Category: Spanish Civil War

The assassination of José Calvo Sotelo on 13 July 1936 was one of the most consequential political murders in modern Spanish history. Not because political violence was unusual, but that appeared to become the final straw which saw a months-long coup plan finally get launched.

By the summer of 1936, Calvo Sotelo had become the most prominent voice of the monarchist right. A former finance minister under the dictatorship of Miguel Primo de Rivera, he had returned from exile after the fall of the monarchy and emerged as leader of the Bloque Nacional (National Bloc), a right-wing monarchist coalition. Calvo Sotelo regarded the parliamentary system as a failure and increasingly argued that Spain required a strong state capable of restoring order. To supporters he represented authority, patriotism and resistance to revolution, but was actually a representative of radical reactionary movement that was preparing to destroy the Republic. He openly advocated for the end of parliaments and democracy, to end giving people the opportunity to vote, and make Spain an authoritarian state.

His speeches in the Cortes became increasingly confrontational during the first half of 1936. Following the Popular Front’s electoral victory in February, Spain experienced an escalating wave of political violence. Churches were attacked, Falangists and left-wing activists exchanged gunfire in the streets, strikes spread across the country, and political funerals often became demonstrations. Calvo Sotelo used these developments relentlessly against the government. In parliamentary debates he recited lists of attacks, murders and disturbances, arguing that the Republic had lost control of the country. The most famous of these exchanges occurred on 16 June 1936. During a stormy session of the Cortes, Calvo Sotelo accused the government of presiding over disorder and allowing revolutionary forces to operate with impunity. The debate descended into furious argument. Prime Minister Santiago Casares Quiroga rejected the accusations and blamed the right for encouraging conspiracy. Other deputies joined the confrontation. Calvo Sotelo’s defended his authoritarian corporative ideal and announced, ‘If that is the fascist State, I declare myself a fascist,’ and called for military action the government and the people. Prime Minister Santiago Casares Quiroga announced he would hold Calvo Sotelo responsible if any military coup harmed Spain and her democracy, and Calvo Sotelo declared it was better ‘to die with glory than to live with vilification.’ Calvo Sotelo was threatened with violence even in parliament sittings, and seemed to relish stirring up hatred, and happily announced he knew he was on leftist kill lists.

At the same time, military officers across Spain were conspiring against the Republic. General Emilio Mola had spent months organising a military uprising. Monarchist groups were providing money and political support to anti-Republican movements. Although Calvo Sotelo was not directing the conspiracy, many on the left viewed him as a civilian ally of those preparing to overthrow the government. His prominence ensured that he occupied a unique position in Spanish politics as one of the most recognisable opponents of the Republic.

The immediate chain of events that led to his death began on the evening of 12 July. Lieutenant José Castillo, an Cuerpo de Seguridad y Asalto, Assault Guard officer and socialist activist, was shot and killed in Madrid. Castillo was a member of the anti-fascist military organisation UMRA, he had been involved in suppressing right-wing unrest and had acquired numerous enemies among Falangists and monarchists. News of his death spread quickly through socialist circles and among fellow Assault Guards, and friends, colleagues and political allies gathered during the evening and night. They knew right-wing extremists had murdered Castillo and demanded retaliation. Among those present was Captain Fernando Condés Romero, a close friend of the dead officer. Also present were other members of the socialist militia La Motorizada, including Luis Cuenca Estevas, a bodyguard attached to the socialist leader Indalecio Prieto.

Exactly what was decided during those hours remains one of the most contested questions in the history of the Second Republic. Testimony collected later was often contradictory, and the outbreak of civil war prevented a full investigation. What is known is that a mixed group of Assault Guards, police officers and socialist militants left Pontejos Barracks in official vehicles during the early hours of 13 July. Several later accounts suggested that the original objective may have been José María Gil-Robles, leader of the conservative CEDA. Whether or not this was true, the expedition eventually focused on Calvo Sotelo.

Between 2am and 3am, police van no. 17, which could seat up to sixteen people in five rows,  arrived at Calvo Sotelo home on Calle de Velázquez , and Calvo Sotelo opened the door himself, believing it safe for his family and staff, given the officials present including Captain Condés. His house was given a quick, rough search and Calvo Sotelo tried to use parliamentary immunity to avoid arrest, but went quietly, warning his wife he suspected he would die.

The van was driven by Assault Guard Orencio Bayo Cambrenero, with Captain Condés in the middle, and José del Rey Hernández in civilian clothing. The second row sat Ricardo Cruz Cousillos and two unknown men, and Calvo Sotelo was placed in the third row between Aniceto Castro Piñeiro and an unknown man. In the fourth row, which was supposed to have men facing those in row five, was four socialists – Santiago Carcés Arroyo, Luis Cuenca Estevas, Federico Coello, and Francisco Ordéñez Peña. The back seat had three more Assault Guards, Esteban Seco and Bienvenido Perez Rojo, and an unknown man.

Soon  after leaving Velázquez Street, they headed down Alcalá Street and turned onto Ayala Street when Luis Cuenca turned around and drew a pistol, and shot Calvo Sotelo twice in the back of the head. They then allegedly stopped by a parked car which had two of Jose del Castillo’s friends inside, Alfonso Barbeta and Máximo Moreno, and three others (including possibly including León Lupión and Antonio Moreno), and they paused to chat. Then, just after 4am, Esteban Fernández Sánchez and Daniel Tejero Cabello, two gravediggers at Cemetario del Este opened the gates to an official vehicle asking to drop off the undocumented corpse of a night-watchman, which was left on the mortuary floor. Neither men knew it was Calvo Sotelo, and were suspicious as the man was well dressed. Multiple claims and theories have been shared on what came after, though what is known for sure was all the men involved were told to stay silent back at the barracks, and the van was cleaned out.

Calvo Sotelo’s wife had raised the alarm as soon as he disappeared, calling on family and friends to find out what was happening. By dawn various groups and their leaders had swung into action, but knew how dire the situation was. By 9am, the morgue called about the unidentified body, and soon Calvo Sotelo was identified and his family arrived at the cemetery along with a media contingent.

At 8am, Socialist leader and editor of the PSOE newspaper El Socialista Julián Zugazagoitia, received a visitor, whom he never named. The man, now believed but never identified as Luis Cuenca, told Zugazagoitia that he had killed Calvo Sotelo. ‘In the street, still silent and dark at night, a van of Assault Guards was waiting. They got the conspirators into the car and forced Calvo Sotelo to get in. The van started up. Calvo Sotelo did not utter a word of complaint or protest. Was he praying? In the seat behind him, two men carried their guns. One of them nudged his companion, the latter raised his gun, placed it at Calvo Sotelo’s head and fired twice. Death must have been instantaneous. The dead man’s head bent over his chest and the body, in a swerve of the vehicle, leaned against the guard on the right (likely Piñeiro). As everything was foreseen, the driver took the direction of the cemetery and there, in the morgue, they left the body of the victim, where a few hours later it had to be discovered by his friends, disturbed with the loss that deprived them, at the same time, of an esteemed person and of a leader. As impressive as the story my interlocutor had told me was, I was even more impressed, without knowing why, by the clarification with which he ended the interview. “Before deciding to execute the reprisal we were hesitating whether to go to Gil-Robles’ or Calvo Sotelo’s house. We decided on the latter with the purpose of returning for Gil-Robles if we ended up soon at Calvo Sotelo’s house.” After my confidant had left, a feeling of disgust and uneasiness came over my body’ – Zugazagoitia, Julián (2007) [1940]. Guerra y vicisitudes de los españoles. 

It was Captain Fernando Condés of the Guardia Civil who was more likely to blow open the whole assassination, when he arrived at PSOE headquarters and tearfully confessed to what had happened in the night. He had not believed it was going to be a killing, he claimed, only a kidnapping, though he didn’t think Calvo Sotelo was worth saving either. Now he knew the death would be blamed on the entire government, the entire Republican movement.

