White Terror (Spain)
Encyclopedia
In Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

, White Terror (also known as Represión Franquista) refers to acts of politically motivated violence committed by the Nationalist
National Faction (Spanish Civil War)
The National faction also known as Nationalists or Nationals , was a major faction in the Spanish Civil War of 1936 to 1939. It was composed of a variety of political groups opposed to the Second Spanish Republic, including the Falange, the CEDA, and two rival monarchist claimants: the Alfonsists...

 movement during 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...

 and during 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...

's dictatorship. The mass executions started at the beginning of the civil war on July 1936 and continued after the war until 1945.

Most historians agree that the death toll of the White Terror was much higher than that of the Red Terror
Red Terror (Spain)
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 , as well as attacks on landowners, industrialists, and politicians, and the...

, and the White Terror occurred over a much longer period, continuing after the war. While most estimates of the Red Terror range from 38,000 to 72,344 lives (the collective work: Victimas de la guerra civil: 50,000; Hugh Thomas: 55,000; Paul Preston: 55,000 and Julián Casanova
Julián Casanova
Julián Casanova is a Spanish historian. He teaches contemporary history at University of Zaragoza, and has been visiting professor in US, UK and Latin America universities...

: fewer than 60,000) most of the estimates of the "White Terror" range from 150,000 to 400,000.

Background

The Second Spanish Republic
Second Spanish Republic
The Second Spanish Republic was the government of Spain between April 14 1931, and its destruction by a military rebellion, led by General Francisco Franco....

 was established on 14 April 1931, after the abdication of King Alfonso XIII. The government, led by 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....

, instituted a reformist program, including agrarian reform, separation of church and state
Separation of church and state
The concept of the separation of church and state refers to the distance in the relationship between organized religion and the nation state....

, the right to divorce
Divorce
Divorce is the final termination of a marital union, canceling the legal duties and responsibilities of marriage and dissolving the bonds of matrimony between the parties...

, votes for women
Women's suffrage
Women's suffrage or woman suffrage is the right of women to vote and to run for office. The expression is also used for the economic and political reform movement aimed at extending these rights to women and without any restrictions or qualifications such as property ownership, payment of tax, or...

 (November 1933), reform of the Army, autonomy for Catalonia
Catalonia
Catalonia is an autonomous community in northeastern Spain, with the official status of a "nationality" of Spain. Catalonia comprises four provinces: Barcelona, Girona, Lleida, and Tarragona. Its capital and largest city is Barcelona. Catalonia covers an area of 32,114 km² and has an...

 and the Basque Country
Basque Country (autonomous community)
The Basque Country is an autonomous community of northern Spain. It includes the Basque provinces of Álava, Biscay and Gipuzkoa, also called Historical Territories....

 (October 1936). The proposed reforms were blocked by the right and rejected by the far-left National Confederation of Labour (Confederación Nacional del Trabajo
Confederación Nacional del Trabajo
The Confederación Nacional del Trabajo is a Spanish confederation of anarcho-syndicalist labor unions affiliated with the International Workers Association . When working with the latter group it is also known as CNT-AIT...

) or (CNT). The Republic suffered attacks from the right (the failed coup of Sanjurjo in 1932), and the left (the uprising of Asturias in 1934
Asturian miners' strike of 1934
The Asturian miners' strike of 1934 was a major strike action which took place in Asturias in northern Spain soon developing into armed insurrection against the Spanish government.-Background:...

), as well as the impact of the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...

.

Nevertheless the Republic managed to survive. In February 1936 the Popular Front
Popular Front (Spain)
The Popular Front in Spain's Second Republic was an electoral coalition and pact signed in January 1936 by various left-wing political organisations, instigated by Manuel Azaña for the purpose of contesting that year's election....

, a coalition of parties from the left to the center right (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party
Spanish Socialist Workers' Party
The Spanish Socialist Workers' Party is a social-democratic political party in Spain. Its political position is Centre-left. The PSOE is the former ruling party of Spain, until beaten in the elections of November 2011 and the second oldest, exceeded only by the Partido Carlista, founded in...

 (PSOE), 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...

 (IR), Republican Union Party
Republican Union Party
The Republican Union was a Spanish republican party founded in 1934 by Diego Martinez Barrio.It was formed as a result of a merger of several small republican parties, including notably Diego Martinez Barrio's Radical Democratic Party founded in May 1934 by a split from Alejandro Lerroux's Radical...

 (UR), Communist Party (PCE), Workers' Party of Marxist Unification
Workers' Party of Marxist Unification
The Workers' Party of Marxist Unification was a Spanish communist political party formed during the Second Republic and mainly active around the Spanish Civil War...

 (POUM), Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC) among others) won the general election and the right started to plan an uprising against the Republic. Finally, on 17 July 1936, a part of the Spanish Army, led by a group of far-right officers (the generals Sanjurjo, Goded
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...

, Emilio Mola
Emilio Mola
Emilio Mola y Vidal, 1st Duke of Mola, Grandee of Spain was a Spanish Nationalist commander during the Spanish Civil War. He is best-known for having coined the term "fifth column".-Early life:...

, 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...

, Miguel Cabanellas
Miguel Cabanellas
Miguel Cabanellas Ferrer was a Spanish Army officer during the Spanish Civil War.A cavalry officer, as a major he managed the creation of the African Regular troops . In 1921 he participated in the reconquest of the Rif after the Battle of Annual...

, Queipo de Llano and Varela
José Enrique Varela
José Enrique Varela Iglesias was a Spanish military officer and Carlist noted for his role as a Nationalist commander in the Spanish Civil War.-Early career:...

 among others) attempted a coup against the government. The coup failed but the rebel troops, known as the Nationalists, held a large part of Spain. 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...

 had started.

One of the leaders of the 1936 coup against Spain's democratically elected government, Franco, with his Nationalist forces and aided by Germany
Condor Legion
The Condor Legion was a unit composed of volunteers from the German Air Force and from the German Army which served with the Nationalists during the Spanish Civil War of July 1936 to March 1939. The Condor Legion developed methods of terror bombing which were used widely in the Second World War...

 and Italy
Corpo Truppe Volontarie
The Corps of Volunteer Troops was an Italian expeditionary force which was sent to Spain to support General Francisco Franco and the Spanish Nationalist forces during the Spanish Civil War...

, finally prevailed in 1939. He ruled the country for the next 36 years. As well as mass killing, political prisoner
Political prisoner
According to the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, a political prisoner is ‘someone who is in prison because they have opposed or criticized the government of their own country’....

s were sent to concentration camps and homosexuals to mental asylums.

