A few weeks ago, Pope Leo XIV authorized the beatification of 80 more martyrs of the Spanish Civil War, bringing the total number of recognized martyrs of the Church to 2,334.
This is still only a fraction of the Catholics murdered for their faith in that cataclysmic event in the 1930s, but it suffices to certify the huge dimension of what is among the most immense persecutions of Christians since the times of Roman Emperor Diocletian.
However, in commemorating these victims, there is no mention of the perpetrators. It’s as if the civil war had been an inevitable natural catastrophe, in which thousands of Catholics had been unintentionally caught in the crossfire between the opposing factions, both of which were merely interested in gaining power over the country.
It is at last time for Catholics at large to answer the lengthy plea that was penned by the bishops of Spain and published on July 1, 19371, a year after the start of the military insurgence known as the “Alziamiento”. The bishops begged their fellow Catholics all over the world to help them spread the truth, a truth that is progressively being registered in the Vatican archives but not in the collective mindset of the people because, as noted by historian Eric Hobsbawm, the history of the Spanish civil war was not written by the victors but by the vanquished.
“Help us spread the truth,” wrote the bishops, “help us by spreading the content of this letter, surveilling the Catholic press and propaganda, correcting the mistakes of those who are indifferent or inimical to us. The enemy has abundantly sown his chaff; help us sow the good seed abundantly.”
What mistakes are there still to correct?
First of all, the massacres did not begin in 1936 because the conflict between, on the one hand, the left-wing parties that had “won” the elections and, on the other, their nationalist opponents. It began much earlier, out of an unprecedentedly brutal religious persecution carried out by well-trained communists, anarchists, and socialists, determined to wipe out the Catholic Church in its entirety.
Elected to office in 1931, the leftist factions, under the common name of republicans, once having done away with the monarchy, immediately created a climate of anti-Catholic hatred that, as early as 1934, the year of the insurrection in the Asturias, led to the burning down of 58 churches and the cold-blooded murder of dozens among priests, nuns, and seminarians. In the meantime, they worked on corroding social relationships, emptying out the economy, weakening the police forces, and then filling the void thus created with ideas that were meant to forge “Modern Man”, the man who was to support and perpetuate the revolution.
As the bishops wrote:
Another powerful country, Russia, in agreement with the communists of Spain, by means of theater and cinema, with exotic rites and costumes, using intellectual charm and material subornation, was preparing the people’s spirit for the revolution, which they believed to be imminent, almost to the date.
This explains why “the political regime based on democratic freedom crumbled under the weight of the decisions of the authorities, of the State and of governmental coercion, which deformed the will of the people, up to the point when, at the last parliamentary elections of February 1936, despite the right wing parties having reaped a majority of over half a million votes MORE than the leftists, they were assigned 118 fewer seats than the Popular Front. This came about because the results of entire provinces were arbitrarily annulled, thereby vitiating the very source of the legitimacy of Parliament.”
In particular, continued the bishops:
on the 27th of February 1936, after the triumph of the Popular Front, Russia’s Komintern decreed the outbreak of the Spanish rebellion and funded it with tremendous sums of money. On the 1st of May, hundreds of young people in Madrid publicly amassed ‘bombs and guns, powder and dynamite for the imminent revolution’. On the 16th of that same month, there was a meeting between the envoys from the U.S.S.R. with the Spanish delegates from the Third International, where it was determined, in the ninth of their agreements, to entrust No. 25 of the Madrid “Radios” Committees, together with the policemen on duty, with the task of the elimination of certain political figures. Meanwhile, from Madrid to the remotest of the villages, the revolutionary militias were receiving military training and were so abundantly armed that, when the war began, they numbered 150,000 assault troops and 100,000 line soldiers.
To prove their contention that “the massacre of people and things by the communist revolution was premeditated,” the bishops also specified that “79 specialized agitators had arrived from Russia shortly before the uprising. In those very same days the National Commission of Marxist Unification ordered revolutionary militias to be set up in every country. The destruction of the churches, or at least of their furniture, was systematic and in series. In a matter of a month, every single temple was rendered of no use for the purposes it was meant to serve.”
The unequivocal proof that such an immense devastation was premeditated
are the terrifying numbers. Although the estimates are not final as of yet, we can safely say that about 20,000 churches have been destroyed or totally ransacked. The priests who have been put to death, even just limiting the count to the secular clergy, amount to about six thousand. They even set the dogs on them, hunting them down all the way up into the mountains; they were hunted down savagely into every possible hiding place. Most of the times they were killed without any trial, with no charges held against them except for their very social mission.
