In Our Time - The Spanish Civil War

Episode Date: April 3, 2003

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Spanish Civil War which was a defining war of the twentieth century. It was a brutal conflict that polarised Spain, pitting the Left against the Right, the anti-clericals against the Church, the unions against the landed classes and the Republicans against the Monarchists. It was a bloody war which saw, in the space of just three years, the murder and execution of 350,000 people. It was also a conflict which soon became internationalised, becoming a battleground for the forces of Fascism and Communism as Europe itself geared up for war.But what were the roots of the Spanish Civil War? To what extent did Franco prosecute the war as a religious crusade? How did Franco institutionalise his victory after the war? And has Spain fully come to terms with its past?With Paul Preston, Principe de Asturias Professor of Contemporary Spanish History at the London School of Economics; Helen Graham, Professor of Spanish History at Royal Holloway, University of London; Dr Mary Vincent, Senior Lecturer in the Department of History at Sheffield University.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Thanks for downloading the In Our Time podcast. For more details about In Our Time and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.com.uk forward slash radio 4. I hope you enjoy the program. Hello, the Spanish Civil War was a defining war of the 20th century. It was a brutal conflict that polarised Spain, pitting the left against the right,

the anti-clericals against the church, the unions against the landed classes, and the Republicans against the monarchists. It was a bloody war which saw in the space of just three years the murder and execution of 350,000 people. It was also a conflict which soon became internationalized, becoming a battleground for the forces of fascism and communism as Europe itself geared up for war.

But what were the roots of the Spanish Civil War? To what extent did Franco prosecute the war as a religious crusade? How did Franco institutionalize his victory after the war and has Spain fully come to terms with its peace? past. With me, Paul Preston, Professor of Contemporary Spanish History at the London School of of Economics, an author of the Doves of War and the Spanish Civil War. Helen Graham, Professor of Spanish History at the Royal Holloway University of London, an author of Spanish Republic at War, and Mary Vincent, Senior Lecturer in the Department of History at Sheffield University.

Paul Preston, let's explore the roots of the Spanish Civil War, which started in 1936, but let's take it back earlier than that. Where do you think is the deepest starting point for, What happened in Spain in the 30s? Well, if we had an old day, I would say, you know, probably starts in the 14th century. But to be serious, I think we've got to start looking in the last third of the 19th century, when you've got a Spain which is predominantly an agrarian country, and I'm speaking very crudely here, the north of the country, mainly poor smallholders, deeply Catholic smallholders,

the south of the country, huge estates worked by a sort of wretched population of landless labourers. and then dotted around the country are certain sort of very few centres of advanced industry Barcelona, Madrid Bilbao and the mines of Asturias so it's a country of tremendously uneven development

enormous social conflict and certain problems like I mean there's the long loss of empire throughout the 19th century culminating in 1898 with the final loss of empire and that leads a huge leaves a huge colonial army with nothing to do that basically adopts the idea that its job is to keep an eye on social tension

to control public order and so on. In other words, it becomes obsessed with the idea of the internal enemy. It's diverted for a while by a war in Morocco, which brutalises it severely, but there's always this tendency that as there are more and more social conflicts within Spain to bring the army in to resolve them. The political system is one that rests on two pillars, on the one hand there's the whole network of political corruption, electoral falsification.

You know, governments tend not to lose elections. You often find elections won by 105% of the vote, that sort of thing. If you like, the symmetry of the situation is such that it puts in people's minds the stark choice, apathy or violence. You either accept it or you respond violently against it. and that is where the other pillar of the system comes in, the physical violence, the repressive machinery of the army and the civil guard and so on. So it's an extremely tense society. Was there any sense in which World War I, in which Spain did not participate,

loosened that society up a little? Oh, very much so. I think that what happens is that the First World War actually sees Spain experience a massive economic takeoff because it's able to supply both sides. But that leads to all kinds of tensions. It leads to dissatisfaction between the newly rich industrial classes and the traditional agrarian, sort of the land-owning oligarchy

that basically controlled politics before. So there's a tension there that loosens things up. But of course, the fact that everything that can be moved is sold leads to massive inflation, massive shortages and so on. So there's some of the same sort of social dislocation that you get in other European countries. And the basic upshot is that by 1917, of course, with the influence of the Russian Revolution, you get a revolutionary situation.

