Historiography on Spanish Civil War repressions (numbers)
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victims of Republican terror and monument to victims of Nationalist terror
Historiography on number of victims of the Spanish Civil War repressions is a scientific debate, which has been taking place among historians, and which concerns the question how many people were killed in wartime terror of both sides, the Nationalists and the Republicans, during the Spanish Civil War.
Apart from clearly propagandistic claims, from the onset there was no agreement in the academia, with discrepancies ranging (first Nationalist killings, then Republican ones, in thousands) from 40:60 to 200:20. In the mid-1970s the figures of 35:72 became particularly popular, either endorsed or contested. Since the late 1990s the ratio of 150:50 emerged as dominant, though it compared Francoist repression of 1936-1975 and Republican terror of 1936–1939. In the 21st century university scholars tend to approach wartime-only estimates as 100:50, yet beyond academia there might be widely different figures in circulation.
Apart from numbers, general historiographic debate on Spanish Civil War repression focuses also on many other threads, especially related to mechanisms of terror, its origins, its role and objectives, its nature, perpetrators, victims, institutional arrangements and other. Most of these threads are inter-related.
Already during the war there were various numbers quantifying terror of both sides in circulation. However, they had little to do with historiography and fall rather into the propaganda rubric, as most were coined either by the warring parties or their supporters. Some inflated the figures beyond reason, e.g. on April 19, 1937, Francisco Franco declared that 470,000 people had already been murdered in the Republican zone.[1] On the other hand, in 1940 the periodical issued by the Communist Party of the USA claimed that already 800,000 people had perished in the Francoist repression.[2] Some of these figures, e.g. the claim of Ramón Sender that 750,000 left-wingers had been executed by mid-1938, were repeated even in the 1970s.[3] Following the final Nationalist triumph the Madrid government set up a massive investigation program, which came to be known as Causa General; its purpose was to document Republican atrocities. The work grew to enormous scale.[4] Eventually when in 1942 presenting their findings to the Minister of Justice, formally responsible for the investigation, the authors of this collective work arrived at the figure of 85,940 wartime Republican rearguard killings.[5] However, in huge résumé publications based on Causa General, issued every some time in Spain since 1943,[6] this figure has been omitted; present-day historians speculate that Franco was disappointed and considered the figure to be too low.[7] One scholar maintains that it remained so "for over a quarter of a century",[8] yet the first identified publication of the 85,940 figure - though referred as a well-documented minimum, perhaps subject to revisions upwards following further research - appeared in another version of the Causa General résumé, published in 1961.[9] At times there were even lower figures advanced, not necessarily official yet at least allowed to be floated in public space, e.g. 54,594 as stated in the newly refurbished national sanctuary in Valladolid.[10] However, in the press the figure was rather revised upwards, e.g. to 415,000 (1946);[11] also historians declared higher figures, e.g. José Díaz de Villegas claimed 140,000 victims of terror rojo.[12]
Until the 1960s no independent scholarly estimates as to the Nationalist repression have been offered; in Francoist Spain it was a somewhat inconvenient topic, while émigré or foreign scholars did not have access to sources. Things changed following publication of first academic synthetic accounts of the Spanish Civil War, published by Hugh Thomas (1961) and Gabriel Jackson (1965). Both advanced their estimates and none of them provided any references as to basis of their calculation; Thomas noted merely "my considered belief"[13] while Jackson trusted "my first four fingers" and embarked on some historiographic comparisons.[14] Both scholars offered vastly different numbers. Thomas at one point explicitly declared 40,000 as a maximum for Nationalist repression and at another one estimated the total number of rearguard atrocities as 100,000, which implicitly left 60,000 for Republican killings.