The truth of the Spanish Civil War is that was a diabolical terror that seized Spain and waged war against the Roman Catholic Church and her Faithful

The Spanish Civil War

by Christopher Check

Insofar as Americans know anything of the Spanish Civil War it is through the propaganda of Ernest Hemingway’s admittedly compelling For Whom the Bell Tolls, or through Pablo Picasso’s chaotic (and admittedly repellant) Guernica. That version goes something like this: an oppressed working class calling themselves republicans rose up against a tyrannical aristocracy allied with the Roman Catholic Church. Their people’s revolution was brutally suppressed by a fascist military dictator named Francisco Franco, who was a puppet of the German Nazi regime. The whole affair was a dress rehearsal for Nazi tyranny. For decades following the war this fascist dictator ruled Spain with an iron hand, invading private lives and suppressing individual liberties.

The truth of the Spanish Civil War, however, is that was a diabolical terror that seized Spain and waged war against the Roman Catholic Church and her Faithful. It was the greatest period of clerical bloodletting since the French Revolution and on a larger scale. It was a war waged to free Spain and the Church from the grip of Marxist tyranny. In the end the defenders of tradition, order, and Christianity won the war after which Spain enjoyed decades of prosperity and vitality and a culture in which, as Hugh Thomas (no Catholic propagandist) put it, “The Catholic Church permeated every aspect of Spanish … culture.”

The war was also the occasion of great acts of Catholic heroism, and on September 27 each year we should recall the thrilling conclusion of one of these and honor its heroes. The event was the siege of the Alcazar of Toledo.

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