Red and White Terrors

In the first months following the outbreak of the war, most of the victims died as a result of mass executions behind the Nationalist and Republican lines. According to Stanley Payne:

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" terrors. In some cases the murder of political opponents began more or less spontaneously, but from the very beginning there was always a certain degree of organization, and nearly all the killings after the first few days were carried out by organized groups.


There were some elements in common in the Republican and the Nationalist repression. Large numbers were killed in the course of removals of prisoners from prisons, the so-called sacas, and many others were killed after "be taken for a ride" (paseo). Most of the victims of this sacas and paseos were executed by death squads of the union trades and political parties militas (CNT, UGT and PCE militias among the republicans and Falange and Carlist militias among the Nationalists) easily infiltred by gangs of criminals. Many executions were justified as a reprisal for aerial bombings and many others were denounced because envy and personal hatreds. Nevertheless, there was a great difference. Historians like Helen Graham, Paul Preston, Antony Beevor, Gabriel Jackson, Hugh Thomas and Ian Gibson thinks that the mass executions behind the Nationalists lines were organized and approved by the Nationalists rebel authorities while the executions behind the Republican lines were the result of the breakdown of the republican state and the anarchy:

Though there was much wanton killing in rebel Spain, the idea of the limpieza, the "cleaning up" of the country from the evils which had overtaken it, was a disciplined policy of the new authorities and a part of their programme of regeneration. In republican Spain, most of the killing was the consequence of anarchy, the outcome of a national breakdown, and not the work of the state; even though some political parties in some cities abetted the enormities, and even though some of those responsible ultimately rose to positions of authority.


On the other hand, Stanley Payne believes that the violence in the Republican zone was organized by the leftist parties:


In general, this was not an irrepressible outpouring of hatred by the man in the street for his "oppressors," as it has sometimes been painted, but a semi-organized activity carried out by sections of nearly all the leftist groups. In the entire leftist zone the only organized political party that eschewed involvement in such activity were the Basque Nationalists.

The Civil War

The "White Terror" commenced the day of the Nationalists' coup d'état
Coup d'état
A coup d'état state, literally: strike/blow of state)—also known as a coup, putsch, and overthrow—is the sudden, extrajudicial deposition of a government, usually by a small group of the existing state establishment—typically the military—to replace the deposed government with another body; either...

, July 17, 1936, with hundreds of murders in the area controlled by the rebels, and went on to include the repression of political opponents in areas under Nationalist occupation, mass executions in areas captured from the Republicans
Second Spanish Republic
The Second Spanish Republic was the government of Spain between April 14 1931, and its destruction by a military rebellion, led by General Francisco Franco....

, such as the Massacre of Badajoz
Massacre of Badajoz
The massacre of Badajoz occurred in the days after the Battle of Badajoz during the Spanish Civil War. Between 1,341 and 4,000 civilian and military supporters of the Second Spanish Republic, were killed by the Nationalist forces following the seizure of the town of Badajoz on August 14,...

, and looting.

Gerald Brenan
Gerald Brenan
Edward FitzGerald "Gerald" Brenan, CBE was a British writer and Hispanist who spent much of his life in Spain.He is best known for The Spanish Labyrinth, a historical work on the background to the Spanish Civil War, and for South from Granada: Seven Years in an Andalusian Village...

, in The Spanish Labyrinth (1943), states that


...thanks to the failure of the coup d’état and to the eruption of the Falangist and Carlist militias, with their previously prepared lists of victims, the scale on which these executions took place exceeded all precedent. Andaulsia, where the supporters of Franco were a tiny minority and where the military commander, General Queipo de Llano
Gonzalo Queipo de Llano
Gonzalo Queipo de Llano y Sierra, 1st Marquis of Queipo de Llano, a title bestowed upon him, to crown his professional career at the service of the "New" Spain forged by Dictator of Spain, 1939 - 1975, General Francisco Franco on 1 April 1950, once he had decided Spain would be again a Kingdom...

, was a pathological figure recalling the Conde de España of the First Carlist War
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...

, was drenched in blood. The famous massacre of Badajoz was merely the culminating act of a ritual that had already been performed in every town and village in the South-West of Spain.

Other examples include the bombing of civilian areas such as Guernica
Bombing of Guernica
The bombing of Guernica was an aerial attack on the Basque town of Guernica, Spain, causing widespread destruction and civilian deaths, during the Spanish Civil War...

, Madrid, 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...

, Almería, Lérida, Durango
Bombing of Durango
The Bombing of Durango took place on 31 March, 1937, during the Spanish Civil War.-Background:On 31 March of 1937, the Nationalist forces, led by Emilio Mola, started the offensive against the Republican held, Vizcaya Province...

, Granollers
Bombing of Granollers
The Bombing of Granollers took place during the Spanish Civil War in 1938.-Background.:On 16 April 1938, the Anglo-Italian pact was signed. Italy accepted to withdraw her troops from Spain once the war was over and the countries agreed to guarantee the status quo in the Mediterranean...

, Alcañiz, Valencia and Barcelona
Bombing of Barcelona
The Bombing of Barcelona was a series of Nationalist airstrikes which took place from 16 to 18 March 1938, during the Spanish Civil War. Up to 1,300 people was killed and at least 2,000 wounded.-Background:...

 by the Luftwaffe
Luftwaffe
Luftwaffe is a generic German term for an air force. It is also the official name for two of the four historic German air forces, the Wehrmacht air arm founded in 1935 and disbanded in 1946; and the current Bundeswehr air arm founded in 1956....

 (Legion Condor) and the Italian air force
Aeronautica Militare
The Italian Air Force is the air force of the Italian Republic. It has held a prominent role in modern Italian military history...

 (Aviazione Legionaria
Aviazione Legionaria
The Legionary Air Force was an expeditionary corps from the Italian Royal Air Force. It was set up in 1936 and sent to provide logistical and tactical support to Francisco Franco's Nationalists during the Spanish Civil War, alongside its German equivalent, the Condor Legion, and the Italian ground...

) (according to Gabriel Jackson
Gabriel Jackson
Gabriel Jackson is an American Hispanist, historian and journalist. He was born in New York. He is a leading authority on the Second Spanish Republic and the Spanish Civil War. Since his retirement he has lived in Barcelona, Spain....

 estimates range from 5,000 to 10,000 victims of the bombings), killings of Republican POWs
Prisoner of war
A prisoner of war or enemy prisoner of war is a person, whether civilian or combatant, who is held in custody by an enemy power during or immediately after an armed conflict...

, rape
War rape
War rapes are rapes committed by soldiers, other combatants or civilians during armed conflict or war, or during military occupation, distinguished from sexual assaults and rape committed amongst troops in military service...

