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White Terror (Spain)
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Women pleading with rebels for lives of Republican prisoners,Constantina, Seville, 1936.

In Spain, the White Terror (also known as la Represión Franquista, the “Francoist Repression”) was the series of acts of politically-motivated violence, rape, and other crimes committed by the Nationalist movement during the Spanish Civil War (17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939) and during Francisco Franco's dictatorship (1 October 1936 – 20 November 1975).[1] The mass killings of the Spanish Republican loyalists, which included Popular Front adherents, liberals, Socialists, Trotskyites, Communists, anarchists, Protestants,freethinkers and intellectuals, among others, such as those branded as Catalan and Basque separatists and Freemasons,[2]occurred from the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, in July 1936, and continued unabated until 1945.[3][4]

Nationalist atrocities, which the authorities ordered to eradicate any trace of “leftism” in Spain, were common, ideological practice. The notion of a limpieza (cleansing) was an essential part of the right-wing rebel strategy, and the process of assassination began immediately after the nationalists had captured an area.[5] In the rebel-controlled zone, the nationalist military, the Civil Guard, and the fascist Falange carried out the violence in name of the regime, which was ideologically legitimized by the Roman Catholic Church.[6][7]

Historians of the Spanish Civil War generally agree that the death toll of the White Terror was greater than the death toll of the Red Terror, because the White Terror occurred as a matter of formal Nationalist policy. The assassinations continued until 1945, six years after the end of Spanish Civil War in 1939. Most estimates of the Red Terror's death toll range from 38,000 to 72,344 people;[8][9] these estimates include, among others, the collective work Víctimas de la guerra civil (Victims of the Civil War), which reaches 50,000 people;[10] Hugh Thomas (55,000 people);[11] and Julián Casanova (fewer than 60,000 people).[12] Meanwhile estimates of the White Terror's death toll, such as Paul Preston's 200,000 people,[13] range from 150,000 to 400,000 people.[14][15]

The Law of Political Responsibilities (Ley de Responsabilidades Políticas), reformed in 1942 and in force until 1966,[16] was promulgated in 1939 in order to give a legal cover to the bloody repression carried out during the dismantling of the Spanish republican institutions, as well as to penalise those who had remained loyal to the legally established government at the time of the July 1936 military rebellion against the Spanish Republic.[17]

Background[edit]

The Second Spanish Republic was established on 14 April 1931, after the flight of King Alfonso XIII. The government, led by President Niceto Alcalá-Zamora, instituted a reformist program, including agrarian reform,[18] separation of church and state,[19] the right to divorce,[20] votes for women (November 1933),[21] reform of the Spanish Army,[22] autonomy for Catalonia [23] and the Basque Country (October 1936).[24] The proposed reforms were blocked by the right and rejected by the far-left National Confederation of Labour (Confederación Nacional del Trabajo) or (CNT). The Republic suffered attacks from the right (the failed coup of Sanjurjo in 1932), and the left (theuprising of Asturias in 1934), as well as the impact of the Great Depression.[25][26]

Nevertheless the Republic managed to survive. In February 1936 the Popular Front, a coalition of parties from the left to the center right (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party(PSOE), Republican Left (IR), Republican Union Party (UR), Communist Party (PCE), Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (POUM), Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC) among others)[27] won the general election and the right started to plan an uprising against the Republic.[28] Finally, on 17 July 1936, a part of the Spanish Army, led by a group of far-right officers (the generals Sanjurjo, Goded, Emilio Mola, Franco, Miguel Cabanellas, Queipo de Llano and Varela among others) attempted a coup against the government.[29][30] The coup failed but the rebel troops, known as the Nationalists, held a large part of Spain. The Spanish Civil War had started.

