On the 80th Anniversary of the Spanish Civil War

The Civil War was, with a doubt, the most important historical event in twentieth century Spain. A legally and legitimately elected government was assaulted by a segment of the military. The rebels were supported by a highly efficient civilian conspiracy. There was a before and an after to the war. The before was an imperfect and struggling democracy in need of political, economic, social and cultural modernization. The after, a dictatorship which lasted some 40 years. Over the course of the war there were nearly half a million deaths and a massive repression. The war was also the occasion for an armed clash of the ideologies predominant in the 1930s: liberalism, socialism, fascism and communism, as well as the prelude to the yet undeclared but forthcoming European conflict.