Rehearsal for World War: Spain's Civil War
From 1936 to 1939, civil war raged in Spain, on the periphery of continental politics. An elected center-left government faced a military revolt that eventually resulted in the creation of an authoritarian regime. While the European democracies stayed aloof, totalitarian powers both communist and fascist sent soldiers and supplies. Their intervention in the Spanish Civil War was a prologue to World War IL
The civil war was in origin a traditional conflict between liberalism on one side, and monarchy and entrenched elites on the other. Spain's era of greatness was long gone by 1898, when it lost the last of its major colonies. King Alfonso XIII (r. 1902-1931) ruled weakly thereafter as a constitutional monarch, bolstered by the Roman Catholic clergy and military leaders. Amid labor unrest and separatist revolts, Alfonso turned to the right and sup-ported as prime minister Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera (1870-1930). In 1923, Primo de Rivera suspended the constitution, censored the press, and clamped down on the universities. When the Depression came in 1929, these tactics were unsustainable.
The civil war was in origin a traditional conflict between liberalism on one side, and monarchy and entrenched elites on the other. Spain's era of greatness was long gone by 1898, when it lost the last of its major colonies. King Alfonso XIII (r. 1902-1931) ruled weakly thereafter as a constitutional monarch, bolstered by the Roman Catholic clergy and military leaders. Amid labor unrest and separatist revolts, Alfonso turned to the right and sup-ported as prime minister Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera (1870-1930). In 1923, Primo de Rivera suspended the constitution, censored the press, and clamped down on the universities. When the Depression came in 1929, these tactics were unsustainable.
In 1931, leftist Republican parties triumphed in municipal and national elections, forcing Alfonso to leave Spain. The new constituent assembly was dominated by socialists, communists, anarchists, and syndicalists. This body drafted a liberal constitution granting universal suffrage, basic freedoms, separation of Church and state, secular control of mass education, and the nationalization of church property. The disestablishment of the Roman Catholic Church was one platform on which nearly all agreed.
In 1933, new elections produced a rightist government which promptly undid earlier reforms. In 1936, the pendulum swung again; new elections yielded a left-center majority and a Popular Front government, alarming the wealthy, the clergy, and the military. On July 17, 1936, army officers in Spanish Morocco, North Africa, launched a revolt against the government. Ferried back to Spain in Italian ships, under the leadership of the general Francisco Franco, the Nationalists, as they were called, took control of the Spanish central region, which supported the rising. The Loyalists held the capital at Madrid, the Basque Country, and the developed eastern seaboard, including Catalonia with its cosmopolitan capital at Barcelona.
In 1933, new elections produced a rightist government which promptly undid earlier reforms. In 1936, the pendulum swung again; new elections yielded a left-center majority and a Popular Front government, alarming the wealthy, the clergy, and the military. On July 17, 1936, army officers in Spanish Morocco, North Africa, launched a revolt against the government. Ferried back to Spain in Italian ships, under the leadership of the general Francisco Franco, the Nationalists, as they were called, took control of the Spanish central region, which supported the rising. The Loyalists held the capital at Madrid, the Basque Country, and the developed eastern seaboard, including Catalonia with its cosmopolitan capital at Barcelona.
By all rights, the legitimate, elected government should have won this struggle against a handful of insurgent generals. That it did not has to do with the behavior of the onlooker European nations. The ever-cautious democracies, fearful of war, would not intervene, even to provide the Spanish government with weapons and supplies. The dictatorships, however, intervened vigorously. Mussolini's Italy sent guns, tanks, Planes, and men. Hitler unleashed his air force or Luftwaffe, including the entire Condor Legion, which practiced in Spain the tactics it would use in the larger conflict to come. Stalin’s Soviet Union fed the Loyalists supplies and armaments, for which it required payment in full, and in gold. These were delivered along with the usual political commissars, urging allegiance to the partly line.
Loyalist volunteers arrived in Spain as well—the International Brigades, about 40,000 volunteers from Europe and the United States, democrats, socialists, communists, and workers eager to fight for a new order. Thus strengthened, the Loyalists fought desperately against Franco and his supporters (including the Roman Catholic Church, of whom they murdered more than 1000 priests and nearly 300 nuns).
The efficient Franco – a soldier rather than a fascist, but in league with fascism none the less – made steady progress. His German allies pursued their experiments. Their blanket bombing on April 26, 1937 of the Basque town of Guernica was a tragedy not only for the Basques, but for the whole world., now introduced to a new tactic – the deliberate bombing of unwarned civilians. Its cruelty is conveyed in the coldly eloquent monochrome of Picasso’s painting Guernica.
By the end of 1938, Franco’s forces seized Catalonia; by spring 1939, Valencia and the capital of Madrid. The Loyalists and their international volunteers fled, or were captured, tortured and murdered. Fascism was on the march.
Still the democracies did not act, and would not do so until they were forced to go to war once again, war total and world-wide.
Loyalist volunteers arrived in Spain as well—the International Brigades, about 40,000 volunteers from Europe and the United States, democrats, socialists, communists, and workers eager to fight for a new order. Thus strengthened, the Loyalists fought desperately against Franco and his supporters (including the Roman Catholic Church, of whom they murdered more than 1000 priests and nearly 300 nuns).
The efficient Franco – a soldier rather than a fascist, but in league with fascism none the less – made steady progress. His German allies pursued their experiments. Their blanket bombing on April 26, 1937 of the Basque town of Guernica was a tragedy not only for the Basques, but for the whole world., now introduced to a new tactic – the deliberate bombing of unwarned civilians. Its cruelty is conveyed in the coldly eloquent monochrome of Picasso’s painting Guernica.
By the end of 1938, Franco’s forces seized Catalonia; by spring 1939, Valencia and the capital of Madrid. The Loyalists and their international volunteers fled, or were captured, tortured and murdered. Fascism was on the march.
Still the democracies did not act, and would not do so until they were forced to go to war once again, war total and world-wide.
The Bombing of Guernica
Guernica; What inspired Pablo Picasso
BBC News One of the most striking images of 20th-century art, Guernica is a nightmare vision of violence, pain, and chaos. The painting is full of energy but there is no color and its monochrome, nighttime palette is bleak and disorientating. Picasso uses jagged, fragmented forms and distorted faces to great effect, creating an atmosphere of panic and terror. The painting makes a big impact, both emotionally and physically. More than eleven feet high and more than twenty-five feet long, it is enormous and its vast scale meant that Picasso had to use a ladder in order to paint the upper sections.
In early 1927, Picasso had been commissioned to create a mural for the Spanish Pavilion at the Paris World's Fair, but he had not decided on a theme for the work. |
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At that time Spain was in the grip of a civil war and in April 1937, in broad daylight, the population of the small town of Guernica in the Republican-held Basque region of Spain was devastated by German bombers and fighters from the Condor Legion acting on General Franco's orders. Picasso, who had allied himself with the Republican cause, read about the massacre of defenseless civilians and the theme of the mural for the Spanish Pavilion suddenly presented itself. The Paris Fair would give him an opportunity to bring the atrocities visited on the defenseless people of Guernica to the attention of the world, and so he set to work.