One of the leaders of the 1936 coup against Spain's democratically elected government,[31] Franco, with his Nationalist forces and aided by Germany and Italy, finally prevailed in 1939. He ruled the country for the next 36 years.[31] As well as mass killing, political prisoners were sent to concentration camps [32] and homosexuals to mental asylums.[31]
Red and White Terrors[edit]

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 toStanley 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.[33]

There were some elements in common between Republican and 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 being "taken for a ride" (paseo).[34] Most of the victims of these sacas and paseos were executed by death squads stemming from the trade unions and political party militias (CNT, UGT and PCE militias among the republicans and Falange and Carlist militias among the Nationalists), which were easily infiltrated by gangs of criminals.[35] Many executions were justified as a reprisal for aerial bombings[36] and many others were denounced out of envy and personal hatred.[37] Nevertheless, there were significant differences between the two Terrors as was emphasized by Francisco Partaloa, prosecutor of the Madrid High Court of Justice (Tribunal Supremo de Madrid) and Queipo de Llano's friend, who observed the repression first in the Republican and then in the Nationalist side:

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 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 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.[16]

Historians such as Helen Graham,[38] Paul Preston,[39] Antony Beevor,[40] Gabriel Jackson,[41] Hugh Thomas, and Ian Gibson[42] have concurred that the mass executions behind the Nationalist lines were organized and approved by the Nationalist 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.[36]

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.[43]

However, pro-Franco philosopher Miguel de Unamuno asserted that, unlike the murders in the areas held by the Republic, the White Terror executions were methodical and were orchestrated from the highest spheres. Unamuno denounced General Mola as the main proponent of the systematic terror policy.

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 Masonic, and 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.[44]

When news of the ruthless and systematic executions of republicans by the rebel forces —as part of General Mola's policy of instilling terror in loyalist ranks— began to filter to the areas held by the Republican government, Defence Minister Indalecio Prieto made a fervent plea to Spanish republicans:

... Don't imitate them! Don't imitate them! Surpass them in moral conduct; surpass them by being generous. I do not ask you, however, that you should lose either strength in battle or zeal in the fight. I ask for brave, hard and steely breasts for the combat,... but with sensitive hearts, capable of shaking when faced with human sorrow and being able to harbour mercy and tender feelings, without which the most essential part of human greatness is lost.[45]

Right-wing writer and journalist José María Pemán, concerned about the numerous executions of republicans carried out daily by the faction he fervently supported, wrote about a conversation he had with rebel 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.

The General reflected for about a full minute and then answered grimly:
—Yes.[46]
The Civil War[edit]

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 that terrorism had been planned before the coup d'état.[47][48][49] In the 30 June 1936 secret instructions for the coup d'état in Morocco, General Emilio Mola ordered the rebels "to eliminate left-wing elements, communists, anarchists, union members, etc."[50] The White Terror included the repression of political opponents in areas occupied by the Nationalist, mass executions in areas captured from theRepublicans, such as the Massacre of Badajoz,[51][52] and looting.[53]

In The Spanish Labyrinth (1943),[54] 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, GeneralQueipo 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 Guernica,[55][56] Madrid,[57][58] Málaga,[59] Almería,[60] Lérida,[61] Durango,[62][63] Granollers,[64] Alcañiz,[65]Valencia [66] and Barcelona [67][68][69] by the Luftwaffe (Legion Condor) and the Italian air force (Aviazione Legionaria) (according to Gabriel Jackson estimates range from 5,000 to 10,000 victims of the bombings),[70] killings of Republican POWs,[71][72] rape,[73][74][75][76][77] forced disappearances [78] —including whole Republican military units such as the 221st Mixed Brigade-[79][80] and the establishment of Francoist prisons in the aftermath of the Republicans' defeat.
Goals and victims of the repression[edit]

Twenty-six republicans were assassinated by fascists that belonged to Franco's Nationalists at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, between August and September of 1936. This mass grave is placed at the small town named as Estépar, in Northern Spain. The excavation occurred in July–August of 2014.

The main goal of the White Terror was to terrify the civil population who opposed the coup,[81][82][83]eliminate the supporters of the Second Spanish Republic and the militants of the leftist parties,[84][85][86] and because of this, some historians have considered the White Terror a genocide.[87][88] In fact, one of the leaders of the coup, General Emilio Mola said:[89]

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.

