On July 17th, 1936, General Francisco Franco initiated a coup d’état against the left-wing government of the Second Republic; however, this failed uprising led to the Spanish Civil War. There were numerous causes for this coup, all centering on the fear of communism, anarchism, and overall, the perceived disintegration of the Spanish nation. The government of the Second Republic promoted different reforms in the land and the church, such as its radicalization, which provoked discontent among the Spanish population. In addition, the socioeconomic instability under the republican government resulted in major worker strikes and significant unemployment. Therefore, these factors, combined with the expansion of fascism in Europe, caused political instability and led to the coup d’état orchestrated by Francisco Franco, Emilio Mola and Gonzalo Queipo de Llano which would lead to the longest dictatorship in Spain, known as ‘La Era del Franquismo.’
The first year of the civil war was centered on the assault and defense of Madrid which promoted a false sense of victory amongst the republican army. During 1936, Madrid was in the spotlight of every newspaper around the world, as the ‘fall’ of the city would translate into a quick victory for the fascist regime, considering its status as the capital city and its significant position. However, the fascists were met with an unexpected resistance from a united city, particularly at ‘Casa de Campo’ and ‘Ciudad Universitaria.’ In fact, this successful Republican defense promoted ‘hope’ for the rest of Spain to resist, embodied in the famous motto ‘No pasarán’ −translated as ‘they will not pass.’ This moral boost, alongside the belief that Madrid would become the tomb of fascism, invigorated the spirit of resistance. As a result, Franco suspended the assault, and the capital was not taken until the end of the war in 1939.
The second year of the war shifted focus to the offensive against the north of the Peninsula and the Aragon front. On April 26th, 1937, one of the cruelest events of the war occurred: the bombing of Guernica. As explored in Koldo Serra’s film Guernika (2016) this Basque city became a testing ground to examine the destructive power of ‘lightning attacks’ with Hitler’s Legion Condor. This attack consisted of incendiary bombs, a technique which would be repeatedly used by the Nazis during the Second World War. Additionally, the film highlights the relevance of this bombing in revealing the atrocities committed during the Spanish Civil War to the world, through the British journalist George Steer, the main character of the film: “A very small town in the north of Spain is about to become very famous, but for all the wrong reasons.” (Guernika 1:43:14). Hence, Guernika aims to depict how this brutal attack did not suppose a military advancement but rather a symbol of the destruction of the Basque autonomy as well as the introduction of the Spanish Civil War to the world.
That same year, one month after the attack on Guernica, on the 30th of May 1937, the offensive of Segovia took place. This operation aimed at diverting fascist attacks from the north to avoid its falling. This episode inspired Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom The Bell Tolls (1940) which centers on the republican offensive to release pressure from the north. Although Hemingway’s fiction centered on the attack and its historical context, it displays a social critique of the war and common fears: “In this war are many foolish things […] In this war there is an idiocy without bound” (Hemingway 99). Through Robert Jordan’s narrative, Hemingway presents the cruelty and barbarities committed during the war. The interactions between Jordan and the figures of republican forces such as Anselmo, Agustin, María and Pilar showed the repeated and common brutality thousands of war victims suffered:
“How many times had he heard this? How many times had he watched people say it with difficulty? […] You only heard the statement of the loss […] You did not see the mother shot, nor the sister, nor the brother. You heard about it; you heard the shots; and you saw the bodies.” (Hemingway 140)
Even so, Hemingway’s fiction explores the cruelty exhibited by both parties, as seen with Pablo and the episode involving the brutal murders of the fascist leaders in his town. Pablo, despite his beliefs, is not so different from the fascists, he too, relies on brutality and vengeance. However, For Whom The Bell Tolls relies on an anti-fascist discourse to denounce the war and contemplate the potential consequences of a Republican defeat: “If the Republic was lost it would be impossible for those who believed in it to live in Spain” (Hemingway 170). Hemingway chose not to focus solely on the military aspect, like the battle of ‘La Granja,’ but rather to approach the Civil War from his foreign position, as seen through the character of Robert Jordan. This narrative stance allows him to critically show both sides of the story, with a focus on the loss of life as a tragedy (Hansell 6).
During this period, Barcelona had been largely indifferent towards the war, at least until May 1937. Whilst many of the main Spanish provinces were fully immersed in the war, Barcelona was very much alienated from the actual fighting and its population was indifferent to it (Orwell 95). This is what George Orwell argues in Homage to Catalonia (1938), which rather than focusing on fiction, is a memoir emphasizing the ‘May Days’ in Barcelona: the “uprising against the Republican government by the anti-Soviet anarchists and socialists pro-Trotsky POUM (Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista).” (Furr 751). Orwell’s focus on the condemnation of the POUM as a disguised Fascist organization, emphasizes the perspective of the division within the left, which was favorable to Franco as it debilitated the forces in Catalonia. Orwell aimed to criticize the unreliability of information which destabilized the republican forces, paving the way for a fascist dictatorship, as he noted, “as the chance of a working-class dictatorship had passed.” (Orwell 139). In a similar way, Ken Loach’s Land and Freedom (1995), inspired by Orwell’s novel, echoes this perspective. Like Homage to Catalonia, the film depicts involvement in the POUM, showing the Civil War “as the ‘class war’ it really was, taking into account the considerable ideological diversity within the Spanish Republic.” (Kowalski 37). This highlights the internal divisions within That is, the ‘left’, which were marked by different groups and conflicts, as reflected in the ‘May Days’. In contrast, the right joined forces in its pursuit of a fascist future.
During the third year of the war, in 1938, the battle of the Ebro, the most intense and ferocious battle of the civil war, took place. From July to November 1938 the ‘generalissimo’ initiated the most decisive offensive against the Republican Army, which would result in his total victory. Despite the initial success of resistance under Negrín’s government in the defence of southern Catalonia, similar to Madrid’s ‘No Pasarán’ spirit, the material inferiority of the Republican army ended with the fall of Catalonia. This culminated in the end of the war on April 1st, 1939, with the victory of the ‘generalissimo’ Franco, ushering in a forty-year dictatorship characterized by repression, silence, and torture.
Works Cited
Furr, Grover C. “Leon Trotsky and the Barcelona ‘May Days’ of 1937.” Lands: Journal of Labor and Society, 2019, vol. 22, nº4, pp.713-928.
Hemingway, Ernest. For Whom the Bell Tolls, Arrow Books, 1994
Hansell, Felicia. “Hemingway, Orwell, and the Truth of the “Good Fight”: Foreign Combatants’ Accounts of the Spanish Civil War.” Senior Capstone Projects, 2012, pp.1-70.
Jackson, Gabriel. Spanish Republic and the Civil War, 1931-1939. Princeton University Press, 1965.
Kowalski, Mathew E. “Land and Freedom: An Accurate Glimpse of Spain’s Civil War.” The Histories, 2019, vol.4, nº2, pp.36-37.
Loach, Ken, director. Land and Freedom, PolyGram Film Entertainment, 1995
Orwell, George. Homage to Catalonia, Penguin Classis, 2000.
Serra, Koldo, director. Guernika. Pecado Films, 2016