Anderson in the Name of the Martyrs

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IN THE NAME OF THE MARTYRS

MEMORY AND RETRIBUTION IN FRANCOIST

SOUTHERN SPAIN, 193645

Peter AndersonUniversity of Bath

ABSTRACT This article explores how the Francoist victors of the Spanish Civil War (19369)

remembered their dead. Eschewing a top-down approach alone, it also looks at the reception

and production of memory from below. In this way, the article shows how many of the Francoist

bereaved both came to identify with and gained solace from the regimes message that it was

involved in a sacred struggle against centre and left political groups. Moreover, many ordinary

Francoists came to believe that taking part in the repression of those from the defeated side

could offer a way of honouring their dead.

Keywords: Spanish Civil War, martyrdom, sacrifice memory, repression

I speak in the name of our 400,000 brothers martyred by the enemies of God.

Ramn Serrano Suer, 1938

The dead demand justice against those who destroyed justice.

Francoist priest, 19391

INTRODUCTION

In December 2007, the Spanish parliament placed the popularly known Law ofHistorical Memory on the statute book. This legislation pledges state aid to supportefforts to identify mass, unmarked graves from the Spanish Civil War (19369). Theseburial sites hold primarily the remains of some of the more than 150,000 supporters ofthe Spanish Second Republic (19319) killed behind the lines by the victoriousFrancoist side.2Article 15 of the law also charges public officials with a duty to overseethe removal of monuments to the Francoist dead. Many of these remain in place as a

result of General Francos long rule between 1939 and 1975 and the tacit agreementnot to rake over the past that followed his regimes demise. The article also threatensthose who refuse to co-operate in this task with the loss of state funding.3 The debateover the law stirred strong feeling among many within the ranks of the conservativePopular Party, who argued its clauses served only to rekindle the hatreds of the Civil

War period.4 By contrast, many who had campaigned hardest for a memory law feltANDERSON

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Cultural and Social History, Volume 8, Issue 3, pp. 355370 The Social History Society 2011DOI 10 2752/147800411X13026260433077

Address for correspondence: Dr Peter Anderson, Department of Politics, Languages and International

Studies, University of Bath, Bath, BA2 7AY, UK. E-mail: [email protected]


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the legislation fell a long way short of the mark, particularly because it placed no directduty on the state to locate graves, exhume bodies and identify victims.5 Despite thesedifficulties, large voluntary movements such as the Association for the Recovery ofHistorical Memory, with strong support bases among the grandchildren of the victims,continue to evolve and take the initiative in exhuming graves.6

This article takes a different starting point and argues that removing Francoistmonuments, and particularly those that commemorate the fallen from the victors side,

runs the danger of obscuring from view one of the most important ways in which manyat the grassroots came to identify with the regime.7 In particular, the form in which theFrancoist dead were remembered as heroes or martyrs who had sacrificed their lives topurify Spain of its Republican enemies struck a deep chord with the regimes supportbase and offered much solace.8 Similarly, the explanation that the sacrifice made by theFrancoist dead to free the country of the red criminal horde would gain its truemeaning and fulfilment through a programme of retribution also chimed with manyof the regimes grassroots supporters. For Francoists this reckoning would bothcontinue and honour the martyrs work of purification. It would also convey a sense of

purpose and meaning to many of the sudden deaths experienced by bereavedsupporters of the regime. Moreover, because Francoist memory portrayed Republicansin general as inherently criminal, it provided the language and imagery Francoists frombelow could use to participate in summary prosecutions of their opponents. In turnthis allowed them to achieve their own sense of retribution. Accordingly, by exploringhow Francoists at the local level both received and helped produce this Francoistmessage we can complement important studies of official Francoist memory that haveoften taken a top-down approach and reconsider the idea that Francoism and itsrepression were imposed upon Spanish society.9 We can also see how Francoistmonuments form part of the long-hidden repression that the activists working toexhume bodies and rid public space in Spain of the former regimes commemorativerelics seek to expose.

CONFLICT AND IDEAS OF MARTYRDOM

By understanding death as a sacrifice to regenerate Spain and insisting that the gift ofthe fallen would gain fulfilment with the punishment of the Republican enemy,

Francoists turned the ideological goal of defeating centre and left political forces into asacred task. Accordingly, the starting point for understanding the meaning thatbereaved Francoists gave to their losses lies in the depth of ideological and socialconflict that afflicted Spain. This grew particularly acute after the First World War.

At this time several factors came together, among which the success of the BolshevikRevolution in Russia stood out to Spains middle and upper classes as a chillingportent.10 The post-First World War period witnessed a mushrooming of left-wingunrest across Spain that seemed to confirm their fears. Barcelona, for instance, hadbecome Europes most unionized city and suffered the continents highest number of

deaths during the violent industrial disputes that unsettled labour relations there.11Conflict also rocked Spains southern rural areas in the years of high inflation that3

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followed the close of the war.12 For its part the Spanish Church felt increasinglybesieged by the inroads being made by secularism and grew more anxious as both its

wealth and its hold over society steeply declined.13

In 1923, the radical right seemed to have won the moment when a coup broughtGeneral Primo de Rivera to power. In the end, however, the Primo de Rivera regime(192330) failed to build a mass party and actually gave a fillip to the Socialist Party.14

This only made groups on the right more fearful still and some among their ranks

began to harden their outlook. Indeed, under Primo de Riveras wing a number ofthinkers flourished who saw their now emboldened opponents as implacable enemies.