The government attempted to respond. Investigations began and some participants were identified and interrogated, and an autopsy was performed. The hastily cleaned van still had blood in its floorboards, and logbooks of the vans were missing. News and hysteria had taken over and Luis Cuenca was seen in a restaurant getting upset that the truth of the night was not being reported, accidentally implicating himself in public. Captain Condés was reported as hiding in the home of PSOE politician Margarita Nelken, as one of her bodyguards, del Rey, was also in the van that night. Whether Nelken ever harboured Condés has never been proven, and he was ready to kill himself over what he had done, only to be restrained by others.

Public vigils and memorials for Calvo Sotelo were banned that night, furthering angering right-wing crowds, though the government claimed it was to prevent what would have been inevitable street violence. The investigation into the death was slow and haphazard given the breakdown of society, and the outbreak of war a few days later meant everything came to a halt. The funeral held on 14 July drew massive crowds, which were fired up on by left-wing groups. There had been five dozen such killings within just the last month, and while Calvo Sotelo was the most high profile killing, the outpouring of support at the funeral was not new; both sides had seen huge turnouts and inevitable violence.

As war broke out, Fernando Condés and Luis Cuenca both joined the Battle of Guadarrama just north of Madrid. Cuenca died on July 22 while attempting to take Somosierra mountains. Condés was wounded nearby on July 23 and died three days later in Madrid, receiving a huge funeral and eulogies lamenting his loss. The others involved in the assassination were promoted within the Republican forces, with Santiago Garcés Arroyo the head of Military Intelligence Service, Francisco Ordóñez Peña became leader of the State Information Service, and Federico Coello became a  Military Health commander. Lieutenant Máximo Moreno died on September 22 when his plane crashed, a suspected suicide. Van driver Orencio Bayo was released after arrest on July 25 and returned to his post driving for the Assault Guards. José del Rey Hernández began command of Republican units during the Siege of the Alcázar in Toledo. Several others who were arrested and suspected of knowing or being part of the van operation were all released by August 1936.

On 25 July, a group of militiamen stormed the Supreme Court and stole and destroyed all the files related to the Calvo Sotelo case. All attempts to recreate the paperwork from memory were futile. Everyone involved was now at war, and finding a jury or judge to be impartial on the case would have been impossible. All crimes committed prior to 15 July were cleared under an amnesty in 1937.

After the war, several member of the van were arrested as the Franco dictatorship began their decades of retribution. Aniceto Castro Piñeiro, Bienvenido Pérez Rojo, driver Orencio Bayo Cambronero, and José del Rey Hernández were all rounded up. Del Rey was  executed by garrotte in 1943, and in his statement, said the others in the van were innocent, unaware of the mission that they had been sent on that night. Commander Ricardo Burillo, head of the Assault Guard who had ordered everyone to be silent and cover up the death was also executed despite lac of evidence. Van driver Bayo’s death sentence was commuted to thirty years, serving eight years before release. All those who had been promoted to high-ranking diplomatic posts were not arrested. Neither Ricardo Cruz Cousillos, Estaban Secos, or the four unknown guards were ever found, and likely died in the war or were in exile. Neither side of Spanish politics really did a full investigation into the death of Calvo Sotelo, but the flashpoint served its purpose for the right giving them a perfect excuse to launch their plan to overthrow Spain. 

 

On Sunday 12 July 1936, Madrid was already living in a state of political fever. The city had not yet become the besieged capital of a civil war, but it was no longer a normal European capital either. Rumours moved faster than police reports. Political funerals had become demonstrations. Uniforms, party badges, newspapers, churches, cafés and street corners all carried danger.

Lieutenant José del Castillo Sáenz de Tejada was thirty-five years old, an officer of the Guardia de Asalto (Assault Guard), the urban security force created under the Republic. He was also known as a man of the left,  sympathising with socialism, belonged to the anti-fascist military organisation Unión Militar Republicana Antifascista (UMRA), and had helped train socialist militia groups. This made him admired by some and hated by others; to his enemies on the right, he was not simply a policeman. He was a uniformed symbol of the Republic’s armed left.

Castillo had already been marked. After the violence surrounding the April 1936 funeral of Anastasio de los Reyes, in which right-wing and Falangist mourners clashed with security forces and left-wing crowds, Castillo’s name became associated with the bloodshed. One of those injured was José Luis Llaguno Acha, a young Carlist. Castillo was nearly lynched by the protesters and had to be removed from the scene by the officers under his command, who took him to the Dirección General de Seguridad (General Directorate of Security), where he gave a statement and was released without charge. From that day on, Castillo became a target of right-wing militias; threats became frequent, and his superiors proposed transferring him out of Madrid, which he refused. He survived two assassination attempts, and the Socialist Youth militias escorted him without his knowledge. His wife, Consuelo Morales, said that before their wedding she had received an anonymous warning asking why she was marrying a man who would soon be a corpse. Whether the threat came from Falangists, Carlists, or another right-wing group remains disputed, but the meaning was plain enough. The sense of danger had sharpened further in May, when Captain Carlos Faraudo, another officer linked with socialist militia training, was shot dead in Madrid. Castillo and Faraudo were both military men who had sided with the Republic and the workers, and who therefore seemed to be targets in a campaign of political assassination.

That Sunday evening Castillo spent time like an ordinary young husband in summer Madrid. Some accounts say he had been to the bullring at Las Ventas and then walked with Consuelo through the city. Shortly before ten o’clock, Castillo left his home in Calle Augusto Figueroa. His destination was the Pontejos barracks near Puerta del Sol, where he was due to begin service with his company at ten. The route was short and familiar, with the streets still filled with people living an ordinary day like himself. At the junction of Calle Augusto Figueroa and Calle Fuencarral, near the small religious building, the chapel of the Humilladero, several men were waiting.

The official account given that night by the Undersecretary of the Interior, Bibiano Fernández Osorio y Tafall, stated that at about 10:05 p.m. a group of apparently four men were waiting near Castillo’s home. As Castillo appeared, one of them identified him. A witness heard the words, that’s him, that’s him.’ One of the most vivid accounts came from the passerby Fernán Cruz, who had just got off a tram near Augusto Figueroa and Fuencarral. He said he saw the Assault Guard lieutenant coming across the street when four or five men suddenly appeared behind him. Cruz could not be certain of the exact number. He heard one of them shout, ‘That’s him, that’s him; shoot him.’ A burst of gunfire followed and Castillo staggered and fell against Cruz, knocking him to the ground. Cruz later said he was so shaken that he lost his glasses and, in his confusion, briefly put on another pair found near the body before someone returned his own. Castillo did not have time to defend himself, struck in the arm and the chest. Doctors later recorded a wound to the left arm, breaking his upper arm, and a fatal wound in the precordial region near the heart. Another civilian was also hit, an eighteen-year-old José Luis Álvarez, a pharmacy assistant from Calle Malasaña, was seriously wounded with a fractured femur.

Cruz and another man, named in press accounts as Félix Terán or Torán, helped put Castillo into a passing car or taxi and took him to the surgical emergency centre in Calle de la Ternera. According to the medical account, Castillo died before or during the journey. Cruz remembered what he believed were Castillo’s final words, which were, ‘take me to my wife, who has only just left me.’

Consuelo Morales soon arrived at the medical centre after hearing that something had happened. Those present tried to prevent her from seeing the corpse, and told her he was wounded rather than dead, but she suspected the truth. Contemporary press descriptions of her arrival are highly emotional, but even allowing for journalistic drama, the scene appears to have been devastating. By around eleven o’clock, the killing had become more than a crime scene. Senior officials arrived, including the Dirección General de Seguridad, José Alonso Mallol. Officers, agents and police officials gathered. The body was transferred to the DGS, where a chapel of rest was set up in the Salón Rojo. Castillo’s uniform jacket was placed back on him after he had been examined. Family members came. So did comrades, officers, Assault Guards, political allies, workers and sympathisers. At the Pontejos barracks, Castillo’s associates were furious. They believed the killing was part of a chain of right-wing attacks against officers loyal to the Republic and sympathetic to the left. In the barracks and around the security offices, the word that mattered was revenge. According to later reconstructions, some officers and guards shouted that they could no longer tolerate fascist gunmen killing them while the government did nothing.

