ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the consequences of General Franco’s unconditional victory in the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939). Like other European twentieth-century civil conflicts, both the victorious Nationalists and the defeated Republicans argued that they were in fact fighting a war of national liberation against foreign opponents; the former proclaimed a “crusade” against godless communism. This chapter shows that the Franco regime was not interested in reconciliation after 1939. Indeed, the opposite is the case: it created a multifaceted repressive system to punish “reds.” In a cruel paradox, supporters of the legitimate Republican government were tried and executed for the crime of “military rebellion.” Although mass repression for Civil War “crimes” was wound down in the 1940s, the regime never abandoned its discourse of national liberation, and labeled its opponents “anti-Spaniards” until Franco’s death in 1975. Yet this is not to imply that the regime was able to maintain the fiction of the “Two Spains” throughout its existence. Despite official hostility, an alternative narrative of “fratricidal war” emerged within Spanish society to facilitate the post-Franco transition to democracy in the 1970s. Nevertheless, Franco’s determination to defend his exclusive vision of the Spanish “nation” would have long-term consequences. By emasculating Spanish nationalism in the democratic era, his regime facilitated the growth of separatist political movements, particularly in the Basque Country and Catalonia