[15] Jackson explicitly stated the number for "wartime Nationalist paseos and political reprisals" as 200,000, and this for "Republican zone paseos and political reprisals" as 20,000.[16] Another major synthesis of the war, by Pierre Broué and Émile Témime (1961), did not offer any estimates; neither Herbert Southworth, in his well-known book intended to counter the Francoist propaganda (1963), advanced any figures, except a reference to 192,684 fatal victims of post-war repression.[17] Hence, until the mid-1970s scholars had to find their own way between figures advanced by Causa General, Thomas and Jackson; e.g. Stanley G. Payne initially (1967) pointed to Jackson and assumed that "number of Nationalist executions exceeded those carried out by the left";[18] 5 years later he was more specific and estimated that "the White terror may have slain 50,000, perhaps fewer, during the war", and that the number of victims of the Nationalist repression was "undoubtedly greater" than the number of those killed by the Republicans (not specified, with the Madrid-advanced figure of 61,000 "not subject to objective verification").[19]Raymond Carr in his synthesis (1973) merely referred (incorrectly) vastly different estimates of Thomas and Jackson, without opting for any.[20]
Another historiographic milestone was reached in 1977, already during the Spanish transition to democracy, when Ramón Salas Larrazábal published in Barcelona a 500-page book, titled Perdidas de la guerra. It was the first-ever monograph, intended to gauge the human cost of the Spanish Civil War. Published by a professional military historian, who spent all his career in Francoist armed forces, it was heavily based on Causa General, though also on other sources.[21] The author offered a structured and systematic quantitative summary, which broke down war fatalities into various categories. The total for wartime "executions and murders" was reported as 108,000, with Nationalist terror responsible for 35,500 deaths and the Republican one for 72,500.[22] Because of its systematic nature and the level of detail the work enjoyed considerable impact for almost 2 decades. The figures were also at times quoted abroad as the best that historiography could offer;[23] in his monograph on the Franco regime (1987) Payne reversed his earlier suggestions and referred Salas' figures with few reservations, though he tended to prefer estimates of his brother Jesús Salas Larrazábal, once coined in a newspaper article and featuring 40,000 Nationalist killings and 60,000 Republican ones.[24] However, other scholars did not agree; in the now democratic Spain some historians - most notably Alberto Reig Tapia - heavily criticised Salas' work as fundamentally flawed in terms of methodology.[25]Ramón Tamames claimed (1977) 208,000 victims of Francoist terror (no estimates for the Republican one).[26] Following another revision of his book, since the late 1970s Thomas - again with neither references nor rationale provided - also reversed his earlier estimates and started advancing a new set of figures, namely 75,000 victims of Nationalist terror and 55,000 victims of the Republican one;[27] in the international historiography it became very popular if not prevailing, at least until the late 1990s.[28]
In the 1980s and 1990s numerous works of Spanish historians focused on repression in specific provinces or even specific comarcas; some of them achieved the status of "obra modélica"[29] and almost all offered figures lower (in case of Republican) or higher (in case of Nationalist) than these advanced by Salas.[30] A very important step as to approximation of the scale of terror was taken in 1996, in 2 joint works by Josep Maria Solé i Sabaté and Joan Villarroya i Font.[31] In the volume which formed part of a monumental academic series on the history of Spain (1998), Javier Tusell cautiously endorsed their figures of 90,000 killed by the Nationalists[32] and 55–60,000 killed by the Republicans.[33] However, a professional yet non-academic historian Angel David Martín Rubio in what he claimed to be a "síntesis definitiva" (1997) came out with 53–58,000 killed by the Nationalists and 60,000 by the Republicans;[34] the work became massively popular. The breakthrough volume was a collective publication edited by Santos Julia Díaz (1999), which summarised earlier local research.[35] With 24 provinces (out of 50) scrutinized for Nationalist terror the total number of executions was 72,527; with 22 provinces scrutinized for Republican terror, the total was 37,843. On this basis the editors offered their overall estimates: they claimed that the total number of those killed by the Nationalists should be doubled,[36] implicitly suggesting around 145,000, and that the number of those killed by the Republicans was probably around 50,000 (stated explicitly).[37] The work edited by Julia proved extremely influential; one if its characteristic features, to persist during quarter of a century to come, was quantifying "Francoist repression" instead of "Nationalist repression". The result is that the Republican terror of 1936-1939 was getting compared to combined wartime and post-war terror of the Franco regime, at times up to 1975.[38]
