Published 7 December 2024 at 10.03
Book. A much-needed new book about the run-up to the Spanish Civil War challenges the old communist historiography of how a lawful, democratic government was crushed by vicious fascists under Franco. Jonas De Geer has read A democracy without democrats by Lunda professor Inger Enkvist.
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Book
A democracy without democrats
Author: Inger Enkvist
Published: Bokförlaget August 2023
Number of pages : 198
Price: SEK 199
Spain had gained democracy after centuries of oppressive monarchy and dictatorship, the people had finally gained their freedom. Out of the darkness then appeared a small, evil, mustachioed man in uniform with a black, Catholic, fascist heart that hated the people, hated its freedom.
The noble Spaniards – socialists, democrats – bravely defended their republic and good , brave men from all over the world flocked to volunteer in the fight against fascism, for democracy and human rights. But the military and the fascists were supported by the princes of darkness – Hitler and Mussolini. The people – the workers, the women, in short: the good side – lost.
This is roughly how the picture of the Spanish Civil War of 1936–1939 was drawn. Not least in Sweden. It is not only simple and childish, but above all false. It is a propaganda tale from the Comintern which at the time was spread by its many agents and accomplices in the American and English press.
By this time, Moscow had changed tactics and cultivated close relations with social democrats and “progressive” liberals in other countries. Instead of scolding them for “social fascists” and other ugly things, they now formed “people's fronts” together with other leftists (except Trotskyists), which they ultimately controlled. The unifier would not be anti-capitalism so much as “anti-fascism” – a purpose-built political identity for useful idiots still in use today.
Inger Enkvist, professor emerita of Spanish, published last year a book about the second Spanish republic, A democracy without democrats. The Prelude to the Spanish Civil War 1931–1936. It is a factual account of what led up to the war. It is much needed, because the lied communist propaganda version is still stuck in the public consciousness.
Enkvist begins with a brief historical background.
Spain, like Sweden and most other European countries, had gradually developed into a constitutional monarchy during the 19th and early 20th centuries. In Spain, the struggle between liberal and conservative forces had been fiercer than in, for example, our country and led to a series of civil wars in the form of the so-called Carlist Wars between the years 1833 and 1876. Political life was periodically shaken by coups and political violence, to example, between the years 1897 and 1919 three prime ministers were murdered by anarchists.
The Second Republic in the early thirties had been preceded by a period of dictatorship under General Miguel Primo de Rivera, who took power in a bloodless coup in 1923, with the king's blessing.
Primo de Rivera's son José Antonio would later become a legendary nationalist leader and martyr during the Civil War. However, the father was not ideologically driven, by all accounts conservative and patriotic, but politically very pragmatic. His dictatorship was not particularly brutal either and seems to have been at least initially accepted by the vast majority as a kind of state of emergency, for example the radical Spanish socialist leader Llargo Cabellero, who would later call himself the “Lenin of Spain”, collaborated with Primo de Rivera's regime.
The mild-mannered dictator eventually submitted his resignation in January 1930 and moved to France where he died just six weeks later, reportedly of natural causes.
After a power vacuum of just over a year, municipal elections were held in April 1931. Monarchist parties probably gained a preponderance in those elections, the results of which were never announced, but it was nothing the Republicans felt they had to respect. Faced with threats of revolution and well aware of the fate of the Russian Tsar family, the royal family went into exile.
On April 14, 1931, the Second Republic was proclaimed. The first election two months later was naturally enough boycotted by many monarchists and a government of left-wing socialists and freemasons under Niceto Alcalá Zamora as president and Manuel Azaña as prime minister took office. The red terror that would later characterize the civil war began already now – churches and monasteries were burned, individual political opponents were murdered, newspaper editorial offices and party premises were bombed. Enkvist writes:
“The left that formed a government in 1931 equated itself with the concept of democracy. The left parties and their allies considered themselves to represent the people and believed that when they ruled, democracy prevailed. During the Second Republic, socialists often used the words republicanism, socialism and democracy as if they were interchangeable. In addition, the words republic and democracy were mixed with the concept of revolution, and this does not only apply to the socialists.”
The Spanish left was at this time divided into two main groups: the socialist and the anarchist/anarcho-syndicalist. The latter was also organized, but for reasons of principle did not stand for election. The Communist Party was relatively small, but had a disproportionately large influence, which would later increase exponentially during the Civil War. At this time, the great Spanish socialist party PSOE was also, if not loyal to Moscow, at least extremely pro-Moscow.