Many had their limbs cut off, or were mutilated before being killed; they had their eyes gouged out, their tongue cut off, or they were shot at from a dominant position, others were burned or buried alive, or hacked to death with an axe. The utmost ferocity was used against the ministers of God. Women were violated, showing no respect even for the ones who had consecrated themselves to God. Tombs and cemeteries were desecrated. This work of destruction was carried out with the battle cry “Long live Russia!”, under the banner of international communism […]
To those who claimed that if only Francisco Franco had refrained from leading the uprising, then thousands upon thousands of religious clergy and laity would not have died but could have continued their service to the church, the bishops’ reply is that “it’s the other way around: the detailed plan aiming to carry out a Marxist revolution, which would have broken out all over the world if it hadn’t been prevented in a large measure by the military-civic movement, was preordained for the following purposes: to exterminate the Catholic Clergy and the most qualified Catholic right-wing men, to sovietize all the industries and to install communism.”
This was also openly admitted to on the radio, in January of that year, by one of the leaders of the anarchists: “… we must tell about things the way they are; the armed forces preceded us in order to prevent us from succeeding in unleashing the revolution.”
After leaving Spain, when it was all over, the defeated forces remained silent, in order not to help the enemies of their great cause, the revolution. The only exception to this silence, of course, was George Orwell.
And so, today, people still think of Spain in the 1930s in terms of the epic romantic events narrated by Ernest Hemingway—then a journalist embedded with the republican forces—or of Gary Cooper, who starred in “For Whom the Bell Tolls” as a heroic fighter against Francisco Franco’s nationalist army.
The world-wide disinformation campaign, financed directly by Moscow, used the classical subversion technique of the Left, managing to blame the tragedy on the victim—that is, placing the Catholic Church in the defendant’s docket, so that, after having destroyed her material presence, they might succeed in annihilating her reputation and moral standing as well.
These are basic facts that should be widely known today, but are not. Perhaps the beatification of these 80 martyrs will help rectify that sad fact.
Endnote:
1 “Joint Letter of the Spanish Bishops to the Bishops of the Whole World Concerning the War in Spain, July 1st, 1937”. The excerpts here are translated by the author; a complete English translation can be read here.
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“…brutal religious persecution carried out by communists, anarchists, and socialists.”
Sounds like the U.S.A. in a few years- if we keep voting for them and their apologists.
Sadly, that could happen.
The Spanish Civil War had brutal people on either side.
Beware of equivalencies that don’t recognize distinguishing characteristics, especially when most published and taught historical accounts are controlled by one side.
Could the mere fact that the Church is promoting these long neglected, forgotten, martyred at this time indicate another shift toward supporting tradition and orthodoxy by the Vatican? Is this the sort of thing that the imputed “ lavender left” would support?
Unfortunately, it is frequently the case that revolutionaries, tring to prove to themselves that they are not unreasonable people, will, with all due honor towards the martyrs, throw a bone to the faithful.
Unfortunately, we become complicit in the revolutionary spirit that is a blasphemy of The Holy Ghost, The Spirit of Perfect Divine Eternal Infinite Love Between The Father And His Only Begotten Son, Jesus The Christ, Who Proceeds From Both The Father And His Only Begotten Son, Jesus The Christ, when we allow The Papacy to be undermined by those who deny The Unity Of The Holy Ghost, in order to deny The Divinity Of The Most Holy Blessed Trinity.
RORATE CÆLI: MAJOR STATEMENT: The Crimes and Heresies of Pope Francis, Their Causes and Effects, and the Action to Be Taken
Apostasy is what apostasy does, and if you do not believe that allowing the undermining of The “forever” Office of The MUNUS of The Magisterium Of The Catholic Church makes one complicit in a revolution that is promoting A Great Falling Away, perhaps you simply cannot understand the Sign of The Times Christ Warned us about.
Best short article about the truth of the beginning of the Spanish Civil War I’ve read I think ever! There is a lot of misinformation in the US educational circles and from uninformed media about this Spanish holocaust.
The author is to be highly commended and I thank her.
Franco was the most successful Fascist. He accepted assistance from Germany and Italy, and even provided a Division to fight against the Soviets during WW2. He refused to fully cooperate with Hitler and would not allow German troops on Spanish soil. When the war went badly for Germany, Franco got friendly to the US. He remained in power for almost 40 years. Franco was a “Fascist” but a pragmatic one. He cleverly avoided Spain being invaded by either side,
We read: “Tombs and cemeteries were desecrated. This work of destruction was carried out with the battle cry “Long live Russia!”, under the banner of international communism [….]”