In the 2000s numerous scientific works in Spain referred the Julia-edited volume as basically a statement which perhaps was not definitive, but eventually set the figures straight and introduced the ratio between two terrors which was unlikely to change;[39] the 150 vs. 50 proportion started to dominate in historiography. However, some scholars advanced even wider discrepancy. In 2006 in his major work a British academic historian Paul Preston came out - not offering any specific references as to sources - with 180,000 Nationalist killings and 55,000 Republican ones.[40] The same year Antony Beevor, another historian from Britain though catering to popular rather than scientific audience, sort of reverted to the ratio advanced by Jackson 40 years earlier. His take was 200,000 for the Nationalist terror and 35,000 for the Republican one; like Preston, he offered no specific references.[41] Both works became massively popular, and the one by Beevor got translated into numerous foreign languages. Jean-François Berdah (2003) very cautiously advanced the proportion of 200:70.[42] However, there were other vastly popular books which either claimed that the Nationalist vs. Republican gap was much more narrow, or that it did not exist at all. In terms of commercial success in Spain no book on the civil war is comparable to the one published by an amateur historian Pio Moa (2003). He did not advance his own figures, yet endorsed these by Martín Rubio (55,000 Nationalist killings, 60,000 Republican ones) as "más cercanos a la realidad", though he noted that they "parecen también excesivos".[43] Calculations of Martín Rubio were endorsed also by distinguished hispanists, though when noting that "those ratios are probably as accurate as they can be made" Payne (2007) quoted 70,000 Nationalist and 60,000 Republican executions.[44] Lesser-known academic historians like José Luis Orella (2005) advanced figures like 52,000 killings by the Nationalists and 57,000 by the Republicans.[45] Some scholars in their synthetic summaries of the war preferred not to provide any figures at all.[46]
The first decade of the 21st century is at times described as "el gran avance" in terms of researching the scale of wartime terror,[47] with a spate of new detailed works focused on specific geographical areas. In the 2010s some scholars accepted the 150:50 extrapolations advanced in the Julia-edited volume of 1999, though at time without the reservation that they included also the post-war terror; this was the case e.g. of Francisco Romero Salvado, who in his dictionary (2013) claimed "at least" 150,000 Nationalist executions and 49,000 Republican ones.[48] In a subsequent work (2011) Preston relinquished his earlier 180:50 proportion and also settled for the now-dominant 150:50.[49] However, more and more works started to abandon this ratio and to scale down the gap between the two warring sides. The work of Francisco Espinosa Maestre (2010) re-stated the numbers as 130,199 for Nationalist repression (including post-war terror) and 49,272 for the Republican one.[50] One of contributors to the Julia-edited work, an established academic Julian Casanova, in an English-language compendium by a prestigious British publisher (2013) suggested 100,000 killed by the Nationalists and 55,000 by the Republicans (war only).[51] A young historian with his PhD dedicated to Republican violence, José Luis Ledesma, first (2009) endorsed 76,000 vs. 50,000 totals,[52] and then (2014) re-stated them as 90,000 vs. 50,000.[53] Payne, who over time kept re-working his numbers and has never accepted the 150:50 ratio, in another compendium by another prestigious British publisher (2012) with somewhat confusing maths settled for 70,000 Nationalist executions and 56,000 Republican ones.[54] In 2012 a British-Spanish scholar Julius Ruiz when attempting a summary of historiographic output on repression (2012) opted for 100,000 killed by the Nationalists and 50–60,000 by the Republicans, though he did not conceal his kind of irritation as to futility of the ongoing debate.[55] A new civil war synthesis by Esdaile (2019) claimed 75,000 victims of Nationalist terror and 55,000 of the Republican repression.[56]
