White Terror (Spain)

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White Terror (Francoist Repression)
Part of
war rape, genocide
Deaths160,000–400,000[1]: 110 [2][3]: 8 [4][5]: 900–001 [6]: 202 [7]: 94 [8]
PerpetratorsNationalist faction of Spain and the proceeding government

In the

immigrants, Basque, Catalan, Andalusian and Galician nationalists.[9][6]: 52 [10]
: 136 

The Francoist Repression was motivated by the right-wing notion of a

enemies of the state began immediately upon the Nationalists' capture of a place.[7]: 98  As a response to the similar mass killings of their clergy, religious, and laity during the Republican Red Terror, the Catholic Church in Spain legitimized the killings by the Civil Guard (national police) and the Falange as a defense of Christendom.[7]: 88–89 [11]

Ideologically hardwired into the Francoist regime, repression turned "the whole country into one wide prison", according to Ramón Arnabat,[12] enabled by the ironic trap of turning the tables against the loyalist defenders of the Republic by means of accusing them of "adherence to the rebellion", "aid to the rebellion" or "military rebellion".[12] Throughout Franco's rule (1 October 1936 – 20 November 1975), the Law of Political Responsibilities (Ley de Responsabilidades Políticas), promulgated in 1939, reformed in 1942, and in force until 1966, gave legalistic color of law to the political repression that characterized the defeat and dismantling of the Second Spanish Republic;[13] and served to punish Loyalist Spaniards.[14]

Historians such as Stanley Payne consider the White Terror's death toll to be greater than the death toll of the corresponding Red Terror.[15]

Background

The end of the monarchy of King Alfonso XIII (r. 1886–1931) precipitated Gen. Francisco Franco's reactionary coup d'état (17 July 1936) against the Second Spanish Republic (1931–1939), which launched the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939)

After

Sanjurjo in 1932), and the left wing (the Asturian miners' strike of 1934), whilst enduring the economic impact of the Great Depression.[7]: 21 [17]
: 28 

After the general election in February 1936 was won by the

far-right-wing officers (the generals José Sanjurjo, Manuel Goded Llopis, Emilio Mola, Francisco Franco, Miguel Cabanellas, Gonzalo Queipo de Llano, José Enrique Varela, and others) launched a military coup d'état against the Spanish Republic in July 1936.[10]: 21 [7]: 55  The generals' coup d'état failed, but the rebellious army, known as the Nationalists, controlled a large part of Spain; the Spanish Civil War
had started.

Franco, one of the leaders of the coup,

homosexuals were interned to psychiatric hospitals.[18]

Repressive thinking

The Chief Prosecutor of the Francoist army, Felipe Acedo Colunga, wrote in the internal report of 1939:[20]

The native land must be disinfected beforehand. And here is the work – weight and glory – entrusted by chance of destiny to military justice.

According to historian Francisco Espinosa, Felipe Acedo proposed an exemplary model of repression to create the new fascist state "on the site of the race." Absolute purification was needed, "stripped of all feelings of personal piety." According to Espinosa, the legal model for repression was the German (National Socialist) procedural system, where the prosecutor could act outside legal considerations. What was important was the unwritten right that, according to Hermann Göring, peoples carry as "a sacred ember in their blood."[20]

Aside, specifically about Catalonia, (one of the main reasons of the war, upon Franco words[20]) can be chosen the statements of Queipo de Llano in the article subtitled "Against Catalonia, the Israel of the modern world", published in the Diario Palentino on November 26, 1936, where it states that in America they consider the Catalans as "a race of Jews, because they use the same procedures that the Hebrews perform in all the nations of the globe." And considering the Catalans as Hebrews and having in mind his antisemitism "Our struggle is not a civil war, but a war for Western civilization against the Jewish world," it is not surprising that Queipo de Llano clearly expressed his anti-Catalan intentions: "When the war is over, Pompeu Fabra and his works will be dragged along the Ramblas".[20] (These were not empty words: the house of Pompeu Fabra, the standardizer of the Catalan language, was raided and his huge personal library burned in the middle of the street. Pompeu Fabra was able to escape into exile).[21]

Policy of extermination of the enemy

Four months after the Collective letter of the Spanish bishops to the bishops of the whole world on the occasion of the war in Spain, in November 1937, gathered in Venta de Baños, the spanish bishops issued a second letter, where in addition to reaffirming in their postulates, justifying the policy of extermination of the enemy, they testify that this policy existed.[22] Otherwise, the explicit reference to a policy of extermination, not repression or elimination, leads to biopolitical interpretations.