, forced disappearances and the establishment of Francoist prisons in the aftermath of the Republicans' defeat.

In areas controlled by the Nationalists, government officials, Popular Front
Popular Front (Spain)
The Popular Front in Spain's Second Republic was an electoral coalition and pact signed in January 1936 by various left-wing political organisations, instigated by Manuel Azaña for the purpose of contesting that year's election....

 politicians were executed (in the city of Granada 23 of the 44 councillors of the city's corporation were executed), union leaders, teachers (in the first weeks of the war hundreds of teachers were killed by the Nationalists), intellectuals (for example,in Granada, between 26 July 1936 and 1 March 1939, the poet Garcia Lorca, the editor of the Left-wing newspaper El Defensor de Granada, the professor of paediatrics in the Granada University, the rector of the university, the professor of political law, the professor of pharmacy, the professor of history, the engineer of the road to the top of the Sierra Morena and the best-known doctor in the city were killed by the Nationalists, and in the city of Cordoba, "nearly the entire republican elite, from deputies to booksellers, were executed in August, September and December,...”), suspected Freemasons (in Huesca where there were only twelve Freemasons but the Nationalists killed a hundred suspected Freemasons), 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...

, Catalan
Catalan nationalism
Catalan nationalism or Catalanism , is a political movement advocating for either further political autonomy or full independence of Catalonia....

, Andalusian
Andalusian nationalism
Andalusian nationalism or Andalusian regionalism, sometimes referred as Andalucismo in Spanish, is the name given to the political movement in Spain advocating the recognition of Andalusian people as a "nation". It is considered to be represented primarily by the Andalusian Party but there are also...

 or Galician
Galicianism (Galicia)
Galicianism is a political ideology of nationalist character whose objective is the defence of Galicia and its culture by the means of the establishment and strengthening of its own institutions.-Origins:...

 Nationalists (among them Manuel Carrasco i Formiguera
Manuel Carrasco Formiguera
Manuel Carrasco i Formiguera , Spanish lawyer and Christian democrat Catalan nationalist politician, in the twentieth century.- Early life :...

, leader of Democratic Union of Catalonia
Democratic Union of Catalonia
The Democratic Union of Catalonia is a political party in Catalonia, Spain. Together with the Democratic Convergence of Catalonia, it is part of the Convergence and Union coalition.It describes itself as Catalan nationalist and Christian Democrat....

 Unió Democrática de Catalunya, Alexandre Boveda
Alexandre Bóveda
Alexandre Bóveda Iglesias , commonly known as Alexandre Bóveda, was a Galician politician and financial officer. He is considered one of the most important Galicianist intellectuals during the Spanish Second Republic...

, one of the founders of the Partido Galeguista
Partido Galeguista (1931)
The Partido Galeguista was a Galician nationalist party founded in December 1931. It achieved notoriety during the time of the Spanish Second Republic...

 and Blas Infante
Blas Infante
Blas Infante Pérez de Vargas . Blas Infante was an andalusist politician, writer, historian and musicologist, known as the "Father" of Andalusian fatherland ....

, leader of the Andalusian nationalism), military officers who had remained loyal to the government of the Republic, (among them the Army generals Domingo Batet, Enrique Salcedo Molinuevo, Miguel Campíns, Nicolás Molero, Nuñez de Prado, Manuel Romerales and Rogelio Caridad Pita), and people suspected of voting for the Popular Front were targeted, usually brought before local committees and imprisoned or executed. The living conditions in the improvised Nationalist prisons were very harsh. One former Republican prisoner declared:


At times we were forty prisoners in a cell built to accommodate two people. There were two benches, each capable of seating three persons, and the floor to sleep on. For our private needs, there were only three chamberpots. They had to be emptied into an old rusty cauldron which also served for washing our clothes. We were forbidden to have food brought to us from outside, and were given disgusting soup cooked with soda ash which kept us in a constant state of dysentery. We were all in a deplorable state. The air was unbreathable and the babies choked many nights for lack of oxygen...
To be imprisoned, according to the rebels, was to lose all individuality. The most elementary human rights were unknown and people were killed as easily as rabbits...


The main goal of the "White Terror" was to terrify the civil population who opposed the coup, eliminate the supporters of the Second Spanish Republic
Second Spanish Republic
The Second Spanish Republic was the government of Spain between April 14 1931, and its destruction by a military rebellion, led by General Francisco Franco....

 and the militants of the leftist parties, and because of this, some historians have considered the "White Terror" a genocide. In fact, one of the leaders of the coup, General Emilio Mola
Emilio Mola
Emilio Mola y Vidal, 1st Duke of Mola, Grandee of Spain was a Spanish Nationalist commander during the Spanish Civil War. He is best-known for having coined the term "fifth column".-Early life:...

 said:
Because of this mass terror in many areas controlled by the Nationalists, thousands of Republicans left their houses and tried to hide in nearby forests or mountains. Many of these huidos later joined the Spanish maquis
Spanish Maquis
The Spanish Maquis were Spanish guerrillas exiled in France after the Spanish Civil War who continued to fight against the Franco regime until the early 1960s, carrying out sabotage, robberies , occupations of the Spanish Embassy in France and assassinations of Francoists, as well as contributing...

, the anti-Francoist guerrilla which continued to fight against the dictatorship in the post-war. Hundreds of thousands of others fled to the areas controlled by the Second Republic. In 1938 there were more than one million refugees in Barcelona alone. In many cases, when someone fled the Nationalists executed their relatives. One witness in Zamora stated: "All the members of the Flechas family, both men and women, were killed, a total of seven persons. A son succeeded in escaping, but in his place they killed his eight-months-pregnant fianceé Transito Alonso and her mother, Juana Ramos." Furthermore, thousands of republicans joined Falange and the Nationalist army in order to escape the repression. In fact, many supporters of the Nationalists referred to the Falange as "our reds" and to the Falanges shirt as the salvavidas (life jacket). In Granada, one supporter of the Nationalists said:
Estimates of executions behind the Nationalist lines during the Spanish Civil War range from fewer than 50,000 to 200,000 (Hugh Thomas: 75,000, Secundino Serrano: 90,000; Josep Fontana: 150,000; and Julián Casanova: 100,000.). Most of the victims were killed without a trial in the first months of the war and their corpses were left on the sides of roads or in clandestine and unmarked mass graves. For example, in Valladolid only 374 officially recorded victims of the repression of a total of 1,303 (there were many other unrecorded victims) were executed after a trial, and the historian Stanley Payne in his work Fascism in Spain (1999), citing a study by Cifuentes Checa and Maluenda Pons carried out over the Nationalist-controlled city of Zaragoza and its environs, refers to 3,117 killings, of which 2,578 took place in 1936. He goes on to state that by 1938 the military courts there were directing summary executions. Many of the executions in the course of the war were carried by militants of the fascist party Falange
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....