Who killed Castillo remains one of the disputed points. Many accounts, especially Republican and left-wing accounts at the time, blamed Falangist gunmen. Historians such as Paul Preston and Gabriel Jackson have also identified the killers as Falangists or right-wing extremists. Ian Gibson, after detailed investigation, argued instead that the killers were Carlist requetés, acting in revenge for the earlier wounding of José Luis Llaguno Acha, but this was proven false. Other writers have suggested links to the UME, the right-wing military conspiracy. Falangists were suspected of the crime. Besides being an instructor in the Motorized Brigade, Castillo had recently implicated in the death of Andrés Sáenz de Heredia, a Falangist and cousin of José Antonio. Historian Hugh Thomas blamed to Ángel Alcázar de Velasco, who was in prison but had associates who could carry out an attack, though they claimed they had received an express order from José Antonio Primo Rivera (also imprisoned at the time) not to carry out the assassination. A member of the Unión Militar Española (Spanish Military Union, UME), Alfonso Gómez-Cobián confessed to the killing, but got all the details of the event wrong and was likely not even in Madrid that night. Other conspiracy theories claim evidence that it was an inside job, designed to provoke the assassination of José Calvo Sotelo in the next few hours, which contradicts the beliefs around his own killing. 

José and Consuelo had only married less than a month earlier on 20 May, and Consuelo was three months pregnant. She and her family fled to the relative safety of Valencia, and gave birth to a daughter in January 1937. She was arrested along with her family on unspecified charges in 1939, but she was released nine months later, in time to see her child pass away, and she was not granted her full widow’s pension until 1983 when the country had finally thrown off Franco and the tentative years of establishing democracy.

These types of killings had been happening all over Spain for some time, and Castillo’s name would have likely been forgotten like so many others, had Castillo’s associates not travelled to José Calvo Sotelo’s home in the early hours of 13 July 1936. 

When the military uprising began in Barcelona on 19 July 1936, women appeared in public spaces in ways that challenged assumptions held by supporters and opponents. Some carried rifles, joined militia units, helped defend barricades, and travelled to the front. Others became organisers, journalists, educators, political activists, trade unionists, committee members, and public representatives of the anti-fascist struggle. The image of the miliciana, the armed anti-fascist woman wearing overalls or a militia cap,  quickly became one of the defining symbols of the early Spanish Civil War. Photographs of young women carrying rifles in the streets of Barcelona circulated across Europe. To many observers, they appeared to represent a revolution not only in politics but also in gender relations, though the reality behind those images was more complex than later mythology often suggested. Women in Barcelona did not suddenly become politically active when the military uprising began. By the summer of 1936, thousands of women were already participating in the social, economic, and political life of the city, although their opportunities remained constrained by law, custom, and deeply rooted expectations about gender.

Barcelona was one of the most industrialised cities in Spain. Women worked throughout the city’s economy, particularly in the textile industry, garment workshops, food processing, domestic service, retail businesses, and other forms of wage labour. Many working-class families depended upon the earnings of women as well as men, especially during periods of economic hardship. Female workers often endured long hours, low pay, and insecure employment. Married women frequently faced the additional burden of domestic responsibilities alongside paid work. These conditions helped draw many women toward labour organisations. Women participated in strikes, workplace disputes, and union campaigns long before the Civil War began. Although men dominated most senior positions within the labour movement, women were active members of trade unions and frequently took part in collective action. During major strikes in Barcelona, women appeared on picket lines, attended meetings, organised neighbourhood networks, and confronted employers and police alongside male workers.

Political participation was expanding during the years of the Second Republic. Women gained the right to vote in 1931 and first exercised that right in the general election of 1933. Access to education improved, secular schools expanded, and debates about divorce, marriage, religion, and women’s rights became increasingly visible within Spanish society. For many women, particularly those from working-class backgrounds, these changes created opportunities that had not existed a generation earlier. At the same time, traditional expectations remained powerful. Spanish society in the 1930s was still overwhelmingly shaped by assumptions that women should prioritise marriage, motherhood, domestic responsibilities, and religious life. Even within progressive political movements, many men who supported social reform continued to hold conservative views about women’s roles. Participation in public life  often required women to challenge political opponents and attitudes within their own organisations.

Barcelona’s anarchist movement provided some of the most important opportunities for politically active women. The Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT) attracted female workers who saw connections between economic inequality, political repression, and gender discrimination. Women contributed to anarchist newspapers, attended educational programmes, organised cultural activities, and participated in neighbourhood campaigns. The movement’s emphasis on education and self-improvement appealed to many women who viewed knowledge as a means of achieving greater independence. But anarchist organisations were not free from sexism. Women often found themselves excluded from leadership positions or treated as secondary participants despite their contributions. Some female activists complained that male comrades who spoke passionately about social revolution frequently remained unwilling to challenge traditional assumptions about women’s place within the family or political organisations. These frustrations helped shape a generation of female activists who believed that women’s emancipation required more than class revolution alone. Among them were Lucía Sánchez Saornil, Mercedes Comaposada, and Amparo Poch y Gascón, women who would later become central figures in Mujeres Libres. All three had been politically active before the Civil War. Their experiences convinced them that women needed greater access to education, professional opportunities, and political participation if genuine equality was ever to be achieved.

By July 1936, Barcelona already contained a substantial population of politically engaged women. Some were anarchists, others socialists, communists, republicans, or Catalan nationalists. Some worked in factories, others in offices, schools, hospitals, shops, or their own homes. Their backgrounds and beliefs varied considerably, but many shared a growing conviction that women should play a larger role in shaping Spanish society.

The collapse of established authority of July 1936 during the military uprising created opportunities that had previously seemed impossible. Women who had spent years organising in unions, political groups, educational campaigns, and neighbourhood movements suddenly found themselves operating in a world where many of the old social boundaries had weakened. The visibility of women in revolutionary Barcelona was the result of decades of activism, organisation, and social change that had already been transforming the city before the first shots of the Civil War were fired.

When rebel troops moved into Barcelona on the morning of 19 July 1936, the fighting that erupted across Barcelona was chaotic and decentralised. Unlike a conventional battle fought by clearly defined armies, much of the struggle unfolded at street level. Rebel troops attempted to seize key locations, including Plaça de Catalunya, the Telefónica building, military barracks, government offices, and major road junctions. Resistance emerged from a combination of loyal security forces, organised workers, political activists, and local residents. Women were present throughout this process, though their experiences varied considerably depending upon where they lived and to which organisations they belonged. As fighting intensified, many women found themselves operating in public spaces from which they had traditionally been excluded. Streets became political and military spaces simultaneously.

During the first hours of the rebellion, access to weapons remained a major problem for anti-fascist forces. Many civilians possessed little more than hunting guns, pistols, or improvised weapons. The situation changed dramatically once rebel positions began to fall. The capture of military installations, particularly the Sant Andreu barracks, placed thousands of rifles and large quantities of ammunition into anti-fascist hands. Women were among the crowds that entered these newly seized spaces. Contemporary accounts and later testimonies describe women collecting weapons, helping transport supplies, and participating in the frantic effort to arm the city’s defenders. Some women chose to carry weapons themselves. The exact number remains difficult to determine, but contemporary photographs, eyewitness accounts, and later memoirs leave little doubt that armed women were present during and immediately after the fighting. Their visibility attracted enormous attention because it challenged assumptions held by much of Spanish society. Many conservative observers regarded the sight of armed women as shocking or unnatural. Supporters of the revolution often viewed the same images as evidence that a new society was emerging.

The atmosphere following the defeat of the uprising reinforced these developments. During the days immediately after 19 July, many anti-fascists believed they had not simply defended the Republic but opened the possibility of profound social change. Traditional authorities appeared weakened or discredited. Employers had fled some workplaces. Barracks had fallen. Political prisoners were released. Revolutionary organisations suddenly exercised influence on a scale that would have seemed impossible only a week earlier. For many women, this moment created opportunities that had rarely existed before. Participation expanded beyond supporting male activists or attending political meetings. Women could now be seen openly joining militia units, speaking at public gatherings, helping administer revolutionary organisations, and shaping the future direction of their communities. These opportunities were uneven and often contested, but they were nonetheless real.

