"The war memorial in this small village in southern Spain bears the names of 95 civilians and local police." "It was built in General Franco's time." "It recalls the victims killed here behind the lines on just one side of Spain's civil war. 40 years after the war." "Only then was it safe to admit you had opposed him." "This mass grave of anonymous civilians was organised by one of the survivors. that were shot here." "it was a rubbish dump. but from their relatives we reckon there are about 500 bodies." "The civil war became the battlefield for international ideologies. and counter revolution." "Justice was swept away by random brutality." "Historians say the war's dead could be as many as half a million. ... or massacre." "Spain was a republic. tried to overthrow the government." "Much of Spain was still deeply conservative and welcomed the army revolt." "It was only five years since the Spanish monarchy had fallen." "and desperately fragile. but so far democracy had survived." "The inspiration for this new army plot was General Mola." "but it didn't come off." "some sections of the army stayed loyal to the republic." "So did half the Spanish people." "The pattern for the division of Spain was set. traditional monarchist and fascists joined the army rebels." "So did the Civil Guard." "But conservative Pamplona was very different from other parts of Spain." "the rising and workers took to the streets to help the loyal republican police put down the rebellion. the rising succeeded." "But in Valladolid only after local fascists had helped the army overcome workers' resistance. commanded by General Francisco Franco in Morocco. and a base on the mainland." "It was provided when General Queipo seized Seville." "and secured the vital bridgehead." "The troops were taken there by German planes." "the army rebels stayed in their barracks awaiting reinforcements. but the republican government hesitated." "They feared the consequences of arming the people." "The coup had missed the swift victory it had expected." "The workers fought back." "The coup became a civil war." "and the resistance became a revolution. was typical of hundreds of villages in southern Spain." "The uprising took it by surprise." "All we knew was that the train from Seville did not arrive. but nobody knew for sure. and there was a lot going on in the streets. some with shotguns on their shoulders." "I was working in the harvest when one of my brothers came and said:" "the revolution has broken out." "he said." "So everybody left the harvest and came to town. who a generation later organised the village war memorial." "He was a socialist." "So were most of the labourers and peasants of Lora del Río." "This wasn't especially meaningful." "The villages all around were political one way or another." "they all responded the same way." "They set up revolutionary committees in the town hall to defend their villages against the soldiers setting out from Seville. and shared them out." "A truck went out to all the shops requisitioning all the merchandise. and all the people had to go there" "Everybody was treated alike by the committee." "Everybody got the same quantities per person." "chickpeas or meat. we took the fighting bulls." "We took the bulls because we didn't need entertainment. and we didn't want to use the cattle which we needed for working the land." "Some people had never seen the colour of cooked meat." "but never cooked." "Very soon people became tired of eating meat." "Lora del Río's revolution had its more unpleasant aspects." "Right-wingers and landlords were locked up in the village jail." "They were accused of rebellion. but they all ended up the same way." "All the right-wingers were put in jail." "All whom they believed to be on the right were also put in jail." "There was a lot of hatred." "Through many years of struggle a lot of hatred had accumulated." "hunger and hate." "This hate was not only in the countryside." "the rising gave the authorities a double problem. that denied the principle of government authority of any kind." "The anarchists had more than half a million supporters all over the country." "the army represented all the forces of reactionary Spain. found themselves in common cause for the first time." "It was a combination bound to have dramatic consequences." "Anarchists led crowds of people to urge the loyal police force to attack army divisional headquarters was holding out." "his surrender was broadcast throughout Spain" "It encouraged resistance everywhere to the army coup." "The anarchists stormed the artillery depot." "The government tried to contain the situation by sending but crowds of people seized substantial quantities of weapons." "the people armed themselves." "This was a serious dilemma for the authorities of Catalonia." "the voice of the middle-class. and the police force." "The politicians had kept their heads down." "Federico Escofet." "and I said:" ""The rebellion has been put down." "There's only the odd patch of local fighting of minor importance." "that's fine." "But the CNT-FAI now rule the streets. made the government powerless." "This was the awful dilemma." "Escofet's men would have had to turn on the very comrades in arms who had helped save the republic." "I told the president:" ""How can you hope to fight these people? and we've got so many dead and wounded." "they have fought side by side with those people." "How can you ask me to order them to fight against them?" "they would not obey me." "What happened in Barcelona was critical for the development of the war." "The right-wing army rebellion had created a revolutionary fervour of resistance." "The army's surrender in Barcelona released forces that the ordinary democratic republic could not contain." "While the rebellion's defeat in Barcelona the capital was in suspense." "Giral had at last given the order