Catholic polemicists writing during the Civil War had no difficulty in blaming the Popular Front for the tragic end of the Second Republic. One of the innumerable tracts put out by Catholic apologists in support of the generals' rising baldly stated that the Popular Front was essentially evil, ‘a monstrous conglomeration of anti-Catholic political parties’ whose tyranny was manifested in its persecution of the ‘sacred institutions’ of the family, religion and property. Manipulated by international masonry, it intended to deliver Spain to Soviet communism thus betraying both the fatherland and the Catholic religion. Nor did it have a genuine popular mandate as the Popular Front had effectively usurped power after the 1936 elections when, despite the violent and corrupt methods used by the left, the Catholic parties had gained a majority of votes. It was also the presentative of a regime which was in itself illegitimate, since the Republic had been voted into power only by the stage-managed April 1931 municipal elections, which had not even consulted most of the conservative rural areas. All this showed that the ‘authentic’ Spanish nation was represented by the nationalist government: the antithesis of the Popular Front which spoke only for those enslaved by ‘exotic and treacherous powers’.

This particular polemic was published early in July 1937. It was, therefore, written with full knowledge of the anti-clerical massacres perpetrated in the republican zone at the war's outset. However, its bitter invective was not simply a horrified reaction to atrocities committed in the government's name. The Church's relations with the Republic had never been happy.