Spanish Civil War

The Spanish Civil War was fought from July 1936 to April 1939 between the Republicans, who defended the elected government of the Second Spanish Republic, and the Nationalists, a coalition of army officers, monarchists, conservative Catholics and the fascist Falange, led from late 1936 by General Francisco Franco. Foreign intervention turned it into an international issue. The Nationalists won, and Franco ruled Spain as a dictator until his death in 1975.

The monarchy fell in 1931 and a republic was proclaimed. Its reforms on land, the army, regional autonomy and the place of the Catholic Church divided the country deeply, and politics swung between left and right amid strikes, uprisings and political violence. In February 1936 a coalition of left-wing parties, the Popular Front, narrowly won a general election, and tension rose further over the following months.

On 17–18 July 1936 army officers led by Generals Emilio Mola, José Sanjurjo and Franco rose against the government. The coup succeeded in parts of the north and west, in Andalusian cities such as Seville, and in Spanish Morocco, but failed in Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia and much of the industrial north. The country split in two. In the Republican zone, the collapse of state authority allowed revolutionary committees, workers' militias and anarchists to take control in many areas. German and Italian aircraft helped Franco ferry his experienced Army of Africa across the Strait of Gibraltar, and in October 1936 he was named head of the Nationalist state.

Britain and France sponsored a Non-Intervention Agreement, which most European powers signed but Germany and Italy ignored. Fascist Italy sent tens of thousands of troops, and Nazi Germany sent the Condor Legion of aircraft and tanks. The Soviet Union supplied the Republic with weapons, advisers and pilots, and the Communist International organised the International Brigades, in which some 32,000 foreign volunteers served, according to recent estimates, though some older figures are higher. On 26 April 1937 the Basque town of Guernica was destroyed by German and Italian bombers, an attack commemorated in a painting by Pablo Picasso.

The Nationalist advance on Madrid was halted in November 1936, and the capital held out under siege for most of the war. In 1937 the Nationalists conquered the northern coast, including the Basque Country, while the Republic was weakened by conflict between communists, anarchists and other left-wing groups, which erupted in street fighting in Barcelona that May. In 1938 Franco's forces reached the Mediterranean, cutting Republican territory in two. The Republic's last great offensive, on the Ebro from July to November 1938, ended in defeat. Barcelona fell in January 1939, Madrid at the end of March, and Franco declared the war over on 1 April 1939.

Both sides killed large numbers of people behind the lines: priests, landowners and political opponents in the Republican zone, and trade unionists, left-wing activists and officials in the Nationalist zone. Historians generally find the Nationalist repression larger and more systematic, and it continued for years after the war, with tens of thousands more executed and many more imprisoned. Estimates of total deaths vary widely, often from about 200,000 to 500,000. In early 1939 roughly 450,000 to 500,000 Republican soldiers and civilians fled to France, where many were held in camps.

The war was widely seen as a rehearsal for World War II, testing new weapons and the bombing of cities, and as a struggle between fascism and its opponents. Franco kept Spain out of the wider war, and his regime survived until 1975, after which Spain returned to democracy.

Our 1930 map shows Spain on the eve of the republic, and our 1938 map shows the country during the war. Our 1945 map shows Franco's Spain.