In July 1936, elements of Spain's armed forces, garrisoned in Morocco and parts of the Iberian peninsula staged a coup d'état against the democratically-elected government of the Second Republic. Not for the first time in modern Spanish history, the nation was plunged into a bloody civil war which divided its peoples, resulted in huge losses of human life and brought about the physical destruction of homes, factories and economic infrastructure. After almost three years of bitter conflict, the insurgents led by General Francisco Franco, who were backed by Hitler's Germany and Mussolini's Italy, emerged triumphant.

Within Spain, Franco's New Order enjoyed practically unanimous support from the military, landowners, big business, the banks and the Church. Urged on by the triumphalist rhetoric of the Movimiento, the single party of the one-party state, the new regime set about eliminating all opposition, whether it came from liberals, Marxists, anarchists, intellectuals, home rulers or any other source. Hard-won achievements such as parliamentary democracy, free trade unions, freedom of the press, agrarian reforms or the devolution of power to Catalonia and the Basque Country, were savagely repressed by the Francoist authorities. Put bluntly, post-civil war Spain comprised two groups: the victors and the vanquished. Motivated by a fierce desire for vengeance, the Franco dictatorship continued to execute its former opponents long after the ceasefire of April 1939. At the same time, to escape incarceration or the firing squad, tens of thousands of defeated Republicans and their families fled the country. Most of Spain's exiles were young and active.