Red and White Terrors

From the beginning of the war, in July 1936, the ideological nature of the Nationalist fight against the Republicans indicated the degree of dehumanisation of the lower social classes (peasants and workers) in the view of the politically reactionary sponsors of the nationalist forces, the Roman Catholic Church of Spain, the aristocracy, the landowners, and the military, commanded by Franco. Captain Gonzalo de Aguilera y Munro, a public affairs officer for the Nationalist forces, told the American reporter John Thompson Whitaker:[23]: 37 

You know what's wrong with Spain? Modern plumbing! In healthier times – spiritually healthier, you understand – plague and pestilence could be counted on to thin the Spanish masses ... now, with modern sewage disposal, they simply multiply too fast. The masses are no better than animals, you understand, and you can't expect them not to become infected with the virus of Bolshevism. After all, rats and lice carry the plague.[23]: 37 

The Nationalists committed their atrocities in public, sometimes with assistance from members of the local Catholic Church clergy. In August 1936, the

Massacre of Badajoz ended with the shooting of some 4,000 Republicans, according to the most comprehensive studies;[24] on August 20, after a Mass and a multitudinous parade,[25] two Republican city mayors (Juan Antonio Rodríguez Machín and Sinforiano Madroñero), Socialist deputy Nicolás de Pablo and 15 other people (7 of them Portuguese) were publicly executed. The assassination of hospitalized and wounded Republican soldiers was also a common practice.[26]

Among the children of the landlords, the joke name Reforma agraria (agrarian reform) identified the horseback hunting parties by which they killed insubordinate peasantry and so cleansed their lands of communists; moreover, the joke name alluded to the grave where the corpses of the hunted peasants were dumped: the piece of land for which the dispossessed peasants had revolted.[23]: 37  Early in the civil war most of the victims of the White Terror and the Red Terror were killed in mass executions behind the respective front lines of the Nationalist and of the Republican forces:

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 "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.[27]

Common to the political purges of the left-wing and right-wing belligerents were the sacas, the taking out of prisoners from the jails and the prisons, who then were taken for a paseo, a ride to summary execution.[6]: 233  Most of the men and women taken out from the prisons and jails were killed by death squads, from the trade unions, and by the paramilitary militias of the political parties (the Republican CNT, UGT, and PCE; the Nationalist Falange and Carlist).[7]: 86  Among the justifications for summary execution of right-wing enemies was reprisal for aerial bombings of civilians,[5]: 268  other people were killed after being denounced as an enemy of the people, by false accusations motivated by personal envy and hatred.[5]: 264–265  Nevertheless, the significant differences between White political terrorism and Red political terrorism was indicated by Francisco Partaloa, prosecutor of the Supreme Court of Madrid (Tribunal Supremo de Madrid) and a friend of the aristocrat General Queipo de Llano, who witnessed the assassinations, first in the Republican camp and then in the Nationalist camp of the Spanish Civil War:

I had the opportunity of being a witness to the repression in both areas. In the Nationalist side it was planned, methodical, cold. As they did not trust the [local] people, the authorities imposed their will by means of terror, committing atrocities in order to achieve their aim. Atrocities also took place in the Popular Front zone; that was something which both areas had in common. But the main difference was that in the Republican zone the crimes were carried out by the [local] populace in moments of passion, not by the authorities. The latter always tried to stop them. The assistance that I received from the Spanish Republican authorities in order to flee to safety, is only one of the many examples. But this was not the case in the Nationalist zone.[13]

Historians of the Spanish Civil War, such as Helen Graham,[10]: 30  Paul Preston,[6]: 307  Antony Beevor,[7]: 86–87  Gabriel Jackson,[28]: 305  Hugh Thomas, and Ian Gibson[17]: 168  concurred that the mass killings realized behind the Nationalist front lines were organized and approved by the Nationalist rebel authorities, while the killings behind the Republican front lines resulted from the societal breakdown of the Second Spanish Republic:

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.[5]: 268 

In the second volume of A History of Spain and Portugal (1973),

Stanley Payne
said that the political violence in the Republican zone was organized by the left-wing political 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.[27]

That, unlike the political repression by the

right wing, which "was concentrated against the most dangerous opposition elements", the Republican attacks were irrational, which featured the "murdering [of] 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" to the Spanish Republic.[27]: 650  Nonetheless, in a letter-to-the-editor of the ABC newspaper in Seville, Miguel de Unamuno
said that, unlike the assassinations in the areas held by the Republic, the methodical assassinations effected by the White Terror were ordered by the highest authorities of the Nationalist rebellion, and identified General Mola as the proponent of the political cleansing policies of the White Terror.