The experience was not the same for all women. Political beliefs, social class, education, employment, and family circumstances all influenced how individuals responded to events. Some embraced revolutionary change enthusiastically. Some supported the Republic without supporting social revolution. Barcelona’s women were never a single political group, they were workers, teachers, students, shopkeepers, clerks, nurses, intellectuals, domestic workers, mothers, daughters, and activists with differing priorities and beliefs. But in the space created by that victory, women became more visible than ever before in the political and public life of Barcelona and this visibility would help create one of the most enduring images of the early Civil War, of women standing beside men on barricades, carrying rifles, participating in revolutionary organisations, and claiming a place within a struggle that many believed would transform both Spain and their own lives. Those images became famous around the world, but they represented something deeper than a moment of military resistance. They reflected the sudden expansion of possibilities that many women experienced during the extraordinary days following the defeat of the uprising in Barcelona.

 Concha Pérez Clado

Among the many olwomen who participated in the revolutionary mobilisation that followed the defeat of the military uprising in Barcelona, few left a clearer firsthand record than Concha Pérez Collado.

Born in Barcelona in 1915, Pérez Collado grew up in a working-class environment shaped by many of the social tensions that characterised early twentieth-century Spain. Like countless young people in Barcelona, she encountered politics not primarily through formal institutions but through neighbourhood networks, workplaces, trade unions, and the wider culture of labour activism that permeated much of the city. Before the Civil War began, she had already become involved in libertarian and anarchist circles associated with the CNT and anarchist youth organisations. Her political development reflected a broader pattern visible among many young anarchists of the period. Activism was rarely confined to elections or party meetings. It often involved educational programmes, cultural activities, labour organising, and community networks that sought to create alternatives to traditional political structures. By the summer of 1936, Pérez Collado belonged to a generation of politically engaged young women who viewed social change as both possible and necessary.

When the military uprising erupted on 19 July, she was twenty-one years old. Like many residents of Barcelona, she was drawn immediately into events. Later recollections describe her participation in the construction of barricades and other defensive measures during the fighting. She also became involved in patrols and activities directed against rebel positions after the uprising had begun to collapse. Although later photographs of militiawomen often encouraged romanticised interpretations of women’s participation, Pérez Collado’s own accounts generally presented a more practical and less glamorous picture of revolutionary mobilisation. She described confusion, urgency, shortages, and the sense that ordinary people were being forced to take responsibility for defending their communities.

Following the defeat of the uprising in Barcelona, Pérez Collado joined the Aguiluchos militia associated with the Les Corts district. The formation was one of many volunteer units that emerged during the revolutionary weeks following the coup’s failure in Catalonia. Like other militia organisations, it combined military objectives with political ideals. Volunteers believed they were fighting not only against the military rebellion but also for a transformed society.

Her decision to join a militia is significant because it illustrates the opportunities that briefly opened for women during the summer of 1936. Although women had long participated in political movements, it had been far less common for them to be accepted openly into armed formations. The collapse of established authority in Barcelona created circumstances in which some women could move into roles that had previously been difficult or impossible to imagine. Their participation was never uncontested, and women remained a minority within militia organisations, but their presence was real.

Pérez Collado later travelled toward the Aragón front as part of the broader mobilisation that carried thousands of volunteers westward from Catalonia. The departure of these columns became one of the defining features of the revolutionary summer. For many participants, the journey represented both a military campaign against the rebellion and a social mission intended to spread revolutionary change into the countryside.

What makes Pérez Collado especially valuable to historians is not simply that she took part in these events, but that she lived long enough to reflect upon them in detail. Through interviews, memoirs, and oral history projects, she provided a rare firsthand perspective on the experiences of working-class women who participated directly in the revolutionary movement. Her testimony offers a corrective to both romantic myths and dismissive stereotypes.

On one hand, she challenged simplistic portrayals of militiawomen as heroic icons frozen in famous photographs. On the other, she also rejected attempts to minimise women’s participation by treating them as mere spectators or auxiliaries. Her recollections demonstrate that women were active participants in the political and social upheaval unleashed by the Civil War, even if their experiences often differed from those of male comrades.

Pérez Collado repeatedly emphasised that many women did not join the struggle in search of symbolic recognition. They joined because they believed fascism threatened their communities, their organisations, and the freedoms they had gained during the years of the Second Republic. Their motivations were political, personal, and practical rather than purely ideological.

Her life  helps illuminate one of the central themes of July 1936. The significance of women like Concha Pérez Collado was not that they represented an entirely new phenomenon. Women had been politically active for years. Rather, the defeat of the uprising created a brief period in which women could participate more visibly and directly in public, political, and military life than ever before. Through her experiences, modern readers can see how revolutionary Barcelona opened possibilities that many women had long sought, even if those possibilities would later be constrained by the demands and realities of war.

In 1997, Pérez Collado, along with a group of women over 80 years old, founded the association Women of ’36 to remind new generations that the political and social advances women enjoy today stem from a struggle that became evident in 1931 with the advent of the Republic. They also aimed to ensure that this history was not forgotten. During the ten years the association existed, they gave 179 talks in secondary schools, 35 in universities, conducted 185 personal interviews, and participated in radio programmes and documentaries.

Federica Montseny Mañé

If Concha Pérez Collado represents the experiences of many young working-class women drawn into the revolutionary upheaval of July 1936, Federica Montseny illustrates a different but equally important aspect of women’s changing roles during the Civil War: political leadership.

By the time the military uprising began, Montseny was already one of the most recognisable figures within the Spanish anarchist movement. Unlike many activists whose influence was confined largely to local organisations, she was known throughout Spain as a writer, journalist, public speaker, and intellectual. Her prominence meant that when revolutionary events unfolded in Barcelona during July 1936, she was not merely a participant but one of the individuals helping to interpret and shape them.

Born in Madrid in 1905, Montseny grew up in an unusual environment. Her parents, Juan Montseny and Teresa Mañé, were prominent anarchists who published newspapers, books, and political literature under the names Federico Urales and Soledad Gustavo. Their household functioned as both a family home and a centre of anarchist intellectual activity. Discussions about politics, education, social reform, and revolutionary theory formed part of everyday life from an early age. This background gave Montseny opportunities unavailable to many Spanish women of her generation. She received a broad education, became an avid reader, and began writing while still young. Over time she established herself as a prolific author whose novels, essays, and articles reached audiences far beyond traditional anarchist circles. Through journalism and public speaking she became one of the movement’s most effective communicators.

Within a political culture where leadership positions were overwhelmingly occupied by men, Montseny emerged as one of the most influential female voices in Spanish public life. She regularly addressed large meetings, participated in major debates within the anarchist movement, and commented on issues ranging from labour organisation to education, religion, family life, and women’s rights. Her prominence demonstrated that women could occupy visible positions within political movements, even if such examples remained relatively uncommon.

When the military uprising began in July 1936, Montseny was in Catalonia and witnessed the extraordinary transformation that followed the defeat of the rebellion in Barcelona. The days after 19 July brought a collapse of normal authority unlike anything most Spaniards had experienced. Barracks had fallen, weapons had been distributed, revolutionary committees appeared across the city, and armed patrols became a common sight. Later, Montseny would describe the atmosphere as one of exhilaration mixed with uncertainty. For many anarchists, it seemed that decades of struggle had suddenly opened the possibility of genuine social revolution. Factories were being collectivised, workers were assuming control over workplaces, and traditional hierarchies appeared to be crumbling. At the same time, nobody knew how long the situation would last or what form the future might take.

Montseny occupied a particularly interesting position within these developments because she stood at the intersection of several different struggles. She was an anarchist committed to social revolution, an anti-fascist determined to defeat the military uprising, and a woman operating in political spaces that remained heavily male-dominated despite revolutionary rhetoric about equality.