2020s: Neo-Republicans vs. Revisionists and 100:50
In the 2020s many scholars claim that there is a scientifically approved consensus about the 150:50 ratio,[57] though some use its scaled-down variants, like 143:45 (Tizón 2022),[58] 140:49 (Espinosa Maestre 2022),[59] 135:50 (Alia Miranda 2020)[60] or 130:50 (Reig Tapia 2025).[61] However, these estimates include post-war Francoist terror and at times it is close to impossible to comprehend what is counted in and what is counted out.[62] Attempts to understand the scale of war-only Nationalist terror by deducting the number of post-war fatalities from the total are inconclusive, as the number of killed by the regime after April 1939 might be given as 35,000,[63] 40,000,[64] or 50,000;[65] in broad public discourse the figures in circulation might be around 100,000[66] or even 1 million.[67] Scholarly statements which explicitly provide war-time repression figures are rare. An attempt at a historiographic summary claims that science has sort of agreed to 120–150,000 for Nationalist terror and 50,000 for the Republican one (Pérez Baquero 2022),[68] but Casanova (2022) sticks to 100,000 vs. 55,000 (respectively Nationalist and Republican repression).[69] There are attempts - usually not by academics - to challenge head-on the historiography-dominant figure of 50,000 victims of Republican repression, with new numbers reaching 60,000 (Esparza)[70] or even 200,000 (Piñeiro Maceiras).[71] This includes also local studies, e.g. in case of Catalonia.[72] In the academia these studies are usually greeted with silence,[73] though they receive some attention in the media, usually of right-wing leaning. Payne, in re-work of his earlier history of the war (2020), dropped the paragraph with numbers of Nationalist and Republican killings altogether.[74] The debate, framed within the general controversy between (as they are dubbed by their opponents) neo-Republican and revisionist historians, is at times very bitter.[75] Also foreign scholars do not agree even on the very basics.[76]
↑ J. S. Vidarte, Todos fuimos culpables, Barcelona 1978, ISBN 8425309395, p. 418
↑ details in Pablo Gil Vico, Ideología y represión. La causa general: Evolución histórica de un mecanismo jurídico-político del régimen franquista, [in:] Revista de estudios políticos 101 (1998), pp. 159-189
↑ Francisco Espinosa Maestre, Agosto de 1936. Terror y propaganda. Los orígenes de la Causa General, [in:] Pasado y Memoria. Revista de Historia Contemporánea 4 (2005), p. 16
↑ e.g. Causa general: la dominación roja en España (1943) or a larger version, Datos complementarios para la Historia de España. Guerra de Liberación, 1936-1939 (1945), Espinosa Maestre 2005, p. 15
↑ literally "En definitiva, los crímenes cometidos por el Frente Popular en la zona de España que estuvo sometida a su dominio revisten tal magnitud, que solamente los asesinatos debidamente investigados alcanzan la cifra de 85.940, sin incluir, como es consiguiente, las bajas y víctimas de guerra", La dominación roja en España. Causa General, Madrid 1961, p. 611. The first identified press reference to this figure is from 1962, Declaraciones del ministro de justicia, [in:] Diario de Burgos 13.12.1962
↑ Francois Godicheau, La represión y la guerra civil española. Memoria y tratemiento histórico, [in:] Prohistoria 5 (2001), p. 106
↑ José Díaz de Villegas, ¿Un millón de muertos?, [in:] Diario de Burgos 02.04.1961
↑ Hugh Thomas, The Spanish Civil War, London 1961, p. 631
↑ Gabriel Jackson, The Spanish Civil War, Princeton 1961, p. 539
↑ "it is my considered belief that the total number of Nationalist 'atrocities' - by which I understand any shooting outside the battle line - is unlikely to have been greater that 40,000" p. 631, and "about 100,000 may be supposed to have died by murder or summary execution", Thomas 1961, p. 606
↑ Herbert Southworth, El mito de la cruzada de Franco, Paris 1963, p. 310
↑ "the bulk of evidence seems to support Jackson's contention that even during the wartine period the number of Nationalist executions exceeded those carried out by the left", Stanley G. Payne, Politics and the Military in Moden Spain, Stanford/London 1967, p. 415
↑ Stanley G. Payne, A History of Spain and Portugal, Madison 1973, ISBN 9780299062705, quoted after the online version
