The Carlist Wars and the Spanish Civil War

Thinking of Spain as a modern nation state today distorts the complicated reality that the Iberian Peninsula faced in the past. Spain was a nation in progress, consisting of regions united under the Spanish crown, but with strong regional identities based on different historical and cultural experiences. The largest entities were the kingdoms of León and Castile, but Spain also included the kingdoms of Navarre, Andalusia, Granada, Jaén, Aragon, and Valencia. There were also the principalities of Asturias and Catalonia, the lordship of Vizcaya, and both Guipúzcoa and Alava were "exempted provinces." Navarre, Aragon, and Catalonia had separate Cortes, which were versions of parliaments (Parker 18-19). This complex system of entities granted privilege to local power structures over the concept of a unified nation and made administration difficult, because there were few standards that applied to all of Spain. Many of the regions had special laws that respected and allowed traditional institutions, administrative patterns, and cultural patterns. These local and regional rights were called fueros and were fiercely defended against centralization. The fueros originated as rights agreed to when the regions joined the Spanish crown. Before becoming king, the king-designate had to swear to maintain and respect the fueros. This meant that the rights of the king were to a considerable extent limited.



The Basque regions have been part of Spain for centuries, but the region historically had its own language and customs, and the Catholic Church was especially important there. St. Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556), the founder of the Jesuit order, was a Basque and is the patron saint of the Basque people, so the region was extremely important during the Carlist Wars because the Carlists embodied traditional Catholic and localist values. The Basque regions enjoyed internal borders that gave them major advantages in imports and exports, and the Basque provinces also had a great deal of self-government until 1833. Losing these privileges was a major grievance, and the hope of recovering them was an important factor in the coming civil wars.



The Spanish Civil War has exerted a powerful impact on the historical imagination. Without question, the conflict was a key moment in the 20th century, a precursor to World War II, and an encapsulation of the rise of extremist movements in the 1930s, but it was also a complex narrative in and of itself, even as it offered a truly international theatre of war. It marked one of the seminal moments, along with the 1929 Wall Street Crash, between the two apocalyptic wars of the early 20th century, and since it occurred between 1936 and 1939, Spain proved to be a testing ground of tactics, weaponry, and ideology ahead of World War II.



For the Allied powers Britain and France, Spain became a nadir of "appeasement," yet, as the name suggests, the conflict had distinctly Spanish characteristics. The pressures that led to war were particular to the country, its social challenges, and its long and intricate history, and it was a conflict between two sides that included disparate elements like the clergy, socialists, landowners, and even anarchists. It is estimated that somewhere between 500,000-2,000,000 people were killed in the war.



Unlike World War II, the Spanish conflict attracted artists and writers, many of whom reflected upon events and even volunteered to fight. Pablo Picasso's painting Guernica, journalist Martha Gellhorn's reports, Robert Capa's iconic photography, George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia,and Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls are just some examples of the art and literature that documented the war, but ultimately, the forces of reaction, led by General Francisco Franco, triumphed, and after his victory in 1939, Franco ruled Spain with an iron fist for 36 years.