49 Fun Facts About Spanish Civil War

The Spanish Civil War ended two weeks after Germany occupied which country?

Czechoslovakia fell in mid-March 1939 and Madrid at the month's end; five months later Germany, which had tested its tank and air tactics in Spain, began World War II.

Which phrase came out of the 1936 Nationalist advance on Madrid?

Fifth column: a Nationalist general is credited with boasting that four columns were marching on Madrid while a fifth, his hidden supporters, waited inside the city.

Which king succeeded Franco as Spain's head of state in 1975?

Juan Carlos I had been chosen by Franco himself and had sworn loyalty to his movement, but once on the throne he steered Spain back to democracy.

Which two countries openly armed and backed the Spanish Republic throughout the war?

Mexico and the USSR: Mexico refused to join the non-intervention pact and shipped rifles to the Republic, then took in thousands of its refugees when few other countries would.

Which Basque town was bombed by German aircraft on 26 April 1937?

Guernica was the Basques' ancient meeting place, where their assemblies gathered under an oak tree; the raid wrecked most of the town, yet the oak and the assembly house survived.

What was the name of Nazi Germany's air and land force sent to help the Nationalists?

Condor Legion: at Nuremberg, Hermann Göring said he had backed sending it partly to test his young Luftwaffe, and it was lent on condition that it stayed under German command.

Which dictator sent a 'Corps of Volunteer Troops' to aid Franco?

Benito Mussolini sent regular soldiers and Blackshirt militia, tens of thousands of men in all, months after Italy had signed a pledge not to intervene in Spain.

Which photographer took 'The Falling Soldier', the 1936 picture that appears to catch a Republican militiaman at the moment of death?

Robert Capa made his name with it in his early twenties, and lived by the rule it suggests: 'If your pictures aren't good enough, then you aren't close enough.'

The first battalion of American volunteers for the Republic was named after which president?

Lincoln: a second American battalion, named for George Washington, followed within months, but losses in both were so heavy that the two were merged in mid-1937.

Canadian volunteers joined a battalion named after which two rebels?

Mackenzie and Papineau led the rebellions of 1837 in Upper and Lower Canada; the men who took their names broke a new Canadian law to fight in Spain and came home under suspicion.

Which international body recruited and directed the International Brigades?

Comintern: it drew volunteers from some 50 countries; in late 1938 the Republic withdrew them with a farewell parade, hoping the gesture would win over the Western democracies.

The flag of the Second Spanish Republic replaced the lower red stripe of Spain's flag with which colour?

Purple was added by the new republic to stand for Castile, on the belief, now doubted, that Castile's old banner was that colour; the rebels went back to plain red and yellow in 1936.

Which English writer fought with the POUM militia and wrote Homage to Catalonia?

George Orwell was shot through the throat by a sniper, then had to flee Spain when his own side outlawed the POUM, which left him with a lifelong dread of communism.

Which Canadian surgeon built a mobile blood-transfusion service for the Republican front?

Norman Bethune took the blood to the wounded instead of waiting for them to reach a hospital; he died in China in 1939 as a surgeon with Mao's forces and is a national hero there.

Who was Nationalist figurehead until he died in a plane crash on 20 July 1936?

José Sanjurjo was flying home from exile in Portugal to head the rising when his small plane crashed on take-off; its pilot blamed the general's heavy luggage.

Which general, commanding at Pamplona, was the chief planner of the July 1936 military coup?

Emilio Mola had been posted to Pamplona to keep him out of the way, and ran the plot from there; his death in an air accident in 1937 left Franco without a rival.

Which slogan became the battle cry of Republican Madrid in 1936?

¡No pasarán!, 'They shall not pass': the Communist orator Dolores Ibárruri, known as La Pasionaria, made the cry famous as the rebel army neared Madrid in 1936, and the city held for over two years.

Before the 1936 coup, where had the Republic sent Franco to command?

The Canaries: the government had sent a suspect general to an obscure island command, yet within two days of the rising he had flown to Morocco and taken over the army there.

The 1936 People's Olympiad, a protest against Hitler's Berlin Games, was abandoned when war broke out in which host city?

Barcelona: athletes woke on the opening day to gunfire in the streets; most went home, but a few stayed on and joined the units defending the Republic.

The murder of which monarchist politician on 13 July 1936 became the coup's trigger?

José Calvo Sotelo was seized at home by a squad avenging a police lieutenant murdered hours earlier, then shot in a police truck; the generals had been plotting for months, and his death brought their rising on within days.

The Republican government moved from Madrid in November 1936 to which city?

Valencia took in the ministers because Madrid was expected to fall within days; instead the capital they had left to a defence junta held out for nearly two and a half years.

The relief of which besieged fortress was a propaganda triumph for Franco in September 1936?

The Alcázar of Toledo had held out for ten weeks under Colonel Moscardó; turning aside to rescue it made Franco a hero to his side but gave Madrid time to prepare its defence.

Which title did Franco adopt as Spain's answer to the titles Duce and Führer?

Caudillo: his fellow generals gave him supreme power in autumn 1936 for what they thought would be the final assault on Madrid; he kept it until he died in 1975.

Which March 1937 battle north-east of Madrid ended in a Republican victory?

Guadalajara: the attackers' motorised units bogged down in foul weather and mud, and the Republic's counter-attack drove them back with heavy losses.

The Republic's last great offensive in 1938 was fought along which river?