And that revolutionary situation effectively lasts from about 1917 to 1923, with rural uprisings, with massive urban strikes and so on. And eventually, if you like, that situation is anesthetized in 1923 by the imposition of a military dictatorship. So we have this huge army, army still has. hanging around partly in Morocco, partly in Spain. We've had great time of unrest. We have these polarisations already coming into play. Do you think, Helen Graham, that that is going too deeply back for, say, what happened in 1931, let's moved forward by there, where the coalition of various political parties on the left was voted into power? I mean, what,

poor Preston has suggested, gives a feeling of inevitability to this whole thing. Do you think that... What to the Civil War itself? No, I mean, I'm slightly twitchy about suggesting the whatever divisions you want to identify once the centre left comes into power in 1931, you can trace an unbroken line of causality right through to why there was a civil war. I mean, it seems to me there was a civil war because a progressive coalition could not diffuse a military coup.

I mean, that's the heart of the problem with the civil war. But certainly in 1931, there are increasing tensions which separate urban and rural Spain, which is a very big divide, I think, with the civil war. what's happening in 1939 is the back has been turned on the monarchy and very much it's urban Spain which is on the move which has been dramatically transformed in the 1920s by economic boom by demographic transfer of population

by all sorts of the advent of radio, new roads all sorts of things are on the move and all sorts of middle class groups if you like mid the middle in classes urban rural constituencies want to, knocking on the door, they want to be on the stage of politics and they want change. I mean, those changes are not always coherent with each other, but they want change. What was the composition of the government of 1931? Who were they? And given the military dictatorship that Paul Preston talked about and given the grip of the landowners, given the army

in the church, how did they manage to get in, as it were? Right. Well, I almost think that the Republic was declared in a fit of absence of mind. I think, you know, establishment, Spain, Ancian regime, Spain, thought that it would simply be the change of the form of the regime. It would be a Republican business would go on much as it had done under the Restoration monarchy. But there were within the urban Spain and its political groups, there were people who were determined that things would not go on and the republic would mean a content of social and economic reform. And in a sense, that's when the tensions really start to build up,

when it's clear that the republic, the government, I think one has to make a distinction between the various forces that bring in the Republic or are with the Republic and want some kind of change. But the government of 1931 is basically a coalition between ideological Republicans who are not mass parties and the Social Democratic movement in Spain, and they have a clear reform program, which is to modernize and Europeanize Spain. Can you give us some idea? As I understand it, the reforms they proposed were comparatively moderate,

but they were represented by the right-wing press as being vicious, extreme revolution and so on. As I understand, what sort of reforms were they proposing and how far did they get to implementing them in the 19301 to 193? Well, the Republicans, the sort of centre-left Republicans, were the conscious earths of the French Revolution in a sense. In a sense, they came into power to do the things that in the sense had been done in France, certainly previously, a fundamental land reform to create a property-owning, small-holding,

peasantry. They wanted to civilianise and domesticate this very powerful and dangerous army and they wanted to, they had a certain sort of social justice brief, but basically reformed, the land reform was I supposed to try and kickstart industry as well. I thought if they could raise income levels across Spain, moving from subsistence to small holding farming, they could basically create a market for Spanish industry. So they would be kicked, it wasn't just social justice,

it was kind of economic modernisation as well. Sorry, isn't the problem though about the huge mixed agenda that on the one hand, the middle-class Republicans wanted, if you like, institutional reform. They wanted to break the power of the Catholic Church. They wanted to break the power of the army. They wanted to reform the civil service. Whereas on the other hand,

what the socialists wanted to do was to bring in effectively a kind of mini-welfare state. And the consequence of this huge joint agenda was to create enemies, the most powerful enemies possible, right across the old establishment. Now, Vincent, can we talk about the agenda? How did the right, as it were, react to this 1931 election? Did they take it? Did they take it badly? Did they immediately begin to gang up against it in a less than democratic way? What happened?

