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15th Jun '13 12:45:11 PM faunas

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[[quoteright:340:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Capa-001_6476.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:340:''The Falling Soldier'', by Robert Capa]]

The Spanish Civil War was fought from 1936-1939 by Spaniards, against Spaniards with foreign powers directly assisting both sides. Though it is known as 'The' Spanish Civil War, it was but the last and bloodiest of [[strike:3]] 4 Civil Wars that Spain had fought in since NapoleonBonaparte was ejected from Spain in 1812.

The war first got going when the left-wing Republicans post-victory election celebrations got out of hand, with Republican supporters attacking members of the bourgeoisie in an escalation of the simmering ideological conflict that had been threatening to destabilise the social order in Spain for decades. A previously planned coup d'etat by the Spanish Army Generals Jose Sanjurjo and Emilio Mola was put into play against the Second Spanish Republic (which was only established just 5 years prior). Caught between a military revolt and a revolution of socialists and anarchists at the same time, the Republican government decided to throw its support behind the revolution. The army coup, which became the Nationalists, seized the northwestern, north, and a section of the southwest parts of Spain. The Republicans controlled most of the East coast as well as the capital Madrid in the center. This led to a conflict between the Nationalists and the Republicans fighting over the right to rule Spain. Short story: the Nationalists under Francisco Franco won and he ruled Spain as a dictatorship until his death in 1975.

Interestingly, while Franco played a major role in starting the rebellion, he was a latecomer, as he vacillated on whether or not he would support Sanjurjo and Mola. A short while after the revolution started he decided to support them as third in command of the rebel forces. During the war, both Sanjurjo and Mola died in semi-mysterious plane crashes. Another interesting note is that while Franco was undoubtedly authoritarian, most historians do not consider him to have actually been a fascist, since he was more of a traditional conservative, enjoying support of both the Catholic Church and the Carlists, whereas genuine fascists like Falange, Mussolini, and the Nazis subscribed to a revolutionary policy that was in many ways critical of both factions. In fact, once Franco came to power he suppressed most of the fascist elements of Falange, replacing it with his own, more traditionalist ideology.

It was noted that the Nationalists were supported by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, and to a lesser extent, their neighbor Portugal. The fascist and ferociously Catholic Blue Shirts in Ireland send volunteers to fight with the Nationalists, while some IRA members joined the International Brigades. Given this international involvement, the weapons used in the early stages of World War II were tested in the Spanish conflict, especially the German Condor Legion, a volunteer Air unit whose vets would eventually take part in WorldWarII. Oddly, Franco was fairly unenthusiastic about his Irish volunteers (after their initial propaganda use as Catholics ended), perhaps because they were ''volunteers'' like the International Brigades, and thus not a regular military unit in the way his German and Italian allies were (at least they didn't unburden themselves in their own trenches like the anarcho-syndicalists). In the end O'Duffy (the Irish fascist leader) was forced to charter a ship of his own to even get to Spain and in 1937 the force withdrew. Presumably for similar reasons Franco also turned down offers of Belgian, Greek, and exiled White Russian volunteer brigades.

The Republicans, conversely, were placed under embargoes by France and the United Kingdom, which most nations followed. The exception came from the Soviet Union (which tried to keep its involvement secret) and Mexico (who also sent in financial aid). The Comintern also recruited volunteers from the US, UK, France, Poland and even Germany and Italy for the International Brigades. The sad/funny part of this is that different factions from the USSR sent different volunteers, often leading to clashes between the Republicans.

While all this was going on, Anarcho-Syndicalists, starting in 1936, pulled off the Spanish Revolution, one of the few historical examples of a ''genuine'' workers' social revolution, with the workers taking control of the factories (for real), and agrarian areas collectivized and run as libertarian communes in Catalonia, Aragon and Andalusia. All this, of course, was not in line with Stalin's vision of centralized state socialism, and the increasingly Soviet-dominated government of the Republic ultimately crushed them, with another, mini civil war fought behind the Republican lines which severely weakened their resolve.

In the end, the Nationalists defeated the Republicans and managed to gain control and establish Franco as a dictator, ruling over Spain for a little over 35 years. Franco made the country something of a haven for Jews (especially Sepharadim, Jews originally from Spain, who had been expelled by Fernand and Isabel 500 years before), and stayed neutral in the war: being supported by Hitler against Stalin was one thing, supporting Hitler against the Western Allies was another. He remained entirely neutral until the fall of France, then shifted to non-belligerent support for the Axis, then shifted back to neutrality once France got un-fallen. Hitler thought Franco's debt of gratitude to the Axis cause extended further than that. Franco thought it didn't.