Writers such as Jos Pemartn argued that liberal democracy, by basing itself onuniversal suffrage, inevitably led to communism. The horror this prospect triggeredamong some sections of the right comes across in the intellectual Ramn Maeztuscomment that the world had become involved in a struggle between civilization andcommunism. Figures like Maeztu gave a particularly Catholic infusion to this struggleby arguing that all those who supported the Church and civilization formed the trueSpain, while the enemies of civilization could not be part of the nation and so werelabelled the anti-Spain.15

With the coming of the Second Republic in April 1931, some sections of the rightbegan immediately to plot the overthrow of those they represented both as tyrants andas the embodiment of the anti-Spain.16 Their arguments began to take firmer rootacross the right from February 1936, when the centre-left coalition of the PopularFront won power at the ballot box, leaving the right railing at its inability to hold ontopower against its united opponents. In this context, in the spring of 1936 attitudes onthe right stiffened considerably and large numbers of fresh recruits surged into right-

wing parties such as the Carlists and the Falange which stood committed to the violentoverthrow of the regime.17

The Carlists formed a group of traditionalists who had kept their political culturealive in part by honouring their dead as martyrs to their cause.18 For its part theFalange, widely regarded as the Spanish fascist party, spoke of the need for a holycrusade of violence to purge Spain of impure influences. At Falange meetings the namesof comrades killed in the political violence would be read out to an accompanying cryof Presente.19 For Falangists it was the political aspiration of their fallen comrades thatthey tried to preserve in their collective memory, and so it became incumbent on the

survivors to carry on the political work for which they had died. Such ceremoniesechoed those of other European movements. In Italy, for instance, commemoration ofthe fascist martyrs also made use of the roll call and the shout that the dead comraderemained present.20 Equally, the belief that the work of those who had sacrificed theirlives should be continued underlay Mussolinis 1919 cry that he would defend thedead.21

For the Italian historian Emilio Gentile the cult of the fallen played a central role inMussolinis efforts to mobilize the masses through rituals which could inspire people

with both mystical and political ideals.22 Much of the power of such ceremonies came

out of the extraordinary experience of mass death in the First World War that gave ideasof sacrifice and resurrection a profound resonance for millions who served in the

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trenches as well as those who lost loved ones at the front.23 Moreover, in the crisis yearsthat followed the First World War, Italian fascists presented the violence they inflictedupon socialists as part of a crusade against Bolshevism to save the nations soul. In this

way, death in the struggle against political enemies became a form of regenerativesacrifice. Equally, the funeral ceremonies subsequently staged for the dead helped forgea new religion of nationalism in which violence was seen as a means to purify andredeem the nation.24

Unlike Italy, Spain did not participate in the First World War. However, many of themovements on the Spanish right were profoundly influenced by French, German andItalian right-wing groups and remained deeply marked by the experience of the First

World War. Mussolini, for instance, funded a number of radical groups in Spain.Equally, the ideas of right-wing political organizations such as Accin Espaola drewinspiration directly from French far-right groups.25 Factions on the right in Spanishpolitics moved further to the right as the political temperature began to rise throughthe spring of 1936. This meant they now began to accept many of the ideaspropounded by far-right European movements. Even the party ostensibly committedto respecting the Republican constitution, the Confederacin Espaola de Derechas

Autnomas (CEDA), had its own youth groups, the Juventud de Accin Popular(JAP), with a track record of supporting ideas of martyrdom, and in spring of 1936 thissection of the movement jumped ship and swelled the ranks of the fascist party. 26

With the Civil War in the offing, many Spanish rightists from differentorganizations found that they could effectively unite against a common enemy andaround shared ideas of martyrdom. In addition, the Civil War brought the experienceof mass death to Spain both on and behind the lines. In these circumstances many in

what became the Francoist coalition found inspiration and solace in the ideas of otherEuropean movements already tempered by the fire of war. The stage now lay set forthem to represent death in the struggle as a sacred and regenerative act.

THE EXPERIENCE OF WAR

The killing began between 17 and 18 July 1936 with rebellion against the governmentled by General Mola. This coup suffered an ignominious start when sections of thearmy and their civilian supporters bungled their effort to seize power rapidly.27

Defeated in major urban centres such as Madrid, Barcelona, Mlaga and Valencia, theyclinched success mainly in northern and western Spain. Despite this poor start,desperately needed aid from fascist Italy and Nazi Germany saved the rebels skins andtransformed the bodged coup into a brutal civil war of attrition.28 From late September1936, the rebels came under the leadership of General Franco and his insurgent forcessecured total victory in late March 1939. Up to half a million people are estimated tohave lost their lives in the conflict, and some writers suggest that the number of civiliancasualties exceeded the number of combatants for the first time in history.29

Many of these civilian deaths came through the brutal processes of occupation

carried out by rebels and Francoists. By the end of the war in late March 1939, theyhad cut short the lives of around 100,000 people they identified as supporters of the

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Popular Front. Large numbers died at the hands of death squads, while summarymilitary tribunals, set up with advice from Nazi legal theorists and often trying scoresof military or civilian prisoners at a time with little regard to due process, also sentencedthousands to death and tens of thousands more to jail terms of up to thirty years. Theclose of the war did not bring an end to the killings and in the next ten years victoriousFrancoists ended the lives of a further 50,000 people.30

Keen not to draw attention to these killings, the insurgents instilled fear and

exercised censorship to draw a veil of silence over their programme of terror. Bycontrast, and to inspire its supporters and bolster its fight with a sense of purpose, theFrancoist side made great play of violence in Republican held territory. Events certainlyoffered a helping hand because the coup the rebels had mounted destroyed policinginstitutions in the territory controlled by the government. Here many police officersdefected to the rebels, while others were considered unreliable or were drafted into thearmed forces.31 In addition, in a last throw of the dice to put down the revolt, thegovernment had distributed arms to the masses, which gave a number of irregularelements the opportunity they needed to take matters into their own hands. News of

rebel and Francoist atrocities helped drive some of the terror such groups carried out.At a time of mortal danger a number of militia men believed that the government wasfailing to deal with fifth columnists and that they had to act to root out these enemies.But with the outbreak of civil war, some left-wing revolutionaries operating ingovernment territory believed that the time had now come to build a new society andif necessary members of the old guard would have to be killed.32 Representatives of theChurch suffered particularly badly in the wave of violence 4,184 priests lost their livesalong with over 2,500 monks and nuns and 13 bishops.33 The Church did not sufferalone, however, and in total in territory controlled by the Republic 55,000 people hadtheir lives taken.34 That said, by the end of 1936 the government had reasserted itscontrol over most of the rogue elements and had substantially rebuilt its policingservices.35