They did accept it. They really didn't have any choice but to accept it because their defeat is catastrophic. And it's a movement which has always articulated itself in terms of monarchism. So in 1931 in the elections that bring about the second. Second Republic, the right stands on a monarchical ticket. I don't think that means that it's loyal to the person of the king. I mean, certainly nobody lifts a finger to stop Alfonso the 13th going into exile. They really don't care, particularly about the person of the king. What it means, rather, I think, is that monarchism is a way of articulating a belief in a certain social order, a belief in social hierarchy, a belief in public order, private property, and in the sanctity of religion, because of course that's always been consubstantial monarchy and religion in Spain. And so they have no choice but to accept it,

and they do recognise that they've been defeated, they recognise the popular will is against them. I think that doesn't mean that they all accept the Republic. There's undoubtedly a hardcore and quite a large hardcore, which is never reconciled to the idea of a republic, to whom the very existence of a republic, and particularly a secularising republic, is anathema and will not be tolerated.

There's a much larger constituency who do come, think from exactly the kind of middle classes that Helen was talking about, the provincial middle classes, like the Republicans, their lawyers and doctors and university teachers and high school teachers as well, they come from the small cities, they come from the agrarian towns and they purports to represent agrarian Spain, particularly the peasants of the north, who are largely, by and large, conservative Catholic smallholders. And they actually mobilise very quickly and they change the rights agenda remarkably. And they accept the Republic in order really to campaign against its content. They accept the Republic. They form Spain's first ever

mass political party of the right. They use modern methods. They're very attracted. I mean, they also want to modernise, but they want to retain social order, private property, the defence of the church. Can we put the church in this context, which we've slightly just bounced across because it was very powerful in Spain, not only as of the church, but also as a force in education, as a force for whatever it was, as a force in helping the sick and so on and so forth. Can we just put it in its political context, not to talk about the whole apparatus of the church,

but where was the church after 1931? Because the coalition, the First Republic, did make sallies against the church, and you could have thought they moved too quickly and rather incompetently against the church in some of the things they did. I think they did. I don't think it's any surprise that they tried to separate, that they separated church and state or introduced freedom of worship. I think it would be extraordinary had they not done those things. To the, a lot of people on the right, that's seen as equally offensive as the outright anti-clerical legislation, which does things like dissolve the Jesuits, present religious orders from teaching and schools when they run most of the schools in Spain, and also affects the forms of religious devotion that people used in their everyday lives. You couldn't have funeral processions. A lot of municipalities ban church bells

because they might offend the ears of non-believers. And those kinds of things really do affect people's daily lives and are in areas like the Catholic North are immensely unpopular. And, of course, can probably cause people to believe that the Republic is far more radical than it actually was. In terms of their political stance, though, the church is identified with the properted classes, religious houses, for example,

religious communities, are overwhelmingly housed in affluent urban areas. The church is urbanised very much so. Of course there are parishes in all the villages, but it's still very urbanised. In working class suburbs of the big

cities or in some of the areas of the south that Paul was talking about, where you get lots of landless labourers, you get enormous parishes, parishes with over 8,000 people in them. Whereas in the Catholic smallholding areas parishes, you get parishes of two or three hundred

because you get a church in every village. So there's enormous disparity. There's an identification with the church with the previous order, which has always defended it, and with the property middle classes. And you also get, if I could say, because the state's shortfall in terms of education and welfare has been so great, the church has done the most to make good that shortfall.

And even under the Second Republic, where you do have this ambitious program, of social reform. And in education, the Republic does an enormous amount on the French model to replace the church. It still doesn't have the resources to do that. It never has the money to put forward those reforms. Spain doesn't have an income tax until 1977.

It cannot, for all the fiscal rectitude, it cannot actually fund the programmes that it wants to fund. From each of you before we move on, can you say, when does this opposition become, something that threatens the Republic, and when does the Republic threaten back? When does it, as it were, the violence start? When did the tremor start, which are going to lead to what we're going to talk about, the actual Spanish civil war?