The classic Fascist leader was an "artist of souls," eager to reshape the world into his particular vision by whatever means necessary; Franco was a cop. He was most similar to the leaders of juntas in Latin America (and even referred to the Nationalist cause as a junta). Neutrality was probably inevitable for him; in the apocalyptic war between democracy and communism on the one hand, and fascism and monarchism on the other, his first concern was that none of it happened in Spain. He went on to become an American ally in the Cold War, and died peacefully in his sleep, still in power. (He handed power back to the monarchy, hoping that it would keep a regime similar to his own, but it didn't stick; Spain is now a democracy -- with a much smaller dose of crazy than in the 1930s.)

Another notable incident in the war was the Bombing of Guernica, perpetrated by the German expeditionary force, the Condor Legion, under the command of the Red Baron's hard-ass brother. It was the first widely-known example of carpet bombing of a civilian target, and inspired PabloPicasso's heart-wrenching and monumental mural ''Guernica''.
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!!Tropes for this war include:

* AnachronismStew: The war combined tactics and weapons from WorldWarOne and WorldWarTwo.
* BlackAndGreyMorality: Fascists, Autocratic Monarchists, the religious, and Conservatives versus Communists, Socialists, Anarchists, and Liberals.
* BlindMistake: A ceasefire occurred at least twice a day during the siege of the Alcázar due to a blind beggar who regularly traversed a road between the battle lines.
* BombThrowingAnarchists - Simultaneously averted and played straight depending on which individual band of anarchists you're referring to; it's not exactly a unified ideology. The Spanish Civil War featured a large and active Anarchist contribution to the Republican side, but many of them were working to organize resistance against Franco rather than spread pointless terror and chaos. Odds are some of them probably threw bombs at the enemy in the literal sense during the course of the war, but that doesn't quite fit the trope. That said, tens of thousands of people died in Anarchist-inspired mob violence in the early days of the war. Churches and other clerical buildings were burned to the ground, along with the clergy being killed regardless of politics, alienating many potential Catholic Republic sympathizers. The anarchists also had a tendency to fight ''each other''; there's evidence that the destruction of an anarchist commune, blamed on Soviet supporters, was actually done primarily by another anarchist band with which the commune was feuding.
** It should probably be noted here that the Anarchists had a rather good reason to want to see the churches burn. The Catholic church in Spain had long been a supporter of reactionary government, and in any struggle between "the people" and "the government" the church took the side of the government. It should be remembered that the majority of Anarchist power so-to-say laid in "the masses" of the working class, so most of the violent actions undertaken (such as the aforementioned mob violence) represented the wishes of the working class to rid themselves of capitalists, reactionaries, monarchists, clericalists and fascists, [[WellintentionedExtremist a struggle they found more than justified due to the ills that these groups supposedly had inflicted upon society]]. The Anarchists were first and foremost Socialists, specifically Anarcho-Syndicalists and Anarcho-Communists, so many of the same ideals and ethics that go for Socialists go for Anarchists as well.
*** RuleOfCautiousEditingJudgement
* ButtMonkey: The Italians of the CTV got so badly pwned at Guadalajara that their own allies came with the song "Spain is not Abyssinia" to mock them.
** To be fair to them, Guadalajara was the very lowest point of the Italian participation, in which they fared more or less as well as any other Nationalist force - and certainly not like they suffered [[WorldWarTwo later.]] Plus, it should be noted that they were fighting ''other Italians'' who had joined the Republican side...
* CardCarryingVillain: During an interview a war reporter asked Juan Yagüe about the massacre of 2000 civilians after the fall of Badajoz. His answer was "What did you expect me to do?".
* TheCassandra: General Cabanellas adviced against choosing Franco as the new leader of the rebels following Sanjurjo's death, claiming that "he'll make Spain his and will not let it go until he is dead".
* ChurchMilitant: The Carlist requetés, who fought on the Nationalist side.
* CivilWar
* DecoyProtagonist: General Sanjurjo, the expected leader of the uprising (although Mola was planning on using him as a mere figurehead) died on the third day of the war when he attempted to fly from his exile in Salazar's Portugal. The reason? He [[HoistByHisOwnPetard packed too many uniforms]] in the plane for [[IronicDeath his expected victory parade]].
* DefectorFromDecadence: The Internationales fighting alongside the Republican forces included the Garibaldi Brigade, a unit of Italian antifascists, as well as several units of German anti-Nazi activists.