In areas controlled by the Nationalists, government officials, Popular Front politicians[90][91] (in the city of Granada 23 of the 44 councillors of the city's corporation were executed),[92] union leaders, teachers[93] (in the first weeks of the war hundreds of teachers were killed by the Nationalists),[94]intellectuals (for example, in Granada, between 26 July 1936 and 1 March 1939, the poet Federico García 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,[95][96] and in the city of Cordoba, "nearly the entire republican elite, from deputies to booksellers, were executed in August, September and December..."),[97] suspected Freemasons (in Huesca, where there were only twelve Freemasons, the Nationalists killed a hundred suspected Freemasons),[98][99] Basque,[100] Catalan, Andalusian or Galician nationalists (among them Manuel Carrasco i Formiguera, leader of Democratic Union of Catalonia Unió Democrática de Catalunya, Alexandre Boveda, one of the founders of the Partido Galeguista and Blas Infante, leader of the Andalusian nationalism),[101] military officers who had remained loyal to the government of the Republic (among them the Army generals Domingo Batet,[102] Enrique Salcedo Molinuevo, Miguel Campíns, Nicolás Molero,[102] Nuñez de Prado, Manuel Romerales and Rogelio Caridad Pita),[103] and people suspected of voting for the Popular Front[104] 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:[105]

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.[106][107][108] Many of these huidos later joined the Spanish maquis,[109] the anti-Francoist guerrilla force that continued to fight against the dictatorship in the post-war era. 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.[110] 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 fiancé Transito Alonso and her mother, Juana Ramos."[111] 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 Falange's blue shirt as the salvavidas (life jacket).[112][113] 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.[114]
Death toll[edit]

Estimates of executions behind the Nationalist lines during the Spanish Civil War range from fewer than 50,000[43] to 200,000[115] (Hugh Thomas: 75,000,[116] Secundino Serrano: 90,000;[117] Josep Fontana: 150,000;[118] and Julián Casanova: 100,000.[12][119]). 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.[120][121] 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,[122] 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.[123] He goes on to state that by 1938 the military courts there were directing summary executions.[123] Many of the executions in the course of the war were carried by militants of the fascist party Falange [124] (Falange Española de las J.O.N.S.) or militants of the Carlist party (Comunión Tradicionalista) militia (Requetés), but with the approval of the Nationalist government.[125]
Cooperation of the Spanish Church[edit]

The Spanish Church approved of the White Terror and cooperated with the rebels.[72][126][127][128] 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."[129] 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."[130] Nevertheless the Nationalists killed at least 16 Basque nationalist priests (among them the arch-priest of Mondragon),[131]and imprisoned or deported hundreds more.[132] Several priests who tried to halt the killings[133] and at least one priest who was a Mason were killed.[134]

Regarding the callous attitude of the Vatican, Manuel Montero, lecturer of the University of the Basque Country commented on 6 May 2007:[135]

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.
The repression in the South and the Drive to Madrid[edit]
See also: Málaga–Almería road massacre

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,[136] and afterwards went on to execute thousands of workers and militants of the leftist parties: in the city of Cordoba 4,000;[137]in the city of Granada 5,000;[138] in the city of Seville 3,028;[139] and in the city of Huelva 2,000 killed and 2,500 disappeared.[140] The city of Malaga, 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.[141][142][143][144] 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).[145] Over 4,000 people were buried in mass graves.[146]

Even towns of rural areas were not spared the terror, such as Lora del Rio in the province of Seville, where the Nationalists killed 300 peasants as a reprisal for the assassination of a local landowner.[147] In the province of Córdoba the Nationalists killed 995 Republicans in Puente Genil [148] and about 700 loyalists were murdered by the orders of rebel Colonel Sáenz de Buruaga in Baena,[149][150][151] although other estimates mention up to 2,000 victims following the Baena Massacre.[152]

Paul Preston estimates the total number of victims of the Nationalists in Andalusia at 55,000.[153]
The troops of North Africa[edit]
See also: Mohamed Meziane

Furthermore the colonial troops of the Spanish Army of Africa (Ejército de África), mainly the Moroccan regulares and the Spanish Legion, under the command of ColonelJuan Yagüe, in their advance towards Madrid from Sevilla through Andalusia and Extremadura, killed dozens or hundreds in every town or city conquered,[154][155] and several thousands of Republicans in the city of Badajoz.[156][157] Moreover the colonial troops raped many working-class women[74][158] and looted the houses of the Republicans. Queipo de Llano, one of the leaders of the Nationalists said:[159]

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.
Post-war[edit]

When Heinrich Himmler visited Spain in 1940, a year after Franco’s victory, he was shocked by the brutality of the Falangist repression.[160] In July 1939, the foreign minister of the Fascist Italy, Ciano 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".[161] While authors like Payne have cast doubts on the democratic leanings of the Republic, "fascism was clearly on the other".[160]
Repressive laws[edit]