Ebro: the Republic's army crossed the river by night in small boats and held its bridgehead for nearly four months, but the effort broke it, and Catalonia fell soon afterwards.

Which agreement ended Republican hopes of help from the Western democracies?

Munich Agreement: the Republic had been holding on in the hope of a wider war that would bring the democracies in, and at Munich they chose to give way to Hitler instead.

The Aragon Offensive of 1938 reached the Mediterranean and achieved what?

Cut Republican Spain in two: Catalonia was severed from the centre and south, and when the Republic then sounded out peace terms, Franco would accept only unconditional surrender.

From which site near Madrid was Franco's body removed in 2019?

The Valley of the Fallen holds war dead from both sides, and Franco lay among them for 44 years; his coffin left by helicopter for a family vault after his relatives lost their court challenge.

Which philosopher, rector of Salamanca, denounced the Nationalists in October 1936 and died under house arrest weeks later?

Miguel de Unamuno had at first welcomed the rising; 'They will win, but they will not convince,' he wrote in a letter in his last weeks.

The best-known painting of the Spanish Civil War spent four decades in exile at which New York museum?

The Museum of Modern Art held it at the artist's wish: he would not let it hang in Spain while Franco ruled, and it went home only in 1981, when both men were dead.

Who was the Spanish Republic's last wartime prime minister, from May 1937?

Juan Negrín's motto was 'to resist is to win': he meant to hold out until a European war brought the Republic allies, but his own officers turned on him and he flew into exile.

Half a million Republicans fled Spain in early 1939 mainly by which route?

Over the Pyrenees: in a few winter weeks about half a million people crossed into France, most of them on foot, and many were then held in guarded camps on open beaches.

Which Chilean poet, as consul in Paris, shipped some 2,000 Republican exiles to Chile in 1939?

Pablo Neruda crammed them into the Winnipeg, an old cargo ship built to carry a fraction of that number, and called it the noblest mission he had ever undertaken.

Which artist painted the huge 1937 canvas inspired by the bombing of a Basque town?

Pablo Picasso had been asked for a mural for the Republic's pavilion at the 1937 Paris World's Fair; after reading the reports of the raid he painted it in a matter of weeks.

Which Surrealist painted Soft Construction with Boiled Beans (Premonition of Civil War) in 1936?

Salvador Dalí painted its giant tearing itself apart in Paris some months before the war began, and afterwards claimed it proved the prophetic power of his subconscious mind.

Which novelist co-produced The Spanish Earth, a 1937 film seeking aid for the Republic?

Lillian Hellman was also involved; the film premiered in the United States in July 1937.

Which American sculptor made a mercury fountain for the Republic's Paris pavilion?

Alexander Calder made it to honour Almadén, a mercury-mining town then under siege by Franco's troops; it now runs sealed behind glass because the vapour is toxic.

Which poet and playwright was shot by Nationalist forces near Granada in August 1936?

Federico García Lorca was killed within weeks of the rising, outside the city where he grew up; despite several searches, his grave has never been found.

In May 1937 nearly 4,000 Basque children were evacuated from the bombing in a single voyage to which country?

Britain took them in from the liner Habana, a ship fitted out for 800 passengers that reached Southampton under Royal Navy escort with almost five times that number aboard.

Franco's side gave its war against the Republic which name?

A crusade: the rebels called it a holy war against godless Bolshevism, yet the army that fought it leaned heavily on Muslim troops recruited in Morocco.

About 700 Catholic volunteers sailed in 1936 to fight for Franco, against their own government's wishes, from which country?

Ireland's brigade, raised by the former police chief Eoin O'Duffy, lost men to fire from its own side as it first moved up to the front, and was home within months.

Which French novelist organised a squadron of volunteer airmen for the Republic and turned the experience into Man's Hope?

André Malraux flew on the squadron's missions as its colonel, then toured the United States raising money for Spanish medical aid; de Gaulle later made him France's culture minister.

What order by the Republic's new premier helped defeat the July 1936 rising in Madrid?

Arming civilians: José Giral's order let workers' militias help beat the rising in the big cities, but it left their unions, not his government, holding real power.

Which French prime minister was sympathetic to the Republic but signed non-intervention?

Léon Blum led a Popular Front government like Spain's own and at first helped it, but opposition at home forced him to back non-intervention, a policy his critics called appeasement.

The Non-Intervention Committee, set up to keep foreign arms out of Spain, met in which city?

London was its seat, while three of the powers sitting on it went on pouring weapons and men into Spain in open breach of their own pledge.

Franco merged the right-wing parties into a single ruling party known as what?

Falange Tradicionalista welded the fascist Falange to the Carlist monarchists by decree, two movements with little in common, and it remained Spain's only legal party until 1977.

Which king left Spain in 1931 when the Second Republic was proclaimed?

Alfonso XIII was gone within two days of local elections that republicans won in the big cities, refusing to abdicate; he died in exile in Rome ten years later.

Which 2006 Guillermo del Toro film is set in 1944 Spain, where a Francoist captain hunts the last Republican guerrillas?

Pan's Labyrinth takes place five years after Franco's victory, when bands of guerrillas were still fighting on in the mountains; the last of them held out into the 1950s.

Who led the Socialist-dominated Republican government formed in September 1936?

Largo Caballero, a former plasterer nicknamed 'the Spanish Lenin', brought even the anarchists into his cabinet, but a crisis stirred up by the Communists forced him out in May 1937.