No matter how many the atrocities perpetrated by the Reds ... those perpetrated by the Whites are greater ... Murders without justification, such as two University lecturers, one in Valladolid, and another in Granada, just in case they were

García Lorca as well. It is disgusting to be a Spaniard stuck in Spain now. And all this is being directed by General Mola, that poisonous beast full of resentment. I told that Spain would be saved by Western Christian civilization, but the methods employed are not civilized, but militarized, not Western, but African, not Christian, but from an ancient Spanish traditionalism that is essentially anti-Christian.[29]

When news of the mass killings of Republican soldiers and sympathizers – General Mola's policy to terrorise the Republicans – reached the Republican government, the Defence Minister Indalecio Prieto pleaded with the Spanish republicans:

Don't imitate them! Don't imitate them! Surpass them in your moral conduct; surpass them by your generosity. I do not ask you, however, that you should lose vigour in battle or zeal in the fight. I ask for hard breasts for the combat, hard like steel, as some of the courageous militias have named themselves – Breast of Steel – but with sensitive hearts, capable of shaking in the face of human sorrow, and capable of harbouring mercy, the tender sentiment without which the most essential part of human greatness is lost.[30]

Moreover, despite his political loyalty to the reactionary rebellion of the Nationalists, the right-wing writer José María Pemán was concerned about the volume of the mass killings; in My Lunches with Important People (1970), he reported a conversation with General Miguel Cabanellas in late 1936:

My General, I think that far too many people have been, and are still being killed, by the Nationalist side.

After a full minute of silent reflection, General Cabanellas grimly answered:

—Yes.[31]

Civil War

The ruins of Guernica, destroyed by the Condor Legion of the German Luftwaffe

The White Terror commenced on 17 July 1936, the day of the Nationalist coup d'état, with hundreds of assassinations effected in the area controlled by the right-wing rebels, but it had been planned before earlier.[32][7]: 57 [33] In the 30 June 1936 secret instructions for the coup d'état in Morocco, Mola ordered the rebels "to eliminate left-wing elements, communists, anarchists, union members, etc."[7]: 88  The White Terror included the repression of political opponents in areas occupied by the Nationalist, mass executions in areas captured from the Republicans, such as the Massacre of Badajoz,[34][6]: 120–121  and looting.[35]: 343–349 

In The Spanish Labyrinth (1943),[36] Gerald Brenan said 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. Andalusia, where the supporters of Franco were a tiny minority, and where the military commander, General Queipo de Llano, was a pathological figure recalling the Conde de España of the First Carlist War, 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

forced disappearances[6]: 11  – including whole Republican military units such as the 221st Mixed Brigade[46][47]
 – and the establishment of Francoist prisons in the aftermath of the Republicans' defeat.

Goals and victims of the repression

The main goal of the White Terror was to terrify the civil population who opposed the coup,[5]: 248 [6]: 201 [10]: 34  eliminate the supporters of the Republic and the militants of the leftist parties,[10]: 29 [3]: 84 [45]: 375  and because of this, some historians have considered the White Terror a genocide.[48]: 24–28 [49]: 501  In fact, one of the leaders of the coup, General Mola, said:[6]: 103 

It is necessary to spread terror. We have to create the impression of mastery eliminating without scruples or hesitation all those who do not think as we do. There can be no cowardice. If we hesitate one moment and fail to proceed with the greatest determination, we will not win. Anyone who helps or hides a Communist or a supporter of the Popular Front will be shot.

Sánchez Léon says that the tanatopolitics and the biopolitics of the Francoist repression simultaneously obeyed to the logics of a civil war, a colonial conquest and a Catholic holy war, unleashed upon a population hitherto considered part of the same community.[50] Features such as the institutional processes, policies and practices put in motion by the victors, the indiscriminate massacres, the re-catholisation of the defeated, the forced exile and the exclusion from the benefits of full citizenship or the application of retroactive repressive rulings crystallised in the definition of the Republicans as anti-Spanish, a terminology that intermingles the perception of the enemies as "non-citizens", as "inferior beings" and as alien to the values that defined the self-imagined (confessional) nation.[50] Behind the generic term 'Reds' there was a notion of enemy in an absolute sense, targeted for eradication.[51]

In areas controlled by the Nationalists, government officials, Popular Front politicians

Alexandre Boveda, one of the founders of the Partido Galeguista and Blas Infante, leader of the Andalusian nationalism),[35]: 229  military officers who had remained loyal to the government of the Republic (among them the Army generals Domingo Batet,[7]: 66  Enrique Salcedo Molinuevo, Miguel Campíns, Nicolás Molero,[7]: 66  Nuñez de Prado, Manuel Romerales and Rogelio Caridad Pita),[48]: 31  and people suspected of voting for the Popular Front[6]: 123  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:[52]
: 220–221 

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...

