered.

From July 18 to August 1: 861 clergymen murdered in 2 weeks.

August 1936: 2077 clergymen murdered, more than 70 a day. 10 of them bishops.

Septiembre 14: 3400 clergymen murdered during the first stages of the war.

1939: end of the war; a total of 7000 clergymen and 3000 religious people murdered for practicing Catholicism.

Republican side

Attitudes to the "red terror" varied on the Republican side. President Manuel Azaña

Manuel Azaña

Manuel Azaña Díaz was a Spanish politician. He was the first Prime Minister of the Second Spanish Republic , and later served again as Prime Minister , and then as the second and last President of the Republic . The Spanish Civil War broke out while he was President...

made the well-publicized comment that all of the convents in Madrid were not worth one Republican life. Yet equally "commonly cited, for example, is the speech by the Socialist leader Indalecio Prieto

Indalecio Prieto

Indalecio Prieto Tuero was a Spanish politician, one of the leading figures of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party in the years before and during the Second Spanish Republic.-Early years:...

on Madrid radio on 9 August 1936 pleading that Republican militiamen not ‘imitate’ the murderous actions of the military rebels" and also "the public condemnation of arbitrary ‘justice’ by Julián Zugazagoitia, the editor of El Socialista, the Socialist Party newspaper, on 23 August."

Julius Ruiz goes on to note, however, that "not cited [...] are El Socialistas regular reports extolling the work of the Atadell brigade", a group of Republican agents who engaged in detentions and frequently murders of (in the end) up to 800 Nationalists. "On 27 September 1936", Ruiz continues, "an editorial on the brigade stressed that its ‘work, more than useful, is necessary. Indispensable.’ Similarly, the Prieto-controlled Madrid daily Informaciones carried numerous articles on the activities of the Atadell brigade during the summer of 1936."

Nationalist side

The Catholic hierarchy believed that, on the cusp of the Civil war, the violence directed against it was the result of a plan, "a program of systematic persecution of the Church was planned to the last detail." José Calvo Sotelo

José Calvo Sotelo

José Calvo Sotelo, 1st Duke of Calvo Sotelo was a Spanish politician prior to and during the Second Spanish Republic...

told the Spanish Parliament in April 1936, that in six week of popular front government, from Mid-February 15 to April 2, 1936, some 199 attacks were carried out, 36 of them in Churches. He listed 136 fires, and fire bombings, which included 106 burned and Catholic Churches and 56 Churches otherwise destroyed. He claimed 74 persons dead and 345 persons injured. Shortly afterwards, José Calvo Sotelo was shot himself, allegedly by a socialist gunman, Luis Cuenca, who was known as bodyguard of the Socialist Party leader Indalecio Prieto

Indalecio Prieto

Indalecio Prieto Tuero was a Spanish politician, one of the leading figures of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party in the years before and during the Second Spanish Republic.-Early years:...

.

The attitudes of the Catholic side towards the government and the ensuing Civil War was expressed in a joint Episcopal letter from July 1, 1937. It was addressed by the Spanish bishops to all bishops of the Catholic world. Spain, so said the bishops, is divided into two hostile camps, of which one side expresses anti-religious and anti-Spanish terror, and the other side upholding the respect for the religious and national order. The Church is pastorally oriented and not willing to sell its freedom to politics. But under these circumstances, she has no option but to side with those who started out, defending her freedom and right to exist.

The attitudes of the people in the national zone were characterized fear, hope and by religious revival. Victories were celebrated with religious services, the separation of Church and State was abolished and religious education was reintroduced into the schools. Catholic chaplains were re-introduced into the army. The attitudes towards the Church had changed from hostility to admiration.

Reported murders

Murder of 6,832 members of the Catholic clergy and religious orders as well as the killing thousands of lay people.

The parish priest of Navalmoral
Navalmoral
Navalmoral is a municipality located in the province of Ávila, Castile and León, Spain. According to the 2006 census , the municipality has a population of 471 inhabitants....

was put through a parody
Parody
A parody , in current usage, is an imitative work created to mock, comment on, or trivialise an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation...

of Christ's Crucifixion. At the end of his suffering the militiamen debated whether actually to crucify him or just shoot him. They finished with a shooting.

The Bishop of Jaén and his sister were murdered in front of two thousand celebrating spectators by a special executioner
Executioner
A judicial executioner is a person who carries out a death sentence ordered by the state or other legal authority, which was known in feudal terminology as high justice.-Scope and job:...