Like many anarchist women, she was acutely aware that political liberation did not automatically produce gender equality. Although anarchist organisations generally supported broader roles for women than many conservative groups, female activists still encountered prejudice, exclusion, and assumptions about their proper place in society. Montseny’s prominence challenged those assumptions simply through her public visibility. Her speeches and writings often addressed questions of education, social welfare, family relationships, and personal freedom. She argued that genuine emancipation required more than political change alone. Society itself needed transformation. In this respect, her ideas overlapped with many of the concerns that would later inspire Mujeres Libres and other efforts to expand women’s participation within the broader revolutionary movement.

The significance of Montseny’s career became even clearer later in 1936. In November, she accepted the position of Minister of Health in the Republican government headed by Francisco Largo Caballero. The decision was controversial because anarchists had traditionally opposed participation in state institutions,  many leaders believed the military emergency required cooperation between different anti-fascist forces. Her appointment made her the first female cabinet minister in Spanish history and this achievement carried symbolic importance far beyond the immediate political situation. At a time when women in many European countries remained excluded from senior political office, Montseny became one of the most prominent female politicians on the continent. Her position reflected the extraordinary upheavals unleashed by the Civil War and the opportunities that briefly emerged during the revolutionary atmosphere of 1936. Montseny’s story reminds us that women’s participation in revolutionary Barcelona was not limited to armed struggle. Women also acted as writers, organisers, intellectuals, speakers, administrators, educators, and political leaders. Their influence was exercised not only on barricades and battlefields but also through ideas, institutions, and movements that sought to redefine Spanish society itself.

The Women of Mujeres Libres

Among the many organisations that emerged during the revolutionary upheaval of 1936, none did more to address the specific experiences of women than Mujeres Libres (Free Women).

The organisation was formally established only a few months before the Civil War, its origins lay in frustrations that had been building for years among female anarchists. Many women supported the goals of the anarchist movement and participated actively in unions, strikes, educational campaigns, and political organisations.  they often found themselves marginalised within movements that spoke passionately about freedom and equality while continuing to reproduce many of the assumptions of the wider society. Women frequently discovered that male comrades who opposed capitalism, militarism, and state authority could still assume that leadership, public speaking, and political decision-making were primarily male responsibilities. Meetings were often dominated by men. Educational opportunities were uneven. Women with family responsibilities frequently found it harder to participate fully in political activity. Some female activists concluded that social revolution alone would not automatically eliminate gender inequality. The most important figures behind Mujeres Libres were Lucía Sánchez Saornil, Mercedes Comaposada, and Amparo Poch y Gascón.

Lucía Sánchez Saornil was a poet, journalist, and committed anarchist. She had spent years writing about social issues and labour politics, while also confronting the limitations faced by women within both Spanish society and the anarchist movement itself. Sánchez Saornil argued that women required their own spaces for education, political development, and collective organisation. She believed that many working-class women remained excluded from revolutionary activity not because they lacked ability or commitment, but because social and cultural barriers continued to restrict their opportunities. (her full biography will be in a separate post)

Mercedes Comaposada came from a background in education and law. Deeply committed to adult learning and social improvement, she believed that education was essential if women were to participate fully in public life. Many working-class women had received little formal schooling and possessed limited opportunities to acquire professional skills. Comaposada viewed education not as a secondary issue but as a foundation for genuine emancipation. (full biography to come separately)

Amparo Poch y Gascón brought  another perspective. One of Spain’s first female doctors, she combined medical work with activism and social reform. Poch was particularly interested in public health, childcare, sexual education, and women’s wellbeing. At a time when discussions of such subjects remained controversial, she argued that women should have greater knowledge and control over their own lives and bodies. (full biography and her impressive bibliography will be a separate post)

Together, these women helped create an organisation that was unusual even within the revolutionary atmosphere of 1936. Mujeres Libres did not see itself as a conventional feminist organisation in the modern sense, nor did it simply function as a women’s auxiliary attached to the anarchist movement. Instead, its members argued that women faced a unique set of obstacles that required specific attention. They often spoke of fighting a triple slavery – ignorance, economic dependence, and gender inequality. Their goal was not merely to recruit women into existing organisations but to equip them with the knowledge, confidence, and practical skills necessary to participate fully in revolutionary society.

The collapse of established authority in Barcelona and other Republican cities created opportunities that had previously seemed impossible. Factories, offices, hospitals, schools, unions, and political organisations suddenly required people capable of assuming new responsibilities. Women who had often been excluded from leadership roles found themselves operating in a society undergoing rapid transformation. Mujeres Libres responded by organising educational programmes, literacy classes, vocational training, childcare initiatives, and political discussions. The organisation sought to prepare women not merely to support the revolution but to help shape it.  Mujeres Libres members believed that a revolution could not succeed if half the population remained dependent upon the other half. They argued that women should become active participants in every aspect of social, political, economic, and cultural life.

The organisation  encouraged women to enter occupations and activities from which they had often been excluded. It promoted education, technical training, public speaking, journalism, administration, and political organising. Women were encouraged to see themselves not as helpers standing behind events but as people capable of influencing and directing them. Membership expanded rapidly during the war. By 1938, the organisation would claim tens of thousands of members across Republican Spain, though precise figures remain debated by historians. Regardless of the exact number, Mujeres Libres became one of the largest women’s organisations in the Republican zone.

Many male anarchists supported the organisation and welcomed women’s increased participation, but others questioned whether a separate women’s organisation was necessary at all. Some argued that anarchism already sought equality and  special organisations for women were unnecessary, but Mujeres Libres disagreed, and pointed out that formal declarations of equality meant little if women still lacked access to education, influence, and opportunities.

The famous photographs of armed militiawomen remain some of the most recognisable images of the early Civil War, but the longer-lasting legacy of Mujeres Libres came from its members who sought not only to defend the Republic or participate in a revolution, but to expand what women believed they could become. In doing so, they helped create one of the most ambitious experiments in women’s political and social participation in twentieth-century Spain. For a brief period during the Civil War, many women in Barcelona and across Republican Spain found opportunities that previous generations could scarcely have imagined.

 

When people first encounter the Spanish Civil War, one of the most confusing aspects is the enormous influence of anarchism in Republican Spain, particularly in Barcelona and across large parts of Catalonia and Aragón. Modern readers often associate the word ‘anarchy’ with disorder, lawlessness, or the complete absence of organisation. In popular culture, the term is frequently used as a synonym for chaos. The anarchists of 1936 Spain would have rejected that definition. Far from seeking disorder, they believed they were creating a different kind of social order. Instead of governments, monarchies, military elites, large corporations, and traditional political institutions directing society from above, anarchists argued that ordinary people should organise themselves through workplaces, neighbourhood assemblies, cooperatives, trade unions, and voluntary associations. They believed society could function through cooperation rather than coercion and through collective decision-making rather than hierarchical authority.

Whether one agrees with these ideas or not, it is important to understand that Spanish anarchists did not see themselves as destroying society. They believed they were rebuilding it on different foundations. By July 1936, anarchism was not a marginal political current in Spain. It was one of the largest mass movements in the country and arguably the most influential anarchist movement anywhere in the world. This can surprise modern readers because anarchism never achieved comparable influence in most other European countries. In Spain, anarchist ideas found fertile ground among both industrial workers and agricultural labourers. The reasons were rooted in the country’s social and economic history.

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many Spanish workers experienced low wages, poor working conditions, limited political representation, and repeated cycles of labour unrest. Industrial cities like Barcelona developed strong traditions of trade unionism and worker activism. In the countryside, particularly in parts of Andalucía and Aragón, large estates owned by wealthy landowners existed alongside widespread rural poverty and landlessness. For many workers and labourers, conventional politics seemed incapable of solving these problems. Governments changed, elections came and went, but social inequalities remained. Anarchism offered an alternative vision that promised both economic justice and greater personal freedom.

The movement also drew strength from Spain’s long history of conflict between labour organisations, employers, the military, and the Catholic Church. In Barcelona especially, the early twentieth century had been marked by strikes, lockouts, police repression, political assassinations, and violent confrontations between workers and employers. Entire generations grew up in an atmosphere where political conflict was not an abstract concept but part of daily life. As a result, anarchism in Spain became more than a political theory. It became a culture, a social movement, and a way of understanding the world. Anarchist organisations established newspapers, schools, libraries, cultural centres, educational programmes, and mutual-aid networks. They organised lectures, published literature, promoted literacy, and encouraged political discussion among ordinary workers. For many supporters, anarchism was not simply about future revolution. It was something that shaped everyday life in the present.