Because of this mass terror in many areas controlled by the Nationalists, thousands of Republicans left their homes and tried to hide in nearby forests or mountains.

blue shirt as the salvavidas (life jacket).[6]: 224 [28]
: 308  In Granada, one supporter of the Nationalists said:

The battalion was formed to give political prisoners, who would otherwise have been shot, a chance either to redeem themselves on the field or else die with honour before enemy fire. In this way their children would not suffer the stigma of having had Red fathers.[17]: 95–96 

Another major target of the Terror were women, with the overall goal of keeping them in their traditional place in Spanish society. To this end the Nationalist army promoted a campaign of targeted rape. Queipo de Llano spoke multiple times over the radio warning that "immodest" women with Republican sympathies would be raped by his Moorish troops. Near Seville, Nationalist soldiers raped a truckload of female prisoners, threw their bodies down a well, and paraded around town with their rifles draped with their victims' underwear. These rapes were not the result of soldiers disobeying orders, but official Nationalist policies, with officers specifically choosing Moors to be the primary perpetrators. Advancing Nationalist troops scrawled "Your children will give birth to fascists" on the walls of captured buildings, and many women taken prisoner were force fed castor oil, then paraded in public naked, while the powerful laxative did its work.[23]: 38–39 

Death toll

Valle de los Caídos. Red: Fully or Partially Exhumed. Blue star: Valle de los Caídos. Source: Ministry of Justice of Spain

Estimates of executions behind the Nationalist lines during the Spanish Civil War range from fewer than 50,000[27] to 200,000[28]: 539  (Hugh Thomas: 75,000,[5]: 900  Secundino Serrano: 90,000;[48]: 32  Josep Fontana: 150,000;[4]: 23  and Julián Casanova: 100,000.[53][3]: 8 ) 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.[54]: 231 [44]: 172  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,[54]: 231–232  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.[55]: 247  He goes on to state that by 1938 the military courts there were directing summary executions.[55]: 247 

Many of the executions in the course of the war were carried by militants of the fascist party Falange

Requetés), but with the approval of the Nationalist government.[6]
: 201–202 

Cooperation of the Spanish Church

The Spanish Church approved of the White Terror and cooperated with the rebels.[7]: 88 [10]: 82–83 [28]: 306–307 [3]: 47  According to Antony Beevor:

Cardinal Gomá stated that 'Jews and Masons poisoned the national soul with absurd doctrine'... A few brave priests put their lives at risk by criticizing Nationalist atrocities, but the majority of the clergy in Nationalist areas revelled in their new-found power and the increased size of their congregations. Anyone who did not attend Mass faithfully was likely to be suspected of 'red' tendencies. Entrepreneurs made a great money selling religious symbols... It was reminiscent of the way the Inquisition's persecutions of Jews and Moors helped make pork such an important part of the Spanish diet.[7]: 96 

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 Falangists were killing.[52]: 233 

(The bishop of Zamora in 1936 was Manuel Arce y Ochotorena) Nevertheless, the Nationalists killed at least 16 Basque nationalist priests (among them the arch-priest of Mondragon),[7]: 82–83  and imprisoned or deported hundreds more.[5]: 677  Several priests who tried to halt the killings[5]: 251–252  and at least one priest who was a Mason were killed.[56]

Regarding the callous attitude of the Vatican, Manuel Montero, lecturer of the University of the Basque Country commented on 6 May 2007:[57]

The Church, which upheld the idea of a 'National

Crusade' in order to legitimize the military rebellion, was a belligerent part during the Civil War, even at the cost of alienating part of its members. It continues in a belligerent role in its unusual answer to the Historical Memory Law
by recurring to the beatification of 498 "martyrs" of the Civil War. The priests executed by Franco's Army are not counted among them. It continues to be a Church that is incapable of transcending its one-sided behaviour of 70 years ago and amenable to the fact that this past should always haunt us. In this political use of granting religious recognition one can perceive its indignation regarding the compensations to the victims of Francoism. Its selective criteria regarding the religious persons that were part of its ranks are difficult to fathom. The priests who were victims of the Republicans are "martyrs who died forgiving", but those priests who were executed by the Francoists are forgotten.