Some eyewitness details from a rare scholar, historian and novelist, artist, world traveler, and speaker of ten languages and reader of twenty:
“I had the chance to see the cemetery of Huesca, a city under siege, between September 1936 and April 1938. Only one road connected the city with Nationalist Spain and trucks could enter it only very early in the morning or late at night with the lights switched off and traveling at great speed. Life within the city went on normally, but the cemetery, to the east, was in Red hands all the time. And since the forces of progress, democracy, and enlightenment could not take Huesca, they vented their hatred on the dead. The vulgarities, the obscenities, the corpses torn out of their graves and assembled in obscene positions gave one a never to be forgotten impression of the fine spirit which received such enthusiastic support from the American and British left. I saw these horrors just a few days after the liberation of the cemetery and on the way back to Huesca, riding in an army jeep, we passed as stalled ambulance which bore the inscription, ‘Gift of the Friends of Spanish Democracy, Tampa, Florida Chapter.’ [….] the ‘Revolution of the Eighteenth of July’ as the Red counterrising was officially called, had indeed been an orgy of rape, sadism, torture, and unspeakable obscenities perpetrated by our dear friend, the Common Man, and which has its analogies wherever leftism lifted its ugly head. That they showed the need for a spiritual reeducation of vast sectors of the Spanish people [and the entire West] is also not to be denied” (Eric von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, “Leftism: From de Sade and Marx to Hitler and Marcuse,” Arlington House, 1974, pp. 266-7)
____________________________
TODAY, after Auschwitz and Pol Pot, the suburbanized and socially acceptable world of federally subsidized abortion, USPS mifepristone, white coat euthanasia, high-tech human composting, LGBTQ tribalism and transgender child mutilation—and even the synodal “expert” study group #9 that would calibrate a new human morality under the oracle of lived experience.
Lived experience…indeed.
Thank you for telling the truth, Mr. Nucci. Unfortunately, this truth is kept hidden in a veil of silence by the CC hierarchy today in contrast to how vocal it is about social justice, equality, peace through becoming a doormat, etc. We can expect no mention from it of who murdered and persecuted the Christians in Spain: the left, the socialists, the communists.
Arn’t these canonizations the product of the CC hierarchy?
Unfortunately, as the author observes, “However, in commemorating these victims, there is no mention of the perpetrators.”
Who do you think Rick had earlier been running guns to in Casablanca?
Look closely at the picture above. On the left side there are skeletons and coffins, remains dug up from cemeteries to be defiled. They even exhumed the corpses of nuns from convent cemeteries and invited people to beat them to pieces with sticks. The American public hasn’t heard much about these atrocities or the thousands of religious persons slaughtered. But they’ve seen Guernica. Many Americans who regard Franco as a terrible Fascist tyrant don’t ask why his regime was so harsh. The Spanish Civil War is what happens when a society is irreconcilably split into hostile halves.
My apologies for my typo in addressing you, Ms. Nucci. My eyesight is getting worse and worse.
Mr Oscar, I hear you. My vision’s been heading downward. Working on computer screens doesn’t help either.
Whether you’re there yet or not, a valid supplement containing proven nutrients to prevent or limit eye damage is AREDS, which is an acronym. AREDS2 has been around a while, but a third generation of AREDS3 is now available.
Thank you for your thoughts, al of you. God bless you. Yes, I take areads2 plus visiclear plus bilberry plus a number of other things. I was diagnosed with macular degeneration and glaucoma ten years ago. Only for the grace God and thse supplements can I still look at the screen and read it and write in no less than 16 or 18 font and my pc screen is of course very large and all letters are magnified. Cannot read books anymore. copy and then paste my comment since the posting does not allow large font. But I keep fighting the good fight….
May God bless you and continue to protect your eyesight, Mr Oscar. 🙏
We take things like our vision for granted until we can’t.
These days in the U.S. the USSR has been replaced by China in its intervention in the politics of our nation:
—-“National Security Experts React to Trump’s Disclosures on Chinese Election Influence: Revelations Should ‘Galvanize Our Resolve’”
https://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2026/07/17/exclusive-national-security-experts-react-to-trumps-disclosures-on-chinese-election-influence-revelations-should-galvanize-our-resolve/
—And over a million Chinese “tourist babies” are now back in China with US. citizenship and could vote in the future.