Barcelona became the movement’s most important centre. The city was Spain’s leading industrial metropolis and possessed one of Europe’s largest concentrations of organised labour. Factories, workshops, docks, railway yards, and industrial districts brought together large numbers of workers who often faced similar economic conditions and political grievances. By the 1930s, anarchist organisations had become deeply embedded in many working-class neighbourhoods. This helps explain why events unfolded as they did in July 1936.  The organisations that resisted the military rebellion had often spent decades building local networks, recruiting members, publishing newspapers, organising strikes, and developing structures capable of mobilising thousands of people quickly. The ability of Barcelona’s workers to respond to the uprising was rooted in years of organisation before the first shots of the Civil War were fired. For many anarchists, the military rebellion represented more than an attack on the Republic. It threatened everything they had spent years building. Trade unions, workers’ centres, educational projects, community organisations, and political freedoms all appeared to be at risk.

The central organisation of Spanish anarchism was the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo, usually known simply as the CNT. Founded in Barcelona in 1910, the CNT was far more than a trade union in the modern sense. It functioned simultaneously as a labour organisation, a social movement, an educational network, and, for many supporters, a vision of a future society. By the 1930s it had become one of the largest revolutionary labour organisations in the world. Membership fluctuated considerably because of government repression, economic conditions, and internal disputes, but by the mid-1930s the CNT claimed well over one million members. During some periods it approached or exceeded one and a half million. Precise figures remain debated by historians,  there is broad agreement that it represented a substantial portion of Spain’s organised working class.

Although Catalonia remained the organisation’s strongest centre, CNT unions operated across much of Spain. Membership was particularly strong among industrial workers in Barcelona, Valencia, Zaragoza, and other urban centres. It also attracted large numbers of agricultural labourers in Andalucía, Aragón, Extremadura, and parts of Levante. Dock workers, railway workers, construction labourers, metalworkers, textile workers, printers, transport employees, and agricultural workers could all be found within its ranks. What united these diverse groups was not a shared occupation but a shared belief that workers should control their own lives and workplaces.

The CNT rejected the idea that political parties or governments could solve the problems facing ordinary people. Instead, it argued that workers themselves should organise society through federations of unions. Factories, railways, farms, workshops, ports, and public services would ultimately be managed by those who worked within them rather than by employers, shareholders, politicians, or state officials. This ideology became known as anarcho-syndicalism. To many outsiders, the concept appeared radical or unrealistic. To many CNT members, it seemed entirely practical. Workers already possessed the skills necessary to operate factories, transport systems, farms, and public services. The CNT’s structure reflected these beliefs. Rather than concentrating authority in a small leadership elite, the organisation was built around local unions, assemblies, and federations. Decisions were theoretically made from the bottom upward. Delegates could represent members at higher levels, but they were expected to carry out decisions rather than impose them. This emphasis on direct participation became one of the defining features of Spanish anarchism.

The organisation also developed a reputation for militancy. During the early twentieth century, Spain experienced repeated cycles of strikes, lockouts, repression, and political violence. The CNT often stood at the centre of these confrontations. Major strikes in Barcelona and other cities brought workers into direct conflict with employers, police, and the military. Governments periodically banned the organisation, imprisoned its members, closed its newspapers, and attempted to dismantle its networks. These experiences reinforced a widespread belief among CNT members that the state ultimately served the interests of employers and powerful social groups rather than ordinary workers.

The years after the First World War proved especially important. In 1919, the famous La Canadiense strike in Barcelona demonstrated the organisation’s growing strength. What began as a dispute involving workers at a power company expanded into a broader strike that paralysed much of the city and eventually forced the government to introduce the eight-hour working day, making Spain one of the first countries in the world to adopt it nationally. For many workers, this victory demonstrated that collective action could achieve results that conventional politics had failed to deliver.

The CNT also sponsored newspapers, reading groups, educational programmes, cultural centres, and community activities. In many working-class districts, union offices served as social and political hubs where people discussed current events, attended lectures, borrowed books, and participated in local campaigns. Anarchists believed education was essential because workers needed knowledge as well as organisation if they were to build a different society. As a result, membership in the CNT  could shape an individual’s political outlook, social relationships, and daily life.

Women also participated in the organisation, although not always on equal terms. Female workers joined unions, attended meetings, contributed to publications, and participated in strikes and labour campaigns.  leadership positions remained overwhelmingly male, and many women later criticised the gap between anarchist ideals of equality and the realities they experienced within the movement. These frustrations would contribute to the creation of Mujeres Libres during the Civil War.

By the time the Second Republic was established in 1931, the CNT had become one of the most influential political and social forces in Spain. The organisation’s relationship with the Republic was complicated. Many members welcomed the fall of the monarchy, but they remained sceptical of parliamentary politics. They supported reforms that improved workers’ lives while continuing to argue that genuine emancipation required a more fundamental transformation of society. Throughout the early 1930s, the CNT participated in strikes, protests, and occasional insurrectionary actions that brought it into conflict with successive governments. Then, the Civil War revealed how important the organisation had already become. The ability of Barcelona’s workers to resist the uprising, organise militias, seize weapons, and maintain control over much of the city was built upon decades of prior organisation.

Alongside the CNT operated the Federación Anarquista Ibérica, or FAI. Compared to the CNT, the FAI was much smaller. It never possessed hundreds of thousands of members and did not function as a mass trade union organisation. Instead, it operated as a network of committed anarchist groups spread across Spain and Portugal. Membership was probably measured in the thousands rather than the hundreds of thousands, though precise figures remain difficult to establish because the organisation’s structure was intentionally decentralised. Despite its relatively small size, the FAI exercised influence far beyond its numbers because it offered alternatives to the CNT. As the CNT grew during the early twentieth century, many anarchists worried that it might gradually become a conventional labour organisation concerned more with reform than revolution, and so the FAI emerged partly in response to these concerns.

Founded in 1927, during the dictatorship of General Miguel Primo de Rivera, the FAI sought to preserve what its members regarded as the revolutionary essence of Spanish anarchism. They feared that participation in legal politics, negotiations with governments, or routine trade-union activity might dilute anarchist principles and weaken the movement’s long-term goals. The FAI  acted less like a political party and more like a revolutionary current operating within the broader anarchist movement. Its members organised through small affinity groups, often composed of trusted friends and comrades who shared similar political views. These groups coordinated activities, discussed strategy, distributed literature, and attempted to influence the direction of the wider movement. The structure reflected anarchist distrust of rigid hierarchies and centralised authority.

Many prominent anarchist figures belonged to both the CNT and the FAI. As a result, the distinction between the two organisations can sometimes appear blurred. The CNT remained the mass organisation rooted in workplaces and trade unions, while the FAI represented a more explicitly revolutionary tendency operating within and alongside it. Historians often describe the relationship as complex because individuals frequently moved between both worlds. By the early 1930s, critics and supporters alike increasingly referred to the combined influence of CNT-FAI.

The FAI became particularly influential during the years of the Second Republic. While some political groups welcomed parliamentary democracy as the path to reform, many faístas remained deeply sceptical of elected governments. They argued that genuine social change would not come through elections, ministries, or political parties. Instead, they believed transformation would emerge through direct action by workers and communities themselves. This outlook contributed to a series of confrontations with Republican authorities. During the early 1930s, sections of the anarchist movement participated in strikes, uprisings, and insurrectionary attempts that sought to accelerate social revolution. Some of these efforts ended in failure and brought severe repression. Events like the uprising at Casas Viejas in 1933, where government forces brutally suppressed anarchist activists and villagers, reinforced distrust of state institutions among many militants. For FAI members, such incidents appeared to confirm their belief that governments of all kinds ultimately relied upon coercion and violence.

