White Terror (Spain) - The Civil War

The Civil War

The White Terror commenced the day of the Nationalists' coup d'état, July 17, 1936, with hundreds of murders in the area controlled by the rebels, but was planned before the coup. On his secrets instructions of June 30 for the coup in Morocco, Emilio Mola ordered: "to eliminate left-wing elements, communists, anarchists, union members, etc". It went on to include the repression of political opponents in areas under Nationalist occupation, mass executions in areas captured from the Republicans, such as the Massacre of Badajoz, and looting.

Gerald Brenan, in The Spanish Labyrinth (1943), states that

...thanks to the failure of the coup d’état and to the eruption of the Falangist and Carlist militias, with their previously prepared lists of victims, the scale on which these executions took place exceeded all precedent. Andaulsia, where the supporters of Franco were a tiny minority and where the military commander, General Queipo de Llano, was a pathological figure recalling the Conde de España of the First Carlist War, was drenched in blood. The famous massacre of Badajoz was merely the culminating act of a ritual that had already been performed in every town and village in the South-West of Spain.

Other examples include the bombing of civilian areas such as Guernica, Madrid, Málaga, Almería, Lérida, Durango, Granollers, Alcañiz, Valencia and Barcelona by the Luftwaffe (Legion Condor) and the Italian air force (Aviazione Legionaria) (according to Gabriel Jackson estimates range from 5,000 to 10,000 victims of the bombings), killings of Republican POWs, rape, forced disappearances and the establishment of Francoist prisons in the aftermath of the Republicans' defeat.