A young Republican walks in a street of Barcelona with a gun, July 1936.STF/AFP/Getty Images
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General Franco (C) with Chief of Staff Barroso (L) and Commander Carmenlo Medrano looking at a map. STF/AFP/Getty Images
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Two young fascists loyal to General Franco give the military salute. STF/AFP/Getty Images
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A young Republican marching in a street of an unidentified village.STF/AFP/Getty Images
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Men demonstrate the Republican salute.Vimeo
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Arson of churches and monasteries was common during the first days of the Republic. A militia man poses for the photographer in front of an already ransacked church. Barcelona, July 1936.Magnum Photos
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To show their anticlericalism and protest the Catholic support to Franco, Republicans put the bodies of religious on display in a Barcelona street.STF/AFP/Getty Images
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A crowd greets Republican loyalists in Madrid, January 1936. STF/AFP/Getty Images
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A Republican banner in Madrid reads, "They shall not pass! Fascism wants to conquer Madrid; Madrid shall be fascism's grave."Wikimedia Commons
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Holding the flag of the Second Spanish Republic, Madrid.YouTube
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The Nationalist offensive on Madrid, which lasted from November 1936 to February 1937, was one of the fiercest of the Civil War. During this period, Italy and Germany started helping the Nationalist forces, and the USSR aided the Popular Front government. Magnum Photos
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Death of a loyalist militiaman. Córdoba, September 1936.Magnum Photos
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Soldiers loyal to the Republic shooting from a window in Barcelona, July 1936.STF/AFP/Getty Images
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A Republican soldier in one of the French-made Renault FT17 tanks prepares to fight against Franco's troops, Madrid.STF/AFP/Getty Images
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Republicans battle for the Alcazar in Toledo where rebels are sheltered, July 1936. The rebels were delivered by Franco's troops on September 29.STF/AFP/Getty Images
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Republicans fight on a road in an unidentified place. STF/AFP/Getty Images
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Women at the Siege of the Alcazar. Toledo, 1936.Wikimedia Commons
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Ernest Hemingway (center) with Soviet writer Ilya Ehrenburg (left) and German writer Gustav Regler (right) during the Spanish Civil War, circa 1937. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum
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Republican soldiers. Madrid, November-December 1936. Magnum Photos
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Republican women shoot during a military exercice in an unidentified place.STF/AFP/Getty Images
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Battle of Teruel. December 21, 1937. Magnum Photos
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The destruction wrought on Granollers after a German aircraft raid on May 31, 1938. Wikimedia Commons
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The ruins of Guernica.Wikimedia Commons
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Spanish painter Pablo Picasso in front of his painting Guernica, at its unveiling at the Spanish Pavilion of the International World Fair held six weeks after the aerial bombing of the Basque village of Guernica. Picasso completed this monumental canvas which became an international symbol of the Spanish Republican cause. July 12, 1937.Magnum Photos
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Woman painting bombs in a munitions factory. Barcelona, 1938. Magnum Photos
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Bombing in Barcelona, 1938.Wikimedia Commons
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Watching a Nationalist air raid over the city. Barcelona, January 1939.Magnum Photos
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Refugees from Malaga. Murcia, February 1937.Magnum Photos
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On the road from Tarragona to Barcelona. People from Tarragona seeking refuge in Barcelona, before the evacuation of the city. Many of them were killed or lost their belongings during fascist air raids. January 15, 1939. Magnum Photos
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Adolf Hitler greets Spanish Nationalists at the 1939 Condor Legion Parade, where they are guests of honor.New York Public Library
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Francoist troops at the French border, 1939.New York Public Library
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A woman and her child arrive in France, February 1939. STF/AFP/Getty Images
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Children preparing for evacuation, some giving the Republican salute.Wikimedia Commons
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Republican fighters arrive in France after fleeing Spain where nationalists troops of General Franco won the civil war, February 1939. STF/AFP/Getty Images
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Former member of the Barcelona Philharmonic at a concentration camp for Spanish refugees. March, 1939. Magnum Photos
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Exiled Republican soldiers and civilians, who crossed the border after Franco's victory, being transferred from one refuge camp to another. A French Gendarme heads the column of refugees. France had set up eight camps along the border in the Pyrenees Orientales region. March 1939. Magnum Photos
A Republic Collapsed: Inside The Spanish Civil War
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By January of 1939, the dream of a true Spanish Republic had shattered. Many of those who composed its short-lived reality — Republican men and women, and elected officials of the democratically-elected Republican government — headed for the Pyrenees mountains and the French border, blanketed in cold and perhaps the sobering knowledge that blunt force, not competing ideas or democratic procedures, wields the most power to transform a given locality and govern its future.