↑ "The total number of Nationalist executions is still a matter of controversy and guess-work ... Thomas estimates the number of executions at 50,000 on each side; Jackson estimates that 200,000 people were executed during the war itself and 200,000 more died in prison or were shot between 1939 and 1943", Raymond Carr, The Spanish Tragedy, Weidenfeld/London 1973, p. 124. Carr kept repeating the same numbers in subsequent editions until the late 1980s
↑ Ramón Salas Larrazábal, Perdidad de la guerra, Barcelona 1977, ISBN 8432002852. In 1980 the book was followed up by a larger and re-worked version, though largely with the same numbers, Ramón Salas Larrazábal, Los datos exactos de la Guerra Civil, Madrid 1980, ISBN 8430026940
↑ they were referred as "magisterial" as late as in the mid-1990s, compare Warren Carrroll, The Last Crusade, New York 1996, ISBN 0931888670, p. 216
↑ Jesús Salas Larrazábal, Los muertos de la Guerra Civil, [in:] ABC 21.07.1977
↑ Alberto Reig Tapia, Consideraciones metodológicas para el estudio de la represión franquista en la guerra civil, [in:] Sistema: revista de ciencias sociales 33 (1979), pp. 99-128. Reig Tapia kept publishing other demolishing works, the most important of which is Alberto Reig Tapia, Manuel Tuñon de Lara, Ideología e historia: sobre la represión franquista y la guerra civil, Madrid 1986, ISBN 8476000146
↑ Ramón Tamames, La Republica. La era de Franco, Madrid 1977, ISBN 8420620513, p. 323
↑ "Murders and executions behind the lines account perhaps for another 130,000 (75,000 nationalist, 55,000 revolutionary or republican)", Hugh Thomas, The Spanish Civil War, New York/London 1977, ISBN 0241894506, p. 927
↑ e.g. the 75,000 vs 55,000 figures referred by Thomas are quoted as "tabulated" in the "Casualties" entry in James W. Cortada, Historical Dictionary of the Spanish Civil War 1936-1939, Westport/London 1982, ISBN 0313220549, p. 115
↑ these were especially numerous works on repression in Catalonia by Josep María Solé i Sabaté and Joan Villaroya i Font, published mostly in ther 1980s, Godicheau 2001, p. 109
↑ Josep Maria Solé i Sabaté, Joan Villarroya i Font, La represión en la zona rebelde, [in:] Manuel Tuñón de Lara (ed.), La guerra civil española, vol. 6, Madrid 1996, ISBN 844130436X, pp. 100-112, and Josep Maria Solé i Sabaté, Joan Villarroya i Font; La represión en la zona republicana, same volume, pp. 113-127
↑ quoting Francisco Moreno Gómez, Javier Tusell, Historia de España en el siglo XX, vol. 2, Madrid 1998, ISBN 9788430606306, p. 323
↑ quoting Josep Solé i Sabaté as "mejor especialista en estas materias", in Tusell 1998, p. 323
↑ Angel David Martín Rubio, Paz, piedad, perdón - y verdad: la represión en la guerra civil: una síntesis definitiva, Madrid 1997, ISBN 9788488787163
↑ opinion of Godicheau 2001, pp. 110-111; the volume in question is Santos Juliá Díaz (ed.) Víctimas de la guerra civil, Madrid 1999, ISBN 847880983X
↑ "si en la mitad de las provincias ya se conocen 72.527 fusilamientos (guerra y posguerra), habria que pensar en el doble para la totalidad de Espana", Julia 1999, p. 410
↑ compare e.g. "habría que situarla en torno a un mínimo de 130.000 incluyendo los abatidos por la 'ley de fugas' aplicada a la guerrilla, ejecutados sobre el terreno, fusilados, paseados, etc., para el periodo 1936-1975", Alberto Reig Tapia, Memoria de la represión de la guerra civil y el franquismo, [in:] Juan Andrés Blanco (ed.), Memoria histórica y memoria democrática en la España actual, Salamanca 2025, ISBN 9788410910669, p. 118
↑ "perhaps as many as 180,000 Freemasons, liberals and leftists lost their lives in the Francoist repression although there is still considerable controversy over exact figures", Paul Preston, The Spanish Civil War: Reaction, Revolution and Revenge, London/New York 2006, ISBN 9780007232079, p. 202, and "about 55,000 civilians were killed in the Republican zone in course of the war", p. 233
↑ "we are probably faced with a total figure for killings and executions by the nationalists during the war and afterwards of around 200,000 people", and "in all, the victims of the red terror in the Republican zone during the civil war rose to some 38,000 people", Antony Beevor, The Battle for Spain, London 2006, ISBN 9780297848325
↑ "On a parlé de 200 000 victimes pour la période 1939-1944 tant chez Max Gallo que chez Gabriel Jackson, mais quel crédit donner à ces chiffres qui englobent au passage la période de la guerre civile et le premier franquisme?", and "la réalité se situerait en l’état actuel des connaissances autour de 70 000 morts [victims of Republican terror]", Jean-François Berdah, Épuration et répression politique en Espagne pendant la guerre d’Espagne et la post-guerre (1936-1945), [in:] Amnis 3 (2003) [online]