 (Falange Española de las J.O.N.S.) or militants of the Carlist
Carlism
Carlism is a traditionalist and legitimist political movement in Spain seeking the establishment of a separate line of the Bourbon family on the Spanish throne. This line descended from Infante Carlos, Count of Molina , and was founded due to dispute over the succession laws and widespread...

 party (Comunión Tradicionalista) militia (Requetés
Requetés
The Requetés were the Carlist militia during the Spanish Civil War. Wearing red berets, they mostly came from Navarre and were highly religious with many regarding the war as a Crusade...

), but with the approval of the Nationalist government. The Spanish Church approved the White Terror and cooperated with the rebels. One witness in Zamora said: "Many priests acted very badly. The bishop of Zamora in 1936 was more or less an assassin—I don't remember his name. He must be held responsible because prisoners appealed to him to save their lives. All he would reply was that the Reds had killed more people than the falangist were killing.". Nevertheless the Nationalists, killed at least 16 Basque nationalists priests (among them the arch-priest of Mondragon), and imprisoned or deported hundreds more. Also killed a few priests who tried to halt the killings and at least one priest for being a Mason.

The "White Terror" was especially harsh in the southern part of Spain (Andalusia and Extremadura). The rebels bombed and seized the working-class districts of the main Andalusian cities in the first days of the war and after executing thousands of workers and militants of the leftist parties: in the city of Cordoba 4,000; in the city of Granada 5,000; in the city of Seville 3,028; in the city of Huelva 2,000 killed and 2,500 disappeared; in the city of Malaga (occupied by the Nationalists in February 1937) 4,000. In the rural areas the White Terror was also brutal. For example, in Lora del Rio, in the province of Seville, the Nationalists killed 300 peasants as a reprisal for the assassination of a local landowner. In Puente Genil, in the province of Cordoba, the Nationalists killed 995 Republicans. Paul Preston estimates the number of victims of the Nationalists in Andalusia at 55,000.

Furthermore the colonial troops of the Spanish Army of Africa
Spanish Army of Africa
The Army of Africa was a Spanish field army that garrisoned Spanish Morocco from the early 20th century until Morocco's independence in 1956....

 (Ejército de África), mainly the Moroccan regulares
Regulares
The Fuerzas Regulares Indígenas , known simply as the Regulares , were the volunteer infantry and cavalry units of the Spanish Army recruited in Spanish Morocco. They consisted of Moroccans officered by Spaniards...

 and the Spanish Legion
Spanish Legion
The Spanish Legion , formerly Spanish Foreign Legion, is an elite unit of the Spanish Army and Spain's Rapid Reaction Force. Founded as the Tercio de Extranjeros , it was originally intended as a Spanish equivalent of the French Foreign Legion, but in practice it recruited almost exclusively...

, under the command of Colonel Juan Yagüe
Juan Yagüe
Juan Yagüe y Blanco, 1st Marquis of San Leonardo de Yagüe was a Spanish army officer during the Spanish Civil War, one of the most important in the National side.-Early life:...

, in their advance towards Madrid from Sevilla trough Andalusia and Extremadura killed dozens or hundreds in every town or city conquered, and several thousands of Republicans in the city of Badajoz
Massacre of Badajoz
The massacre of Badajoz occurred in the days after the Battle of Badajoz during the Spanish Civil War. Between 1,341 and 4,000 civilian and military supporters of the Second Spanish Republic, were killed by the Nationalist forces following the seizure of the town of Badajoz on August 14,...

. Moreover the colonial troops raped many working-class women and looted the houses of the Republicans. Queipo de Llano, one of the leaders of the Nationalists said:

Post-war

When Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler was Reichsführer of the SS, a military commander, and a leading member of the Nazi Party. As Chief of the German Police and the Minister of the Interior from 1943, Himmler oversaw all internal and external police and security forces, including the Gestapo...

 visited Spain in 1940, a year after Franco’s victory, he was shocked by the brutality of the Falangist repression. In July 1939, the foreign minister of the Fascist Italy
Italian Fascism
Italian Fascism also known as Fascism with a capital "F" refers to the original fascist ideology in Italy. This ideology is associated with the National Fascist Party which under Benito Mussolini ruled the Kingdom of Italy from 1922 until 1943, the Republican Fascist Party which ruled the Italian...

, Ciano
Galeazzo Ciano
Gian Galeazzo Ciano, 2nd Count of Cortellazzo and Buccari was an Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Benito Mussolini's son-in-law. In early 1944 Count Ciano was shot by firing squad at the behest of his father-in-law, Mussolini under pressure from Nazi Germany.-Early life:Ciano was born in...

 reported "trials going on every day at a speed which I would call almost summary... There are still a great number of shootings. In Madrid alone, between 200 and 250 a day, in Barcelona 150, in Seville 80". While authors like Payne have cast doubts on the democratic leanings of the Republic, "fascism was clearly on the other".

According to Beevor, Spain was an open prison for all those who opposed the dictatorship. Until 1963, all the opponents of the dictatorship were brought before military courts. A number of repressive laws were issued, like the Law of Political Responsibilities
Law of Political Responsibilities
The Law of Political Responsibilities was a law issued by the Francoist dictatorship on February 1939, two months before the end of Spanish Civil War...

 (Ley de Responsabilidades Políticas) on February 1939, the Law of Security of State (Ley de Seguridad del Estado) on 1941 which regarded illegal propaganda or labour strikes as military rebellion, the Law for the Repression of the Masonry and Communism (Ley de Represión de la Masonería y el Comunismo) on 1 March 1940), and the Law for the Repression of Banditry and Terrorism (Ley para la represión del Bandidaje y el Terrorismo) on April 1947, which targeted the maquis. Furthermore, in 1940 the Francoist dictatorship established the Tribunal for the erradication of Freemasonry and Communism (Tribunal Especial para la Represión de la Masonería y el Comunismo).

Political parties and trade unions were forbidden, excepting the government party, Traditionalist Spanish Falange and Offensive of the Unions of the National-Syndicalist (Falange Española Tradicionalista y de las Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional-Sindicalista or FET de las JONS), and the official trade union Spanish Trade Union Organisation
Spanish Trade Union Organisation
The Spanish Trade Union Organisation , commonly known as Vertical Syndicate , was the only legal trade union organisation in Francoist Spain , and a main component of the Movimiento Nacional Francoist apparatus...