Starting with you, Paul Preston. Well, the Second Republic is founded on the 14th of April 1931. By 5 o'clock in the afternoon on the 14th of April 1931, there are groups of monarchist plotters already making the arrangements for what eventually, on a very long road, will be the military rising of 1936. So that would be one possibility. Their first crack at it is on the 10th of August 1932 when there's a failed military coup. At a local level, even the agrarians that Mary was talking about

who have, if you like, accepted the republic or at least accepted the shell of the republic in which to work for the kind of social order they want, there's tremendous violence at a local level, people who try to trade union officials and so on who try to introduce some of the, to make sure certainly that some of the republic laws are being implemented are attacked, they're killed, they're thrown down wells, the wells filled up with boulders, all kinds of horrendous things happen. So violence is endemic from pretty early on.

If I had to put a date on when things really start to go wrong, personally, I think for complex reasons, I would say, round about the spring of 1934. Helen, where would you say it started to bust up? I think I agree with Paul that violence is always endemic within the struggle between an old Spain, which has not yet relinquished its social and economic power and the attempt by political authorities to impose a new order.

But I mean, I think there is this long thread of apocalyptic ritism, which in a sense goes from the beginning of the Republic, which never is reconciled with it. But, I mean, I actually think that always there's this fallacy that the Republic degenerates into disorder, and this is why there's a military coup. If you actually look at what happens coolly between 31 and 36, it's always the left that gets its head broken,

Republican public order, if you like, legislation, police force and so forth. There is no kind of equatable situation between the Republic is going down between violence on the left and the right. It is the right and the army that the Republic in the end cannot control, but there is a concerted campaign amongst various groups on the right to present it, the situation as if the Republic simply cannot control public order. So after the elections of February 1936, when there's a clear agenda to make sure that reform goes ahead through parliamentary channels. This is the point at which various groups

who were previously perhaps prepared to treat with parliamentary routes decide no, and they back, you know, basically it's the military that abandons the game. So you're saying that the Republic has had rather a bad press, I mean, was given deliberately a bad press, was black-washed by the right ring press in Spain and it was doing a better,

because they were trying, yes, they were trying in a massive way to change society, and then quite soon they'll have to fight a war as well. Would you agree with that? I do agree with that. really think civil war only becomes inevitable in 1936, and probably you can only really say that it's inevitable once you get the military coup. I think it's very significant that the first apocalyptic attempts, the first coups don't work,

and there are always plotters, there are always people sitting moodily on their estates, plotting the next military coup, but they don't work, and they don't really have a chance of working until the right has failed to win an election and an outright majority. And I think then, which happens in February 19th, when the Popular Front is elected in Spain and tries to reassert the basis of the Second Republic.

And by that time, I think, yes, the military's patient snaps and then a coup is going to happen. It doesn't have to be a successful coup. We know that it isn't a successful coup. It leads to civil war. But I do think it's then that it becomes a novel. And I do agree with Helen. I do think that political violence is endemic

throughout modern Spanish history, up to and including the Civil War. And I think that in the 1930s, there's a lot of street. violence happening in a lot of places. You know, you get the fascist party founded in Spain, you get the radicalisation of the socialist youth movement, but it's still street fighting, it skirmishes, it's a public order problem which is dealt with until you get the outbreak of civil war. So we have the military coup in 1936 in July, Paul Preston, and quite soon a lot happens, doesn't it? Very, very soon. Franco comes on the scene, international things pile in. Can you just

Briefly, tell us how rapidly it gathers strength from there. Basically, I'd sum it up as follows. For all the reasons we've talked about so far, the Spanish Civil War up to, if you like, the first few days remains a Spanish issue. It's being fought about Spanish issues. There's a bit of a veneer of the language, the rhetoric about fascism versus communism,

but it's basically about Spanish issues. But in the first 10 days, it ceases from being a Spanish war to being a European war fought on Spanish soil. And that's largely to do with the fact that in those very first few days, in the first week, basically Franco who's stuck in Morocco trying to get the colonial army across the Straits of Gibraltar, makes contact with representatives of Mussolini's Italy and Hitler's Germany,

and a very complex story, manages to persuade both of them, to persuade their masters in turn to help him. That help starts off with just being the aircraft that will get the army across the Straits of Gibraltar, but actually opens the way to massive assistance, principally from Mussolini but also from Hitler, and therefore turns the Spanish War into a European war. Mary Vincent, why do you think Hitler and Mussolini took so little persuading? We're talking 11 days after the coup.