We can glimpse the grim reality of these murders on the ground by studying twocontrasting areas in southern Spain: the small agricultural village of Pedroche nearPozoblanco in the province of Crdoba, and the city and province of Mlaga. Events inPedroche cast light on the bloodbath that followed the storming of villages in thePozoblanco area after rebels against the elected government seized power in the wake of

the July coup. Immediately upon recapturing the village in late July 1936, militiamenbeyond the control of the local Republican leadership won control of a number ofprisoners whom in some cases they went on to murder. In total, they left eighty-fourvillagers for dead.36A large number of rightists from the Pozoblanco area were also takento Republican strongholds in Valencia and Jan where they were put on trial, after which223 of them faced the firing squad.37 In Mlaga, around 2,500 people lost their lives toa mixture of rough-and-ready militia patrol groups through the summer and autumn of1936. Some were taken from their homes and killed and others perished when, asprisoners, they were marched from their cells and murdered in revenge for bombing

raids on the city by rebel forces. A number were dispatched to the firing squad byRepublican tribunals.38 A further 1,182 people suffered arrest and detention, and fifty-

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seven buildings, including many belonging to the Church, were raised to the ground.39

Political activists also took over some businesses and confiscated large amounts ofproperty. In particular these activists trained their sights on Church property.40

MEMORY AND RETRIBUTION

At the national level the Spanish Catholic Church, reeling from its many losses, now

threw the bulk of its weight behind the rebels and Francoists.41 The violence sparkedby the revolt allowed many rebels to think of themselves exclusively as victims, despitethe rebels own wave of killing. At this point much of the substance of Francoistthinking on the purpose of the war and death began to emerge more clearly. InSeptember 1936, for example, the bishop of Salamanca, Enrique Pla y Deniel,described the war as a Crusade for religion, the Fatherland and Christiancivilization.42 He justified his choice of terms with the assertion that communists inSpain had killed thousands of people in an effort to exterminate religion and destroythe family. In this sense, he contended, the war formed an international crusadeagainst Russian communism and barbarism and a struggle to defend the civilization ofthe entire world. He went on to revile those who rejoice in killing, in theft, indestruction and in arson as the incarnation of evil.43

These views soon became stock beliefs both within most parts of the Spanish Churchand across the wider Francoist camp. In July 1937, with just a few exceptions, thebishops of Spain issued a collective letter setting out their vision of the purpose andmeaning of the Civil War. Here they argued that the rebels had taken up arms to savereligious principles from those set on the elimination of Catholicism in Spain and the

extermination of the Catholic clergy.

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They went on to argue that the necessity ofthis revolt had become clear over the summer of 1936 and the premeditated avalancheof destruction of all the pillars of society. In short, because of all this they implored alldecent citizens to reduce to impotence the enemies of God who had barbarouslydestroyed centuries of civilization.45

This line of thinking provided a platform from which to launch eulogies to thosewho lost their lives in the struggle as martyrs for the Church or as heroes of the nation.As Enrique Pla y Deniel expressed it, against the human degradation of those withoutGod flourished those whose divine love raised them to the sublime levels of heroism

and martyrdom.46

Technically speaking, as Gom wrote, only those who died for theirfaith could be martyrs, whereas soldiers who offered up their lives for the Fatherlandcould be recognized as heroes.47 In practice, however, members of the Church tendedto run the two terms together so that, as Pla y Deniel stated, those who had died forGod and Spain could enjoy the merit but not the privilege of being martyrs.48 In this

way, the relatively more secular understandings of groups around the Falangeconcerning the status of their fallen and those of the Church became more easilyreconciled.49 By the same token, those who died fighting on the front line and those

who perished behind the lines were accorded similar status.50

Across the Francoist movement a demand arose to give meaning to these heroicdeaths by honouring and fulfilling the purpose for which they had died by enacting

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retribution. One way this desire found expression was through a body of atrocityliterature that grew up during and after the war and which mixed accounts ofmartyrdom with demands for retribution against the criminals said to shoulderresponsibility for the killings.51 In this way, in 1944 the Franciscan monk Antonio

Aracil published his own account of killings in the south of Spain in which he describedthe Civil War as a conflict between Christ and Hell and as a struggle against Marxists

who wanted to destroy both the nation and faith.52 Like other works of this genre, his

book teems with ghastly stories such as the tale of the government supporter accusedof slicing off the ear of one of his victims and parading it around his hometown.53 Butin his view the description of such horrors opened the door to the consoling messagethat these deaths, although painful, gave off a glorious light that cast its splendid beamover those who had survived. All of this meant that it became a duty to remember thesemartyrs. At the same time he noted that he recognized in the tear-stained eyes of thosemourning their dead the desire for justice and punishment for the human abortions

who had committed such horror and barbarism.54

Men of the cloth by no means stood alone in expressing such sentiments. Antonio

Prez de Olaguer, for instance, a novelist who turned his talents to political advantageby gathering up atrocity stories during the Civil War, provides a striking example. In

July 1936, militiamen gunned down both his father and his brother in Barcelona.Rendered distraught by this experience, he went on in 1937 to publish a paperbackbook priced for the mass market on the red terror in Catalonia. Here he described thepattern of the five bullets that killed his father as reproducing the crucifixion of ourLord. Such thoughts both sent a shiver down his spine and offered him much comfort.Indeed he noted that God is certainly on our side. He also observed that recountingdeaths such as that of his father filled people with a sense of purpose in fighting the warin order to finish with the red dictatorship. He added that he felt driven to detail thesavage cruelties of the guilty so that we can demand justice for all those complicit.55