Repression in the South and the drive to Madrid

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,[6]: 105–107  and afterwards went on to execute thousands of workers and militants of the leftist parties: in the city of Cordoba 4,000;[49]: 12  in the city of Granada 5,000;[6]: 107  in the city of Seville 3,028;[35]: 410  and in the city of Huelva 2,000 killed and 2,500 disappeared.[7]: 91  The city of Málaga, occupied by the Nationalists in February 1937 following the Battle of Málaga, experienced one of the harshest repressions following Francoist victory with an estimated total of 17,000 people summarily executed.[58][59][60][61] Carlos Arias Navarro, then a young lawyer who as public prosecutor signed thousands of execution warrants in the trials set up by the triumphant rightists, became known as "The Butcher of Málaga" (Carnicero de Málaga).[5]: 636  Over 4,000 people were buried in mass graves.[6]: 194 

Even towns of rural areas were not spared the terror, such as

province of Córdoba the Nationalists killed 995 Republicans in Puente Genil[49]: 583  and about 700 loyalists were murdered by the orders of Nationalist Colonel Sáenz de Buruaga in Baena,[62][63][64] although other estimates mention up to 2,000 victims following the Baena Massacre.[65]

Paul Preston estimates the total number of victims of the Nationalists in Andalusia at 55,000.[6]: 203 

Troops of North Africa

The colonial troops of the

Moroccan regulares and the Spanish Legion, under the command of Colonel Juan Yagüe, made up the feared shock troops of the Francoist military. In their advance towards Madrid from Sevilla through Andalusia and Extremadura these troops routinely killed dozens or hundreds in every town or city conquered.[6]: 120 [66]: 431–433  but in the Massacre of Badajoz the number of Republicans killed reached several thousands.[6]: 307 [66]: 432  Furthermore, the colonial troops raped many working-class women[6]: 207 [7]: 91–92  and looted the houses of the Republicans. Queipo de Llano, one of the Nationalists leaders known for his use of radio broadcasts as a means of psychological warfare, said:[6]
: 206 

Our brave Legionaries and Regulares have shown the red cowards what it means to be a man. And, incidentally the wives of reds too. These Communist and Anarchist women, after all, have made themselves fair game by their doctrine of free love. And now they have at least the acquaintance of real men, and not milksops of militiamen. Kicking their legs about and struggling won't save them.

Anti-Catalan hostility

Lluís Companys, second president of the restored Generalitat de Catalunya, was captured by the Gestapo and executed by the Francoists.

Catalonia suffered the most fierce engagements during the civil war, as seen in several examples. In Tarragona, in January 1939, Mass was held by a canon from Salamanca cathedral, José Artero. During the sermon he cried: "Catalan dogs! You are not worthy of the sun that shines on you." ("¡Perros catalanes! No sois dignos del sol que os alumbra.") Regarding the men who entered and marched through Barcelona, Franco said the honour was not "because they had fought better, but because they were those who felt more hatred. That is, more hatred towards Catalonia and Catalans." ("porque hubieran luchado mejor, sino porque eran los que sentían más odio. Es decir, más odio hacia Cataluña y los catalanes.")

A close friend of Franco, Victor Ruiz Albéniz, published an article in which he demanded that Catalonia receive "a Biblical punishment (Sodom and Gomarrah) to purify the red city, the headquarters of anarchism and separatism as the only remedy to remove these two cancers by relentless cauterisation" ("un castigo bíblico (Sodoma y Gomorra) para purificar la ciudad roja, la sede del anarquismo y separatismo como único remedio para extirpar esos dos cánceres por termocauterio implacable"), while for Serrano Suñer, brother-in-law of Franco and Minister of the Interior, Catalan nationalism was "an illness" ("una enfermedad.")

The man appointed as civil governor of Barcelona, Wenceslao González Oliveros, said that "Spain was raised, with as much or more force against the dismembered statutes as against Communism and that any tolerance of regionalism would again lead to the same processes of putrefaction that we have just surgically removed." ("España se alzó, con tanta o más fuerza contra los Estatutos desmembrados que contra el comunismo y que cualquier tolerancia del regionalismo llevaría otra vez a los mismos procesos de putrefacción que acabamos de extirpar quirúrgicamente.")

Even Catalan conservatives, such as Francesc Cambó, were themselves frightened by Franco's hatred and spirit of revenge. Cambó wrote of Franco in his diary: "As if he did not feel or understand the miserable, desperate situation in which Spain finds itself and only thinks about his victory, he feels the need to travel the whole country (...) like a bullfighter to gather applause, cigars, hats and some scarce American." ("Como si no sintiera ni comprendiera la situación miserable, desesperada, en que se encuentra España y no pensara más que en su victoria, siente la necesidad de recorrer todo el país (...) como un torero para recoger aplausos, cigarros, sombreros y alguna americana escasa.")