* DemocracyIsBad: Many of the groups involved in the war believed this. The fascists and hardline monarchists rejected democracy outright. Most communists (particularly those loyal to Stalin) ''claimed'' to uphold it, but the reality was [[PeoplesRepublicOfTyranny different]]. Anarchists and some state socialists rejected ''representative'' democracy, insisting that the only true democracy is a ''direct'' democracy. This was implemented with various peasant communes and worker syndicates. There were also many factions on both sides who actually didn't believe this, but their voices were mostly drowned out.
* {{Determinator}}: Millán-Astray, the leader of the Spanish Legion, had lost an arm and an eye fighting in Morocco prior to the war. The ''exit wound'' of the bullet that [[MoeGreeneSpecial destroyed his right eye]] was also visible on his left cheekbone.
* DownerEnding: A real-life subversion. The Nazi-allied Nationalists, who bombed Guernica into rubble, who after the war murdered a quarter of a million people with a blasé regularity that shocked the visiting German envoy (said envoy's name was Heinrich Himmler), won decisively and ruled Spain until Franco's death [[DistantFinale in 1975]]. However, once Franco was out of the way, [[TwistEnding his successor immediately went about dismantling everything he had built and peacefully rebuilt Spain into a democratic society]], despite the protests of the remaining Francoists. Many former Republican politicians even returned to Spain and were elected to office, and the old left-wing parties were all legalized again.
** The new king even put down a Francoist coup in 1981, rather famously causing the ''leader of the Communist Party'' to tearfully declare "God save the King!" on national television.
* DyingLikeAnimals: The Non-Intervention Committee, an international body which was ostensibly formed to keep non-Spanish actors from supplying the Republicans and Nationalists. 
* EagleSquadron: Fighting on the Nationalist side were the German Condor Legion, the Italian Corps of Volunteer Troops, Portuguese Viriatros and the Irish Brigade, as well as the Spanish army's "Foreign" Legion. Foreigners who fought on the Republican side included Soviet advisers, pilots and tank drivers as well as the International Brigades: an estimated 32,000 anti-fascist volunteers from 53 different countries.
* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: The rebels didn't define themselves as anti-Republican at first and continued to use the red-gold-purple flag for a month and a half, after which they adopted the red and gold. The Francoist coat of arms with the black eagle wasn't even adopted until 1938. And Franco himself wasn't supposed to be their leader originally.
* EgomaniacHunter: Franco said that he developed a taste for hunting because of the war. Let FridgeLogic [[TheMostDangerousGame sink in]].
* EnemyMine: 
** The Republican side included democrats, Stalinists, Trotskyists, and Anarchists, groups not known for getting along with each other under ordinary circumstances, but [[WeAreStrugglingTogether mostly]] willing to fight on the same side against the Nationalists. As the Republican side's fortunes declined, the Stalinists, since they had the Soviet Union's backing, managed to force the others out of power in a series of coups -- but one could see the Fascists doing the same on the Nationalist side, had they lost.
** On the other side we have (among others) the monarchist, highly conservative, pro-local-autonomy, arch-Catholic Carlists, and the National Socialist German Workers' Party -- one of a handful of political movements to have been [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mit_Brennender_Sorge explicitly condemned by a Papal bull]]. You don't get stranger than that, although the United States cheering for the side backed by the Soviet Union does come pretty close.
** Actually, scratch that, you do get stranger than that: the Basque Nationalist Party, explicitly Catholic, pro-big-business, conservative, and ''fighting for the Republic''. Because of them, the Pope held off on recognizing the Nationalists as the government of Spain until they'd conquered the whole of Navarre.
** The pre-war Falangists were anti-monarchists, anti-big business and even slightly anti-clericalists. Of course they hated the Carlists, and they were hated by them in turn. The two even had a couple of armed clashes after the war, when Franco had already forced them to unify in a single party.
* EqualOpportunityEvil: The Nationalists included a large number of Muslim Moroccan soldiers in the war; one of them, Mohamed ben Mizzian, was made at some point captain-general of Galicia. (That would be the province that has the Eucharist on its coat of arms...) During WW2 they also [[PetTheDog turned a blind eye to the passage of Jewish refugees]] that used Spain as a door to escape Nazi-ruled Europe.
* FailureIsTheOnlyOption: None of the great Republican offensives launched during the Negrín government (Brunete, Belchite, Teruel, Ebro) was successful. Ebro, in particular, essentially destroyed the Army of the Spanish Republic as an effective fighting force.