They're both involved. Hitler's giving the first great airlift in the history of war, taking the Spanish army across Switzerland, Gibraltar, as it were. Mussolini, Italy is quite soon almost fighting the Spanish military. Republic head on and they're in there within 10 days. Were they prepared to be in there? Did they see a great chance? Was it to do with having an ally against France?

Or was it a general ideological lineup? I think in Mussolina's case, I believe the motivations are primarily ideological and the desire for foreign glory and adventure. It's a neighboring Mediterranean power. And as you say, the involvement is much more overt. He is just about fighting the Spanish Republic head on. I think the case of Nazi Germany is more complicated. and the aid that sent is much more limited but brutally effective.

The aeroplanes. With other aeroplanes to replace them? With which they bomb Gernica and Dorango and give the nationalist supremacy in the air very quickly. And that desire for technical experimentation seems to me to be a big factor. Although it might be worth pointing out that the inevitability of a three involvement in what became a three-year civil war was not clear to either of them. No, not at that.

because they're asked to aid a military coup. Yes, and it's supposed to be short, sharp intervention, which will basically allow Franco to win the war. Sure, well, where was Franco in this? He comes out a not very well-known, major general, was he? Anyway, not very well-known. And very, very soon he's the man. How did that happen?

Paul. Well, Franco is... I must point out at this stage that both these women held their hands over to Paul as this is this kind of a basins here. I'm just going to point to say... Yes, he did. It's... It's to do.

the fact that I spent 20 years writing a biography of Franco, which is very heavy and I think they're frightened on my drop is on them. Basically, Franco has reserves of ambition, you know, mind-boggling.

And from the very beginning, he is convinced that he is the man and he's got a little press office. He is... What is extraordinary, at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, the Times refers to the military coup and says,

it's being led by a man called General Franco, who's the brother of the more famous aviator. So internationally no one knows who he is on the 18th of July. By the 25th of July, the Portuguese press, the German press, the Italian press, and even bits of the British press, are referring to the nationalist side as the Francoist. And that's to do with two things, well, it's to do with three things. I'm sounding like Monty Python now.

It's to do with three things. It's to do with the fact that he is incredibly ambitious. He's got this sort of press office that's pushing his thing. it's to do with the fact that he's the man through which German and Italian aid is channeled and it's to do with the fact that he's the head of the African army which is the one truly brutal and effective bit of the Spanish army Helen can we come to us a lot the Brits the British government did not intervene in the way in which the Italian

the German and eventually the Russian government did can you tell me why that was right well originally I think the British government were hoping for a rapid victory by Franco and did what it could in the in the early weeks of the, after the coup, to enable that to happen. For example, they didn't allow Republican naval vessels to refuel in Gibraltar. So eventually it was difficult to keep the straits blockaded. And they basically were hoping, indeed including with the German and Italian assistance, that there would be a rapid, sharp victory. Because Franco, the rebels equal public order. There was a great concern amongst property classes in Britain

because obviously there's a great deal of British investments in Spain, trade, that the Republic equaled the nationalisation of foreign assets. I mean, I don't think there's any grounds for that looking back at it dispassionately, but that was the perception. So Franco, the Christian gentleman, as one foreign office official described him, was going to win a quick victory. When that didn't happen, when it escalated to full civil waters, was clearly happening by the late summer of 1936.

Then Britain decides that it's going to try and have this idea, of non-intervention to try and sort of, in theory, halt intervention in Spain to get signatories to sign up to a pact so that there will be no provision of assistance to either side. The problem is that Germany and Italy sign that agreement, the non-intervention agreement, but they go on aiding and abetting the rebels. That's Portugal. Yes, indeed, but the problem is the Republic cannot, you know,

is obviously blocked by this agreement. Mary Vincent, the public's doing two things, isn't it? It's trying to change society, and it persists in that in a way which brings out the admiration of people like George Orwell, that it is trying to create a new society. And that is something that a lot of British people who went and German people who went and French people who went. I mean, there was 40,000 of the, what are described as the urban working classes of Western Europe went across there. But they're also having to fight a war. How did they react to a real army?

