Spanish Civil War: Key Battles, Aftermath, and Franco’s Dictatorship
The Spanish Civil War: A Nation Divided
Between March and July 1938, the Aragón Mediterráneo operation was conducted, marking an advance of Nationalist troops toward the sea and effectively partitioning Republican territory into two unequal parts. In the following months of 1938, the Battle of the Ebro took place.
The Battle of the Ebro proved to be a campaign of attrition against the Republican Army. Their loss cleared the path for the rebel forces to advance into Catalonia, which practically ensured the final triumph of the Nationalist forces.
Faced with imminent defeat in November 1938, Juan Negrín (head of government since May 1937) sought a negotiated peace, issuing a proposal with minimum conditions: guarantee of Spanish independence, the people’s right to choose their own government, and a waiver of reprisals. However, it was clear that any attempt to negotiate peace with Franco was futile, as the Nationalist leader demanded the total annihilation of the Republic.
On March 28, Franco’s troops entered Madrid, and three days later, the last Republican loyalist strongholds fell. The war officially ended on April 1, 1939. The Republic collapsed, and its representatives fled abroad, establishing a republican government in exile.
The end of the Civil War did not mean that Spain regained peace. With the establishment of Franco’s government throughout the country, a period of terrible reprisals began against the vanquished. Only those who went into exile were spared repression, particularly those who went to America. Children who had been sent to Mexico during the war preceded them. The exiles who went to France were only momentarily safe until the country was occupied by the Nazis.
Consequences of the War
The main consequence of the Spanish Civil War was the large number of human losses (almost one million), not all attributable to actions in war, but many related to the violent repression orchestrated or consented to by both sides, including deaths from bombings on civilian populations.
On the political side, the result was an abrupt change of government, from one emanating from the ballot box to one established by force of arms, i.e., the end of democracy and the beginning of a harsh dictatorship that would last until Franco’s death in 1975.
Economic Impact
The main economic consequences were: loss of physical and financial stocks, decreased population, destruction of infrastructure, low output, and a reduction in the level of income. Most of the Spanish population suffered during the war and the next two decades, experiencing rationing and a lack of consumer goods.
The Marshall Plan, which aided the economic recovery in other European countries after World War II, did not extend to Spain since the Franco regime owed its victory to Nazi-fascist support.
The Spanish Civil War, with all its brutal implications for the population and political and economic development of the country, seemed to be the preamble to the new war that threatened the entire world, a conflict that placed the Western nations in the trade-off between Red Terror and the fascist threat, a war whose disastrous development and final outcome would lay the foundations of the historical period we call “the world today.”