Accordingly, in 1938 he published a similar work on events in southern Spain in whichhe expressed his hope that he would bring the worlds attention to the wave of killingsand proclaimed that he would be ashamed of my pen if justice is not done.56

Franco himself made this relationship between memory and retribution explicit in aspeech in January 1940. The dictator proclaimed that the deaths of those from thevictorious side had delivered Spain from the perpetual tyranny of the barbarians and

that these losses could not go without retribution. The victims themselves, Francoimplored, demand justice. The purpose of this retribution was clear to the Caudillo:no moral being could refuse these righteous claims for punishment and, importantly,the task of national redemption would not be complete until the horde had beenpunished.57 From this perspective he could declare in March 1939 that in the future it

will be the hundreds of thousands of our dead who will rule.58

The clear ideological tone of these statements presents a challenge. For if they arefound to have been widely accepted, they bring into question some of the argumentsput forward by scholar Michael Seidman in significant and recent contributions to the

social history of the Spanish Civil War. He has argued that during the conflictcombatants on the front line began to adopt a live and let live attitude towards their

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opponents and so pushed ideological considerations into the background as theypursued their own self-interest.59 He has also argued that people who denouncedsupporters of the Popular Front to the Francoist authorities did so for selfish financialreward rather than in response to an ideological drive.60 Indeed, for Seidmanconsumerism more than any ideological motive underpinned early Francoism.61

As regards those behind the lines, there is some evidence that they exhibited the samematerialist attitude that Seidman found on the front line. The Franco regime used its

hold over state patronage to encourage civilians to take up its ideas about the meaningof loss and suffering in the Civil War. To this end, a decree of August 1939, forinstance, stipulated that compensation could be paid to those who could demonstratethey had been subject to vicious persecution or who had a relative that had suffered,in the words used in the decree, a gory martyrdom. The decree also allowed local civilservants who had been dismissed for rebellion by the Republican government to claimcompensation. Bereaved relatives could claim the money if the civil servant had died inviolence in the Republican zone.62

Those unwilling to take up the regimes discourse could face ruin. Antonio Ruiz, for

instance, a judicial officer in rebel-held Burgos in the early part of the Civil War,reported that if a refugee who had made his way from Republican-held territory hasnot been tortured by the Reds, at least morally (or if not himself, one of his friendsor relations), he remains without a job. According to Ruiz, this led to a competition of

woes in which everyone had suffered worse tortures than everyone else, even thoughthey arrived in the best of health.63 Such pressure certainly seems to have exerted apowerful effect. The US journalist Virginia Cowles, for instance, reported that duringher time in Salamanca in 1937 she noticed that vilification of the enemy was soextreme that it was almost a mental disease. At the heart of this vilification stood theconstant recounting of atrocity stories told by refugees from Republican-held territory.She retained some sympathy, observing that many were in mourning. Despite this, shecould not stomach the extreme exaggeration and felt sickened by the fact that anyone

who might have refuted the tales would have ended up behind bars.64

It also seems to be the case that the language used to express Francoist memory ofthe war also provided a means by which the regimes supporters could representthemselves to the new authorities as virtuous victims of the Marxist hordes andauthentic members of the national community who deserved reward. At the same time,

this presented those from below with an opportunity to settle personal scores. Forinstance, the chief executive of the civil court in Pozoblanco had fled the town when ithad been retaken by Republicans in August 1936. However, he regained his formerpost by presenting himself to the authorities as having endured a Calvary of infinitesuffering during the war when he had sought refuge in the Panamanian legation inMadrid, and by painting himself as a true victim of Marxism because of his loyalty tothe Glorious National Movement. By furnishing the authorities with extremely hostiletestimony, he also played an important role in securing in a military court theconviction of, and a thirty-year sentence for, the man who had taken over his post in

Pozoblanco from August 1936.65 Similarly, the former municipal vet in the nearbyvillage of Torrecampo applied for compensation, claiming that Marxists had killed3

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two of his sons and a son-in-law. He also pointed out that he had sufferedimprisonment and the confiscation of his property. The mans claim shows theimportance grassroots Francoists attached to demonstrating their gruesome sufferingand how they related personal torment to reward.66 The same man also played animportant role in defining those whom he held to be responsible for his suffering ascriminals by making a number of denunciations to the military authorities.67

What consumerist explanations leave out, however, is the emotional and spiritual

impact of loss and the way the ideological project of defeating the reds became asacred task that gave meaning to the most private of experiences such as bereavement.For in fact we possess a great deal of evidence to show that ideas of regenerative sacrificeand demands for retribution that would purge Spain of its enemies found a real echoamong the Francoist grassroots. Certainly, the meaning given to death as a sacrifice thatpurged Spain of its Marxist enemies occurs repeatedly in Francoist funeral services heldat the local level. As with other war burials in Europe, these collective funeral servicesoffered emotional catharsis to the bereaved by providing an opportunity for grief to be

worked through by sharing loss with others.68 In the city of Mlaga in 1941, for

instance, Francoists exhumed their dead from a mass grave and held an impressivefuneral ceremony in the august surroundings of the cathedral. Jesuit Father Garca

Alonso, who had suffered imprisonment in Mlaga prison and had witnessed fellowinmates being illegally carted out of the prison to be murdered, led the funeralceremony and imparted the meaning he attached to the deaths of Francoists. In hisoration he beseeched the bereaved relatives amassed before him to take comfort fromthe fact that the deaths they mourned formed a necessary sacrifice to save the countryfrom the atheist and communist revolutionary hurricane which would have robbedSpain of its true essence and would have converted the country into a satellite ofRussian Bolshevism.69