Tomb of Lluís Companys at Fossar de la Pedrera.

The 2nd

president of the Generalitat de Catalunya, Lluís Companys, went into exile in France, like many others, in January 1939. The Spanish authorities asked for him to be extradited to Germany. The questions remains whether he was detained by the Gestapo or the German military police, known as the Wehrmacht
. In any case, he was detained on August 13, 1940, and immediately deported to Franco's Spain.

After a summary

Montjuïc Castle. Since then there have been many calls to cancel that judgement, without success.[67]

Francoist repression

After the repression, the Franco regime created networks of complicity in which thousands of people were involved or were accomplices, in all possible ways, of the bloodshed inflicted, of the persecutions carried out, of the lives of hundreds of thousands people in prisons, concentration camps or Battalions workers. In short, the most diverse forms of repression: political, social, labor, ideological, and in the case of Catalonia, in an attempt of cultural genocide that sought to do away with its specific national personality...

— 
degenerationist theories originated in France and Great Britain must also be considered.[20] As a consequence is theorized a racial degeneration causing conflicts against the social status quo, and it is advocated eugenics to cleanse one's own race, and racism to avoid mixing it with "inferior races." During the first third of the s. XX this theorizing towards the "new man" is gaining strength, and its zenith is Nazi racial politics. But in Spain it also had an impact, given that the political and social elites who patrimonialize Spain, and who would not digest the colonial loss, see in the Republic and the meager Catalan autonomy a threat to its status, power and wealth. The Catalan industrial wealth cannot be tolerated either, and Catalonia
is accused of having a favorable treatment, impoverishing the rest of the Spaniards, in a behavior that is described as Semitic (according to the National-Socialist ideology to use work as a means to exploit and subjugate nations).

According to Paul Preston in the book "Arquitectes del terror. Franco i els artifex de l'odi",[69] a number of characters theorized about "anti-Spain", pointing to enemies, and in this sense accused politicians and republican intellectuals of being of Jewish race or servants of the same as masons. This accusation is widespread in Catalonia for most politicians and intellectuals, starting with Macià, Companys and Cambó, identified as Jews. "Racisme i supremacisme polítics a l'Espanya contemporània"[20] documents this thought of the social part that would be raised against the Republic. In a mixture of degenerationism, regenerationism, and neocolonialism, it is postulated that the Spanish race – always understood as Castilian – has degenerated, and degenerate individuals are prone to "contract" communism and separatism. In addition, some areas, such as the south of the peninsula and the Catalan countries, are considered to be degenerate wholesale, the former due to Arab remains that lead them to a "rifty" behavior, and the latter due to Semitic remains that lead them towards communism and separatism (the catanalism of any kind is called separatism).

The degeneration of individuals calls for a cleansing if it is wantes a prosperous and leading nation, capable of building an empire, one of the obsessions of Franco (as well as other totalitarian regimes of the time). In this regard, rebel spokesman Gonzalo de Aguilera, in 1937, told a journalist: "Now I hope you understand what we mean by the regeneration of Spain ... Our program consists of exterminating a third of the Spanish male population ...", and an interview can also be mentioned in an Italian newspaper where Franco describes that the war was aimed at "to save the Homeland that was sinking in the sea of dissociation and racial degeneration".

In addition to the repression throughout Spain against certain individuals, all this seems to be the source of the fierce repression, such as the Terror of Don Bruno, in Andalusia, and the no less fierce repression against Catalonia, with the addition that as a result, the attack on Catalan culture, lasted throughout the Franco regime and ended up becoming a structural element of the state.

Postwar

When Heinrich Himmler visited Spain in 1940, a year after Franco's victory, he claimed to have been "shocked" by the brutality of the Falangist repression.[70] In July 1939, the foreign minister of Fascist Italy, Galeazzo Ciano, reported of "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".[5]: 898  While authors like Payne have cast doubts on the democratic leanings of the Republic, "fascism was clearly on the other [side]." [70]

Repressive laws

According to Beevor, Spain was an open prison for all those who opposed Franco.[7]: 407  Until 1963, all the opponents of the Francoist State were brought before military courts.[10]: 134  A number of repressive laws were issued, including the Law of Political Responsibilities (Ley de Responsabilidades Políticas) in February 1939, the Law of Security of State (Ley de Seguridad del Estado) in 1941 (which regarded illegal propaganda or labour strikes as military rebellion), the Law for the Repression of Masonry and Communism (Ley de Represión de la Masonería y el Comunismo) on 2 March 1940,[71] and the Law for the Repression of Banditry and Terrorism (Ley para la represión del Bandidaje y el Terrorismo) in April 1947, which targeted the maquis.[7]: 407  Furthermore, in 1940, the Francoist State established the Tribunal for the eradication of Freemasonry and Communism (Tribunal Especial para la Represión de la Masonería y el Comunismo).[10]: 134 