, a woman nicknamed La Pecosa, the freckled one.

Although rare, it was reported that some nuns were raped by militiamen before they were shot. However, according to Antony Beevor, the 1946 nationalist indictment of Republican atrocities contained no evidence for any such incident.

The priest of Cienpozuelos was thrown into a corral
Corral
Corral is a town, commune and sea port in Los Ríos Region, Chile. It is located south of Corral Bay. Corral is best known for the forts of Corral Bay, a system of defensive batteries and forts made to protect Valdivia during colonial times. Corral was the headquarters of the system...

with fighting bulls where he was gored into unconsciousness. Afterwards one of his ears was cut off to imitate the feat of a matador
Matador
A torero or toureiro is a bullfighter and the main performer in bullfighting, practised in Spain, Colombia, Portugal, Mexico, France and various other countries influenced by Spanish culture. In Spanish, the word torero describes any of the performers who actively participate in the bullfight...

after a successful bullfight.

In Ciudad Real
Ciudad Real
Ciudad Real is a city in Castile-La Mancha, Spain, with a population of c. 74,000. It is the capital of the province of Ciudad Real. It has a stop on the AVE high-speed rail line and has begun to grow as a long-distance commuter suburb of Madrid, located 115 miles to the north. A high capacity...

, the priest was castrated and his sexual organs stuffed in his mouth.

There are accounts of the people connected to the Catholic Church being forced to swallow rosary beads, being thrown down mine shafts and of priests being forced to dig their own graves before being buried alive.

An eyewitness to some of the persecution, Cristina de Arteaga, who was soon to become a nun, commented that they "attacked the Salesians, people who are totally committed to the poor. There was a rumor that nuns were giving poisoned sweets to children. Some nuns were grabbed by the hair in the streets. One had her hair pulled out...."

On the night of July 19, 1936 alone, 50 churches were burned. In Barcelona, out of the 58 churches, only the Cathedral was spared, and similar events occurred almost everywhere in Republican Spain.

All the Catholic churches in the Republican zone were closed, but the attacks were not limited to Catholic churches, as synagogues were also pillaged and closed, though some small Protestant churches were spared.

The Bishop of Almeria
Almería
Almería is a city in Andalusia, Spain, on the Mediterranean Sea. It is the capital of the province of the same name.-Toponym:Tradition says that the name Almería stems from the Arabic المرية Al-Mariyya: "The Mirror", comparing it to "The Mirror of the Sea"...

was murdered while working on a history of Toledo
Toledo, Spain
Toledo's Alcázar became renowned in the 19th and 20th centuries as a military academy. At the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 its garrison was famously besieged by Republican forces.-Economy:...

. His card index file was destroyed.

In Madrid, a nun was killed because she refused a proposition of marriage from a militiaman who helped storm her convent
Convent
A convent is either a community of priests, religious brothers, religious sisters, or nuns, or the building used by the community, particularly in the Roman Catholic Church and in the Anglican Communion...

.

Conclusion and aftermath

With the total 1939 victory of the Nationalists over the Republicans in the Civil War in Spain, the Red Terror ended in that country, although individual terror attacks seem to have continued sporadically, carried out by remnant Communists and Socialists, hiding in French border regions, but without great results. Throughout the country, the Catholic Church held Te Deum

Te Deum (religious service)

A Te Deum is a short religious service held to bless an event or give thanks. It is frequently used in the Orthodox church....

s to thank God

God

God is the English name given to a singular being in theistic and deistic religions who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism....

for the outcome. Numerous left-wing personalities were tried for the Red Terror, not all of them were guilty. Others fled to the Soviet Union, where a number of them "disappeared" in Joseph Stalin

Joseph Stalin

's Gulag

Gulag

The Gulag was the government agency that administered the main Soviet forced labor camp systems. While the camps housed a wide range of convicts, from petty criminals to political prisoners, large numbers were convicted by simplified procedures, such as NKVD troikas and other instruments of...

s. Franco's victory was followed by thousands of summary execution

Summary execution

A summary execution is a variety of execution in which a person is killed on the spot without trial or after a show trial. Summary executions have been practiced by the police, military, and paramilitary organizations and are associated with guerrilla warfare, counter-insurgency, terrorism, and...

s (remains of 35,000 people are estimated by the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory

Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory

The Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory is a Spanish organization that collects the oral and written testimonies about the victims of the regime of Francisco Franco and excavates and identifies their bodies that were often dumped in mass graves.Emilio Silva and Santiago Macias...

