The civil war after the Civil War

Rodrigo recently published La guerra degenerada (Pasado & Presente), a work whose objective is to provide a comprehensive overview of the violence unleashed in large areas of rural Spain and its impact on the civilian population. It challenges the view that the Civil War ended abruptly, as armed conflicts continued for more than a decade. So much so that, although the government publicly referred to the guerrillas as mere bandits, for many years it internally acknowledged the magnitude of the problem. For this reason, the state of war continued until 1949, and the Civil Guard admitted in its orders and communications at that time that it was still on campaign.

This is, in the author's opinion, one of the longest-running insurgency phenomena of the 20th century in Europe, as it began as early as 1936, when Republican-affiliated groups found themselves trapped in the Nationalist zone and decided to take to the hills. Many of them were either captured or managed to flee to Republican territory, but in any case, even if they managed to maintain their activity, it was merely resistance. In the next phase, between 1939 and 1944, something similar occurred. During this stage, groups disorganized after their defeat in the Civil War resisted as best they could in rural areas, isolated and with little support.

It was with the invasion of the Aran Valley that the scale and organization of the armed resistance grew. But this did so in parallel with the increase in cruelty and the level of violence, both in the repressive measures against the guerrillas and in the actions of the maquis themselves. During this phase, between 1944 and 1948, most of the 8,000 deaths caused by the long irregular war occurred. This was the period in which the military resorted to practices such as depopulating entire areas, such as certain areas in northern Castellón; "free fire," that is, shooting without warning at anyone violating the curfew; and setting forests arson to force guerrillas from ambush to leave, in a strategy reminiscent of the US bombing of rural areas in Vietnam two decades later.

And, of course, among these tactics were the coercion, torture, imprisonment, and executions of civilians viewed by the military as enemies for their potential cover for the guerrillas. What this population group actually did or didn't do was secondary. The repressive practices against this group are reminiscent, albeit with a distinction due to the scale and nature of the respective conflicts, of those of the Axis occupying forces throughout Europe during World War II.

Even the rhetoric of the Spanish state was very similar to that of the Nazis. It was the latter who theorized about "degenerate warfare," that is, a war that, being irregular, was not subject to the conventions of traditional combat. Therefore, the repressive practices were of a cruelty and indiscriminate violence that would have been unacceptable in normal conflicts.

It cannot be said, by any stretch of the imagination, that the majority of the civilian population supported the insurgents. First, because not everyone agreed ideologically with them; second, out of fear, because helping the guerrillas, whether voluntarily or as a result of coercion—which was more common—was severely punished; and finally, because of the maquis' own violence. "The myth of the good resistance fighter is just that, a myth," Rodrigo asserts.

Beginning in 1947-48, as a result of the regime's counterinsurgency successes and changes in the international situation, the non-communist organizations that had supported the armed struggle changed their position, and the PCE did so as well, although not until a few years later. During this final period, the guerrillas' activity, lacking supplies and with little domestic or foreign support, once again became a struggle for survival, as it had been after the defeat of 1939.

One of the most striking contributions of Javier Rodrigo's study is the connection between the Spanish guerrilla movement and what happened in Europe during World War II and the years immediately following. In reality, insurgency movements were very common throughout the occupied continent, such as Italy, Greece, Yugoslavia, and France. In the case of the latter country, moreover, the presence of Spaniards within the resistance was very large, so that with the end of the German occupation, many of them joined the guerrilla ranks on the peninsula.

But there are also differences. The main one is that north of the Pyrenees, the partisans were facing foreign occupation, so the characteristics of the insurgency and counterinsurgency were different, even more cruel, and the scale was greater. For example, the 8,000 deaths resulting from the persecution of the guerrillas in Spain are very different from the 50,000 or 60,000 in Italy.

Part of the book is devoted to repression specifically targeting women. While little direct female participation in armed actions is documented, in the case of support networks—information or supplies, for example—it can be considered that the involvement of both sexes was equal. In this context, law enforcement developed repressive practices in which gender violence was a frequently used tool, as can be concluded from hundreds of files and court rulings studied by the author. Between the lines, one can read the stories of many women subjected to torture and coercion because the authorities suspected that, for romantic or family reasons, they maintained ties with guerrillas. The book begins with one such case, that of a 21-year-old woman living in the north of the province of Seville. The authorities suspected she was in a relationship with a local guerrilla, who had died a month earlier in combat with the Civil Guard. The young woman was examined by a doctor who certified that "after examining her genitals," a "rupture of the imen (sic)" was observed, a sign that, for the agents, was sufficient to confirm their suspicions. Shortly afterward, they extracted a confession, apparently under duress, from the young woman's mother, which indeed pointed to her daughter's relationship with the guerrilla. Later, both women alleged before the judge that they had been subjected to torture and ill-treatment by Civil Guard officers to force them to sign self-incriminating statements. However, the court ignored these allegations, and they were sentenced to prison for aiding and abetting criminals.

But the book draws another parallel with Europe: the irregular civil war that began after the end of the conventional war and prolonged the armed conflict for more than a decade. In Rodrigo's opinion, after World War II and throughout the second half of the 20th century, civil wars mostly became irregular conflicts, as happened, for example, in Greece (1946-1949). With its own characteristics, the Spanish guerrilla movement follows a clearly continental dynamic.

What was the true impact of this irregular warfare? “In the guerrillas' memoirs, you can often read phrases similar to the fact that they were 'the fist that struck Franco's regime,' but objectively, their importance was much more discreet,” says Rodrigo, adding that while in some rural areas they were very present in daily life, in the big cities, on the other hand, “they weren't even aware of their existence.” And the regime, obviously, never faltered despite opposition propaganda. A sadly poor record for 16 years of guerrilla warfare, with an enormous loss of human life and tens of thousands of victims of reprisals.