to arm the people." "The socialist and anarchist trade unions 000 rifles. and you cannot fire a gun without its bolt. threatening position near the centre of Madrid. so the barracks were stormed." "Very soon a white flag appeared. but firing continued from another section." "People were pissed off about the way the rebels had used a white flag and deceived them." "Many people had been killed because of that. wasn't it?" "of course." "just like that." "There's no double about it." "Unrestrained vengeance." "Spontaneous execution of the enemy." "This in the early months was the way of the civil war." "Many defenders of the republic set themselves outside its law." "and sought a revolutionary justice out of the barrel of a gun." "The uprising was defeated in 5 out of Spain's 7 largest cities." "They stayed loyal to the republic." "catholic peasantry." "They supported the army coup." "There were two Spains now." "Republicans have the north and a vast area southeast of Madrid." "and the southwest." "columns of troops and armed civilians rushed to confront the opposition." "The tactics of both sides were crude and formed only by passion. from the conservative hinterland to crush it. they decided to go out to the mountain passes to hold the advance of the column heading our way." "And it was all still very festive." "The first days it was like a great party." "you might say." "And I remember how people called each other" "Early in the morning you would hear voices." "and the windows would open. and head off to the hills to fight the war." "Then come back for the night;" "they returned home to sleep." "And the women would say:" ""Paco's gone off to the front today." "and he's taken a few bottles of wine." "People went off to the front as though it was a picnic. was matched by the enthusiasm with which civilians who supported the rebels set off to try to capture the city." "Among them was Juan Crespo." "We bought overalls for our uniform." "We went to the barracks where they gave us ammunition belts and rifles." "We thought it was going to be such a walkover that we joked we were going for a coffee in Madrid." "because that's what it was for us." "it was going to a dance." "It was as if there was a competition between the columns setting out from different points." "from Salamanca. as if there were only 300 cups of coffee waiting." "We came back from the front whenever we liked." "Then we'd hand in our rifles and calmly go home." "Nobody stopped us because we weren't dressed as soldiers." "We weren't soldiers." "We weren't formally enlisted." "Of course that soon ended." "General Mola turned us into soldiers." "Put us under military authority." "Put in the beginning it didn't exist." "General Mola had to turn his insurgent irregulars into some kind of disciplined body." "They became one force and called themselves "Nationalist". but that was more difficult." "Each political party or trade union recruited its own volunteers into the militia units. fiercely defended their independence." "anarchists had to oppose organised militarism. but not at the expense of surrendering to any sort of authority." "Otherwise they could hardly be anarchists." "defending the republic was not enough. they now took the offensive." "The war provided the opportunity to achieve a freedom and justice that they argued was impossible under bourgeois democracy." "They claimed that war and revolution were inseparable. and the revolution was to rebuild society according to our ideals." "We weren't going to give our lives for capitalism" "We were giving them for the revolution." "and most of the others." "Barcelona was now anarchy itself." "Governmental authority had gone. they logically refused to take power themselves." "Instead their leaders chose to share control of Catalonia while the rank and file made their revolution at the roots of society. were taken over by the union." "stayed in their homes because there had been 17 or 18 murders among the bosses." "The union said:" ""Let's collectivise it all and they created what was called:" ""Socialised Wood Industry. but it was something the workers had never managed to get." "That was healthy working conditions in the workshops." "Small workshops were closed because they didn't have enough lighting or ventilation." "or the machinery was unsafe." "Big production units were created instead." "Industry was collectivised." "abortion was legalised." "Barcelona celebrated its freedom." "This was the revolution." "It had a dark side too." "The revolution found its enemies within." "the church." "The symbol of authority." "The enemy of individuality." "a dreaded hierarchy. nuns and monks." "This appalled the religious in what was still nominally a catholic country." "It fueled nationalist propaganda against the godless republic." "The tombs of nuns were sacked." "But atrocity was common to both sides." "The general's coup had let loose an orgy of reciprocal vengeance." "General Mola had set the tone from the beginning." "He said: "It is necessary to spread an atmosphere of terror." "We have to create an impression of mastery." "Anyone who is overtly or secretly a supporter of the popular front ... must be shot. when the London Daily Express correspondent in republican Madrid was told by his colleague from The Times that victims of the terror could be found" "in the grounds of the university." "I saw the first bodies. scattered all over the wide expanse of the field." "I counted altogether eighteen." "All lying with their face to the sun and shot through the head." "I naturally wanted to find out what was going on." "So I went to see the head of the communist commission of investigation. the political parties had set up their own so-called "investigation committees". but the brutal administration of justice." "were left virtually without any police whatsoever. and hundreds