The FAI’s influence was particularly strong in Barcelona. The city possessed a long tradition of radical labour politics, anti-clericalism, and working-class activism. In neighbourhoods across Barcelona, anarchist ideas circulated through union halls, newspapers, cultural centres, and informal social networks. Many younger militants were drawn toward the FAI because of its uncompromising commitment to revolution. This revolutionary culture became critically important in July 1936. When the military uprising began, faístas were among the activists who pushed for immediate resistance. Years of organising, clandestine activity, and preparation for confrontation had created networks capable of mobilising rapidly. While loyal police and security forces played a crucial role in defeating the rebellion in Barcelona, anarchist militants were also central participants in the fighting. The defeat of the uprising appeared to vindicate many of the FAI’s long-held arguments.

For supporters, the FAI represented a commitment to revolutionary principles at a moment when compromise seemed tempting. For critics, it represented ideological rigidity and political impracticality. Both interpretations contain elements of truth and what cannot be disputed is the organisation’s influence during the summer of 1936. Although small compared to the CNT, the FAI helped shape the ideas, language, and aspirations of much of the anarchist movement. Its members were among those most determined to ensure that the defeat of the military uprising became not merely a military victory, but the beginning of a social revolution.

Why Did Anarchism Flourish in Spain? Anarchist movements existed throughout Europe during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. France, Italy, Portugal, Russia, Britain, Germany, and the United States all possessed anarchist organisations of varying sizes.  Nowhere did anarchism become as deeply rooted among ordinary workers and labourers as it did in Spain. The CNT alone claimed well over one million members at various points during the decade. Even allowing for the exaggerations common in union membership figures, historians generally agree that hundreds of thousands of Spaniards belonged to anarchist organisations. Millions more lived in communities where anarchist ideas, newspapers, trade unions, cultural centres, and social networks formed part of everyday life. In Barcelona, entire neighbourhoods contained generations of families connected to anarchist organisations. In parts of Aragón and Andalucía, anarchist ideas spread among agricultural workers who often possessed little land and few opportunities. Railway workers, dock workers, textile workers, metalworkers, printers, builders, and farm labourers all contributed to the movement’s growth.

Spain entered the twentieth century with profound social inequalities. Large sections of the population remained poor. Industrial workers often faced long hours, dangerous conditions, and insecure employment. In rural regions, vast estates owned by wealthy landowners existed alongside communities of landless labourers who struggled to find regular work. For many Spaniards, the existing political system appeared incapable of solving these problems. Governments changed frequently, the monarchies fell, dictatorships rose and collapsed. Elections produced new politicians but often little visible improvement in daily life. Corruption, patronage, and political instability undermined confidence in traditional institutions.

Rather than asking workers to trust politicians, anarchists argued that workers should organise society themselves. Factories would be run by those who worked in them. Farms would be cultivated collectively. Communities would govern themselves through assemblies and federations. Education would be expanded. Economic privilege would be dismantled. The vision was ambitious, but it spoke directly to people who felt excluded from existing structures of power.

Spain also lacked some of the factors that helped contain revolutionary movements elsewhere. In countries like Britain and Germany, large socialist parties gradually became integrated into parliamentary politics. Trade unions often focused on negotiating reforms within existing systems. In Spain, political institutions were generally weaker and labour conflicts more intense. As a result, revolutionary ideas retained greater appeal for longer periods.

In 1936, for supporters of the Republic, the victory against the military uprising was one of the most significant achievements of the war’s opening days. Lluís Companys, president of the Catalonian Generalitat, recognised this reality almost immediately. In one of the most famous meetings of the revolutionary period, Companys met with leading CNT figures shortly after the defeat of the uprising. He acknowledged that the anarchists had played a decisive role in saving Catalonia and admitted that real power now rested largely with the armed workers who controlled the streets. The CNT leadership faced a historic decision. For decades anarchists had criticised governments and state institutions. Now they possessed more influence than at any point in their history. Some militants believed the moment had arrived to abolish existing institutions entirely and replace them with revolutionary organisations. Others feared that doing so would fracture anti-fascist unity and weaken the struggle against the rebellion. Rather than immediately replacing the Generalitat, anarchist leaders agreed to cooperate with other anti-fascist organisations through the newly created Central Committee of Antifascist Militias of Catalonia. They intended to defeat the military rebellion, but they also hoped to spread revolutionary change beyond Catalonia. For many anarchists, the war against fascism and the social revolution were inseparable.

Across Europe, observers watched events with fascination, admiration, or alarm. Supporters saw evidence that ordinary people could reshape society. Critics saw chaos and the breakdown of authority. Both recognised that something extraordinary was taking place. For a brief period during the summer of 1936, the CNT and FAI found themselves at the centre of one of the largest social revolutions in modern European history. Decades of organisation had prepared them for resistance. The collapse of the military uprising provided the opportunity. The result was a revolutionary experiment whose influence would extend far beyond Barcelona and far beyond Spain itself.

 

For centuries, the Catholic Church in Spain had been far more than a religious institution. The Church was deeply woven into the political, economic and social fabric of Spain, exercising influence that reached from the royal court to the smallest rural village. By 1936, many revolutionaries did not see churches simply as places of worship. They saw them as visible symbols of an old order that they believed had preserved inequality, defended privilege and resisted social change for generations.

Religion shaped almost every stage of life. Baptisms, marriages and funerals were administered through the Church. Parish records served as important civil documents before the establishment of modern civil registries. Religious festivals marked the calendar in towns and villages across the country, while Catholic teaching defined expectations surrounding family life, morality and public behaviour. Attendance at Mass was often viewed as a sign of respectability, and in many communities those who openly rejected religion risked social isolation or suspicion. A man could be a gambler who slept with every prostitute in town, but as long as he had a wife and a handful of children well-dressed on Sunday morning, he could still be a pillar of the community.

The Church also possessed considerable economic power. Despite the confiscation and sale of much ecclesiastical property during the nineteenth century, it remained one of Spain’s wealthiest institutions. It owned churches, monasteries, convents, seminaries, schools, hospitals, and agricultural estates throughout the country. Religious orders controlled extensive property portfolios, while donations, rents and investments continued to provide substantial income. Though the exact scale varied between regions, the Church remained a significant landowner, particularly through religious communities and diocesan holdings.

Its influence over education was equally profound. Thousands of children attended schools run by religious orders, where Catholic doctrine formed the basis of daily instruction. Teachers employed by these schools did far more than teach reading and writing. They helped shape political and moral values, presenting obedience, hierarchy, and religious authority as the foundations of a stable society. While many clergy believed they were providing moral guidance and valuable education, critics argued that Church-controlled schooling discouraged independent thought, scientific understanding, prevented gender equality, and reinforced existing class structures.

The Church’s political influence extended well beyond the classroom. Bishops regularly issued pastoral letters commenting on elections, legislation, and public affairs. Senior clergy maintained close relationships with conservative politicians, members of the aristocracy and military leaders. Although individual priests differed in their political opinions, the institutional Church consistently opposed many of the reforms demanded by republicans, socialists and anarchists. Divorce, secular education, civil marriage, land redistribution, women’s rights, and organised labour all encountered resistance from much of the Church hierarchy, which regarded these measures as attacks upon Christian civilisation and the natural social order.

For millions of Spain’s rural poor, particularly in regions such as Andalucía and Extremadura, this relationship between Church, landowners, and local authorities was impossible to ignore. Agricultural labourers endured seasonal unemployment, low wages, and chronic poverty while large estates remained concentrated in relatively few hands. Priests frequently occupied positions of considerable local authority alongside estate owners, mayors, judges, and Guardia Civil officers. Whether this reflected genuine political collaboration or simply the realities of rural society, many workers came to see these institutions as protecting the same unequal system. When labour disputes arose, Church leaders more often condemned class conflict than the conditions that had produced it.

