Red Terror (Spain)

"Execution" of the Sacred Heart by a republican firing squad is a famous example of "an assault on the public presence of Catholicism". The image was originally published in the pro-National London Daily Mail with a caption noting the "Spanish Reds' war on religion."

The Red Terror in Spain (Spanish: Terror Rojo en España) is the name given by historians to various acts committed "by sections of nearly all the leftist groups" such as the killing of tens of thousands of people (including 6,832 members of the Catholic clergy, the vast majority in the summer of 1936 in the wake of the military rising), as well as attacks on landowners, industrialists, and politicians, and the desecration and burning of monasteries and churches. During the first months of the war, "the republican government proved completely unable to stop the killings,although it was profoundly disquieted by them." News of the military coup unleashed a social revolutionary response and no republican region escaped revolutionary and anticlerical violence - though in the Basque Country this was minimal.

A process of political polarisation had characterised the Spanish Second Republic – party divisions became increasingly embittered and questions of religious identity came to assume a major political significance. Electorally, the Church had identified itself with the Right, which had set itself against social reform.

The insurgents had expected a rapid alzamiento, or rising, to be followed by military rule, and they had not counted on the strength of working-class resistance. In the Catholic heartlands, where the rising -with the exception of the Basque territory- did enjoy instant success, the repression of Republicans of all kinds followed. General Mola believed that terror behind the lines was essential. Likewise, the failed pronunciamiento of 1936 set loose a violent onslaught on those that revolutionaries in the Republican zone identified as enemies - " where the rebellion failed, for several months afterwards merely to be identified as a priest, a religious or simply a militant Christian or member of some apostolic or pious organization, was enough for a person to be executed without trial."

In recent years the Catholic Church has beatified hundreds of the victims, 233 of them on 11 March 2001 in a spectacular ceremony, the largest single number of beatifications in the church's history.

Some estimates of the Red Terror range from 38,000 to 72,344 lives.Paul Preston, speaking in 2012 at the time of the publication of his book The Spanish Holocaust, put the figure at a little under 50,000.

Background

In the 1936 Elections a new coalition of Socialists (Socialist Workers Party of Spain, PSOE), liberals (Republican Left and the Republican Union Party), Communists, and various regional nationalist groups won the extremely tight election. The results gave 34 percent of the popular vote to the Popular Front and 33 percent to the incumbent government of the CEDA. This result, when coupled with the Socialists' refusal to participate in the new government, led to a general fear of revolution. This was made only more apparent when Largo Caballero, hailed as "the Spanish Lenin" by Pravda, announced that the country was on the cusp of revolution. However these statements were meant only to remove any moderates from his coalition. Moderate Socialist Indalecio Prieto condemned the rhetoric and marches as provocative.

Early outbreak of violence

Following the outbreak of full-scale civil war there was an explosion of atrocities in both the Nationalist and Republican zones.

The days of the greatest anticlerical bloodletting were at the beginning of the civil war, in the aftermath of the generals' rising, and large areas of the country fell under the control of local loyalists and militias. A large part of the terror consisted of a perceived settlement of accounts against bosses and clergy as they lost their powerful position in the social revolution and move towards extremism that took place in the first months of the civil war. According to historian Anthony Beevor: "In republican territory the worst of the violence was mainly a sudden and quickly spent reaction of suppressed fear, exacerbated by desires of revenge for the past" - in contrast with, "the relentless purging of 'reds and atheists' in nationalist territory." After the generals' coup d'état on 17-18 July 1936 the remaining days in July saw 861 priests and religious lose their lives, 95 of them on 25 July, feast day of St James, patron saint of Spain. August saw a further 2,077 clerical victims. After just two months of civil war, 3400 priests, monks and nuns had been murdered.

According to recent research, the Republican death squads were heavily staffed by members of the Soviet secret police, or NKVD. According to author Donald Rayfield, "Stalin, Yezhov, and Beria distrusted Soviet participants in the Spanish war. Military advisors like Vladimir Antonov-Ovseenko, journalists like Koltsov were open to infection by the heresies, especially Trotsky's, prevalent among the Republic's supporters. NKVD agents sent to Spain were therefore keener on abducting and murdering anti-Stalinists among Republican leaders and International Brigade commanders than on fighting Francisco Franco. The defeat of the Republic, in Stalin's eyes, was caused not by the NKVD's diversionary efforts, but by the treachery of the heretics.

The most famous member of the Loyalist assassination squads was Erich Mielke, the future head of the East German Ministry for State Security.