Political parties and trade unions were forbidden except for the government party, Traditionalist Spanish Falange and Offensive of the Unions of the National-Syndicalist (

regional languages, like Basque and Catalan, were also forbidden,[6]: 225  and the statutes of autonomy of Catalonia,[7]: 341  Galicia, and the Basque country were abolished. Censorship of the press (the Law of Press, passed in April 1938)[5]: 740  and of cultural life was rigorously exercised and forbidden books destroyed.[7]
: 408 

Executions, forced labour and medical experiments

At the end of the Spanish Civil War the executions of the "enemies of the state" continued (some 50,000 people were killed),[3]: 8 [7]: 405  including the extrajudicial (death squad) executions of members of the Spanish maquis (anti–Francoist guerrillas) and their supporters (los enlaces, "the links"); in the province of Córdoba 220 maquis and 160 enlaces were killed.[48][49]: 585  Thousands of men and women were imprisoned after the civil war in Francoist concentration camps, approximately 367,000 to 500,000 prisoners were held in 50 camps or prisons.[7]: 404  In 1933, before the war, the prisons of Spain contained some 12,000 prisoners;[72] just seven years later, in 1940, just one year after the end of the civil war, 280,000 prisoners were held in more than 500 prisons throughout the country.[35]: 288–291  The principal purpose of the Francoist concentration camps was to classify the prisoners of war from the defeated Spanish Republic; men and women who were classified as "unrecoverable", were put to death.[6]: 308 

After the war, the Republican prisoners were sent to work in militarised penal colonies (Colonias Penales Militarizadas), penal detachments (Destacamentos Penales) and disciplinary battalions of worker-soldiers (Batallones Disciplinarios de Soldados Trabajadores).

Valle de los Caídos) (20,000 political prisoners worked in its construction)[6]: 313 [10]: 131  and in coal mines in Asturias and Leon.[7]: 405  The severe overcrowding of the prisons (according to Antony Beevor 270,000 prisoners were spread around jails with capacity for 20,000),[7]: 405  poor sanitary conditions and the lack of food caused thousands of deaths (4,663 prisoner deaths were recorded between 1939 and 1945 in 13 of the 50 Spanish provinces),[3]: 20  among them the poet Miguel Hernández[35]: 292  and the politician Julián Besteiro.[6]: 319  New investigations suggest that the actual number of dead prisoners was much higher, with around 15,000 deaths just in 1941 (the worst year).[73]

Just as with the death toll from executions by the Nationalists during the Civil War, historians have made different estimations the victims of the White Terror after the war. Stanley Payne estimates 30,000 executions following the end of the war.

Julián Casanova Ruiz, nominated in 2008 among the experts in the first judicial investigation (conducted by judge Baltasar Garzón) against the Francoist crimes,[74] estimate 50,000.[3]: 8  Historian Josep Fontana says 25,000.[4]: 22  According to Gabriel Jackson, the number of victims of the White Terror (executions and hunger or illness in prisons) just between 1939 and 1943 was 200,000.[28]
: 539 

A Francoist psychiatrist, Antonio Vallejo-Nájera, carried out medical experiments on prisoners in the Francoist concentration camps to "establish the bio-psych roots of Marxism".[7]: 407 [75][6]: 310 [76]

Vallejo Najera also said that it was necessary to 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).[7]: 407  Many of the mothers were executed afterwards.[6]: 314 [52]: 224  "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".

Stanley Payne observes that Franco's repression did not undergo "cumulative radicalisation" like that of Hitler; in fact, the opposite occurred, with major persecution being slowly reduced. All but 5 per cent of death sentences under Franco's rule occurred by 1941. During the next thirty months, military prosecutors sought 939 death sentences, most of which were not approved and others commuted. On October 1, 1939, all former Republican personnel serving a sentence of less than six years were pardoned. In 1940 special military judicial commissions were created to examine sentences and were given the power to confirm or reduce them but never to extend them. Later that year, provisional liberty was granted to all political prisoners serving less than six years, and in April 1941, this was also granted to those serving less than twelve years and then fourteen years in October. Provisional liberty was extended to those serving up to twenty years in December 1943.[77]

Fate of Republican exiles

Furthermore, hundreds of thousands were forced into exile (470,000 in 1939),

Jose Gaos and Luis Buñuel.[78]