, (Sindicato Vertical). Hundreds of militants and supporters of the parties and trade unions declared illegal under Franco's dictatorship, such as the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party
Spanish Socialist Workers' Party
The Spanish Socialist Workers' Party is a social-democratic political party in Spain. Its political position is Centre-left. The PSOE is the former ruling party of Spain, until beaten in the elections of November 2011 and the second oldest, exceeded only by the Partido Carlista, founded in...

 (Partido Socialista Obrero Español), PSOE; the Communist Party of Spain (Partido Comunista de España), PCE; the Workers' General Union (Unión General de Trabajadores), UGT; and the National Confederation of Labor (Confederación Nacional del Trabajo), CNT, were imprisoned or executed. The regional languages
Language politics in Spain under Franco
Language politics in Francoist Spain centered on attempts in Spain under Franco to increase the dominance of the Spanish language over the other languages of Spain.The regime of Francisco Franco had Spanish nationalism as one of its bases....

 like Basque
Basque language
Basque is the ancestral language of the Basque people, who inhabit the Basque Country, a region spanning an area in northeastern Spain and southwestern France. It is spoken by 25.7% of Basques in all territories...

 and Catalan
Catalan language
Catalan is a Romance language, the national and only official language of Andorra and a co-official language in the Spanish autonomous communities of Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and Valencian Community, where it is known as Valencian , as well as in the city of Alghero, on the Italian island...

 were also forbidden, and the statutes of autonomy of Catalonia
Catalonia
Catalonia is an autonomous community in northeastern Spain, with the official status of a "nationality" of Spain. Catalonia comprises four provinces: Barcelona, Girona, Lleida, and Tarragona. Its capital and largest city is Barcelona. Catalonia covers an area of 32,114 km² and has an...

 and the Basque country were abolished. Censorship of press (Law of Press on April 1938) and cultural life was rigorously exercised and forbidden books destroyed.

After the war the executions continued (maybe 50,000), including the extrajudicial executions of members of the Spanish maquis
Spanish Maquis
The Spanish Maquis were Spanish guerrillas exiled in France after the Spanish Civil War who continued to fight against the Franco regime until the early 1960s, carrying out sabotage, robberies , occupations of the Spanish Embassy in France and assassinations of Francoists, as well as contributing...

 (anti-Francoist guerrillas) and their supporters (enlaces) (only in the province of Cordoba 220 maquis and 160 enlaces were killed). Hundreds of thousands were imprisoned after the war in concentration camps (700,000 in 50 camps) or prisons. Before the war, in 1933, there were 12,000 prisoners in Spanish prisons, but by 1940 there were 280,000 prisoners in over 500 prisons. The main function of the camps was to classify Republican prisoners of war. Those who were regarded as "unrecoverable" were shot. Furthermore hundreds of thousands were forced into exile (470,000 in 1939), among them many intellectuals and artists who had supported the Republic such as Antonio Machado
Antonio Machado
Antonio Cipriano José María y Francisco de Santa Ana Machado y Ruiz, known as Antonio Machado was a Spanish poet and one of the leading figures of the Spanish literary movement known as the Generation of '98....

, Ramon J. Sender, Juan Ramon Jimenez
Juan Ramón Jiménez
Juan Ramón Jiménez Mantecón was a Spanish poet, a prolific writer who received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1956. One of Jiménez's most important contributions to modern poetry was his advocacy of the French concept of "pure poetry."-Biography:Jiménez was born in Moguer, near Huelva, in...

, Rafael Alberti
Rafael Alberti
Rafael Alberti Merello was a Spanish poet, a member of the Generation of '27....

, Luis Cernuda
Luis Cernuda
Luis Cernuda , was a Spanish poet and literary critic.-Life and career:...

, Pedro Salinas
Pedro Salinas
Pedro Salinas y Serrano was a Spanish poet and member of the Generation of '27. He was also a scholar and critic of Spanish literature, teaching at universities in Spain, England, and the United States....

, Manuel Altolaguirre
Manuel Altolaguirre
Manuel Altolaguirre was a Spanish poet, an editor, publisher, and printer of poetry, and a member of the Generation of '27.-Biography:...

, Emilio Prados
Emilio Prados
Emilio Prados was a Spanish poet and editor, a member of the Generation of '27.-Life:Born in the Andalusian city of Málaga in 1899, Prados was offered a place at Madrid's famous Residencia de estudiantes in 1914 and moved into its university section in 1918...

, Max Aub
Max Aub
Max Aub Mohrenwitz was a Spanish experimentalist novelist, playwright and literary critic. In 1965 he founded the literary periodical Los Sesenta , with editors that included the poets Jorge Guillén and Rafael Alberti.-Early life:Aub was born in Paris to a Jewish French mother and German father,...

, Franciso Ayala
Francisco Ayala (novelist)
Francisco Ayala García-Duarte was a Spanish writer, the last representative of the Generation of '27.- Biography :...

, Jorge Guillén
Jorge Guillén
Jorge Guillén y Álvarez was a Spanish poet, a member of the Generation of '27.-Biography:Jorge Guillén was born in Valladolid. His life paralleled that of his friend Pedro Salinas, whom he succeeded as a Spanish teaching assistant at the Collège de Sorbonne in the University of Paris from 1917 to...

, León Felipe
León Felipe
León Felipe Camino Galicia was a Spanish poet.Felipe was born in Tábara, Zamora, Spain, while his parents were on travel. His father was a notary public, and consequently very well off. His family established in Santander. Later on, Felipe would study pharmacy and start a business as a...

, Arturo Barea
Arturo Barea
Arturo Barea Ogazón was a Spanish broadcaster and writer.-Biography:Of humble origins, his father died when he was four months old. His mother, with four young children to support, worked as a laundress, washing clothes in the River Manzanares, while the family lived in a garret in the poor...

, Pau Casals, Jesús Bal y Gay
Jesús Bal y Gay
Jesús Bal y Gay was a Spanish composer, music critic, and musicologist. He was a member of Generation of '27 and the Group of Eight, the latter of which also included composers Julián Bautista, Ernesto Halffter and his brother Rodolfo, Juan José Mantecón, Fernando Remacha, Rosa García Ascot,...

, Rodolfo Halffter
Rodolfo Halffter
Rodolfo Halffter Escriche was a Spanish composer.-Life:Born in Madrid, Spain into a family of musicians, he was the brother of Ernesto Halffter and uncle of Cristóbal Halffter, also composers. His father Ernesto Halffter Hein came from Königsberg, Germany...

, Julián Bautista
Julián Bautista
Julián Bautista was a Spanish composer and conductor. He was a member of Generation of '27 and the Group of Eight, the latter of which also included composers Jesús Bal y Gay, Ernesto Halffter and his brother Rodolfo, Juan José Mantecón, Fernando Remacha, Rosa García Ascot, Salvador Bacarisse and...