"During the first months of the fighting most of the deaths did not come from combat on the battlefield but from political executions in the rear—the 'Red' and 'White' terrors. The terror consisted of semi-organized actions perpetrated by almost all of the leftist groups, Basque nationalists, largely Catholic but still mostly aligned with the Republicans, being an exception. Unlike the repression by the right, which "was concentrated against the most dangerous opposition elements", the Republican attacks were more irrational, "murdering innocent people and letting some of the more dangerous go free. Moreover, one of the main targets of the Red terror was the clergy, most of whom were not engaged in overt opposition."

Describing specifically the Red Terror, Stanley Payne states that it "began with the murder of some of the rebels as they attempted to surrender after their revolt had failed in several of the key cities. From there it broadened out to wholesale arrests, and sometimes wholesale executions, of landowners and industrialists, people associated with right-wing groups or the Catholic Church." The Red Terror was "not an irrepressible outpouring of hatred by the man in the street for his 'oppressors,' but a semi-organized activity carried out by sections of nearly all the leftist groups."

As early as 11 May 1931, when mob violence against the Republic's perceived enemies had led to the burning of churches, convents, and religious schools, the Church had sometimes been seen as the ally of the authoritarian right. The academic Mary Vincent has written that: "There was no doubt that the Church would line up with the rebels against the Republic. The Jesuit priests of the city of Salamanca were among the first volunteers to present themselves to the military authorities...The tragedy of the Second Republic was that it abetted its own destruction; the tragedy of the Church was that it became so closely allied with its self-styled defenders." During the war the nationalists claimed that 20,000 priests had been killed; today the figure is put at 4,184 priests, 2,365 members of other religious institutes and 283 nuns, the vast majority during the summer of 1936.

Historian Stanley Payne has called the terror the "most extensive and violent persecution of Catholicism in Western History, in some way even more intense than that of the French Revolution", driving Catholics, left then with little alternative, to the Nationalists even more than would have been expected.

Death toll

Figures for the Red Terror range from 38,000 to 110,000. In his recent, updated history of the Spanish Civil War, Antony Beevor "reckons Franco's ensuing 'white terror' claimed 200,000 lives. The 'red terror' had already, according to Beevor, killed 38,000." According to Julio de la Cueva, the toll of the Red Terror was 72,344 lives. Hugh Thomas and Paul Preston said that the death toll was 55,000, and the Spanish historian Julian Casanova said that the death toll was fewer than 60,000.

Previously, Payne had suggested that, "The toll taken by the respective terrors may never be known exactly. The left slaughtered more in the first months, but the Nationalist repression probably reached its height only after the war had ended, when punishment was exacted and vengeance wreaked on the vanquished left. The White Terror may have slain 50,000, perhaps fewer, during the war. The Franco government now gives the names of 61,000 victims of the Red Terror, but this is not subject to objective verification. The number of victims of the Nationalist repression, during and after the war, was undoubtedly greater than that." In Checas de Madrid (ISBN 84-9793-168-8), journalist and historian César Vidal comes to a nationwide total of 110,965 victims of Republican repression; 11,705 people being killed in Madrid alone. Historian Santos Juliá, in the work Víctimas de la guerra civil provides approximate figures: about 50,000 victims of the Republican repression; about 100,000 victims of the Francoist repression during the war with some 40,000 after the war.

Toll on clergy

See also: Martyrs of the Spanish Civil War

Historian Julio de la Cueva has written that, "despite the fact that the Church...suffer[ed] appalling persecution" behind Republican lines, the events have been met by much silence and even attempts at justification by some scholars and memoirists. In the course of the Red Terror, 6,832 members of the Catholic clergy, 20% percent of the nation's clergy, were killed. The figures break down the as follows: Some 283 women religious were killed. Some of them were badly tortured. 13 bishops were killed from the dioceses of Siguenza Lleida, Cuenca, Barbastro, Segorbe, Jaén, Ciudad Real, Almeria, Guadix, Barcelona, Teruel and the auxiliary of Tarragona. Aware of the dangers, they all decided to remain in their cities. I cannot go, only here is my responsibility, whatever may happen, so said the Bishop of Cuenca. In addition 4,172 diocesan priests, 2,364 monks and friars, among them 259 Claretians, 226 Franciscans, 204 Piarists, 176 Brothers of Mary, 165 Christian Brothers (also called the De La Salle Brothers), 155 Augustinians, 132 Dominicans, and 114 Jesuits were killed. In some dioceses, the number of secular priests killed are overwhelming:

• In Barbastro 123 of 140 priests were killed, about 88 percent of the secular clergy were murdered, 66 percent
• In Lleida, 270 of 410 priests were killed. about 62 percent
• In Tortosa, 44 percent of the secular priests were killed.
• In Toledo 286 of 600 priests were killed.
• In the dioceses of Málaga, Minorca and Segorbe, about half of the priests were killed"

In 2001 the Catholic Church beatified hundreds of Martyrs of the Spanish Civil War and beatified 498 more on October 28, 2007.