coming at them from the south? I mean, did they collapse immediately? Did they? What means had they at their disposal to take this army on? And how did it affect the Republic from then on? I think that it's extraordinary how they responded because I think in many ways,

capitulation wouldn't have been surprising or a quick defeat wouldn't have been surprising. And I don't think the defeat of the Republic, given the way non-intervention worked and given the aid from Germany and Italy and Portugal, I think that really means that the nationalist, when we look back at it, we can see they were bound to win, that

the defeat was almost inevitable. What's extraordinary is that they resisted for so long. And they do, having initially begun to defend the Republic through the use of popular militias with a very spontaneous popular action, which is quite often referred to as a people's war, they do then really build on

the parts of the army that remain loyal and the parts of the police that remain loyal and the advice they get from Soviet military advisors in particular and try to couch the defence of the Republic in terms of a popular army. They try to respond with military discipline, with regular fighting forces. They try to bring the initial popular impetus to defend the Republic into the kind of military body that can actually resist an opposing army. And it's a not half bad army.

It's not half bad at all. They stick out for three years. The other thing perhaps to be said about the construction of the Republican Army is maybe they lose several months at the very beginning of the war when really if they perhaps got going earlier sort of in the, I suppose in the autumn of 1936, the very early months of 1937, when perhaps those people in political control in the Republic

are not sufficiently aware of quite what the nature of the war that's supervening is and don't get going early enough with proper militarisation. Just as a little loop of a digression, but it's sort of, I cannot ask it at the moment, Paul Preston. And if the British had intervened more positively, as did Italy, Germany, Portugal, and so between, do you think it would have changed not only the war there, but 20th century? Totally. I mean, I happen to think that Germany and Italy are in it because they want to weaken Britain and France.

They see it as an operation to change the balance of power. Basically, the only person in the – or one of the very few people in the British ruling classes who sees this is Churchill, who effectively says that what happens is that the British let their class. interests overcome their strategic interests. And the fact is that what happens in the Spanish Civil War is that Britain and France are strategically weakened at the expense of Germany and Italy. And I genuinely believe, I mean, as a historian,

I shouldn't even go there, I shouldn't get into counterfactual speculation. But I do believe, I mean, I'll give you one little bit of proof of what it's worth. There's a meeting in Rome in the first week of January of 1937. and Gering goes to Rome and talks to Mussolini and he says to him something like, we've got three weeks.

We've got to get Franco to win in the next three weeks because there is no way the British are not going to wake up and stop us. And of course the British don't wake up and they don't stop them. But had they done so, had they been stronger in opposition, then I think that the whole course of events, you know, the Anshlus, Munich, I think the whole thing would have been dramatically different. I mean, you know, if you push me,

I'd end up saying there probably wouldn't have been the Second World War. That's going to have to stay there. Otherwise, we're going to be here all day on that. But that was very clearly stated. Back to the Spanish Civil War, Mary Vincent and Helen, both of you, one of you. Franco turned it into a religious crusade, and as I understand it. Yes, I don't think Franco turned it into religious crusade, but it was turned into religious crusade.

It certainly helped him enormously. He wasn't going to oppose it. And like the Crusades, it was very bloody and very brutal. It was very bloody and very brutal. And I do think that the idea of the crusade, I think there are two parts to it. And one of it, I think, a part of it, I think, happened spontaneously. And I think you can see it, I think, in things like the letters sent home from some of those that we have, from the often very young men fighting at the front,

many of whom come, not just from the Falange, the Spanish Fascist Party, which is founded in 1933, but many more of them come from the youth movement of the Parliamentary Catholic Party, the Theda. And they have already been speaking the language of crusade. They've already talked about extirpation, not simply of sin, but of revolution and of communism and of alien influences, alien eastern influences,

they're often portrayed as, which are seen as the legacy, not of the French Revolution, but of the Russian Revolution, which is, of course, and is also a model for people on the left by this time in Spain. And I think in that notion of crusade, it's already there. It's already at work in the 1930s.