, Salvador Bacarisse
Salvador Bacarisse
Salvador Bacarisse Chinoria was a Spanish composer.Bacarisse was born in Madrid and studied music at the Real Conservatorio de Música there, as a student of Manuel Fernández Alberdi and Conrado del Campo...

, Josep Lluís Sert
Josep Lluís Sert
Josep Lluís Sert i López was a Spanish Catalan architect and city planner.- Biography :Born in Barcelona, he showed keen interest in the works of his painter uncle Josep Maria Sert and of Gaudí. He studied architecture at the Escola Superior d'Arquitectura in Barcelona and set up his own studio...

, Margarita Xirgu
Margarita Xirgu
Margarita Xirgu, also Margarida Xirgu was a Catalan stage actress, who was greatly popular throughout her country and Latin America. A friend of the poet Federico García Lorca, she was forced into exile during Francisco Franco's dictatorship of Spain, but continued her work in America...

, Maruja Mallo
Maruja Mallo
Maruja Mallo was a Spanish painter.She was born in Vivero, Lugo, and studied arts in Madrid between 1922 and 1926, where she met many important artists, as she also did subsequently in Paris: Salvador Dalí, Federico García Lorca, Luis Buñuel, Magritte, Max Ernst, Miró, De Chirico, André Breton,...

, Claudio Sánchez Albornoz
Claudio Sánchez-Albornoz y Menduiña
Claudio Sánchez-Albornoz y Menduiña was an eminent Spanish medieval historian, statesman, and a leader of the Spanish Republican government in Exile during the rule of Francisco Franco.- Education and Early Career :...

, Americo Castro
Americo Castro
Américo Castro y Quesada was a Spanish cultural historian, philologist, and literary critic who challenged some of the prevailing notions of Spanish identity, raising heated controversy with his conclusions that Spaniards didn't become the distinct group they are today until after the Islamic...

, Clara Campoamor
Clara Campoamor
Clara Campoamor was a Spanish politician and feminist best known for her advocacy for women's rights and suffrage during the writing of the Spanish constitution of 1931. A child of a working class family, Campoamor began work as a seamstress at age 13, later working in a number of government...

, Victoria Kent
Victoria Kent
Victoria Kent was a Spanish lawyer and republican politician.Born in Málaga, she was affiliated to the Radical Socialist Republican Party and came to fame in 1930 for defending - at a court martial - Álvaro de Albornoz, who would shortly afterwards go on to become minister of justice and later the...

, Pablo Picasso
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...

, Maria Luisa Algarra
María Luisa Algarra
María Luisa Algarra was a Spanish playwright who lived and wrote in exile in Mexico after the Spanish Civil War and World War II.-Life:...

, Alejandro Casona
Alejandro Casona
Alejandro Rodríguez Álvarez, known as Alejandro Casona was a Spanish poet and playwright born in Besullo, Spain, a member of the Generation of '27. Casona received his bachelor's degree in Gijon and later studied at the University of Murcia. After Franco's rise in 1936, he was forced, like many...

, Rosa Chacel
Rosa Chacel
Rosa Chacel was a famous and sometimes controversial writer from Spain. She was a native of Valladolid.- Early life :...

, Maria Zambrano
María Zambrano
María Zambrano Alarcón was a Spanish essayist and philosopher.Zambrano studied under and was influenced by José Ortega y Gasset and went on to teach Metaphysics at Madrid University from 1931 to 1936...

, Josep Carner
Josep Carner
Josep Carner i Puig-Oriol , was a Catalan poet, journalist, playwright and translator. He was also known as the Prince of Catalan Poets.-Biography:...

, Paulino Masip
Paulino Masip
Paulino Masip Roca was a Spanish playwright, screenwriter and novelist, a member of the Generation of '27. Driven into exile in Mexico in 1939 by the events of the Spanish Civil War, he became involved with the nascent Golden age of Mexican cinema and was the author of over 50 screenplays...

, María Teresa León
María Teresa León
María Teresa León was a Spanish writer, activist and cultural ambassador. Born in Logroño, she was the niece of the Spanish feminist and writer María Goyri . She herself was married to the Spanish poet Rafael Alberti...

, Alfonso Castelao
Alfonso Daniel Rodríguez Castelao
Alfonso Daniel Rodríguez Castelao , most commonly known as simply Castelao, was a Galician writer in Galician language and one of the main symbols of Galician nationalism...

, Jose Gaos
José Gaos
José Gaos was a Spanish-born philosopher who obtained political asylum in Mexico during the Spanish Civil War....

 and Luis Buñuel.
Luis Buñuel
Luis Buñuel Portolés was a Spanish-born filmmaker — later a naturalized citizen of Mexico — who worked in Spain, Mexico, France and the US..-Early years:...


When Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...

 occupied France, Franco's regime encouraged the Germans to detain and deport thousands of Republican refugees to the concentration camps. 15,000 Spanish Republicans were deported to Dachau, Buchenwald (including the writer Jorge Semprún
Jorge Semprún
Jorge Semprún Maura was a Spanish writer and politician who lived in France most of his life and wrote primarily in French. From 1953 to 1962, during the era of Francisco Franco, Semprún lived clandestinely in Spain working as an organizer for the exiled Communist Party of Spain, but was expelled...

), Bergen-Belsen
Bergen-Belsen concentration camp
Bergen-Belsen was a Nazi concentration camp in Lower Saxony in northwestern Germany, southwest of the town of Bergen near Celle...

, Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg (one of them the politician Francisco Largo Caballero
Francisco Largo Caballero
Francisco Largo Caballero was a Spanish politician and trade unionist. He was one of the historic leaders of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party and of the Workers' General Union...

), Auschwitz, Flossenburg
Flossenbürg concentration camp
Konzentrationslager Flossenbürg was a Nazi concentration camp built in May 1938 by the Schutzstaffel Economic-Administrative Main Office at Flossenbürg, in the Oberpfalz region of Bavaria, Germany, near the border with Czechoslovakia. Until its liberation in April 1945, more than 96,000 prisoners...

 and Mauthausen
Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp
Mauthausen Concentration Camp grew to become a large group of Nazi concentration camps that was built around the villages of Mauthausen and Gusen in Upper Austria, roughly east of the city of Linz.Initially a single camp at Mauthausen, it expanded over time and by the summer of 1940, the...

 (5,000 out of 7,200 Spanish prisoners at Mauthausen died there). Other Spanish Republicans were detained by the Gestapo
Gestapo
The Gestapo was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Beginning on 20 April 1934, it was under the administration of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police...