Francoists in Pozoblanco also exhumed the dead and then transported them,sometimes great distances, for reburial.70 They then marked the subsequent massreinterment of their dead with elaborate services that attracted considerable publicity.71

As in Mlaga, in these services local Francoist sympathizers gave voice to grief andprovided comfort to the bereaved by speaking of death as a redemptive sacrifice. In thisvein, bereaved relatives in Alcaracejos were told in a funeral service that the pain of losscould be borne because the martyrs had offered their lives to rebuild the fatherland.72

Another way of providing comfort was to construct the sacrifice of their loved ones asa gift to both the nation and the bereaved relatives themselves. Indeed, those who haddied were commonly said to have been the best in Spain and those who shared theirbloodline stood illuminated by their glory. This is why the children of the dead wereoften cited as symbolizing the pride of the race and the saving of Spain for Christianityand civilization.73

The most important meaning given to the deaths of Francoists was that theirsacrifice had helped eliminate Republican barbarians. For instance, an anonymousrightist from Pozoblanco, writing in the local Falangist newspaper, informed the

relatives of the hundreds of people executed after trial in Valencia in December 1936that these deaths contributed to saving Spain from barbarity.74 Further chiming with

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national forms of mourning, calls for retribution were raised at services in Pozoblancomarking the interment of the local Francoist dead. An example comes in a funeraloration by a priest from Villanueva de Crdoba. The service marked the reburial ofpeople from the town who had been executed after trial in Republican-held Jan duringthe war. The priest declared to the assembled bereaved relatives that their dead demand

justice against those who destroyed justice.75

There is also much evidence that understanding death as a redemptive sacrifice met

the emotional needs of Francoist sectors of society in Pozoblanco. For instance, someproto-Francoists about to be executed in the Civil War took comfort from their beliefthat they were dying a martyrs death to regenerate Spain. One rightist condemned todeath for supporting the rebellion in Villanueva de Crdoba wrote from his prison cellthat he was journeying to God as one of the martyrs who had offered his life for thesalvation of Spain.76 The bereaved also gained a sense of equanimity from Francoistceremonies that linked their losses to retribution against Republicans. Newspaperreports from the period show that Francoist funeral services were very well attendedand became highly emotional occasions in which families of the dead openly expressed

their great sense of loss.77

Francoists in Pozoblanco supported the building of memorials in their own villageswhich expressed their understanding of the war and its purpose. This can be seen in theerection of crosses to the fallen to commemorate the Francoist dead. These monumentsfirst emerged during the Civil War in parts of Spain occupied by Francoist forces. Adecree of November 1938 stipulated that a list of the names of the local Francoist deadbe placed below a cross fixed on the wall of a church. All of these crosses and lists ofnames linked national redemption with local sacrifice. Placing the name of theexecuted Falange leader Jos Antonio Primo de Rivera at the head of the roll of honouroffered one means to do this.78 Although established by decree, the crosses proved apopular way for people to express their loss and retained great meaning for the bereavedfrom Francoist sectors of society. Indeed, we know that the Civil Governor of Mlagaprovince insisted that subscriptions to pay for crosses could only be carried out on anexclusively voluntary basis.79 We also know that in the village of Pedroche, nearPozoblanco, relatives of the Francoist dead paid for the cross to the fallen.80

Bereaved relatives in the post-war period also constructed their own privatememorials. In the town of Marbella in Mlaga province, for instance, one man

petitioned the authorities to be allowed to place a cross to those killed in a vile mannerby the Marxist hordes.81 Similarly, in Pedroche, near Pozoblanco, a widow who losther husband and three sons in the violence of the summer of 1936 constructed amonument in memory of her dead husband that shows how she understood his death

within the broader terms of Francoist memory of the war. The monument stood on thecorner of the house where she lived in the central square in Pedroche. The inscriptionon the memorial plaque read that her husband had been killed by the enemies of God.The widow later made a number of denunciations to military tribunals conductingrepression in the area and furnished testimony in a number of other cases.82

Further evidence of the way bereaved families understood their losses in terms ofsacrifices to purge Spain of its enemies is supplied in the inheritance claims made by3

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Francoists in Pozoblanco after the Civil War. In these inheritance claims, relativesappear to have been free to describe the manner in which their loved ones had died.For instance, in their inheritance depositions some people chose to refrain from makingexcoriating comments about people associated with the defence of the Republic,perhaps because they did not share the desire to keep alive such bitter acrimony.83

Many other grassroots Francoists, however, chose to explain the cause of theirbereavement as barbarous Marxism or death itself as a form of sacrifice for God and for

Spain. Another war widow from Pedroche, who also supplied the military tribunals with denunciations and testimony, blamed criminal Marxism for the deaths of herhusband and three sons.84 Indeed, 80 of the 153 inheritance claims made in relationto those who died in the summer of 1936 for the judicial district of Pozoblanco drewon language that reflected an acceptance of terminology redolent of Francoist collectivememory and its demand for punishment.85

Such examples offer us an insight into the mix of feelings, meanings, beliefs andmaterial rewards that helped drive popular participation in the Francoist repression.This included the confiscation of property and its reallocation to the Francoist support

base. Many at the grassroots became active in this process and not simply because theypursued material reward. They also did so because they understood their experience ofsuffering during the war as part of an ideological conflict cast as a contest betweengood and evil which granted them the right to seize their enemies property.

We can see this process at work when, on occupying an area, the Francoistauthorities went on to confiscate the property of known supporters of the PopularFront or people who had fled their homes. Officials then stored this property in

warehouses along with goods which had been recovered from the collectivizationprogramme that occurred during the Civil War in Republican territory. Once this wasdone, regime supporters could put in requests for such property.