* FightingForAHomeland: The men of the Thälmann Battalion, a unit made up entirely of German anti-fascists either exiled or frightened off by the Nazis, fought for the Republic in the hopes that they might be able to one day call it home - most of them had already given up on the possibility of ever going back to Germany again.
* {{Foreshadowing}}: One of the wars that foreshadowed WorldWarII.
** Also, the Asturias Uprising of 1934 brought the factional hatred, the decaying ground for compromise, and mutual disregard for liberal democracy to the fore from an abortive attack on the Republic... [[MetaTwist launched from the Left.]] Which was put down by Francisco Franco.
* ForeverWar: Not the war itself, which was of relatively "normal" duration even if it seemed like this sometimes, but the Prologue. Spanish Morocco was a hotbed of discontent and rebellion, and the Spanish Army of Africa spent somewhere on the tune of [[PendulumWar 28 to 34 years]] of nonstop bloodshed. 
* FromBadToWorse: Again, WorldWarII.
** Except for Spain, who mostly sat it out despite Franco sending the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Division Blue Division]] to assist Nazi Germany, and exiled Republican veterans who joined the combat in the Allied side.
** The war started as a conflict of Nationalists and Republicans, and ended out as a war between Fascists and Communists.
* GreyAndGrayMorality: Became more and more evident as the war went on and the Spanish Republic became increasingly dominated by the USSR and its ideological allies, which unfortunately led to infighting and soldiers deserting, hastening its collapse.
** It doesn't help that the Nationalists weren't much better off, despite using Catholicism to justify themselves. Especially by the time Franco came to power.
** Both sides committed numerous atrocities; the Republicans and International Brigades were probably less bad (no bombing of Guernica, after all), but some of their Anarchist colleagues had done some pretty spectacular stuff in the run-up to the war.
* HopelessWar: For the Republicans after the 1938 Munich Conference.
* {{Hypocrite}}: Rebel set-up courts sentenced loyalists to death under charges of "helping the rebellion". In fact, Franco continued to imprison disidents for "helping the rebellion" right to his own death, 40 years after the war.
* ImprovisedWeapon: The trench warfare saw the use of Molotov cocktails (before they were named that), dynamite and grenades thrown with ''slings'' made from belts, among other things.
* InternationalShowdownByProxy: The Spanish Civil War was, at its core, ultimately a war between NaziGermany and the SovietUnion, fought using Spanish supporters of their respective ideologies as puppets.
* {{Irony}}: Many, many examples.
** Due to many of the Republicans fleeing to France after the end of the war, the [[LaResistance French Resistance]] eventually came to include a unit of ''Germans'' leftover from the International Brigades.
** One of the proposed reasons for the attempt at a coup d'état was that the Communists were in charge of the Popular Front left-wing coalition and ready to turn Spain into a USSR-style nation. Popular Front governments certainly did have a history of turning out to be Communist puppets, but this wasn't the case in Spain -- until the war started and the only substantial military aid for the Republicans came from the USSR.
** The CEDA, despite being the most influential pre-war right-wing party and one of the main supporters of the military uprising, lost support quickly in the early stages of the war and was dissolved in 1937, its leader Gil Robles even going into exile ''and contacting exiled leftist politicians to conspire against Franco'' at some point.
** Franco likened his campaign to the SpanishReconquista, while leading an army of Muslims (with Jesus' Sacred Heart embroidered on their tunics) from Morocco to Toledo along the very same route used by Tariq ibn Zyad in 711 AD.
** The war ended in 1939, while the beginning of WorldWarTwo was just brewing at the time. Spain stayed out of WWII.
* IWillFightSomeMoreForever: Many of the surviving Republican soldiers and leaders never stopped fighting against the Nationalists despite having [[HopelessWar absolutely no chance of victory]], and as a result many of them were systematically hunted down and destroyed over the course of the next thirty years. A few of them were still around when [[VillainBall Franco, on his deathbed, inadvertently appointed a covert supporter of democracy as his successor]], and the new king proceeded to dismantle the dictatorship and restore democracy entirely non-violently, doing in months what his allies had been unable to do in thirty years.
* LaResistance: The Republicans became this after the Nationalist victory. Many of them fled to France, where they would join the ranks of the TropeNamer.
* LoadBearingBoss: A rare real-world example of a load-bearing ''city''. The civil war went on for years until effective Republican resistance ended completely with the fall of Madrid. They fought on for some time after that, but after Madrid fell it was obvious to all involved that a Nationalist victory was now a foregone conclusion, it was only a matter of time.
