Getting your questions ready
Getting your questions ready
Beat the crowd
10 questions No timer
50 free Spanish Civil War trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
The Spanish Civil War began with a half-failed coup in July 1936 and ended with Franco's radio broadcast of 1 April 1939. In between, Italy and Germany tested tanks and bombers, Stalin shipped arms under false decks, 32,000 foreigners joined the International Brigades, and a Basque market town became the subject of the century's most famous anti-war painting. This quiz walks through the conflict from the fall of the monarchy to the Retirada: the generals who planned the rising and the plane crashes that killed two of them, the siege of the Alcázar, Guadalajara and the Ebro, the Condor Legion and the Corpo Truppe Volontarie, Orwell and Bethune, the Munich Agreement, the Basque children on the SS Habana, and the poets and painters who responded. Fifty questions with four options each and a short explanation after every answer. Play on your phone or print it for a history quiz night.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which year did the Spanish Civil War begin?
1936
It ran until the Nationalist victory in the spring of 1939.
Q 02Which general was appointed supreme leader of the Nationalists on 1 October 1936?
Francisco Franco
He ruled Spain until his death in November 1975.
Q 03Franco declared victory in Madrid on which date in 1939?
1 April
The last Republican forces surrendered the same day.
Q 04Which two countries were the Republic's only open and full supporters?
Mexico and the USSR
Mexico gave $2 million in aid and later sheltered around 50,000 Republican refugees.
Q 05Which Basque town was bombed by German aircraft on 26 April 1937?
Guernica
The raid killed perhaps 200 to 300 civilians and inspired Picasso's most famous painting.
Q 06What was the name of Nazi Germany's air and land force sent to help the Nationalists?
Condor Legion
Germany trained some 56,000 Nationalist soldiers and used Spain as a proving ground for tactics.
Q 07Italy's volunteer force for the Nationalists was known by which initials?
CTV
The Corpo Truppe Volontarie supplied around 50,000 men.
Q 08Roughly how many men did the Italian CTV supply to the Nationalists?
50,000
Italian warships also bombarded Málaga, Valencia and Barcelona.
Q 09American volunteers for the Republic fought in a unit named after which president?
Lincoln
The Abraham Lincoln Brigade served within the XV International Brigade.
Q 10Canadian volunteers joined a battalion named after which two rebels?
Mackenzie and Papineau
Both men led rebellions against British rule in 1837.
Q 11About how many foreigners fought in the International Brigades overall?
32,000
No more than about 18,000 were in Spain at any one time, drawn from a claimed 53 nations.
Q 12Which country supplied the largest national contingent to the International Brigades?
France
France sent roughly 10,000 volunteers, twice the German and Austrian total.
Q 13Which English writer fought with the POUM militia and wrote Homage to Catalonia?
George Orwell
He was part of the small ILP Contingent and was shot through the throat at the front.
Which Canadian surgeon built a mobile blood-transfusion service for the Republican front?
Q 21The murder of which monarchist politician on 13 July 1936 became the coup's trigger?
José Calvo Sotelo
His killing by state police turned a 'limping conspiracy' into open revolt.
Q 22The Republican government moved from Madrid in November 1936 to which city?
Valencia
It moved again, to Barcelona, at the end of 1937 as Franco closed in.
Q 23The relief of which besieged fortress in Toledo was a 1936 propaganda triumph for Franco?
The Alcázar
Colonel Moscardó's garrison had held out since the start of the rebellion.
Norman Bethune
He later died serving with Mao's forces in China.
Q 15French philosopher Simone Weil briefly fought with the column of which anarchist?
Buenaventura Durruti
Durruti himself was fatally shot in Madrid in November 1936 in unclear circumstances.
Q 16Who was Nationalist figurehead until he died in a plane crash on 20 July 1936?
José Sanjurjo
His death split command between Mola in the north and Franco in the south.
Q 17Which general was the chief planner of the 1936 coup and Franco's second-in-command?
Emilio Mola
Like Sanjurjo before him, he died in an air accident, in June 1937.
Q 18Which Nationalist general secured Seville for the rebels in July 1936?
Queipo de Llano
Seville gave Franco's African troops a landing point on the mainland.
Q 19Before the coup, Franco had been transferred to command where?
The Canaries
A chartered Dragon Rapide later flew him from there to Spanish Morocco.
Q 20What type of aircraft carried Franco to Spanish Morocco in July 1936?
Dragon Rapide
British intelligence agents helped the rebels charter it.
Q 24What title did Franco take two days after relieving the Alcázar?
Caudillo
The word means chieftain, the Spanish equivalent of Duce or Führer.
Q 25Which March 1937 battle was the only widely publicised Republican victory of the war?
Guadalajara
Italian troops and blitzkrieg tactics failed and cost the Nationalists some 5,000 casualties.
Q 26The Republic's last great offensive in 1938 was fought along which river?
Ebro
It ran from July to November and forced Franco to take personal command.
Q 27Which 1938 deal between Hitler and Chamberlain crushed Republican morale?
Munich Agreement
It ended hope of an anti-fascist alliance with the Western powers.
Q 28The Aragon Offensive of 1938 reached the Mediterranean and achieved what?
Cut Republican Spain in two
The Republic tried to sue for peace in May, but Franco demanded unconditional surrender.
Q 29Which fortifications stopped the Nationalist push toward the Republican capital in 1938?
XYZ Line
The line stopped the advance south from Teruel after heavy fighting in July.
Q 30Barcelona fell to Franco's forces on which date?
26 January 1939
Tarragona had fallen eleven days earlier and Girona followed on 2 February.