New elections were held in October 1933 and then the center/right parties won big. The two leading figures in that camp were the Catholic politicians José María Gil Robles and José Calvo Sotelo. However, the left, having lost, could not accept a center/right government, since they considered the republic as their project. The corresponding prime minister, the left-liberal freemason Azaña, tried in vain to have the election results annulled. However, the single largest party in the chamber, Gil Robles' CEDA was kept out of government formation and found itself comfortable in it. Nevertheless, left-wing violence in the country increased even more and, above all, socialists, communists and anarchists began to plan for violent revolution.
It was put into effect in several parts of the country in October 1934. It could be quickly put down in most places, but not in Asturias. It began with a revolutionary strike among the miners, which quickly developed into an orgy of violence, usually aimed mainly at the church, but also at the police, libraries, party premises and various designated class enemies. The dictatorship of the proletariat was proclaimed.
The miners were a well-disciplined working-class elite, but from the outset received outside support from large armed contingents of socialists, communists and anarchists. The whole thing was a well-planned attempted revolution with the powerful Socialist Party in a driving role and what followed was nothing less than a two-week long civil war. The number of dead is estimated at between 1,400 and 2,000. Although the revolutionary left was defeated, the government did not dare to hold the real instigators to account.
Some historians have argued that the civil war actually began in Asturias in October 1934. In any case, there was no doubt whatsoever about what the left's real goals and what means it was prepared to use. They resent the fact that the revolt in 1936 was against a legally elected government, but do not pretend that the left had tried the same thing two years earlier but failed.
At the beginning of 1936, the left won a very dubious electoral victory. Instead of abating, left-wing terror in the country intensified in the months that followed; the euphoria of victory intensified the thirst for blood.
On the night of July 13, 1936, the leading opposition politician Calvo Sotelo was murdered by the Republic's politicized special police, the Guarda de Asalto. A few days later, on July 18, the rebellion and civil war started.
A couple of things can be added. Just a couple of months after the outbreak of the civil war, the Republic had the Spanish gold reserve – then the fourth largest in the world – shipped to Moscow. It has of course never been returned. Clearer evidence that the Spanish Republic was already then in fact a Soviet vassal state is hard to imagine.
It has been constantly repeated that the military (in the definite singular) rebelled against the legitimate government. In fact, 17 generals joined the rebels while 22 remained loyal to the Republic. The military was not only made up of conservative Catholics, as the fairy-tale left would like it to be, but anti-clerical Freemasonry was very widespread within that corps and many high-ranking officers were left-leaning.
One of the senior military men who was given responsibility for the defense against the rebellion in 1934 was the young general Francisco Franco. However, President Alcalá Zamora chose General Lopez Ochoa to lead the military effort in Asturias, because he, in contrast to the Catholic Franco, was a republican and a freemason. However, that would not protect him from the red revenge two years later when the civil war broke out. He was then in hospital in Madrid, where he was murdered. His severed head was mounted on a bayonet and driven around the streets of the city with a sign that read “Butcher of Asturias”.
“He who controls the past controls the future, he who controls the present controls the past”, wrote George Orwell (who himself volunteered in the Civil War on the Red Side, but that's another story).
After Franco's death, when democracy was reintroduced in Spain at the end of the 1970s, there was a general agreement in all political camps to leave the past in history, to move forward and not unnecessarily open up old wounds.
Somehow, a new generation of left-wing politicians has been formed. The once blood-soaked Spanish Socialist Party PSOE rules Spain today and now takes posthumous revenge on the defeaters of its ancestors by digging up their graves, as with General Franco and José Antonio Primo de Rivera, removing statues and other memorials and renaming streets.
Not only is money being allocated to politicized historiography, which can only be called falsification of history, but laws such as the one on “historical memory” from 2007 and its extension, the “law on democratic memory” from 2022 are being enacted. Researchers who arrive at results that does not conform to the official, politicized historiography can have their material confiscated and be sentenced to up to 150,000 euros in fines. In the first draft of the bill, prison was also included in the punishment scale.
Enkvist writes: “Speaking of memory instead of history is not a specifically Spanish phenomenon, but an international trend, as is also the focus on victims and not heroes.”
So true. To the extent that it is a question of whether it is a “trend”, or perhaps rather it is about some kind of global program being implemented. Spain has been affected in a particular way, as the civil war of 1936–1939 was seen as a kind of reprieve for the truly great conflict between good and evil – the Second World War.
Sweden got its Ministry of Historical Truth Living History already 21 years ago . This year we got new, tougher legislation against questioning official history writing. At the request of the EU.
It also has nothing to do with history. However, everything with power over the present and the future. Over people's minds.
JONAS DE GEER
Jonas De Geer is a freelance writer.