Many of these requests reveal both a shared understanding with the regime of theGodless enemy and a clear desire to profit from the largesse of the Francoist state. Acase in point comes from the city of Mlaga, where members of the Church played aprominent role both in reclaiming their own property and in staking a claim to otherproperty now resting in the hands of the state. The Provincial Archive in Mlagapreserves 214 such requests. Many of the Church officials who wrote these deployedneutral language, but some did not hesitate to stake a claim to the confiscated property

of their political enemies. A high-ranking official in Mlaga Cathedral, for instance,declaimed that both the city and the cathedral had fallen victim of the horrors ofbarbaric Marxism and asked to be granted the right to extract an array of furniturefrom a warehouse to compensate for what had been lost.86 In another case, a nun fromMlaga described how those from her convent had been thrown into the street and leftin misery until our martyred city was rescued from the red outlaws by the gloriousnational army. She then went on to plead that she needed furniture for her conventand requested the right to take what she needed from the stocks held by theauthorities.87 The authorities granted all such requests.

Similarly, when framing their denunciations to the summary military tribunals anddriving the repression forward, local Francoists drew on the ideologically charged

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language of hatred that characterized the regimes discourse, while also targeting theirown personal and political enemies for elimination. Thus a group of citizens from thevillage of Dos Torres, near Pozoblanco, prefaced their denunciation of one of theirneighbours by claiming that they had been persecuted by the red hordes.88 Inanother case from Villanueva de Crdoba a man from the town denounced aneighbour for killing his brother, whom he described as a martyr for God and Spain.89

In a further case from the same town another man denounced a rural labourer for

demonstrating his criminal red instincts by setting fire to the denouncers house.90 Inpractice, however, for some Francoists all reds could be driven by criminal instincts.

As one Francoist from Torrecampo told a judicial inquiry, he suspected all the groupsin the Marxist Popular Front and all those affiliated to left-wing parties in the villageof being capable of having killed his father.91

CONCLUSION

Some historians have argued that Francoism was imposed upon Spanish society, while

many studies of Francoist memory and culture have taken a top-down approach thatpays less attention to the issue of reception. However, if we focus on the Francoistmemory of the martyrs and heroes alongside its accompanying demand for retribution,

we can gain a new perspective on the making of early Francoism. According to theregimes discourse, death came as a form of sacrifice to redeem the nation, and thisoffered such solace to many grassroots Francoists that they adopted it whenconstructing their own monuments. The evidence further suggests that they found realcomfort for their own terrible losses in the belief that retribution would honour theirfallen. Moreover, the popular demand for retribution seems to be mirrored bysignificant participation in the repression through denunciation. Thus while politicalactivists currently seek the removal of Francoist monuments, we can see how theregimes commemoration of the dead helped win the active backing of the regimesgrassroots supporters. Importantly, this helps us to understand more about theFrancoist repression that contemporary activists hope to highlight.

This approach also allows us to draw some broad comparisons with other Europeancases. Thus while in Mussolinis Italy the regimes ideas about the value of the fallenexercised little popular appeal, in Spain it appears that the widespread losses caused by

the Civil War brought a much broader acceptance of these ideas and greater supportfor the regime.92 Moreover, while important studies of Soviet social history have movedideology from centre stage, they have also shown that, by taking up the regimesideology, ordinary citizens could both satisfy their material interests and find realmeaning for their lives.93 The evidence here suggests that by deploying suchperspectives in the Spanish case we further advance the social history of the SpanishCivil War and gain a richer picture than that offered by turning to theories ofconsumerism alone. Indeed, by conducting more research into the ways in whichFrancoist ideology came to enjoy a depth of meaning in the lives of the regimes

ordinary supporters, it seems likely we will be able to understand more about themaking of the dictatorship as a political, social and cultural system.3

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The Arts and Humanities Research Council and the British Academy funded theresearch for this article.

NOTES

1. Serrano Suer cited in Hilari Raguer, La plvora y el incienso. La Iglesia y la Guerra Civilespaola (19361939) (Barcelona, 2001), p. 175. For the priest see Bernab Copado,Contribucin de sangre(Mlaga, 1941), pp. 26870.

2. An overview in Santos Juli (ed.), Vctimas de la guerra civil (Madrid, 1999); JulinCasanova, Una dictadura de cuarenta aos, in Julin Casanova, Francisco Espinosa,Conxita Mir and Francisco Moreno Gmez, Morir, matar, sobrevivir. La violencia en ladictadura de Franco (Barcelona, 2002), pp. 350.

3. Boletn Oficial del Estado (BOE), 27 December 2007.4. An example of the Popular Party position in El Pas, 8 October 2007.5. See, for example, El Pas, 21 September 2006.

6. A good early example in El Pas, 19 October 2003.7. Historian Paul Preston argues monuments should be understood, not removed. El Pas, 2August 2006.

8. On right-wing attitudes towards martyrdom see Mary Vincent, The Martyrs and theSaints: Masculinity and the Construction of the Francoist Crusade, History Workshop

Journal, 47 (1999), pp. 6898. On the cathartic relationship between notions of sacrificeand redemption in Francoist religious processions see Michael Richards, Presenting Armsto the Blessed Sacrament: Civil War and Semana Santa in the City of Mlaga, 19361939,in Chris Ealham and Michael Richards (eds), The Splintering of Spain: Cultural History andthe Spanish Civil War, 19361939(Cambridge, 2005), pp. 196222.