, handed over to Spain and executed, among them Julian Zugazagoitia, Juan Peiró, Francisco Cruz Salido and Lluis Companys (president of the Generalitat of Catalonia) and other 15,000 were forced to work building the Atlantic Wall
Atlantic Wall
The Atlantic Wall was an extensive system of coastal fortifications built by Nazi Germany between 1942 and 1944 along the western coast of Europe as a defense against an anticipated Allied invasion of the mainland continent from Great Britain.-History:On March 23, 1942 Führer Directive Number 40...

. Moreover, 4,000 Spanish Republicans were deported by the Nazis to the occupied Channel Islands
Occupation of the Channel Islands
The Channel Islands were occupied by Nazi Germany for much of World War II, from 30 June 1940 until the liberation on 9 May 1945. The Channel Islands are two British Crown dependencies and include the bailiwicks of Guernsey and Jersey as well as the smaller islands of Alderney and Sark...

 and were forced to work
Lager Sylt
Lager Sylt was a Nazi concentration camp on Alderney in the British Crown Dependency, the Channel Islands, in operation between March 1943 and June 1944. The Germans built one concentration camp and three Labour camps on the island, subcamps of the Neuengamme concentration camp...

 building fortifications; only 59 survived. Because of this, thousands of Spanish refugees (10,000 fighters in 1944) joined the French Resistance
French Resistance
The French Resistance is the name used to denote the collection of French resistance movements that fought against the Nazi German occupation of France and against the collaborationist Vichy régime during World War II...

 and the Free French Forces.

After the war, the republican prisoners were sent to work in militarized penal colonies (Colonias Penales Militarizadas), penal detachtments (Destacamentos Penales) and disciplinary batallions of worker-soldiers (Batallones Disciplinarios de Soldados Trabajadores). According to Beevor, 90,000 republican prisoners were sent off to 121 labour batallions and 8,000 to military workshops. In 1939, Ciano said about the Republican prisoners of war that: "They are not prisoners of war, they are slaves of war.". Thousands of prisoners (15,947 in 1943) were forced to work building dams, highways, the Guadalquivir Canal(10,000 political prisoners worked on its construction between 1940 and 1962), the Carabanchel Prison
Carabanchel Prison
Carabanchel Prison was constructed by political prisoners after the Spanish Civil War between 1940 and 1944 in the Madrid's neighbourhood of Carabanchel. It was one of the biggest prisons in Europe until its closure in 1998...

, the Valley of the Fallen (Valle de los Caídos) (20,000 political prisoners worked in its construction) and in coal mines in Asturias and Leon. The severe overcrowding of the prisons (according to 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...

 270,000 prisoners were spread around jails with capacity for 20,000), poor sanitary conditions and the lack of food caused thousands of deaths (4,663 deaths of prisoners between 1939 and 1945, in 13 of the 50 Spanish provinces), among them the poet Miguel Hernández
Miguel Hernández
Miguel Hernández Gilabert was a 20th century Spanish poet and playwright.-Biography:Hernández was born in Orihuela, in the Valencian Community, to a poor family and received little formal education; he published his first book of poetry at 23, and gained considerable fame before his death...

 and the politician Julián Besteiro
Julián Besteiro
Julián Besteiro Fernández was a Spanish socialist politician and university professor.-Early life:...

. Torture was systematic in the Francoist prisons and concentration camps. According to Gabriel Jackson, the number of victims of the "White Terror" (executions and hunger or illness in prisons) only between 1939 and 1943 was 200,000.

A Francoist psychiatrist, Antonio Vallejo-Nájera
Antonio Vallejo-Nájera
- Early life :Vallejo-Nájera was born in Paredes de Nava in 1889. He studied Medicine at the University of Valladolid and joined the army’s sanitary corps in 1910, taking part in the Rif War between 1912 and 1915. During World War I he was posted to the military department at the Spanish Embassy in...

, carried out so-called "experiments" on prisoners in the Francoist concentration camps in order to "establish the bio-psych roots of Marxism". He said that it was necessary remove the children of the Republican women from their mothers. Thousands of children were taken from their mothers and handed over to Francoist families (in 1943 12,043). Many of their mothers were executed after that. "For mothers who had a baby with them—and there were many—the first sign that they were to be executed was when their infant was snatched from them. Everyone knew what this meant. A mother whose little one was taken had only a few hours left to live."

The francoist dictatorship carried out extensive purges among the civil service. Thousands of army officials loyal to the Republic were expelled from the army. Thousands of university and school teachers lost their jobs (a quarter of all spanish teachers). Priority in order to get a job was always given to the Nationalists supporters and was necessary to have a "good behavior" certificate from local Falangist officials and parish priests. Furthermore, the dictatorship encouraged tens of thousands of Spaniards to denounce their Republican neighbours and friends:
Republican women were also victims of the repression in post-war Spain. Thousands of women suffered public humiliation (being paraded naked through the streets, being shaved and forced to ingest castor oil so they would soil themselves in public), sexual harassment and rape. In many cases the houses and goods of the widows of Republicans were confiscated by the government. Because of this, many Republican women, living in total poverty, were forced into prostitution. According to Paul Preston: "The increase in prostitution both benefited Francoist men who thereby slaked their lust and also reassured them that 'red' women were a fount of dirt and corruption.". Furthermore thousands of women were executed (for example the 13 roses
Las Trece Rosas
"Las Trece Rosas" is the name given in Spain to a group of thirteen young women, seven of whom were under age , who were executed by a Francoist firing squad just after the conclusion of the Spanish Civil War, as part of a massive execution campaign known as the "saca de agosto" along with 43...

), among them pregnant women. One judge said: "We cannot wait seven months to execute a woman".

The divorce and marriage legislation of the Republic was retroactively reversed, with the divorces retroactively unmade and the children of civil marriages made illegitimate
Legitimacy (law)
At common law, legitimacy is the status of a child who is born to parents who are legally married to one another; and of a child who is born shortly after the parents' divorce. In canon and in civil law, the offspring of putative marriages have been considered legitimate children...

. Furthermore, under the Francoist legislation a woman needed her husband's permission in order to take a job or open a bank account. Adultery by women was a crime, adultery by the husband only if he lived with his mistress.

Estimates

Concrete figures do not exist, as many supporters and sympathizers of the Republic fled Spain after losing the Civil War. Furthermore the francoist government destroyed thousands of documents relating to the White Terror and tried to hide the executions of the Republicans. Gabriel Jackson states that:
Thousands of victims of the "White Terror" are buried in hundreds of unmarked common graves (over 2,000), more than 600 only in Andalusia. The largest common grave is the common grave at San Rafael cemetery on the outskirts of Malaga (with perhaps more than 4,000 bodies). 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...