(ARMH) to still lie in mass graves) and imprisonments, while many were put to forced labour, building railways, drying out swamps, digging canals (La Corchuela, the Canal of the Bajo Guadalquivir

Guadalquivir

The Guadalquivir is the fifth longest river in the Iberian peninsula and the second longest river to be its whole length in Spain. The Guadalquivir is 657 kilometers long and drains an area of about 58,000 square kilometers...

), construction of the Valle de los Caídos monument, etc. The 1940 shooting of the president of the Catalan government

Generalitat de Catalunya

The Generalitat of Catalonia is the institution under which the autonomous community of Catalonia is politically organised. It consists of the Parliament, the President of the Generalitat of Catalonia and the Government of Catalonia....

, Lluís Companys, was one of the most notable cases of this early repression.
Although leftists suffered from an important death-toll, the Spanish intelligentsia

Intelligentsia

The intelligentsia is a social class of people engaged in complex, mental and creative labor directed to the development and dissemination of culture, encompassing intellectuals and social groups close to them...

, atheists and military and government figures who had remained loyal to the Madrid government during the war were also targeted by the repression.

The new Pope Pius XII

Pope Pius XII

The Venerable Pope Pius XII , born Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli , reigned as Pope, head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of Vatican City State, from 2 March 1939 until his death in 1958....

sent a radio message of congratulation to the Spanish Government, clerics and people on April 16, 1939. He referred to the denunciation of his predecessor, Pope Pius XI

Pope Pius XI

, who described past horrors and the need to defend and restore the rights of God and religion. The pope stated that the victims of terror died for Jesus Christ. He wished peace and prosperity upon the Spanish people, appealing to them to punish criminals but to exercise leniency and Spanish generosity against the many who were on the other side. He asked for their full participation in society and entrusted them to the compassion of the Church in Spain.

The Red Terror in Spain was from the Vatican perspective only one part of a "Terrible Triangle

Terrible Triangle

Terrible Triangle was a term used by Pope Pius XI for the simultaneous persecution of Christians in general and the Catholic Church in particular in three countries: the Soviet Union, Mexico, and Spain. These events are said to have influenced his position on Communism throughout his pontificate...

" of Red Terror

Red Terror

The Red Terror in Soviet Russia was the campaign of mass arrests and executions conducted by the Bolshevik government. In Soviet historiography, the Red Terror is described as having been officially announced on September 2, 1918 by Yakov Sverdlov and ended about October 1918...

, whose goal was the eradication of religion, involving Mexico

Persecution of Christians in Mexico

The modern history of Mexico has often been characterized by deep conflicts between the government and the Catholic Church, sometimes including outright persecution of Catholics in Mexico.- Beginning of Anticlericalism and Persecution :...

and the Soviet Union

Persecution of Christians in the Soviet Union

The history of Christianity in the Soviet Union was not limited to repression and secularization. Soviet policy toward religion was based on the ideology of Marxism-Leninism, which made atheism the official doctrine of the Soviet Union...

as well. Pope Pius XI

Pope Pius XI

complained about Conspiracy of Silence on all Church persecutions

Conspiracy of Silence (Church persecutions)

Conspiracy of Silence is a term used by the Catholic Church since Pope Pius XI to describe the lack of reaction to the persecution of Christians by Nazis and Communists in such countries as the Soviet Union, Mexico, Germany and Spain....

The Red Terror continued in Mexico for about one year, then in 1940 the new President Manuel Ávila Camacho

Manuel Ávila Camacho

Manuel Ávila Camacho served as the President of Mexico from 1940 to 1946.Manuel Ávila was born in the city of Teziutlán, a small town in Puebla, to middle-class parents, Manuel Ávila Castillo and Eufrosina Camacho Bello. He had several siblings, among them sister María Jovita Ávila Camacho and...

restored the rights of the Church in that country. In the Soviet Union, the terror against religion and the Church was greatly reduced after the German invasion in June 1941. The Soviet persecution resumed however at the end of World War II, when the Soviet Union incorporated former Polish territories with 4.5 million Catholics and arrested over 1000 Catholic priests and archbishop Joseph Slipyi

Background

1933 election and aftermath

1934 murder of priests and religious in Asturias

1936 Popular Front victory and aftermath

Early outbreak of violence

Death toll

Toll on clergy

Republican side

Nationalist side

Reported murders

Conclusion and aftermath

See also