9. A good discussion of official Francoist memory sites may be found in Paloma Aguilar, Memory and Amnesia: The Role of the Spanish Civil War in the Transition to Democracy(Oxford, 2002), pp. 7188. A good examination of the state narration of triumph isprovided by Michael Richards, From War Culture to Civil Society: Francoism, SocialChange and Memories of the Spanish Civil War, History and Memory, 14 (2002), pp.979. On the dominance of Francoist memory see Alberto Reig Tapia, Memoria de laGuerra Civil. Los mitos de la tribu (Madrid, 1999). On Francoism as imposed see DanielSanz, La implantacin del franquismo en Alicante. El papel del Gobierno Civil (19391946)(Alicante, 2001), p. 204; Manuel Sabn, Prisin y muerte en la Espaa de postguerra (Madrid,1996), p. 236; Manuel Ortiz, Violencia poltica en la II Repblica y el primer franquismo

(Madrid, 1996), pp. 40912. On the importance of reception in memory studies see AlonConfino, Collective Memory and Cultural History: Problems of Method, AmericanHistorical Review, 102 (1997), pp. 1386403.

10. Francisco J. Romero Salvad, Spain and the First World War: The Structural Crisis of theLiberal Monarchy, European History Quarterly, 25 (1995), p. 540.

11. Benjamin Martin, The Agony of Modernization: Labour and Industrialisation in Spain(Ithaca, NY, 1990), pp. 21450.

12. Juan Diaz del Moral, Historia de las agitaciones campesinas andaluzas, Crdoba (antecedentespara una reforma agraria) (Madrid, 1984), pp. 265363; Martin, The Agony, pp. 21130.

13. Frances Lannon, The Socio-political Role of the Spanish Church A Case Study, Journal

of Contemporary History, 14 (1979), p. 194; Frances Lannon, Privilege, Persecution, andProphecy: The Catholic Church in Spain 18751975 (Oxford, 1987), p. 16, pp. 945.

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14. Shlomo Ben-Ami, Fascism from Above: The Dictatorship of Primo de Rivera in Spain19231930 (Oxford, 1983), pp. 31899; Shlomo Ben-Ami, The Origins of the SecondRepublic in Spain (Oxford, 1978), pp. 1441.

15. Alejandro Quiroga, Making Spaniards: Primo de Rivera and the Nationalization of theMasses, 192330(Basingstoke, 2007), pp. 57, 601.

16. Julio Gil Pecharromn, Conservadores subversivos. La derecha autoritaria Alfonsina(19131936) (Madrid, 1994), pp.1014, 175.

17. Paul Preston, Alfonsist Monarchists and the Coming of the Spanish Civil War, Journal of

Contemporary History, 7 (1972), p. 111; Paul Preston, The Spanish Civil War: Reaction,Revolution and Revenge(London, 2006), pp. 8991.

18. On the Carlists see Martin Blinkhorn, Carlism and Crisis in Spain, 19311939(Cambridge, 1975), particularly p. 18; Jordi Canal, Republicanos y carlistas contra elestado. Violencia poltica en la Espaa finisecular, Ayer, 13 (1994), p. 77

19. Vincent, The Martyrs and the Saints, pp. 767.20. Tracy H. Koon, Believe, Obey, Fight: Political Socialisation of Youth in Fascist Italy,

19221943 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1985), p. 27.21. Mussolini cited in Alan Kramer, Dynamics of Destruction: Culture and Mass Killing in the

First World War(Oxford, 2007), p. 300.22. Emilio Gentile, Fascism as a Political Religion, Journal of Contemporary History, 25 (1990),

pp. 2423.23. The classic discussion of this topic can be found in George Mosse, Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping

the Memory of the World Wars (Oxford, 1990).24. Mosse, Fallen Soldiers, pp. 2334.25. Ismael Saz, Mussolini contra La Repblica. Hostilidad, conspiraciones, intervencin

(19311936) (Valencia, 1986); Pecharromn, Conservadores subversivos, p. 102.26. Paul Preston, The Coming of the Spanish Civil War: Reform, Reaction and Revolution in the

Second Republic(London, 1994), p. 257.27. Stanley Payne, Politics and the Military in Modern Spain (Stanford, CA, 1967), pp. 31137;

Helen Graham, The Spanish Civil War: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2005), pp. 213.28. Enrique Moradiellos, El reidero de Europa. Las dimensiones internacionales de la guerra civil

espaola (Barcelona, 2001), pp. 8890.29. Nicholas Coni, Medicine and the Spanish Civil War, Journal of the Royal Society of

Medicine, 95 (2002), p. 147.30. On the figures see Casanova, Una dictadura de cuarenta aos, p. 8.31. Michael Alpert, El ejrcito republicano en la guerra civil(Barcelona, 1977), pp. 2731.32. Javier Cervera, Madrid en guerra. La ciudad clandestina, 19361939 (Madrid, 1998), pp.

5456; Julin Casanova, Anarquismo y revolucin en la sociedad rural aragonesa, 19361938(Madrid, 1985), p. 165.

33. Lannon, Privilege, Persecution, p. 201.34. Joan Villaroya i Font, La vergenza de la Repblica, La aventura de la historia, 1 (1999),

p. 32.35. Carmen Gonzlez Martnez, Guerra Civil en Murcia. Un anlisis sobre el poder y los

comportamientos colectivos (Murcia, 1999), p. 158; Antonio Nadal, Guerra civil en Mlaga(Mlaga, 1985), pp. 1745; Glicerio Snchez Recio, Justicia en guerra en Espaa. LosTribunales Populares (19361939) (Alicante, 1991), p. 27; Alpert, El ejrcito, p. 80.

36. Archivo Histrico Nacional Madrid (AHN-M), Causa General (CG), 1044, 1.37. Gabriel Garca de Consuegra et al., Represin en Pozoblanco. Guerra civil y posguerra

(Crdoba, 1989), p. 191. See also the discussion of Republican trials in Glicerio SnchezRecio, Justicia en guerra.368


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38. Elas de Mateo Avils, Las vctimas del Frente Popular en Mlaga. La otra memoria histrica(Mlaga, 2007), p. 38.