if not thousands of criminals had gained their liberty. out to kill as many fascists as possible rivaling with the anarchists to see who could get the biggest score." "You had also these common criminals to avenge old grievances." "there were cases of and shooting him. and they knew full well that they only had to shoot that tradesman during the night and they would not be called to account." "The random terror of republican Spain was matched in the nationalist zone." "But here the methods were systematic and justified as a crusade to purify Spain." "A lawyer called Francisco Poyatos Lopez escaped from republican Madrid to the nationalist zone." "He saw the crimes of both." "Nothing happened in one zone that didn't in the other." "Nobody committed a crime which the other side didn't also perpetrate." "it was popular fervour which spilled over and killed people." "On the other side it was those in authority who coldly condemned people to injustice." "The moral difference is striking because it's one thing bloodily talking about a holy crusade in God's name because God cannot condone anything like that." "God was not consulted." "Nobody seemed to mind. 40 republican prisoners were shot every dawn." "It became spectator sport." "An opportunist vendor set up a snack bar." "The nationalist authorities rationalised their brutalities by the obligation to purge the motherland of alien ideologies." "Liberal." "shrieked the propaganda." "Nor was this modern inquisition concerned only with politics." "Federico García Lorca was the avant-garde of an artistic renaissance. undermined the moral fabric of Spain. 000 there were more than four and a half thousand deaths." "Dozens of the towns leading intellectuals were shot at the cemetery wall." "or even a politician." "was meaningless." "Lorca had fled his family home for the supposed safety of a nationalist friends house." "he was arrested sent by the authorities to his death. on the road to their anonymous execution." "in the hills outside Granada." "No-one knows who pulled the trigger. in an unmarked grave. necessary." "north of Madrid." "So the nationalist strategy to capture it now involved the Army of Africa sweeping from the south across vast areas of republican Spain." "The working class population was hostile." "They had to be cowed." "General Queipo de Llano he called:" "the republican rabble"." "he announced:" "for every right-wing person" "I shall kill ten." "And perhaps exceed this proportion." "This was to prove no idle threat." "the Andalucían village time was catching up." "The civil war's justice of vengeance was underway." "nationalist troops were advancing." "anyone who resisted was summarily shot. they just cleaned the place up." "They dealt with anybody they wanted to." "bang." "No procedures were followed." "A simple accusation was enough." "The threatening advance created panic in Lora del Río. were taken out and handed over to the revolutionary committee." "Entregado el Comité" "The same names on the graveyard memorials show what those words meant." "was shot." "the killing began again." "The prison records for the following weeks ... of reciprocal revenge." "I didn't see anything." "No ..." "I heard it." "It was such a scandal." "and the shots." "more shots." "They struck them all away." "along by the railway line." "You can see that the cemetery is very near." "where those trees are." "especially in the silence of the night." "we knew what it was." "Rojo means red. and if captured ... shot." "Local landowners in Andalucía joined the nationalist columns attacking our farms." "For me it meant the liberation of our country." "For me it was the war against communism." "In my heart I was anti-communist." "as such." "or not." "In this country there was a red revolution." "bad or indifferent." "same as anybody." "they're terrible." "The workers as an entity will always be selfish." "They have never considered the country's well-being as a whole." "or compromise." "Moreno de la Cova and other landowners joined the columns making their way to Andalucía to execute the red resistance. marched along the road to Madrid." "They took Merida in the first proper battle of the war." "This linked them with the nationalists in the north." "Ahead lay Madrid." "But the frontier town of Badajoz with a garrison loyal to the republic was cut off." "The battle for Badajoz was ferocious. won a bloody victory at great cost of life." "Mário Neves." "the Moors were capable of anything. and had fought violent battles on the way to Badajoz." "An officer warned us not to speak to the legionnaires because they were so violent. and advanced only to be crushed by gunfire. ... they went berserk." "Neves followed their rampage." "he returned for the first time." "and they usually tied a white handkerchief round their left arm. to find the mark left by the gun." "the gun left a black mark. and to endure the fate we all can guess." "They herded them into the bullring." "Just the swift bullet." "I wanted to go to the bullring where people had told me and piles of bodies." "On my way there I saw a brook where heaps of bodies lay. which caused an extraordinary impression." "and I succeeded." "I talked to the guards and learned there were now just two bodies left in the middle of the ring. but I was so disturbed I did not want to talk to them." "They were obviously awaiting their final moment." "000 people were summarily shot by firing squad." "and became a reporter again. ... who was in charge." "and I told him that everybody was talking about the shootings with horror and I asked him how many." "000 people had been shot." "and replied:" "Probably not that many." "But something in the way he said it left no doubles about which had already spread all over town." "Yagüe was interviewed by an American reporter." "Yagüe had his own estimate of the killings. while