Spanish Civil War, A Sketch

choi

Spain’s civil war | The Opening Act; A history of the first head-on collision between Europe’s major conflicting ideologies. Jan 31, 2015
www.economist.com/news/books-and ... flicting-ideologies
(book review on Richard Rhodes, Hell and Good Company; The Spanish Civil War and the world it made. Simon & Schuster, 201*)

Note:
(a) “THE Spanish civil war, which began in [July 17,] 1936 [and ended on Apr 1, 1939], three years before the second world war, was far more than a local scrap between reactionary Roman Catholic traditionalists [‘Nationalists’ led by Generalísimo Francisco Franco] and domestic left-wingers of multiple shades [‘Republicans’].”
(i) Nationalist faction (Spanish Civil War)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationalist_faction_(Spanish_Civil_War)
(coined by Joseph Goebbels [(1897-1945 (suicide); Nazi Germany’s Minister of Propaganda 1933-1945] following the visit of the clandestine Spanish delegation [to Berlin] led by Captain Francisco Arranz requesting war material on July 24, 1936, in order to give a cloak of legitimacy to Nazi German help to the Spanish rebel military)  
(ii) Francisco Franco (1892-1975; dictator 1939-1975; Catholic)  Wikipedia
(iii) The Spanish and Italian surname Franco: "from a personal name, in origin an ethnic name for a Frank, a member of the Germanic people who inhabited the lands around the river Rhine in Roman times. See also Frank"
Dictionary of American Family Names, by Oxford University Press.
(iv) Second Spanish Republic
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Spanish_Republic
(1931-1939; The Second Spanish Republic was proclaimed when King Alfonso XIII [fled] the country following [the 1931] elections in which anti-monarchist candidates won the majority of votes)

King Alfonso XIII’s grandson became King Juan Carlos (reign 1975 (two days after Franco's death) - 2014) in a constitutional monarchy.
(vi) Regarding Republicans. So called because Republicans of all tendencies (right and left) advocated the overthrowing the monarchy and establishing a republic.

In Spain, in the 1933 election the right won, but in the 1936 election the left won.


(b) It spawned great works of art—Pablo Picasso’s ‘Guernica,’ Ernest Hemingway’s ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls [1940],’ and ‘Homage to Catalonia’ [1938] by George Orwell [in Spain 1936-1937, fighting on the Republican side]; —lasting improvements in emergency medical treatment and terrible advances in modern warfare.

Ernest Hemingway
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Hemingway
(1899-1961; section 1.6 Spanish Civil War: a journalist [1937 and 1938] for North American Newspaper Alliance (NANA; 1922-1980))

(c) “Hitler’s airborne Condor Legion invented the carpet-bombing of civilian targets at Guernica [three hours on Apr 26, 1937], which inspired Picasso’s painting”
(i) Hermann Göring of Germany gave name to Condor Legion--I guess because it was airborne (volunteers from German air force).
(ii) “Picasso completed the painting by mid-June 1937” in Paris.  Wikipedia

(d) “The polarity of the Spanish conflict was part of the draw. With Hemingway and Orwell went other writers, including André Malraux, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and John Dos Passos. Whether observers, war tourists or participants, all were drawn to the first head-on collision between Europe’s expansive and unbending ideologies. Fascism, socialism, communism, anarchism and religious conservatism—with all their splits, large and small—provided fuel for the bonfire of historical tensions in one of Europe’s poorest corners. It was at once Rousseauesque and ghastly. Many of the 35,000 who volunteered from 53 countries to defend the republic in the International Brigades did not survive. Orwell and Dos Passos were scarred, their ideals battered by reality. Few remained neutral.”

George Orwell
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Orwell
("wounded in the throat by a sniper's bullet. At 6 ft 2 in (1.88 m) Orwell was considerably taller than the Spanish fighters")

(e) “Inevitably much is missing. Some of the post-war giants of European politics, such as the future German chancellor, Willy Brandt, Marshall Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia and, even, Enver Hoxha, the post-war Albanian leader, were also involved in Spain.”
(i) Willy Brandts
partacus-educational.com/GERbrandtW.htm
(“In February 1937, Brandt travelled to Spain to [as a journalist] cover the Spanish Civil War. He based himself in Barcelona where he developed close links with the Worker's Party (POUM). While covering the war he developed a life long suspicion of communism. He later recalled how the ‘POUM were persecuted, dragged before the courts, or even murdered by the Communists’")
(ii) Spartacus Educational
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spartacus_Educational