—See The Invisible Coup: How American Elites and Foreign Powers Use Immigration as a Weapon by investigative journalist Peter Schweizer. Released in January 2026, the book argues that up to 1.5 million Chinese nationals have obtained U.S. citizenship through “birth tourism” over the last 13 years.
Schweizer contends that these children, often raised in China within the Communist Party system, will become eligible to vote in U.S. elections upon turning 18, posing a potential national security risk. The author describes this phenomenon as an “industrial scale” operation allegedly supported by the Chinese government, with a significant wave of these new voters expected to reach adulthood around 2030.
https://www.amazon.com/Invisible-Coup-American-Foreign-Immigration/dp/0063422506
Thankfully:There is a middle way (that of the Christian) which need not side with either left or right.
Christianity is not a “middle road.” It is the only road. The fiction of a political spectrum of left and right has been created to promote a myth of equivalencies. Fascism, Communism, Socialism, Nazism are essentially identical ideologies, which makes them all lefist, yes, the political spectrum is single wing, started during the French Revolution in their assemblies where revolutionaries sat on the left, and dissenters from revolution were relegated to the right, eventually to be beheaded. The myth of fascism being “right wing” enables contemporary Christian values to be cast as the enemy of “progressive enlightenment.”
My last sentence should read:
Identifying fascism in a fictional “right wing” mythology, and therefore different from other leftwing ideologies, enables religion haters to ignore non-ideological Christians and their values, whom they falsely associate with fascism, as the enemy of “progressive enlightenment,” just as they’ve done since the French Revolution.
Yes, Catholic Social Thought is the negation of ideology, not a middle ground between political left and right:
“Christian anthropology therefore is really a chapter of theology, and or this reason the Church’s social doctrine, by its concern for man and by its interest in him and in the way he conducts himself in the world, ‘belongs to the field…of theology and particularly moral theology'” (Pope St. John Paul II, “Centesimus Annus,” 1991, n. 55; citing Rerum Novarum, n. 143).
Orwell nailed it and was haunted by it until his dying day: how the foreign press deliberately distorted the facts and covered up the atrocities of the socialists. Reporters saw it, knew it and yet gave accounts that promoted the leftist agenda. And the beat goes on, doesn’t it?
>Walter Duranty has entered the chat.
Yes, when the cover-up isn’t bought and paid for, then conformism sets in, fuelled by both the fear of leaving the comfort-zone of the herd and that of serious retaliation by the powerful covert machinery. The network was already formidably widespread, and well financed, in Orwell’s day, since then it has grown, become more complex and gone deeper, as documented by David Horowitz’s “Discover the Networks”.
1936 Brigadier General Francisco Franco landed in Spain from Spanish Morocco with the Spanish Army of Africa, composed of the Spanish Foreign Legion and the Regulares belonging to the Spanish Army of Africa.
The largest contingent were the Muslim Moroccan regulares. Franco convinced the Moroccans that this was a religious war against infidel atheists [Communists]. Knowledgeable of their devotion to Mary he distributed the Brown Scapular which they wore in battle. Roughly 20,000 of the Army were Moroccan. This Muslim Moroccan contingent grew to approx 130,000 and were largely responsible for the defeat of the Communist Republicans and the restoration of the Catholic Church in Spain.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Thank you so much for sharing that Father. That’s very interesting and something I had never heard about.
Don’t forget the German Condor Legoon, consisting of both ground troops and Luftwaffe.
The Germans were small in number, perhaps 3,000 men, but were very effective pioneering Blitzkreig tactics. Spanish Republican troops were no match for them.
There were atrocities on both sides,with the Republicans being worse. There was great suffering by the Spanish people. Franco was a heavy handed dictator, but he gave the Spanish people peace for many years.
Franco accepted aid from Germany and provided Hitler with a division of Spanish troops to fight the Soviets. He refused to allow German troops on Spanish soil. The Germans wanted to go through Spain to attack British Gibraltar. Franco would not allow this. When the Germans started losing,Franco hedged his bets by getting friendly with the US. He spared Spain the agony and suffering of being invaded by the Germans or the Allies. Franco msy have been a “Fascist,” but he was a smarty, pragmatic one.