In October 2008, the Spanish newspaper La Razon published an article on the number of people murdered for practicing Catholicism."

May 1931: 100 church buildings are burned while firefighters refuse to extinguish the flames.

1932: 3000 Jesuits expelled. Church buildings burned with impunity in 7 cities.

1934: 33 priests murdered in the Asturias Revolution.

1936: just a day before July 18, the day the war started, there already have been 17 clergymen murdered.

From July 18 to August 1: 861 clergymen murdered in 2 weeks.

August 1936: 2077 clergymen murdered, more than 70 a day. 10 of them bishops.

Septiembre 14: 3400 clergymen murdered during the first stages of the war.

1939: end of the war; a total of 7000 clergymen and 3000 religious people murdered for practicing Catholicism.

Attitudes

Republican side

Attitudes to the "red terror" varied on the Republican side. President Manuel Azaña made the well-publicized comment that all of the convents in Madrid were not worth one Republican life. Yet equally "commonly cited, for example, is the speech by the Socialist leader Indalecio Prieto on Madrid radio on 9 August 1936 pleading that Republican militiamen not ‘imitate’ the murderous actions of the military rebels" and also "the public condemnation of arbitrary ‘justice’ by Julián Zugazagoitia, the editor of El Socialista, the Socialist Party newspaper, on 23 August."

Julius Ruiz goes on to note, however, that "not cited [...] are El Socialista's regular reports extolling the work of the Atadell brigade", a group of Republican agents who engaged in detentions and frequently murders of (in the end) up to 800 Nationalists. "On 27 September 1936", Ruiz continues, "an editorial on the brigade stressed that its ‘work, more than useful, is necessary. Indispensable.’ Similarly, the Prieto-controlled Madrid daily Informaciones carried numerous articles on the activities of the Atadell brigade during the summer of 1936."

Nationalist side

The Catholic hierarchy believed that, on the cusp of the Civil war, the violence directed against it was the result of a plan, "a program of systematic persecution of the Church was planned to the last detail." José Calvo Sotelo told the Spanish Parliament in April 1936, that in six week of popular front government, from Mid-February 15 to April 2, 1936, some 199 attacks were carried out, 36 of them in Churches. He listed 136 fires, and fire bombings, which included 106 burned and Catholic Churches and 56 Churches otherwise destroyed. He claimed 74 persons dead and 345 persons injured. Shortly afterwards, José Calvo Sotelo was shot himself on July 13, allegedly by a socialist gunman, Luis Cuenca, apparently in retaliation for the murder of his colleague, Guardia de Asalto Lieutenant José Castillo earlier that night.

The attitudes of the Catholic side towards the government and the ensuing Civil War was expressed in a joint Episcopal letter from July 1, 1937. It was addressed by the Spanish bishops to all bishops of the Catholic world. Spain, so said the bishops, is divided into two hostile camps, of which one side expresses anti-religious and anti-Spanish terror, and the other side upholding the respect for the religious and national order. The Church is pastorally oriented and not willing to sell its freedom to politics. But under these circumstances, she has no option but to side with those who started out, defending her freedom and right to exist.

The attitudes of the people in the national zone were characterized fear, hope and by religious revival. Victories were celebrated with religious services, the separation of Church and State was abolished and religious education was reintroduced into the schools. Catholic chaplains were re-introduced into the army. The attitudes towards the Church had changed from hostility to admiration.

Reported murders

• Murder of 6,832 members of the Catholic clergy and religious institutes as well as the killing thousands of lay people.

• The parish priest of Navalmoral was put through a parody of Christ's Crucifixion. At the end of his suffering the militiamen debated whether actually to crucify him or just shoot him. They finished with a shooting.

• The Bishop of Jaén and his sister were murdered in front of two thousand celebrating spectators by a special executioner, a woman nicknamed La Pecosa, the freckled one.

• Although rare, it was reported that some nuns were raped by militiamen before they were shot. However, according to Antony Beevor, the 1946 nationalist indictment of Republican atrocities contained no evidence for any such incident.

• The priest of Cienpozuelos was thrown into a corral with fighting bulls where he was gored into unconsciousness. Afterwards one of his ears was cut off to imitate the feat of a matador after a successful bullfight.

• In Ciudad Real, a priest was castrated and his sexual organs stuffed in his mouth.

• There are accounts of the people connected to the Catholic Church being forced to swallow rosary beads, being thrown down mine shafts and of priests being forced to dig their own graves before being buried alive.

• An eyewitness to some of the persecution, Cristina de Arteaga, who was soon to become a nun, commented that they "attacked the Salesians, people who are totally committed to the poor. There was a rumor that nuns were giving poisoned sweets to children. Some nuns were grabbed by the hair in the streets. One had her hair pulled out...."