According to Beevor, Spain was an open prison for all those who opposed the dictatorship.[162] Until 1963, all the opponents of the dictatorship were brought before military courts.[163] 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 1 March 1940),[164] 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.[162] Furthermore, in 1940 the Francoist dictatorship established the Tribunal for the eradication of Freemasonry and Communism (Tribunal Especial para la Represión de la Masonería y el Comunismo).[165]

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(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 (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.[166] The regional languages like Basque and Catalan were also forbidden,[167] and the statutes of autonomy of Catalonia [168] and the Basque country were abolished. Censorship of the press (the Law of Press, passed in April 1938)[169] and of cultural life was rigorously exercised and forbidden books destroyed.[170]
Executions and forced labor[edit]

At the end of the Spanish Civil War the executions of the “enemies of the state” continued (some 50,000 people),[171][172] 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 160enlaces were killed.[173][174] Thousands of men and women were imprisoned after the civil war in Francoist concentration camps, approximately 367,000 to 500,000 prisoners in 50 camps or prisons.[175] In 1933, before the war, the prisons of Spain contained some 12,000 prisoners,[176] but, by 1940, one year after the end of the civil war, there were 280,000 prisoners contained in more than 500 prisons throughout the country.[177][178] The principal purpose of the Francoist concentration camps was the to classify the prisoners of war from the defeated Spanish Republic; those men and women classified as “unrecoverable”, were put to death.[179]

After the war, the republican prisoners were sent to work in militarized penal colonies (Colonias Penales Militarizadas), penal detachments (Destacamentos Penales) and disciplinary battalions of worker-soldiers (Batallones Disciplinarios de Soldados Trabajadores).[180] According to Beevor, 90,000 republican prisoners were sent off to 121 labour battalions and 8,000 to military workshops.[181] In 1939, Ciano said about the Republican prisoners of war that: "They are not prisoners of war, they are slaves of war.".[182] Thousands of prisoners (15,947 in 1943)[183] were forced to work building dams, highways, the Guadalquivir Canal[184] (10,000 political prisoners worked on its construction between 1940 and 1962),[185] the Carabanchel Prison, the Valley of the Fallen (Valle de los Caídos) (20,000 political prisoners worked in its construction)[184][186] and in coal mines in Asturias and Leon.[172] The severe overcrowding of the prisons (according to Antony Beevor 270,000 prisoners were spread around jails with capacity for 20,000),[172] 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),[187] among them the poet Miguel Hernández [188] and the politician Julián Besteiro.[189] Torture was systematic in the Francoist prisons and concentration camps.[190] 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.[191]

A Francoist psychiatrist, Antonio Vallejo-Nájera, carried out so-called "experiments" on prisoners in the Francoist concentration camps in order to "establish the bio-psych roots of Marxism".[162][192][193][194] He 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).[162] Many of the mothers were executed afterwards.[195][196] "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."
Fate of Republican exiles[edit]

Furthermore hundreds of thousands were forced into exile (470,000 in 1939),[197] among them many intellectuals and artists who had supported the Republic[198] such asAntonio Machado, Ramon J. Sender, Juan Ramon Jimenez, Rafael Alberti, Luis Cernuda, Pedro Salinas, Manuel Altolaguirre, Emilio Prados, Max Aub, Franciso Ayala,Jorge Guillén, León Felipe, Arturo Barea, Pablo Casals, Jesús Bal y Gay, Rodolfo Halffter, Julián Bautista, Salvador Bacarisse, Josep Lluís Sert, Margarita Xirgu, Maruja Mallo, Claudio Sánchez Albornoz, Americo Castro, Clara Campoamor, Victoria Kent, Pablo Picasso, Maria Luisa Algarra, Alejandro Casona, Rosa Chacel, Maria Zambrano, Josep Carner, Paulino Masip, María Teresa León, Alfonso Castelao, Jose Gaos and Luis Buñuel.[198]