This collaboration between Moroccan Muslims and Catholics is a very useful aspect to ponder, as the current winning alliance is unfortunately the one embodied by islamo-marxist Mamdani, in whom the two identities interlock on one aspect: enmity towards Christianity. This leaves us with only one way out: fervent prayer for their conversion to Christ. In this we can find great hope: although Muslim conversions are hardly ever reported, since Sharia law requires an apostate’s family to take it upon themselves to kill him/her, nonetheless they are taking place by the hundreds every day, all over the world. Despite the danger. There are many published testimonies of converts to be had and to give as presents, such as “The Price to Pay”, by Joseph Fadelle, and “I dared call him Father” by Bilquis Sheik, and surely a lot of more recent ones. Let us all remember to pray for this intention!
There is a long history of anti-clericalism in Spain. Spaniards who emigrated to Tampa in the late 19th and 20th century, particularly males, despised the Church. They claimed it was corrupt and oppressive. The community also overwhelmingly supported the Republicans during the Spanish Civil War.
As I read this article, as well as the complete letter from the Spanish bishops, I can’t help but think of soon-to-be Blessed Archbishop Sheen’s tenacious fight against Communism, which I still hear regularly on Catholic radio. Communism hardly died with the fall of the Soviet Union. I can’t help but wonder what we can– perhaps must– do to liberate those large parts of the world that are still under oppressive Communist regimes, even as I have to question the wisdom of being involved in foreign quagmires and the risk of nuclear armageddon. At the very least, it shouldn’t be “business as usual” with such regimes.
One was just elected Mayor of New York.
You are incorrect. The current mayor of New York is not now nor has been a Communist. You slander millions of New Yorkers who elected him in a democratic election.
You are incorrect, yet again, Gerard. Mamdami is an avowed communist. And every demented individual who voted for him slander their own souls and contributed to making a mockery of democracy.
Pray the rosary, per her instructions.
Thanks for this article. An eye-opener for me.
It’s true. There was widespread killing of religious and burning of churches all over the country well before the war started.
Pablo Picasso’s painting, “Guernica”, was painted long before the war too. It commemorates the nuns killed and the burning of churches by anarchists, and also his friend the bullfighter Ricardo Ortiz, who was killed by a bull. Picasso kept it in his attic because anti-communism wasn’t always good business in artistic circles. As soon as the Germans bombed twenty houses in Guernica in 1937, he got it down, gave it a new name, and the rest is “history”.
I would like to use this tidbit about Picasso’s Guernica: do you have a source that I can cite?
The historian Arnaud Imatz writes:
“In July of 1936 the Spanish army of Africa had 47000 men with between 9000 and 10000 Moroccans. During the war only between 9 and 10 thousand Moroccans were part of the National forces, which was about 6.5 percent of the total National army. At its height the National army had 1’250,000 against the Republicans 1’750,000.
The Moroccan soldiers had great respect for the Spanish leadership and Franco. This concept of military respect is not understood by the left wingers, who use every means to denigrate the National forces.
Moroccan general Ben Mizzian, who saved Franco’s life during the Rif war [ While Franco and Lieutenant Colonel Claudio Temprano were fortifying the village of Abada, a rebel fighter emerged within four meters and pointed a Mauser rifle at them. Mizzian, then a captain and aide to Temprano, shot the rebel first, killing him instantly. ] was a great friend of Franco. He had fought alongside the Spanish force in the Rif war. He led the Moroccan troops during the Civil War. Because of his merits he was promoted to general.
Franco’s wife took care of the education of his children.
One of Mizzian daughters became a Catholic. After the war ended, Mizzian requested to be relieved of his command. The reason was that the king of Morocco would entrust him with the formation of the Moroccan army. He became Minister of Defense of the king of Morocco.
The Moroccan soldiers fighting with the National army carried scapularies because of respect to the National leadership and because they considered them bullet stoppers (anti bala).
The left wing propaganda always repeats that the Moroccans were “convinced” or “forced” by the National leadership. The left wingrs do not understand that the Moroccans were natural fighters who admired and respected the Spanish African commanders. THIS CONCEPT OF MILITARY RESPECT IS NOT UNDERSTDOO NOR CAN IT BE UNDERSTOOD BY MOST OF TODAY’S HISTORIANS BUT IS FUNDAMENTAL TO UNDERSTAND THE COLONIZATIN OF NORTH AFRICA AND THE EUROPEAN PRESENCE. THEY PRODUCE THE SAME PROPAGANDA TO EXPLAIN HOW THE JEWS IN MOROCCO TURNED TO FRANCO’S SIDE.”
You mean the Nationalist forces were outnumbered by the Republicans by half a million troops?? 1,750,000 to 1250,000?? Are these official numbers?