The course of the Spanish Civil War
... Church power weakened (Jesuits banned/divorce) President could not be army officer or member of clergy Govt. had the power to nationalize large estates and industries ...
... Church power weakened (Jesuits banned/divorce) President could not be army officer or member of clergy Govt. had the power to nationalize large estates and industries ...
White Terror (Spain)
In Spain, the White Terror (also known as la Represión Franquista, the “Francoist Repression”) was the series of acts of politically-motivated violence, rape, and other crimes committed by the Nationalist movement during the Spanish Civil War (17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939) and during Francisco Franco's dictatorship (1 October 1936 – 20 November 1975). The mass killings of the Spanish Republican loyalists, which included Popular Front adherents, liberals, Socialists, Trotskyites, Communists, anarchists, Protestants, freethinkers and intellectuals, among others, such as those branded as Catalan and Basque separatists and Freemasons, occurred from the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, in July 1936, and continued unabated until 1945.Nationalist atrocities, which the authorities ordered to eradicate any trace of “leftism” in Spain, were common, ideological practice. The notion of a limpieza (cleansing) was an essential part of the right-wing rebel strategy, and the process of assassination began immediately after the nationalists had captured an area. In the rebel-controlled zone, the nationalist military, the Civil Guard, and the fascist Falange carried out the violence in name of the regime, which was ideologically legitimized by the Roman Catholic Church.Historians of the Spanish Civil War generally agree that the death toll of the White Terror was greater than the death toll of the Red Terror, because the White Terror occurred as a matter of formal Nationalist policy. The assassinations continued until 1945, six years after the end of Spanish Civil War in 1939. Most estimates of the Red Terror's death toll range from 38,000 to 72,344 people; these estimates include, among others, the collective work Víctimas de la guerra civil (Victims of the Civil War), which reaches 50,000 people; Hugh Thomas (55,000 people); and Julián Casanova (fewer than 60,000 people). Meanwhile, estimates of the White Terror's death toll, such as Paul Preston's 200,000 people, range from 150,000 to 400,000 people.The Law of Political Responsibilities (Ley de Responsabilidades Políticas), reformed in 1942 and in force until 1966, was promulgated in 1939 in order to give a legal cover to the bloody repression carried out during the dismantling of the Spanish republican institutions, as well as to penalise those who had remained loyal to the legally established government at the time of the July 1936 military rebellion against the Spanish Republic.The current Spanish government refuses to open the historical archives that would allow experts and historians to throw light on the fate of victims of the Francoist regime.