Tanks of 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 France, Franco's regime encouraged the Germans to detain and deport thousands of Republican refugees to the concentration camps.[199] 15,000 Spanish Republicans were deported to Dachau, Buchenwald(including the writer Jorge Semprún),[200] Bergen-Belsen, Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg (among them the politicianFrancisco Largo Caballero),[201] Auschwitz, Flossenburg [202] and Mauthausen (5,000 out of 7,200 Spanish prisoners at Mauthausen died there).[203] Other Spanish Republicans were detained by the Gestapo, handed over to Spain and executed, among them Julián Zugazagoitia, Juan Peiró, Francisco Cruz Salido and Lluis Companys (president of theGeneralitat of Catalonia)[204] and another 15,000 were forced to work building the Atlantic Wall.[195] Moreover, 4,000 Spanish Republicans were deported by the Nazis to the occupied Channel Islands and were forced to work building fortifications; only 59 survived.[205] Because of this, thousands of Spanish refugees (10,000 fighters in 1944) joined theFrench Resistance [206]—among them Colonel Carlos Romero Giménez—and the Free French Forces.[203]
Purges and labour discrimination[edit]

The Francoist dictatorship carried out extensive purges among the civil service. Thousands of army officials loyal to the Republic were expelled from the army.[207] Thousands of university and school teachers lost their jobs (a quarter of all Spanish teachers).[208][209] 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.[210] Furthermore, the dictatorship encouraged tens of thousands of Spaniards to denounce their Republican neighbours and friends:[211][212][213]

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.[214]
Suppression of women's rights[edit]

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),[215] sexual harassment and rape.[216] In many cases the houses and goods of the widows of Republicans were confiscated by the government.[39] Because of this, many Republican women, living in total poverty, were forced into prostitution.[217] 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".[218] 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".[195]

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.[219]
Marriage law[edit]

The divorce and marriage legislation of the Republic was retroactively reversed, with the divorces retroactively unmade and the children of civil marriages madeillegitimate.[220]
Estimates[edit]

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[221][222][223] and tried to hide the executions of the Republicans.[224][225][226] Gabriel Jackson states that:[227]

Prisons records and the death registers are misleading, since it is known that certificates of release were regularly signed by or for men who were then taken out and shot, and that certificates alleging heart attacks or apoplexy were made out for corpses left on the open road. Execution techniques deliberately disfigured the corpses so as to make them unrecognizable. Officials of the time have testified that families were afraid to report missing male members, and did not come to identify the bodies of the dead.

Thousands of victims of the White Terror are buried in hundreds of unmarked common graves (over 2,000),[228] more than 600 in Andalusia alone.[229] The largest of these is the common grave at San Rafael cemetery on the outskirts of Malaga (with perhaps more than 4,000 bodies).[230] The Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory(Asociación para la Recuperación de la Memoria Historica or ARMH)[231] says that the number of disappeared is over 35,000.[232]

Estimates range from 150,000[233] victims to 400,000;[234] for example, in the collective work Victimas de la guerra civil: 150,000;[235] the Spanish historian Josep Fontana: 175,000;[236] Hugh Thomas: 175,000;[237] Paul Preston: 180,000;[238] Antony Beevor: 200,000;[239] and Gabriel Jackson: 400,000.[115] There are, however, regional and partial figures. For example, in the province of Córdoba the victims of the White Terror number 9,579[240] (the historian Francisco Moreno Gomez has increased the number to 11,581).[174][2], On the other hand, the victims of the Red Terror in the same province come to 2,060.[235] Other provincial number breakdowns are as follows:
Sevilla province: White Terror 8,000, Red Terror 480;[235]
Granada province: White Terror 5,048 (including the poet Federico García Lorca),[241] Red Terror 994;[235]
Zaragoza province: White Terror 6,029, Red Terror 742;[235]
Valencia province: White Terror 3,128, Red Terror 2,844;[235]
Málaga province: White Terror 7,000, Red Terror 2,607;[235]
Navarra: White Terror 2,789, Red Terror zero;[235]
Zamora province: White Terror 3,000, Red Terror zero;[89]
Valladolid province: White Terror 3,430, Red Terror zero;[242]
La Rioja: White Terror 2,000, Red Terror zero;[235]
Asturias: White Terror 5,592;[235]
Cádiz province: White Terror 3,000, Red Terror 95;[243]
and in the eastern part of the province of Badajoz, the White Terror killed 6,600 while the Red Terror claimed 243.[244]