• On the night of July 19, 1936 alone, 50 churches were burned. In Barcelona, out of the 58 churches, only the Cathedral was spared, and similar events occurred almost everywhere in Republican Spain.

• All the Catholic churches in the Republican zone were closed, but the attacks were not limited to Catholic churches, as synagogues were also pillaged and closed, though some small Protestant churches were spared.

• The Bishop of Almeria was murdered while working on a history of Toledo. His card index file was destroyed.

• In Madrid, a nun was killed because she refused a proposition of marriage from a militiaman who helped storm her convent.

Conclusion and aftermath

With the total 1939 victory of the Nationalists over the Republicans in the Civil War in Spain, the Red Terror ended in that country, although individual terror attacks seem to have continued sporadically, carried out by remnant Communists and Socialists, hiding in French border regions, but without great results. Throughout the country, the Catholic Church held Te Deums to thank God for the outcome. Numerous left-wing personalities were tried for the Red Terror, not all of them were guilty. Others fled to the Soviet Union, where a number of them "disappeared" in Joseph Stalin's Gulags. Franco's victory was followed by thousands of summary executions (remains of 35,000 people are estimated by the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory (ARMH) to still lie in mass graves) and imprisonments, while many were put to forced labour, building railways, drying out swamps, digging canals (La Corchuela, the Canal of the Bajo Guadalquivir), construction of the Valle de los Caídos monument, etc. The 1940 shooting of the president of the Catalan government, Lluís Companys, was one of the most notable cases of this early repression. Although leftists suffered from an important death-toll, the Spanish intelligentsia, atheists and military and government figures who had remained loyal to the Madrid government during the war were also targeted by the repression.

The new Pope Pius XII sent a radio message of congratulation to the Spanish Government, clerics and people on April 16, 1939. He referred to the denunciation of his predecessor, Pope Pius XI, who described past horrors and the need to defend and restore the rights of God and religion. The pope stated that the victims of terror died for Jesus Christ. He wished peace and prosperity upon the Spanish people, appealing to them to punish criminals but to exercise leniency and Spanish generosity against the many who were on the other side. He asked for their full participation in society and entrusted them to the compassion of the Church in Spain.

The Red Terror in Spain was from the Vatican perspective only one part of a "Terrible Triangle" of Red Terror, whose goal was the eradication of religion, involving Mexico and the Soviet Union as well. Pope Pius XI complained about Conspiracy of Silence on all Church persecutions

See also

• Communist terrorism
• State atheism
• Spanish Civil War
• Red Terror
• Terrible Triangle
• Paracuellos massacre

References

Bibliography

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• De la Cueva, Julio Religious Persecution, Anticlerical Tradition and Revolution: On Atrocities against the Clergy during the Spanish Civil War, Journal of Contemporary History Vol XXXIII - 3, 1998
• August Franzen, Remigius Bäumer, Papstgeschichte Herder Freiburg, 1988 (Papal history) (cit Franzen)
• August Franzen, Remigius Bäumer, Kirchengeschichte, Herder Freiburg, 1991 (Church history) (cit Franzen II)
• Anastasio Granados, El Cardinal Goma, Primado de Espana, Espasa Calpe Madrid. 1969
• Hubert Jedin, Konrad Repgen and John Dolan, History of the Church: The Church in the Twentieth Century Burn& Oates London, New York (1981) 1999 Vol X (cit Jedin)
• Frances Lannon Privilege, Persecution, and Prophecy. The Catholic Church in Spain 1875-1975. Oxford 1987 ISBN 0-19-821923-7
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• Mitchell, David Mitchell (1983), The Spanish Civil War, New York: Franklin Watts, ISBN ??? {{citation}}: Check |isbn= value: invalid character (help).
• Ruiz, Julius Ruiz (2007), "Defending the Republic: The García Atadell Brigade in Madrid, 1936", Journal of Contemporary History, 42 (1): 97, doi:10.1177/0022009407071625, JSTOR 30036431.
• Josef Schmidlin, Papstgeschichte der neuesten Zeit, Vol IV, Pius XI, 1922–1939, Verlag Josef Kösel & Friedrich Pustet, München, 1939 (Papal history)
• Thomas, Hugh (1961), The Spanish Civil War, ???: Touchstone, ISBN 0-671-75876-4.
• Hugh Thomas, The Spanish Civil War, Revised and Enlarged edition (1977), Harper & Row. ISBN 0-06-014278-2.
• Casanova, Julian. The Spanish Republic and the civil war. Cambridge University Press. New York. 2010. ISBN 978-0-521-73780-7