39. De Mateo Avils, Las vctimas, pp. 38, 60.40. Archivo Histrico Provincial de Mlaga (AHPM), 125068 and 1232636.41. Raguer, La plvora, pp. 834; William Callahan, The Catholic Church in Spain, 18751998

(Washington, DC, 2000), pp. 34651.42. Cited in Raguer, La plvora, p. 108.43. Glicerio Snchez Recio, De las dos ciudades a la resurreccin de Espaa. Magisterio pastoral y

pensamiento poltico de Enrique Pla y Deniel(Valladolid, 1994), pp. 9599, 26.44. Isidro Gom y Toms, Por Dos y Por Espaa. Pastorales instrucciones pastorales y artculos

discursos mensajes apndice, 19361939(Barcelona, 1940), pp. 5649.45. Gom y Toms, Por Dos, pp. 57, 5747.46. Cited in Snchez Recio, De las dos ciudades, p. 76.47. Gom y Toms, Por Dos, pp. 3349.48. Cited in Snchez Recio, De las dos ciudades, p. 109.49. For the stress on the Catholic side of Francoist commemoration see Giuliana di Febo, Ritos

de guerra y de victoria en la Espaa franquista (Bilbao, 2002), especially pp. 27101. For amore critical perspective on the link between the Church and political religion, see ZiraBox, La tesis de la religin poltica y sus crticos: aproximacin a un debate actual, Ayer,62 (2006), pp. 195230.

50. An example in Antonio Aracil, Dolor y triunfo. Hroes y mrtires en pueblos de Andalucadurante el Movimiento Nacional (Barcelona, 1944), p. 391. On shared understandingsbetween the CEDA and the Falange and on martyrs purifying Spain see Mary Vincent,Spain, in Tom Buchanan and Martin Conway (eds), Political Catholicism in Europe,19181965 (Oxford, 1996), pp. 97128, 11213, 119. On the way Italian fascismattempted to remove the distinction between the religious and political spheres, see EmilioGentile, Fascism as a Political Religion, Journal of Contemporary History, 23 (1990), pp.22951.

51. On the need to give meaning to death in war by forging something positive from it, seeAntoine Prost, In the Wake of War: Les Anciens Combattants and French Society 19141939(Oxford, 1992), p. 23. See also Mosse, Fallen Soldiers, pp. 67. An overview of Francoistatrocity literature can be found in Hugo Garca, Relatos para una guerra. Terror,testimonio y literatura en la Espaa nacional, Ayer, 76 (2009), pp. 14376.

52. Aracil, Dolor y triunfo, pp. 56.53. Aracil, Dolor y triunfo, p. 270. On the role of atrocity stories dehumanizing the enemy see

Mosse, Fallen Soldiers, pp. 1724.54. Aracil, Dolor y triunfo, pp. 6, 3023.55. Antonio Prez de Olaguer,

El terror rojo en Catalua(Burgos, 1937), pp. 24, 1011, 14.

56. Antonio Prez de Olaguer, El terror rojo en Andaluca (Burgos, 1938), p. 83.57. Azul, 3 January 1940.58. Franco cited in Azul, 28 March 1939.59. Michael Seidman, Frentes en calma de la Guerra Civil, Historia Social, 27 (1997), pp.

3759, p. 39.60. Michael Seidman, Republic of Egos: A Social History of the Spanish Civil War(Madison, WI,

2002), p. 216.61. Seidman, Frentes, p. 59.62. BOE, 27 August 1939.

63. Antonio Ruiz Vilaplana, Burgos Justice: A Years Experience of Nationalist Spain (London,1938), pp. 1412.

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64. Virginia Cowles, Looking for Trouble(London, 1941), p. 77.65. AHN-M, CG, 1044, 2, folios 7649, 837 7649, 839. See also Archivo Tribunal Militar

Segundo Sevilla (ATMSS), 198, 3456.66. Archivo Municipal de Torrecampo, Caja Secretario Falange, letter dated 11 May 1940.67. For example, ATMSS, 699, 20571; Archivo Histrico Provincial de Crdoba (AHPC), Ley

de Responsibilidades Polticas (LRP), 6, 358 1943; AHPC, LRP, 10, 44 1942.68. Jay Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History

(Cambridge, 1995), pp. 694.

69. El Sur, 4 December 1942.70. Copado, Contribucin de sangre, p. 269.71. An example in ABC Madrid, 30 July 1939.72. Azul, 5 September 1939.73. Azul, 20 April 1939; Copado, Contribucin de sangre, p. 269.74. Azul, 19 August 1939.75. Copado, Contribucin de sangre, pp. 26870.76. Copado, Contribucin de sangre, p. 175.77. An example in Azul, 20 May 1939.78. Julin Casanova, La iglesia de Franco (Madrid, 2001), p. 298.79. Archivo Municipal de Marbella (AMMB) 105, letter 14 May 1938.80. Interview with AMG, Pedroche, 2 July 2004.81. AMMB 106, letter 25 August 1938.82. Examples in ATMSS 641, 20429; ATMSS 590, 19384; ATMSS 316, 12806.83. For example, AHPC, Seccin Judicial (SJ), Audiencia Provincial de Crdoba (APC), Civil,

1941, 232 and AHPC, SJ, APC, Civil, 1941, 232.84. General examples in AHPC, SJ, APC, Civil, 1939, 227 and AHPC, SJ, APC, Civil, 1940,

229. The widow in AHPC, SJ, APC, Civil, 1940, 229 and 1941, 232.85. AHPC, SJ, APC, Civil, 19391945.86. AHPM, 12344, 181.87. AHPM, 12344, letter of B.S.F. Similar examples in AHPM, 12344, 20 May 1937 and

12344, 19 August 1937.88. ATMSS, 268/10979.89. ATMSS, 4806, 20731.90. ATMSS, 519, 17942.91. AHN-M, CG, 1044, 1, Torrecampo Declaraciones.92. Koon, Believe, Obey, p. xx.93. For example Stephen Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization (Berkeley, CA,

1995), pp. 2234.

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