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.[245] The historian Paul Preston 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).[246] They died either as a result of the Nationalist repression during the war or as a result of the Franco dictatorship's repression after the war.[247]
Aftermath[edit]

The last concentration camp, at Miranda de Ebro, was closed in 1947.[248] 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 an organized resistance.[249] 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(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 commenced and in 1978 the Spanish Constitution of 1978 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)[250] and by the democratic opposition. Nevertheless, in October 2008 a Spanish judge, Baltasar Garzón, of theNational 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.[251] 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.[252] 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.[253] In September 2010, the Argentine justice reopened a probe into crimes committed during the Spanish Civil War and during the Franco's dictatorship.[254] Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch,[255] the Council of Europe [256] and United Nations have asked the Spanish government to investigate the crimes of Franco's dictatorship.[257]
See also[edit]
Spanish Civil War
Spain under Franco
Red Terror in Spain
Law of Historical Memory
Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory
Suppression of Freemasonry (Spain)
List of people executed by Francoist Spain
Catholicism in the Second Spanish Republic
Esteban de Bilbao Eguía
Desaparecidos del franquismo
Les grands cimetières sous la lune
References[edit]
Beevor, Antony. The Battle for Spain; The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939. Penguin Books. 2006. London. ISBN 0-14-303765-X.
Casanova, Julian. The Spanish Republic and civil war. Cambridge University Press. 2010. New York. ISBN 978-0-521-73780-7
Casanova, Julían; Espinosa, Francisco; Mir, Conxita; Moreno Gómez, Francisco. Morir, matar, sobrevivir. La violencia en la dictadura de Franco. Editorial Crítica. Barcelona. 2002. ISBN 84-8432-506-7
Espinosa, Francisco. La columna de la muerte. El avance del ejército franquista de Sevilla a Badajoz. Editorial Crítica. Barcelona. 2002. ISBN 84-8432-431-1
Espinosa, Francisco. La justicia de Queipo. Editorial Crítica. 2006. Barcelona. ISBN 84-8432-691-8
Espinosa, Francisco. Contra el olvido. Historia y memoria de la guerra civil. Editorial Crítica. 2006. Barcelona. ISBN 84-8432-794-9 ISBN 978-84-8432-794-3
Fontana, Josep, ed. España bajo el franquismo. Editorial Crítica. 1986. Barcelona. ISBN 84-8432-057-X
Gibson, Ian. The Assassination of Federico Garcia Lorca. Penguin Books. London. 1983. ISBN 0-14-006473-7
Graham, Helen. The Spanish Civil War. A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press. 2005. ISBN 978-0-19-280377-1
Jackson, Gabriel. The Spanish Republic and the Civil War, 1931-1939. Princeton University Press. 1967. Princeton. ISBN 0-691-00757-8
Juliá, Santos; Casanova, Julián; Solé I Sabaté, Josep Maria; Villarroya, Joan; and Moreno, Francisco. Victimas de la guerra civil. Ediciones Temas de Hoy. 1999. Madrid. ISBN 84-7880-983-X
Moreno Gómez, Francisco. 1936: el genocidio franquista en Córdoba. Editorial Crítica. Barcelona. 2008. ISBN 978-84-7423-686-6
Preston, Paul. The Spanish Civil War. Reaction, revolution & revenge. Harper Perennial. 2006. London. ISBN 978-0-00-723207-9 ISBN 0-00-723207-1
Preston, Paul. Doves of War. Four women of Spain. Harper Perennial. London. 2002. ISBN 978-0-00-638694-0
Richards, Michael. A Time of Silence: Civil War and the Culture of Repression in Franco's Spain, 1936-1945. Cambridge University Press. 1998.
Sender Barayón, Ramon. A death in Zamora. Calm unity press. 2003. ISBN 1-58898-789-2
Serrano, Secundino. Maquis. Historia de una guerrilla antifranquista. Ediciones Temas de hoy. 2001. ISBN 84-8460-370-9
Southworth, Herbert R. El mito de la cruzada de Franco. Random House Mondadori. 2008. Barcelona. ISBN 978-84-8346-574-5
Thomas, Hugh. The Spanish Civil War. Penguin Books. London. 2001. ISBN 978-0-14-101161-5
Many of the books of the Documentos collection, edited by the Galician publisher Ediciós do Castro.

External links[edit]