The Spanish Civil war induced anomalous distress and torture to millions of Spaniards during the tedious conflict. This essay will discuss some of the origins of the dispute, some of its characteristics and those of the revolutions that concurred throughout as well as Franco’s role and the impact he had on the warfare.
The author’s Francisco J. Romero Salvadó and Stanley G. Payne both offer unique and comparable views on the Spanish Civil war. Both authors portray how Spain struggled and fought with itself to overcome the political obstacles which alluded to the division of the country and the outbreak of the war of secession.
Firstly, one origin that both authors discuss are associated with the internal political tensions which arose from the heart of Spain’s history, a history which particularly brewed between the Republicans (urban workers, ag labourers, educated middle) and the Nationalists (Roman Catholics/Church) which developed social, religious and economic ruptures; not only within the Spanish government but also amongst the people of Spain. The timing of the feud resulted in the alteration of conventional life in Spain. According to Salvadó, the Second World War played as a incentive of unexampled degrees of “economic transformation and social mobilisation in Spain”. With the Republicans being the more prevailing group, they were soon vanquished by the Nationalists after the halt of the constitution and the assertion of the Spanish martial laws.
Since there were so many people that disapproved of the country’s state of affairs during this period it set forth a stepping stone of challenging hindrance in the years to come. Challenges which produced an unforeseen crucial shift in the country’s economic situation, its advancement in technology with regarding armory, its interference in the mining and steel industries which lead to many, if not all of them, being shut down, and the rearrangement of social aspects of Spanish life and its culture which all occurred as a result of the war. Salvadó, in addition to this accounts for the tenacity in an epoch of a “rapid cultural and economic modernisation which led to social and political upheaval that in Spain it characterised the inter-war years”.
The authors believed that this lengthy and afflicting path brought with it plenty of social turmoil, aggravated class divisions, outbreaks of both combat and naked violences which of course derived from both sides. These are some of the characteristics of the Spanish Civil War and of the conflicts which took place, that both Payne and Romero Salvado present in their works. Payne suggested that it was perhaps the most noxious episode that the country ever underwent and will ever undergo, meanwhile Romero Salvadó revealed that
In addition to this lengthy and afflicting path which the Spaniards hoped would come to and end soon; General Franco led a right-wing army mutiny in Morocco which incited a separation between the Republicans and the Nationalists which was the root of his dictatorship; one which was seen as the country’s method of command and authority over society.
To draw a conclusion, the Spanish Civil War was warfare between democracy and fascism mainly by reason of the civic tensions and opposing political views of the followers of the Catholic Church and those of the educated middle class and agricultural and urban labourers. This came as a because of the emission of the life, culture and beliefs in Spain and its politics which in due course evolved. It was evidently both innermost and borderline of the anti-fascism. Certainly, this civil war was one which brought about the intention to create a peaceful country.
