The military uprising started in Morocco on July 17, 1936, and quickly spread to the garrisons of metropolitan Spain. The Civil War took place because the rising was successful only in Old Castile, in Navarra, where Carlist support was decisive, and, of the larger towns, in Zaragoza, Sevilla, Córdoba, Valladolid, and Cádiz. Galicia soon went over to the Nationalists, as did most of Andalusia. Catalonia and the Basque provinces were loyal to the government because the republic guaranteed their autonomy. In Madrid and Barcelona the security forces, aided by the workers who were armed belatedly by the government, defeated the officers. Thus, in broadest terms, the Republic held the centre, the Levant, Catalonia, and the Basque industrial zones; the Nationalists controlled the food-producing areas, which was to cause an increasingly acute food shortage in the Republican zone.

The role of the workers in defeating the rising made their organizations the power in the Republican zone. The legal government was bypassed or totally supplanted by local committees and trade unions; the workers’ militia replaced the dissolved army. In many parts of Spain a social revolution took place in July 1936 as factories and farms were collectivized. The English novelist George Orwell described Barcelona, where the CNT was all-powerful, as “a town where the working class was in the saddle.” The success of working-class control, in terms of increased production, is difficult to estimate.

The revolution was distasteful to the Left Republicans and to the Communist Party of Spain (Partido Comunista de España; PCE), the latter growing rapidly in number and in political influence because it controlled the supply of arms from the Soviet Union, which—given the refusal of Britain and France to support the legitimate and democratically elected Republican government or even to allow it to purchase arms—became the Republic’s only significant ally. In the name of an efficient war effort and the preservation of “bourgeois” elements in the Popular Front, the communists pressed for a popular army and central government control. In September–November 1936, the CNT was brought into the government of Catalonia and into Largo Caballero’s ministry in Madrid—an astonishing step for a movement that had consistently rejected “bourgeois” politics. The CNT militants did not approve the leaders’ “surrender” and the dismantling of the militia-backed revolution.

A small Marxist revolutionary party, the Workers’ Party of Marxist Unification (Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista; POUM), which rejected the Popular Front in favour of a workers’ government, set off a rebellion in Barcelona in May 1937. The communists, Republicans, and anti-Caballero socialists used this as an excuse to oust Largo Caballero, who proved insufficiently pliable to communist demands. The government led by the socialist doctor Juan Negrín was a coalition of Republicans, socialists, and communists. Thus, the UGT and CNT trade unions were replaced by the political parties.

The communists were correct in arguing that the committee-militia system was militarily ineffective. Ferried over from Morocco, General Franco’s army cut through the militia and neared Madrid by November 1936. The successful resistance of the city, which was stiffened by the arrival of the International Brigades, organized by the Communist International, and by Soviet arms, prolonged the Civil War for two more years.

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Victory ultimately went to the Nationalists, who had a better army, unified political control, and an adequate arms supply. The core of the Nationalist army was the African army commanded by General Franco. Given the confused political control in Republican Spain, the secure military and political command of Franco (from October 1936) was decisive. In April 1937 he incorporated the Falange and the Carlists into a unified movement under his leadership. Franco also benefited from the support of the Roman Catholic Church, which proclaimed his cause a “Crusade.”

The Nationalist zone saw the extensive use of terror against anyone suspected of being a “Red.” The number of people killed for political reasons is unclear, but even conservative estimates put the figure at 80,000 between the outbreak of the war and 1943. The Republican zone also saw numerous political killings, including some 7,000 members of the clergy, but the circumstances were radically different. The vast majority of the executions in the Republican zone took place in the early months of the war when government authority had broken down. In contrast, the Nationalists consciously used terror as a policy, one that continued well after the war had ended.

Both sides sought help from abroad. General Franco appealed immediately to Hitler in Germany and to Benito Mussolini in Italy, both of whom supplied aircraft early in the war. In return for mineral concessions, the Germans supplied the Condor Legion (100 combat planes), and the Italians sent some 70,000 ground troops; both supplied tanks and artillery. This support proved crucial to Franco’s victory.

The Republic consistently hoped that France and Britain would allow them to acquire arms. Owing to fears of a general war and domestic pressures, however, both powers promoted a nonintervention agreement (August 1936), which committed 29 countries to refrain from selling war matériel to either side in the Spanish conflict. The agreement was supposed to be enforced by a London-based committee, but this turned out to be nothing more than a facade that did little to hinder the blatant violations by Germany and Italy.

The Soviet Union responded to the breakdown of nonintervention by supplying arms to the Republican side. Soviet supplies were of great importance (tanks, aircraft, and a military mission) after October 1936. Mexico also provided aid to the Republicans, though its support was very limited. Soviet supplies dropped off in 1938, and thereafter the balance of arms supply decisively favoured the Nationalists. Once the Popular Army replaced the militia, the Republic held Madrid and defeated two flanking attacks in the battles of Jarama (February 1937) and Guadalajara (March 1937), where the International Brigades decisively defeated a motorized Italian corps.

After his failure at Madrid, Franco transferred his effort to the north, where the bombing of Guernica (Gernika-Lumo) on April 26, 1937, by German planes outraged public opinion in the democracies. By October 1937 Franco had captured the industrial zone, shortened his front, and won a decisive advantage. When Franco concentrated again on Madrid, the Republican army staged its most effective offensive in the Battle of Teruel (launched December 15, 1937). Franco, however, recovered Teruel and drove to the sea, but he committed his one strategic error in deciding to launch a difficult attack on Valencia. To relieve Valencia, the Republicans attacked across the Ebro (July 24, 1938); once more they failed to exploit the breakthrough, and the bloody battle exhausted the Popular Army.

The final Nationalist campaign in Catalonia was relatively easy. On the Republican side, the question of the feasibility of continued resistance, which was supported by the communists and Negrín, caused acute political divisions. On March 7, 1939, a civil war broke out in Madrid between communists and anticommunists. On March 28 the Nationalist forces entered a starving capital.