The church also overtly uses that language and talking about crusades against this. But Helen, can I ask you, can I move this? I want to say, I talk introduction about brutalism, and we've hinted at this. I think it's fair to give some idea of the level of brutality, of the rule by fear, of the tortures and sort of revel in it, but just to give an idea what was really going on.

It was a very brutal civil war, wasn't it? Can you just give us some notion of that? Well, obviously there was brutality, violence, extrajudicial killing during the war on both sides. I mean, I think the difference between the two zones was that the military coup in the Republican zone caused the collapse of the state. In that vacuum, all sorts of terrible things happened.

And in a sense, one of the major political objectives, of Republican leaders in the first months was to reconstitute that state. And there were all sorts of political agendas there. But there was a moral imperative as well, which was to cap and prevent this absolute barbarism from carrying on. On the other side, in a sense, the picture is rather different. I mean, I suppose if you lost loved ones, it didn't much matter that there was this difference. But for historians, it's a very important difference. And on the other side, what you have is the military who are, there's no collapse of public order or the state in Franco-East.

territory, the military effectively co-opt all sorts of civilian vigilantes of the right to carry out a dirty war. Can you give us some examples of that? Well, I think, I mean, there are two levels of this, aren't there? I mean, first of all, in the early months of the war, when it's hardly, it's difficult to call it a war, you know, you get this brutal colonial army, will arrive at villages, and they will literally rape, loot and pillage, and then there will be often, you know, sort of theatrical killings, you know, people torn limb from limb tied to four horses, you know, people put in local bull rings. I mean, there are horrendous stories.

And, you know, it does, to go into them is almost like reveling in them. Later in the war, particularly in those areas that, well, first of all, the areas that the nationalist conquered quickly, you get exactly what Helen talks about, this sort of legalisation of vigilantes who take people out, you know, that they're thrown in prison, they're often tortured. they're taken out and shot by the lorry load in the early hours of the morning and just buried in common graves. I think there are two differences in the south where you have the army coming up. You have exactly, as Paul's described. And I think in the north, which doesn't fall to the nationalist, it goes with the coup overwomenally.

That's where you do get, even at the very beginning, you get particularly philangist groups, particularly fascist groups. They just go and they just take out prominent left-wing politicians. They abandon their bodies by the side of the road. that happens everywhere. What does aid the notion of crusade is the fact that on the Republican side, though, as you do get this breakdown of law and order, which I must say I think is clumps of the regime

rather than the state, what they prime victims or the most easily identifiable victims are priests. And of course, that gives an actual, a real content to many people, I think, to the idea of crusade, the fact that you've had this apparent, what can be presented as an onslaught against the church. It is an onslaught against the church.

It's also part of a class war. I mean, the church is identified as a class enemy, and that's why the priests are killed. But they are killed, and they're killed in brutal and highly theatrical ways. But, I mean, there's another kind of agenda there, isn't there? Because in a sense, in rebel Spain, priests are involved in violence as well, and I'm not entirely sure that's just about revenge or some kind of sense of justice for what's gone on in Republican territory.

I think it is about reasserting control. It is about a sense of killing change, killing transformation, which is what their victims represent in a sense. You know, the people who are cleansed by the vigilantes, the people who are denounced by priests and put through that process, in a sense represents all sorts of social constituencies and people who represent where the Republic was going. The Nationalists on the Franco win in 1939,

Was there any attempt at reconciliation on Franco's part, Paul Preston? Not whatsoever. The Franco regime pursued what I've called the politics of revenge. It basically has a rhetoric that is about dividing up Spain into the good Spaniards, the victors and the bad Spaniards, the vanquished. In the early years, there are huge concentration camps. There are hundreds of thousands of people forced into exile. There are hundreds of thousands of people in jail. The executions go on.