* LoopholeAbuse: Germany and Italy got around the naval arms blockade that they were supposed to enforce themselves by shipping weapons to Salazar's Portugal, which was mockingly nicknamed "Castile's port".
* TheManBehindTheMan: Mola planned to be this but it didn't quite work.
* MonumentalDamage: Extensive during the sieges of the Alcázar de Toledo and the Cuartel de la Montaña, and the three years long battle for the University City of Madrid.
* [[MyCountryRightOrWrong My Government Right, Or Wrong]]: General Antonio Escobar Huertas, conservative and devout Catholic, fought on the Republican side even though his son (later KIA) was on the opposite side. He was also the only general of the People's Army to not flee the country after the defeat even though his captor Juan Yagüe [[WorthyOpponent offered him a plane to do so]]. Sentenced to death, [[{{Badass}} he directed his own execution by firing squad]].
* TheNapoleon: Franco measured about 1.60 meters and was nicknamed "Paquito" (Little Paco) behind his back.
* NotSoDifferent: Both sides were basically an uneasy patchwork of loose alliances between different parts of Spanish society which, by war's end, and due primarily to [[WarIsHell the pressures of the war itself]], had both come to be dominated by the worst of their alliance. The Nationalists were controlled primarily by the ultra-authoritarian fascists of the Falange, and the Republic came to be dominated by the Stalinist wing of the Communist Party. Both sides also included sub-factions who were no better than the big players - the Nationalists' hardline absolute monarchists and religious fundamentalists, the Republic's radical anarchist faction, and others. Both sides also included more moderate and sympathetic factions - the Nationalists had a substantial contingent of political conservatives and moderates who supported democracy but were afraid of the Stalinists and Anarchists, while the Republicans had a substantial contingent of political liberals and moderates who supported democracy but were afraid of the Fascists and monarchists. And to cap it all off? In 1934 another (far smaller and localized) revolt had been launched against the Republic from the opposite end of the spectrum, and which was put down by young(er) Francisco Franco.
* PostApunkalypticArmor: The CNT's "tiznaos".
* {{Prequel}}: To WorldWarTwo.
* [[ScaryBlackMan Scary African Man]]: The Moroccan Regulares were especially feared by Republican militias and civilians. Queipo de Llano took advantage of this when seizing power in Seville [[EmergencyImpersonation by dressing his Spanish supporters in Moroccan garb]].
* RapePillageAndBurn: Queipo de Llano encouraged the rebels to do this in his radio program, as part of psychological warfare. Franco eventually forced him out of the radio to better his image in the international press.
* ScavengerWorld: The Non-Intervention Committee left the Republicans with no choice but to recycle everything, even captured ''barbed wire''. They ended up using 60 different types of rifles (versus 10 for the ''Nacionales''), 19 callibers and half a dozen helmets.
* ScrewThisImOuttaHere: Colonel Casado's coup and the rendition of Madrid.
* SecretPolice: The Republicans' SIM and the Soviet NKVD.
* SelfFulfillingProphecy: one of the reasons for the coup attempt was because the Nationalists feared the Communist Party, part of the Popular Front government, would turn Spain into a Spanish Soviet Republic. The Communist Party did not have any true power until after the coup, thanks to their contacts with the {=USSR=}.
* ShotAtDawn: The infamous "paseos".
* SubmarinePirates: Italian submarines operating without identification — in the words of one historian, as pirates — sank several Soviet and other merchant ships attempting to bring weapons to the Loyalist side.
* UriahGambit: The Blue Division has been quite strongly suspected of being Franco's way of getting rid of enthusiastic nationalists as soon as [[YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness he no longer needed them]].
* WaferThinMint: The murder of José Calvo Sotelo is widely considered to be the catalyst for the generals' revolt.
** Disputable. Plans for the coup that would start the war were already months underway by the time of the Sotelo and Castillo murders, and the war itself had been a long time in the coming. What it WAS likely a WaferThinMint for was the participation of Franco and the parts of the Army of Africa loyal to him.
* WarriorPoet: ''Lots'' of them - the Republican cause attracted an extremely large number of academics and intellectuals, more so than almost any other military in recent history. These included [[Creator/ErnestHemingway Ernest Hemingway]] and [[Creator/GeorgeOrwell George Orwell (Eric Blair)]].
* WeAreEverywhere: As his forces approached Madrid, the Nationalist general Emilio Mola said that the four columns of soldiers who he commanded would be assisted by a [[TropeNamer "fifth column"]] of covert Nationalist supporters residing in the city. While this didn't provide any significant support to the attack, it did make the Republicans fiercely paranoid of each other.