U.S. 11th Armored Division
entering the Mauthausen concentration camp; banner in Spanish reads "Antifascist Spaniards greet the forces of liberation". The photo was taken on 6 May 1945

When Nazi Germany occupied

: 419 

Purges and labour discrimination

Memorial plaque in Pamplona with the list of teachers murdered or cracked down by the Spanish Nationalists, 1936 and later

The Francoist State carried out extensive purges among the civil service. Thousands of officials loyal to the Republic were expelled from the army.[80] Thousands of university and school teachers lost their jobs (a quarter of all Spanish teachers).[10]: 132 [7]: 408  Priority for employment was always given to Nationalist supporters, and it was necessary to have a "good behavior" certificate from local Falangist officials and parish priests.[6]: 312  Furthermore, the Francoist State encouraged tens of thousands of Spaniards to denounce their Republican neighbours and friends:[10]: 134–135 [7]: 408–409 [6]: 311 

Although this process has not been analysed in detail, the regime did all it could to encourage denunciation. The Code of Military Justice that regulated the entire trial process effectively created a denouncer's charter and allowed prosecutions to begin through 'any denunciation worthy of consideration'. Denunciations did not even have to be signed before 1941. The radical nature of this rule outflanked even the Nazis' efforts to root out those they despised, indeed they took measures to restrict 'self-interested' denunciations. The Franco regime also went to greater lengths to encourage denunciations. Following the occupation of a village or town the new authorities set up special denunciation centres and placed announcements in newspapers and government publications exhorting people to denounce Republicans. Francoists even made it an offence not to register denunciations against Republicans known to have committed crimes.[81]

Campaign against Republican women

Republican women were also victims of the repression in postwar 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),[82] sexual harassment and rape.[54]: 413  In many cases, the houses and goods of the widows of Republicans were confiscated by the government.[6]: 307  Thus, many Republican women, living in total poverty, were forced into prostitution.[54]: 266  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".[6]: 308  Furthermore, thousands of women were executed (for example the 13 roses) among them pregnant women. One judge said: "We cannot wait seven months to execute a woman".[6]

Furthermore, under the Francoist legislation, a woman needed her husband's permission to take a job or open a bank account. Adultery by women was a crime, but adultery by the husband was a crime only if he lived with his mistress.[83]: 211 

Marriage law

The divorce and marriage legislation of the Republic was retroactively reversed, with the divorces retroactively unmade and the children of civil marriages made illegitimate.[10]: 134 

Homosexuals

Homosexuals were first sent to concentration camps. Then the 1954 reform of the 1933 "Ley de vagos y maleantes" ("Vagrancy Act") declared homosexuality illegal. Around 5,000 homosexuals were arrested during Francoism due to their sexual orientation.[84]

Aftermath

The last concentration camp, at

Spanish Constitution of 1978
was approved.

After Franco's death, the Spanish government approved the

crime against humanity which cannot be subject to any amnesty or statute of limitations.[86] As a result, in May 2010, Mr. Garzón was accused of violating the terms of the general amnesty and his powers as a jurist have been suspended pending further investigation.[87] In September 2010, the Argentine justice reopened a probe into crimes committed during the Spanish Civil War and during Franco's reign.[88] Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch,[89] the Council of Europe[90] and United Nations have asked the Spanish government to investigate the crimes of Franco's reign.[91]

See also

References

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Sources

Further reading

  • Gómez Bravo, Gutmaro and Marco, Jorge. La obra del miedo. Violencia y sociedad en España, 1936–1948, Península, Barcelona, 2011 9788499420912
  • Lafuente, Isaías, Esclavos por la patria. La explotación de los presos bajo el franquismo, Madrid, Temas de Hoy, 2002.
  • Llarch, Joan, Campos de concentración en la España de Franco, Barcelona, Producciones Editoriales, 1978.
  • Molinero, C., Sala, M., i Sobrequés, J., Los campos de concentración y el mundo penitenciario en España durante la guerra civil y el franquismo, Barcelona, Crítica, 2003.
  • Molinero, C., Sala, M., i Sobrequés, J., Una inmensa prisión, Barcelona, Crítica, 2003.
  • Montero Moreno, Antonio (2004). Historia de la persecución religiosa en España (1936-1939) [History of religious persecution in Spain (1936–1939)] (in Spanish) (2nd revised ed.). Biblioteca Autores Cristianos.
    OCLC 433170615
    .
  • Rodrigo, Javier: Cautivos. Campos de concentración en la España franquista, 1936–1947, Barcelona, Crítica, 2005.

External links