BASIS OF THE REPRESSION

A few days after the coup, the Junta de Defensa Nacional (National Defence Board) declared martial law to be in force throughout Spain, and even in the parts of the country which remained under Republican control. According to this law, anyone “committing acts or omissions which could prejudice the aims pursued by the movement to redeem our country” would be deemed guilty of a crime of military rebellion and tried by the military tribunals. This fiction would serve as the basis for court-martial trials in which thousands of people were sentenced to death or long prison terms during the Civil War and for many years after it was over, with the total violation of even the most elementary of procedural rights. Martial law remained in force until March 1948, nine years after the end of the Spanish Civil War.

Between 1936 and 1945, the Franco regime carried out a brutal programme of mass repression. As well as those who were murdered by the regime's death squads, in some areas Francoist authorities subjected up to 15% of the population to summary military trials in which members of the civil society and Catholic Church frequently collaborated in denouncing and providing information about the activities and/or political orientations of the defendants. Recent historical research reveals that the Franco regime did not impose a police state upon a passive Spanish society. Instead, according to Anderson, there was mass complicity that forged a powerful repressive system based on elements present within Spanish society itself which was perhaps even more aggressive than what the Nazis managed to impose on the German population.

DEPURATION

The “purification” of Spain through the elimination of those considered responsible for its woes was the main goal pursued by Franco in directing the war effort and subsequently in building the “new state”. For this reason, in addition to the physical elimination or exile of opponents, Franco planned their removal from power and even from public employment. This lustration affected judges, university lecturers, teachers and other public employees. Franco thus made sure that his followers occupied relevant positions in the public administration. The scope of these measures was one of the key elements that explain the strength of the dictatorship.