** And that "fifth column" rumor might even have been the catalyst for the Paracuellos massacre of November-December 1936. When the war started, many Nationalist sympathizers in Madrid were arrested and taken to prison. When the Nationalists began advancing towards Madrid, the Republican government left for Valencia, on the Mediterranean coast, leaving behind a "Defence Council" in charge of Madrid and its defence. The "Defence Council" was basically controlled by the Spanish Communist Party and its Soviet advisors. After the "fifth column" comment by Mola, the "Defence Council" (likely goaded by their Soviet advisors) took several thousand Nationalist sympathizers out of jail to a place near Paracuellos (a village not far from Madrid) and shot them there. To this date it is not known precisely how many people were killed there; estimates range from 2,000 to 12,000.
* WeAREStrugglingTogether: Both sides got this to some extent, but whereas Franco took control of the Nationalists fairly easily and peacefully (which is to say that there's no conclusive evidence that he killed Generals Sanjurjo or Mola), the Republic was burdened down by obscenely costly infighting between Pro-Soviet and Anti-Soviet factions with Anarchists and the Basques complicating the matter even further. The resulting purges probably sped the defeat.
* WhatTheHellHero: Despite the Nationalists' fascist leanings, the Western democracies refused to support the Republic due to [[RedScare fear of left-wing influence]]; the only major power that was willing to do so was the USSR, with the direct result of this being that the Stalinist wing of the Popular Front became increasingly influential and the more moderate elements were pushed to the side. As the Soviet Union became more influential over its politics, the Republic gradually became [[BlackAndGreyMorality little better than the Nationalists]].
** The Western democracies were indeed involved in the conflict; they publicly proclaimed non-interference, but in secret they sent money and resources to support the Republican side- France especially, since they had a social democratic government in power and Spain was its neighbour (as were Germany and Italy, and they didn't want '''3''' Fascist nations next to them). They did not contribute as much as the dictatorships, but legally they were still bound by non-interference treaties by the almost-dead League of Nations (the others either weren't, or ignored it), and they were in shakier financial situations. And at the outset of the war, the Nationalists were not yet dominated by Fascists, and Fascism in general was not as (rightly) vilified as it would be after the Second World War (if still- rightly- vilified), and with Stalin's purges getting underway at this point in time the political far-Left was looking a lot worse than the far-Right. And aside from all that, one of the catalysts for the war was Left-inspired mob violence so, at the very best, neither side was looking like someone the demoracies would want to help put in power. Even the non-Stalinist Republican factions were not necessarily friendly. 
* WrittenByTheWinners: Inverted outside of Spain and fascist countries: Thanks to the many authors and other artists fighting in the international brigades, their side of the story is much better known. 
** In fact, one would be hard-pressed to find any literature or music supporting the Nationalist side at all outside Spain. 
** As TomLehrer mockingly sang: "Remember the war against Franco, that's the kind where each of us belongs. Though he may have won all the battles, we had all the good songs."
* XMeetsY: Third Carlist War meets WorldWarOne meets WorldWarTwo.
* YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness: Franco got rid of the leaders of the CEDA, (original) Falange and the Carlists by imprisoning or exiling them as soon as they had fulfilled their part supporting the rebellion and seizing the areas where they were stronger; he then unified all rebel groups under a single "Movimiento Nacional" with himself as its leader. Falange's Manuel Hedilla was even sentenced to death in 1937 but then changed to exile in the Canary and Balearic Islands for 10 years. After the war, Franco also appointed Queipo de Llano and Millán-Astray to missions in Italy and Portugal expressly [[KickedUpstairs to get them out of the way.]]
* YouShallNotPass: "No pasarán!". Followed by a TakeThat from Franco after Madrid finally fell: "We have passed."
* YourTerroristsAreOurFreedomFighters: More like your ''criminals'' are our freedom fighters - the Nationalist government prohibited the country's media from reporting on the actions of [[TheRemnant Republican]] [[LaResistance Maquis]] as anything other than isolated bandit attacks or crime sprees; one of the reasons the Maquis finally lost was that their political motivations - and, in some cases, their very existence - were usually completely unknown outside of the immediate area they operated in.