The lowest plausible figure is 50,000, but we think it's probably nearer 200,000. I mean, we won't know even when all these common graves are dug up. This goes on until about 1943 when the fall of Mussolini, if you like, makes Franco clean up his act. But basically the murders during the Civil War and the murders afterwards constitute what I call an investment of terror, an investment of state terror that, if you like, the Franco regime can live on.

right until 1975, and in Franco's very last speech, which is on the 1st of October 1975, he's still using the rhetoric of the victors and the vanquished. It's very noticeable that there is a, not half-hearted, but a small-scale attempt to institute reconciliation on the part of the church, or at least of the cardinal primate, and Franco suppresses it. Where is the church after Franco's victory, huh? Well, the church is restored to a position of power and authority, which in a sense had been challenged during the Republican

years and obviously there are always many churches in Spain, there are many currents but if you like the official ecclesiastical hierarchy is bound in this alliance almost have thrown an altar with the Franco regime and derives great

cultural social power from that and is protected and in return the regime is effectively legitimised and you get this strange hybrid ideology which is national Catholicism emerging from this agreement. So we're frozen until about 1975, that long.

Absolutely, yeah. Again, if we had all day, one could talk about ways in which, of course, social change is breaking up the Franco regime. And in fact, when Franco dies, that sociological change paves the way to the, if you like, the deal between the progressive forces of the right and the more moderate forces of the left

to create what is the negotiated transatlantic, to democracy thereafter. So there is a hidden change, but the actual regime itself, in most aspects, remains ferociously committed to the civil war ideology. Mary Minson and Helen, do you find any, what's happened since 1970, from there's this business of healing and closure and that sort of stuff. Has that been going on? Well, not since 1975.

I think in a sense the deal of the negotiated transition, which came after Franco's death. in the latter part of the 1970s was basically that a veil of silence would be drawn over, in a sense, what had happened. That on the one hand, there would be an amnesty for anti-Francoists, judicial amnesty, but on the other hand, no one would talk about what the regime had done to Spaniards in the long years of its incumbency. Still less than trial for it. No truth and reconciliation commission either, which is separate from judicial retribution. But in a, and in a sense, the left had the same.

civic humanitarianism to buy that during the transition because it was the least worst of the options because if you think about the firepower of the army, the pro-coo tendencies in the army in the late 1970s and the vast amount of firepower, the number of phalanjists of the single-state party who still had weapons in their possession. So the idea of a redescent into civil war in the sense made that kind of deal, that pact of silence perhaps inevitable. Yes, and not just the the real possibility, at least of violence, if not of an outright civil war, but also I think a genuine, a deep desire on the part of many ordinary Spaniards not to revisit what had happened in the past, not to open up old wounds.

And yet that had a tremendous cost, because... An enormous cost, which is coming out now, as the mood in Spain is changing. As it coming out now? Well, the mood in Spain is changing, particularly, I think, amongst younger generations who are more removed, who actually want to know, who want to know what happens, which is why, as Paul mentioned, there are these groups of archaeologists and forensic scientists excavating bone pits.

There's also a biological imperative here that there is this generation that experienced this thing is actually passing. And I do think there's a very real connection with the whole phenomenon of Holocaust memory here. These terrible memories need to be put in the public domain that we need to have public remembrance so that you can then pass on from them.

Which is a cultural mood as well. I mean, that doesn't only affect Spain. I mean, is it very marked? not just in history, but in popular culture and public culture as well. I mean, fortunately, although there has been, I agree with everything that's been said, there has been this pact of silence, historians didn't accept it. And there's been huge, and thank God, because obviously most of the people who were there are now dying off if they're not already dead.

There's been fantastic work done by local historians. And I think that historians since 1975, right across Spain, have actually fulfilled, you know, Walter Benjamin's in John. to historians to speak for the dead, and I think they've done that. There's been a lot of oral history, rather collecting of evidence, that's all of stuff. Yeah, vast amounts. I mean, sometimes the books are quite tedious because effectively they're listed named. Oral history often is, but doesn't put it being invaluable.

Absolutely. Absolutely. And in a real sense, they're war memorials. Yes, they are. And to people who never had war memorials, who were never given any kind of public space in which they could be commemorated and in which even the private space was curtailed because it had to be so private it was almost entirely personal. Well, I really enjoyed that.

I'm haunted by that remark of guring to Mussolini, Paul, so you've left me very unsettled, which isn't a bad thing, is it really? Thank you very much to Paul Preston and Mary Vincent and Helen Graham, and thank you very much for listening. We hope you've enjoyed this Radio 4 podcast. You can find hundreds of other programmes about history, science and philosophy at BBC.com.com.uk forward slash radio 4.