↑ it is 83,000 for Nationalist terror (including 25-30,000 post war repression) and 60,000 Republican terror; both figures are according to the author "más cercanos a la realidad, parecen también excesivos", Pio Moa, Los mitos de la Guerra Civil, Madrid 2003, ISBN 9788497340939, p. 504
↑ Stanley G. Payne, The Spanish Civil War, the Soviet Union, and Communism, New Haven/London 2004, ISBN 9780300178326, p. 337
↑ though "evidentemente no son cifras definitivas", José Luis Orella, Prólogo, [in:] César Alcalá, La represión política en Cataluña, Madrid 2005, ISBN 8496281310, p. 10
↑ see e.g. Helen Graham, The Spanish Civil War. A Very Short Introduction, Oxford 2005, ISBN 9780192803771; the chapter Rebellion, revolution and repression (pp. 21-36) does not offer any estimates
↑ Francisco Espinosa Maestre, La investigación de la represión franquista 40 años después (1979-2020), [in:] Vicente A. Gabarda Cebellán (ed.), Violencia, conceptualización, memoria, represión, estudios, monumentalización, exhumaciones, Pamplona 2021, ISBN 9788477958628, pp. 91-114 [referred after the online version, p. 11]
↑ "Republican terror amounted to some 49,000 killings. Some temporary figures for the Nationalist repression produced by the meticulous research of local historians in different provinces following the death of General Francisco Franco (today graveyards are still being found all over the country) indicate that at least 150,000 were killed", Francisco J. Romero Salvadó, Historical Dictionary of the Spanish Civil War, London 2013 ISBN 978-0810857841, p. 21, the figures are repeated also at p. 325, also with no information that they might include the post-war terror. The same figures, attributed to wartime killing only, filtered out abroad, compare "Die Repression der „Nationalisten“ im Krieg kostete vermutlich 150.000 Menschenleben. In der republikanischen Zone sollen 50.000 Personen ermordet worden sein", Mord aus Dogmatismus, [in:] Deutschlandfunk Kultur 27.06.2007
↑ the author endorses the 49,372 figure of Republican repression, and proceeds to note that in case of Francoist repression " it is unlikely that such deaths were fewer than 150,000 and they could well be more", Paul Preston, The Spanish Holocaust: Inquisition and Extermination in Twentieth-Century Spain, London 2012, ISBN 9780393064766, pp. xi, xvi, xviii
↑ Casanova, a professional historian and academic himself, claims that these are the figures "according to historians", Julian Casanova, The Spanish Civil War, London/New York 2013, ISBN 9781350127586, p. 184
↑ "la suma provisional de la información hoy disponible permitiría hablar de algo más de 50.000 víctimas en la zona republicana y proponer un mínimo de 126.000 para la represión franquista (50.000 de ellas correspondientes a la posguerra), aunque en este caso los datos incorporados son incompletos en el caso de once provincias y del todo inexistentes en el de otras cinco", Ledesma 2009, José Luis Ledesma, Del pasado oculto a un pasado omnipresente. Las violencias en la Guerra Civil y la historiografía reciente, [in:] Revista de historia Jerónimo Zurita 84 (2009), p. 168
↑ "Se puede así calcular de manera razonable que las políticas y prácticas represivas se llevaron por delante la vida de en torno a 50.000 personas en la zona republicana, y un mínimo de otras 130.000 en la España de Franco, unas 40.000 de ellas durante la posguerra, aunque la cifra global real bien pudo ser mayor y, según alguna estimación, superar los 150.000", José Luis Ledesma, Franco y las violencias de la Guerra Civil. Manual de uso para un retrato blando de la represión franquista, [in:] Hispania Nova 1 (2015), p. 170
↑ Stanley G. Payne, The Spanish Civil War, Cambridge 2012, ISBN 9781107002265. The author admits that the question of numbers "remains problematic", though he cautiously adheres to estimates of "56,000 executions by the Republicans and a somewhat higher number by the Nationalists" (p. 244). Elsewhere he notes that "subsequent studies would indicate a total of somewhat more than 120,000 executions by both sides combined during the war" (p. 104), and also that repression in the Nationalist zone claimed "at least 70,000 lives (and possibly more)" (p. 110). The arithmetic does not match, as 120-56=64, not "70 or more"