!!In fiction
* In the final two episodes of ''WhenTheBoatComesIn'', Jack Ford takes a yacht to run rifles to the Republican forces. [[spoiler: It doesn't end well. Jack's ultimately mortally wounded in a shootout.]]
* ''Literature/ForWhomTheBellTolls'', by Creator/ErnestHemingway. The main character is an American journalist who originally came to simply cover the war for a newspaper back home, but has, by the time the story begins, joined one side and become a respected demolition expert.
* ''PansLabyrinth'' is set just after the civil war, and the plot includes the fascist Captain Vidal weeding out the last few Republican holdout groups.
* ''LandAndFreedom'' by Ken Loach, follows the [[TearJerker tragic fate]] of a volunteer in the International Brigades. There are many similarities with Creator/GeorgeOrwell's book cited below.
* ''{{Libertarias}}'', a film following the exploits of a group of women who together join an anarcho-feminist militia fighting for the Republic.
* It is mentioned as a bit of foreshadowing that protagonist Rick Blaine fought in the Spanish Civil War on the Republicans' side in ''{{Casablanca}}''.
* Near the end of PeterJackson's {{Mockumentary}} ''Forgotten Silver'', it is revealed that New Zealand filmmaker Colin McKenzie met his end during the Spanish Civil War, while fighting on the Republicans' side in northern Africa.
* More than one ''AxisPowersHetalia'' (dark) fanwork involve the civil war in one way or another. Whichever side Spain chooses, he's bound to wind up an insane wreck by the end.
* In general, there are quite a few Spanish movies set during the Civil War, mostly human dramas and the like, but you can find most genres, even ''comedy''. As a result, MemeticMutation arose claiming every Spanish film is set on the Spanish Civil War.
* One of GarthEnnis' ''War Stories'' is set during a battle, in which a Spanish Republican, a German pilot, an English International Brigades volunteer, and an Irish psychopath find themselves seeking cover in the same crater. They all declare an uneasy truce until the battle ends and tell each other their stories. The Spanish guy ends it with a ReasonYouSuckSpeech to each of them: to the German because Germany is using Spain to [[WorldWarII test their equipment for the next one]], the Englishman because he's a NaiveNewcomer believing in peaceful communism, and the Irishman because he's completely insane. They all split off after the artillery stops without shooting at each other, except for the Irishman who jumps back in waiting (in vain) for those bastards to ambush him.

!!Non-fiction
* ''Mourir à Madrid'' (''To Die in Madrid''), French documentary film directed by Frédéric Rossif.
* ''Literature/HomageToCatalonia,'' Creator/GeorgeOrwell's classic memoir of his volunteer service in the International Brigades on the Republican side. Moreover, Orwell's experience of the bloody opposition between the POUM militia he served in and the Stalinists of the Communist Party probably gave birth to his criticism of the USSR later expressed in ''AnimalFarm'' and ''Literature/NineteenEightyFour''.
* ''Franco's International Brigades'', a book which proves there were actually more volunteers fighting for Franco than for the Republic, even if they did include gay Norwegian Nazis and drunken Belgian aristocrats.

!!Painting

* ''Guernica'', by Pablo Picasso.
* ''Premonition of Civil War'', by Salvador Dalí.

!!Music
* TheClash song ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Bombs Spanish Bombs]]'' celebrates the Republicans who fought in the conflict.
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31st May '13 5:03:46 PM Milarqui

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11th May '13 10:00:10 AM ferox

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11th May '13 9:52:34 AM ferox