The approximately 500,000 men and women who abandoned their homes that winter left a country where the pursuit and exercise of power saw the deaths of around 500,000 people; radical plans for economic redistribution of wealth sullied, and the installation of Europe’s longest-lasting dictatorship, spearheaded by General Francisco Franco.
The Spanish Civil War officially began in July 1936, when the 43-year-old Franco led a military coup against the leadership of the Second Spanish Republic, proclaimed in 1931 by a coalition of antimonarchist parties.
While these coalitions successfully convened to call for social and economic reform, increased regional autonomy, religious freedom and the separation of church and state, among other things, the multiplicity of actors -- socialists, communists, and anarchists, just to name a few -- and competing interests made it such that by 1933 the Second Republic did not achieve much of what it promised in its 1931 Constitution.
Nevertheless, the intended or achieved reforms of these leftist and left-leaning parties — which coalesced in the 1936 elections as the Popular Front — deeply troubled Spain’s pro-Church, pro-monarchy, pro-military conservatives.
They saw in the Front’s dismissiveness of the Catholic Church a threat to the heart of Spain; they saw in the Front’s openness to communist sects the specter of the Soviet Union; they saw in the Front's granting of regional autonomy a danger to the very existence of Spain as a nation-state. They saw in left wing acts of violence, and a government that seemed to permit them without threat of punishment, a movement that needed to be squashed.
The war started in July 1936, in the stultifying heat of Spanish Morocco and in the hills of Navarre, northern Spain. Politically-motivated murders on the right and left signaled to conservatives a need to restore “order” in Spain, and a kind of order that could only be achieved through violence. Franco, aided by fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, torched his way through Spain, where he encountered a determined, yet ultimately outmanned and out-equipped Republican resistance.
Towns collapsed. Cities and their inhabitants became testing grounds for developing weaponry. The Republican government fled Madrid for Valencia, and then finally for Barcelona in 1937. The 1938 Battle of Ebro would see what remained of the Second Spanish Republic — battered, bruised and backed into a corner — exhausted to the point of collapse.
Its remaining vestiges — old men and women, children, civilians, soldiers, former heads of state — fled in defeat, abandoning the soil where relentless force determined that alternative political and economic life forms would not grow there.
A large, black eagle that appeared on the new Spanish flag soon after the war's ended offered the world a stark visualization of the decades of darkness Spain would endure under Franco -- and a timeless reminder that, as Albert Camus penned of the Spanish Civil War, “force can vanquish spirit.”
To get a better view of other wars that plagued the 20th century, beyond the Spanish Civil War, check out these photos of World War One and World War Two. Then, have a look at some of the most memorable Ernest Hemingway quotes.
Established in 2010, All That's Interesting brings together a dedicated staff of digital publishing veterans and subject-level experts in history, true crime, and science. From the lesser-known byways of human history to the uncharted corners of the world, we seek out stories that bring our past, present, and future to life. Privately-owned since its founding, All That's Interesting maintains a commitment to unbiased reporting while taking great care in fact-checking and research to ensure that we meet the highest standards of accuracy.
John Kuroski is the editorial director of All That's Interesting. He graduated from New York University with a degree in history, earning a place in the Phi Alpha Theta honor society for history students. An editor at All That's Interesting since 2015, his areas of interest include modern history and true crime.