my column marched against the clock?" "Of course we shot them." "Should I have left them free behind me to let Badajoz become a red town again?" "how many died in the Badajoz massacre." "The nationalists allowed them no memorial. and disposed of the bodies. and the following day I came straight to the cemetery to find out what was happening." "It was then that I had the most Dantesque vision of my life as a journalist." "There were bodies of people who had been shot piling up in one of the wings of the cemetery." "They had been set on fire with petrol to be destroyed. and left utterly distressed. asked me what was wrong with me." "and he shrugged." "he said." "in those first days after the town had been taken over." "And I swore I would never come back here." "since I feel that" "I can no longer hide the sad memories I have of that time." "The terror did not end with the battle prisoners were still being executed in the bullring." "To be a republican in Badajoz was to ask for death." "Such as one was the husband of Teresa Villalobos." "He was the town photographer." "he was a republican." "he was the first to put out the flag." "He said:" ""Lets go back to Badajoz even though I'm left-wing." "or anything." "So we came back and they caught him." "and I went to look for him." "he wasn't with the fighters." "That was wasted effort." "They took him to the bullring." "My father-in-law and I went to the bullring to see him." "but I couldn't go near him. but I couldn't go near him to kiss his face." "His face was like yellow wax." "He had big blue eyes." "His eyes were glued on me and his father." "It was pitiful to see him." "these are the worst moments of my life." "because they'll kill me. and had to wait till the morning." "Then we went to the cemetery." "It took several days for the terrible truth of the Badajoz massacre to reach the rest of Spain." "the news coincided with the first air raids on the capital." "Together they provoked a new wave of spontaneous vengeance against anyone suspected of nationalist sympathy." "Prime targets were right-wing political prisoners in the city's Modelo jail." "A fire broke out in the prison. egged on by the anarchist militias who had taken charge of one wing of the jail." "the consequence was tragic." "A crowd gathered and herded the prisoners out of their cells but shootings began. and we could hear shots." "It was like a scene from the French revolution. and wearing strange hats." "Raimundo Fernandez Cuesta was a member of the fascist party General Franco's brother-in-law. a former speaker of the Spanish parliament." "and he turned round to us and said: to finish like this." "And he said "Goodbye"." "we heard shots from one of the cellars under the gallery itself." "and the others." "some European ambassadors threatened to recognise the army rebel government." "Socialist leader Prieto said that night could lose them the war." "Prime Minister Giral wept." "President Azaña wished himself dead." "The revolution had swept away former courts but the Modelo tragedy made some system of justice imperative." "New courts were set up." "The rebels were allowed lawyers in what were called popular tribunals." "They began to curb the worst excesses of revolutionary justice." "The absence of clear authority had also meant setbacks for the republic at the front." "a step nearer Madrid. by capturing Irun." "the republican columns failed to take Zaragoza" "The revolution was underway in the rear-guard the republican militias were getting beaten." "a commander of the 5th regiment was trained in Moscow." "Militias were not effective because they didn't really obey the General Staff." "from political parties." "They were not effective militarily from the point of view such as we were facing at the front." "The other side had brought forces from Africa." "They had some of the best military units at their disposal and regular units of foreign armies were starting to arrive." "Later there were Italian troops and the German Condor Legion." "We couldn't face up to them at the front with party or union militias which didn't obey orders." "Who whenever they received an order held a general assembly to decide whether or not they will obey it. resigned." "replaced him with a government which included communists for the first time." "Largo tried to bring and to centralise the war effort." "it was too late. who had occupied the old Arab fort ... the Alcázar." "The siege was a shambles." "There was absolutely no discipline whatsoever in their attack. and they took a potshot at the Alcázar." "They were very proud of being able to go back to Madrid and say they'd done so." "Prime Minister Largo Caballero was getting desperate." "He tried to end the siege by having miners dynamite the rock on which the Alcázar stood." "It didn't work." "Within ten days and the republicans retreated." "Franco made a meal of the Alcázar." "It had delayed his attack on Madrid." "But Toledo made him a hero. and then head of state in the nationalist zone. refugees fled Madrid." "Less than four months after the start of the war the government itself evacuated to Valencia. and a familiar pattern of atrocity. feared that prisoners would escape in the nationalist assault. but the prisoners never arrived." "The militias controlling the convoy made them stop at Paracuellos fifteen miles outside Madrid. and dumped in mass graves." "The executions continued for days." "It cannot be doubted the authorities knew." "Even the anarchist director of prisons protested." "But nothing could stop the killing. unleashed the passions of centuries of hatred. and profound individual acts of mercy. the killing was unrestrained." "And still the war was only four months old;" "and still the international brigades were on their way to Madrid;" "and that city's resistance would continue the war another two and half years."