 (Asociación para la Recuperación de la Memoria Historica or ARMH) says that the number of disappeared is over 35,000.

Estimates range from 150,000 victims to 400,000; for example, in the collective work Victimas de la guerra civil: 150,000; the Spanish historian Josep Fontana
Josep Fontana
-Education:He received his master's degree in philosophy and letters at the University of Barcelona in 1956 and his doctorate in history by the same university in 1970. He was a student of Jaume Vicens i Vives and Ferran Soldevila. Their main currents of investigation are economic history, 19th...

: 175,000; Hugh Thomas
Hugh Thomas
Hugh Thomas , is a British historian and life peer.Hugh Thomas may also refer to:* Hugh Thomas , American choral conductor, pianist and educator* Hugh Thomas , Australian rules football coach...

: 175,000; Paul Preston: 180,000; Anthony Beevor: 200,000; and Gabriel Jackson: 400,000. There are, however, regional and partial figures. For example, in the province of Cordoba the victims of "White Terror" are 9,579 (the historian Francisco Moreno Gomez has increased the number to 11,581).http://www.publico.es/espana/actualidad/171934/memoriahistorica/franco/republica/guerracivil, On the other hand, the victims of the "red terror" in the same province are 2,060; in the province of Sevilla the "White Terror" 8,000 (the "red terror" 480); in the province of Granada the "White Terror" 5,048 (including the poet Federico García Lorca
Federico García Lorca
Federico del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús García Lorca was a Spanish poet, dramatist and theatre director. García Lorca achieved international recognition as an emblematic member of the Generation of '27. He is believed to be one of thousands who were summarily shot by anti-communist death squads...

) (the "red terror" 994); in the province of Zaragoza the "White Terror" 6,029 (the "Red Terror" 742); in the province of Valencia the "White Terror" 3,128 (the "Red Terror" 2,844); in the province of Malaga, the "White Terror" 7,000 (the "Red Terror" 2,607); in Navarra the "White Terror", 2,789 (the "Red Terror" zero); in the province of Zamora the "White Terror" 3,000 (the "Red Terror" zero); in the province of Valladolid the "White Terror" 3,430 (the "Red Terror": zero); in La Rioja, the "White Terror" 2,000 (the "red terror" zero); in Asturias, the "White Terror" 5,592; in Cadiz 3,000 (the "Red Terror" 95); and in the occidental part of the province of Badajoz, the "White Terror" 6,600 (the "Red Terror" 243). According to the historian Francisco Espinosa, the victims of the Nationalists in only five Spanish provinces (Seville, Cádiz, Huelva, a part of Badajoz and a part of Cordoba) out of fifty were 25,000. The historian Paul Preston
Paul Preston
Paul Preston CBE is a British historian and Hispanist, specialized in Spanish history, in particular the Spanish Civil War, which he has studied for more than 30 years....

 says that the number of victims judicially executed in 36 out 50 Spanish provinces were 92,462 (many other victims were executed without a trial). They died either as a result of the Nationalist repression during the war or as a result of Franco's dictatorship repression after the war.

Aftermath

The last concentration camp, at Miranda de Ebro
Miranda de Ebro
Miranda de Ebro is a city on the Ebro river in the province of Burgos in the autonomous community of Castile and León, Spain. It is located in the north-eastern part of the province, on the border with the province of Álava and the autonomous community of La Rioja...

, was closed in 1947. By the early 1950s the parties and trade unions made illegal by the Franco's dictatorship had been decimated by the francoist police, and the Spanish maquis had ceased to exist as a organized resistance. Nevertheless, new forms of opposition started like the unrest in the universities and strikes in Barcelona, Madrid and Vizcaya. The 1960s saw the start of the labour strikes led by the illegal union trade Workers' Commissions
Workers' Commissions
The Workers' Commissions since the 1970s has become the largest trade union in Spain. It has more than one million members and is the most successful union in labor elections, competing with the socialist Unión General de Trabajadores , with the syndicalist Confederación General del Trabajo ...

 (Comisiones Obreras), linked to the Communist Party of Spain and the protest in the universities continued to grow. Finally, with Franco's death in 1975, the Spanish transition to democracy
Spanish transition to democracy
The Spanish transition to democracy was the era when Spain moved from the dictatorship of Francisco Franco to a liberal democratic state. The transition is usually said to have begun with Franco’s death on 20 November 1975, while its completion has been variously said to be marked by the Spanish...

 commenced and in 1978 the Spanish Constitution of 1978
Spanish Constitution of 1978
-Structure of the State:The Constitution recognizes the existence of nationalities and regions . Preliminary Title As a result, Spain is now composed entirely of 17 Autonomous Communities and two autonomous cities with varying degrees of autonomy, to the extent that, even though the Constitution...

 was approved.

After Franco's death the Spanish government approved an Amnesty Law (Ley de Amnistia de 1977) which granted pardon for all political crimes committed by the supporters of the dictatorship (including the "White Terror") and by the democratic opposition. Nevertheless, in October 2008 a Spanish judge, Baltasar Garzón
Baltasar Garzón
Baltasar Garzón Real is a Spanish jurist who served on Spain's central criminal court, the Audiencia Nacional. He was the examining magistrate of the Juzgado Central de Instrucción No...

, of the National Court of Spain authorized, for the first time, an investigation into the disappearance and assassination of 114,000 victims of the dictatorship between 1936 and 1952. This investigation proceeded on the basis of the notion that this mass-murder constituted a Crime Against Humanity which cannot be subject to any amnesty or statute of limitations (unfortunately, in may 2010, as a result Mr. Garzón was himself accused of violating the terms of the general amnesty and his powers as a jurist have been suspended pending further investigation). In September 2010, the Argentine justice reopened a probe into crimes committed during the Spanish Civil War and during the Franco's dictatorship. Amnesty International
Amnesty International
Amnesty International is an international non-governmental organisation whose stated mission is "to conduct research and generate action to prevent and end grave abuses of human rights, and to demand justice for those whose rights have been violated."Following a publication of Peter Benenson's...

, Human Right Watch the Council of Europe
Council of Europe
The Council of Europe is an international organisation promoting co-operation between all countries of Europe in the areas of legal standards, human rights, democratic development, the rule of law and cultural co-operation...

 and United Nations
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...

 have asked the Spanish government to investigate the crimes of Franco's dictatorship.

See also

  • 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...

  • Spain under Franco
  • Red Terror in Spain
    Red Terror (Spain)
    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 , as well as attacks on landowners, industrialists, and politicians, and the...

  • Law of Historical Memory
  • 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...

  • Suppression of Freemasonry (Spain)
  • List of people executed by Francoist Spain

External links

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