Throughout the nineteenth century, Spain experienced repeated cycles of revolution, fighting, and political upheaval. Liberal figures attempted to reduce the Church’s economic power through the confiscation and sale of ecclesiastical property, while conservative governments restored many of its privileges. These struggles were never solely about religion. They reflected competing visions of what Spain should become: one centred upon monarchy, Catholicism and traditional authority; the other seeking constitutional government, secular institutions and greater social equality. As Spain slowly industrialised, particularly in Catalonia, the Basque Country and Madrid, a growing industrial working class developed its own political identity. Factory workers, railway employees, dock labourers, printers and miners increasingly organised themselves into trade unions and political organisations that challenged both employers and the institutions they believed defended existing inequalities. The Confederación Nacional del Trabajo argued that the Church encouraged obedience while discouraging workers from questioning the economic system that kept millions in poverty. The Unión General de Trabajadores and the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party were often less hostile towards religion itself, but many of their members nevertheless viewed the institutional Church as an ally of conservative politics and employer interests.

One of the earliest major outbreaks of violence against the Church occurred in Madrid during July 1834, when crowds attacked monasteries during a cholera epidemic. Around 80 monks were killed, beaten or stabbed to death before monasteries were looted. The following year, anti-clerical riots spread through Catalonia and other parts of eastern Spain. Monasteries in Barcelona, Reus, Tarragona and several other cities were attacked, stripped and set on fire. Numerous religious communities were forced to flee, while many historic buildings were destroyed. For the next seventy years, anti-clerical violence reappeared whenever political tensions erupted. Churches were attacked during local uprisings and periods of revolutionary unrest, but no outbreak matched the scale of the events that unfolded in Barcelona during the summer of 1909.

By the early twentieth century, as the last generations who remembered the Spanish Inquisition were finally gone, anarchist and socialist unions had attracted hundreds of thousands of members who sought fundamental changes to Spanish society. Their demands included eight-hour working days, higher wages, land reform, secular education, and democratic freedoms. To many within these movements, the Church was an active defender of employers, landlords, and traditional authority. Sermons condemning socialism, pastoral letters warning against anarchism, and public support from senior clergy for conservative governments reinforced this belief. For many Spaniards, particularly among the urban working class and rural poor, anti-clericalism was a political and social movement directed against an institution they believed had accumulated immense wealth, defended privilege and opposed almost every attempt to reform Spanish society. Tragic Week marked a turning point. Between 26 July and 2 August 1909, opposition to military conscription developed into a widespread urban insurrection. During the fighting, approximately 80 churches, convents, monasteries and religious schools were burned or badly damaged across Barcelona. Many religious buildings were first looted and stripped before being set alight, while libraries, archives, religious images and furnishings were destroyed. Official figures recorded 78 deaths during the week’s violence, although later historians have suggested the true number may have exceeded 150 when all civilian and military casualties are considered. Most of those killed died during clashes between demonstrators and government forces rather than inside the religious buildings themselves.

During the reign of Alfonso XIII and the dictatorship of Miguel Primo de Rivera, the monarchy closely identified itself with Catholicism, while the dictatorship enjoyed broad institutional support from much of the Church hierarchy. Although there were clergy who sympathised with social reform and priests who worked tirelessly among the poor, these voices never shaped the public image of the Church. The institution became closely associated with monarchy, military authority, and conservative politics.

With the proclamation of the Second Republic in April 1931, Spain experienced its largest wave of anti-clerical violence since 1909. Between 10 and 13 May 1931, churches, convents, monasteries and religious schools were attacked across much of the country. Madrid saw the first major fires, but the violence quickly spread to Málaga, Seville, Cádiz, Alicante, Valencia, Murcia and several other smaller locations. Modern estimates indicate that more than 100 religious buildings were damaged or destroyed during the four days of unrest, and Madrid’s Jesuit Casa Profesa’s library, lost 80,000 volumes as it burned, including incunables and first editions of Spanish Golden Age authors. The pattern of destruction was strikingly similar from city to city. Crowds entered churches and convents, removed sacred objects, dragged furniture into the streets and set buildings on fire. Libraries and archives were often burned alongside altars, confessionals and religious images. Some buildings were completely destroyed, while others were gutted before the fires were extinguished. Despite the scale of the property damage, relatively few people were killed directly during the May riots. Contemporary accounts record several deaths across the disturbances, including civilians shot during clashes with security forces and individuals caught in confrontations surrounding the attacks, but the violence was directed overwhelmingly against property rather than against clergy themselves. Priests, monks, and nuns, they were all allowed to leave before the destruction took place.

Anti-clerical violence continued intermittently during the following years but the Asturian miners’ strike of 1934 brought anti-clerical violence to a level not seen since 1909. Beginning on 5 October 1934, approximately 30,000 armed miners and other revolutionaries overran much of Asturias, occupying Oviedo and numerous mining towns within days. During the two-week uprising, at least 58 churches, convents and other religious buildings across Asturias were burned or destroyed, including churches in Oviedo, Mieres, Sama, La Felguera and Turón. The Cathedral of San Salvador (now Cathedral of Oviedo) suffered some of the most famous damage when the eighth-century Cámara Santa was blown apart during the fighting, destroying irreplaceable medieval treasures and relics. Across Asturias, 37 priests and religious brothers were killed, most after being arrested and summarily executed by revolutionary groups. Among the best known were the eight Martyrs of Turón and the Passionist priest Inocencio of the Immaculate, who were executed near Turón after refusing to renounce their faith. The destruction was accompanied by widespread looting of churches, the burning of altars, religious images, archives and libraries, including the one in the University of Oviedo, while many surviving church buildings were occupied by revolutionary committees or used for military purposes.

The months before the Spanish Civil War were marked by increasing political violence, and the Catholic Church did not escape it. Throughout the first half of 1936, churches, convents and other religious buildings were attacked in towns and cities across Spain. Most incidents were local rather than coordinated, but together they reflected a political climate that was becoming steadily more confrontational.

Following the Popular Front’s electoral victory in February 1936, anti-clerical demonstrations became more frequent. Churches were damaged or set on fire in a number of provinces, including Madrid, Alicante, Murcia, Valencia, Málaga, Seville and Granada. In many cases, crowds broke into church buildings, smashed religious images, removed furniture and attempted to set the interiors alight. Some fires were quickly extinguished, while others caused extensive damage. Most involved individual churches or small numbers of religious buildings rather than entire cities engulfed in anti-clerical violence. But they reinforced fears among Catholics that public order was collapsing, while many revolutionaries regarded the attacks as further challenges to an institution they believed remained politically aligned with conservative Spain.

Violence against members of the clergy also continued. Priests were assaulted in several provinces, religious processions were disrupted, and churches were vandalised during periods of political unrest. Although the number of clergy killed before the military uprising remained small compared with the months that followed, the attacks contributed to an atmosphere in which many believed confrontation between the Church and the revolutionary left had become increasingly inevitable.

During the first half of 1936, anti-clerical violence remained intermittent rather than continuous. Churches, convents and religious schools were attacked in numerous towns and cities across Spain, particularly in politically polarised urban centres, but there was no nationwide wave of destruction comparable to the outbreaks of May 1931 or the revolution that followed the military coup in July. Most incidents involved vandalism, looting or attempted arson, although some churches were completely burned. Violence against clergy occurred but remained relatively limited, with attacks directed more often against Church property than against priests themselves. The pattern was one of repeated local outbreaks rather than a coordinated national campaign, yet each incident further deepened the hostility between the institutional Church and Spain’s revolutionary left.

The attacks on churches formed only one part of a much wider pattern of political violence that gripped Spain during the months before the Civil War. Across the country, clashes erupted between rival political organisations, trade unionists, landowners, Falangists, socialists, anarchists, members of the security forces and ordinary civilians caught in the middle. Political assassinations, street shootings, bomb attacks, strikes that turned violent, attacks on newspaper offices, party headquarters and union premises became increasingly common. Priests were assaulted because they were associated with the institutional Church, just as socialist organisers, Falangists, Civil Guards, landowners, labour activists and local politicians could find themselves targeted because of their perceived political loyalties or social position. Although most Spaniards never experienced violence directly, the steady succession of local outbreaks created a growing sense that no profession, class or political affiliation guaranteed safety. By the summer of 1936, many communities had become accustomed to hearing of shootings, arson attacks or political confrontations occurring somewhere else in Spain, even if their own town remained temporarily untouched.