↑ "a maximum of 150,000 were executed in rebel (or 'Nationalist') Spain, including 50,000 after the civil war, while there were 50-60,000 victims in the Republican rearguard", Julius Ruiz, Old Wine in New Bottles: The Historiography on Repression in Spain During and After the Spanish Civil War, [in:] Manuel Alvarez Tardió, Fernando del Rey Reguillo (eds.), The Spanish Second Republic Revisited, Eastbourne/Chicago 2012, ISBN 9781845194598, p. 187. Ruiz provided slightly different estimates when claiming that "General Franco's 'crusade' against communism led to 100,000 wartime executions (and around 30,000 after March 1939), while the Republican elimination of 'fascism' cost 50,000 lives", Julius Ruiz, Fighting the Fifth Column: the Terror in Republican Madrid during the Spanish Civil War, [in:] Andrew Barros, Martin Thomas (eds.), The Civilianization of War, Cambridge 2018, ISBN 9781108429658, p. 47
↑ Charles J. Esdaile, The Spanish Civil War. A military History, London/New York 2019, ISBN 9781138311275, p. 310. In the footnote the author quoted Thomas as his reference, though he was aware of the figures advanced by Preston, see p. 320
↑ Jorge Tizón, La guerra como campo de batalla, Barcelona 2022, ISBN 9788425449635, p. 55. A large table offered, with numbers of different categories of casualties listed, is extremely confusing. It produces 2 figures for Francoist repression, 98,000 (as documented) and 147,000 (as probable); some totals used the former figure, and some use the latter
↑ Francisco Alía Miranda, Fernando del Rey Reguillo, Retaguardia roja: violencia y revolución en la guerra civil española, [review of, in:] Vínculos de Historia 9 (2020), p. 546
↑ "víctims of the war violence" but "incorporating also post-war executions", see "actualmente, los últimos estudios estiman las víctimas de la violencia de guerra en toda España en unas 175.000, en torno a unas 50.000 en el bando republicano y 135.000 por la represión franquista (incorporando también las ejecuciones de la posguerra)". To make matters worse, there is also a problem with maths, as 50+135=185, not 175, see Alía Miranda 2020, p. 546. Reig Tapia compares Republican violence of 1936-1939 (50,000) and Francoist violence of 1936-1975 (130,00), Reig Tapia 2025, p. 118. Many other authors follow the same path
↑ "El historiador de la UCLM (Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha) Francisco Alía, miembro del equipo investigador, ofrecía datos tan sintéticos como estremecedores sobre las víctimas de la represión franquista: ¿cuántos han sido?, ¿cómo ocurrió?, ¿por qué los mataron? “Queda aún mucho por investigar, porque la historia no tiene punto final. Actualmente conocemos datos de más o menos la mitad del territorio español. Suponemos que la represión total del franquismo está entre 130.000 y 145.000 víctimas, de ellas 35.000 ejecuciones en la posguerra", Aida Fernández Vázquez, Mapas de Memoria: homenaje, dolor y dignidad para las 4000 víctimas del franquismo en Ciudad Real, [in:] UNED service 19.02.2018
↑ "Los sublevados dieron rienda suelta desde el principio a una implacable estrategia de eliminación del contrario que se llevaría por delante un mínimo de 130.000 vidas entre la guerra y su posguerra, más de 40.000 de ellas durante la segunda, aunque la cifra total real bien pudo ser mayor y, según alguna estimación, superar los 150.000. Por su parte, allí donde la sublevación fue derrotada, o simplemente no llegaba a producirse, estallaba un proceso revolucionario súbito y violento que acometió también sin dilaciones el intento de destruir las posiciones de los grupos sociales y políticos privilegiados y que dejó tras de sí en torno a 50.000 víctimas y también una sucesión inacabable de tragedias individuales y familiares", José Luis Ledesma, Las justicias del pueblo. Prácticas de violencia en la zona republicana durante la Guerra Civil española (1936-1939) [PhD dissertation European University Institute], Florence 2014, p. 45. This statement is not based on own research, as the author quotes scholars like Paul Preston, Julian Casanova, and Santos Julia
↑ in the digital era anyone can publicly advance own estimates, compare "while April 1st marks the end of the Spanish Civil War, the war didn’t end for many. Franco’s first decree was to ensure all Republicans would suffer for their choices. More than 1000 concentration camps were erected in Spain, holding people well into the 1950’s. Many didn’t survive the camps. How many people died between 1939 and 1975 isn’t known, but one estimate is almost one million"; no source and no reference is provided, This Day in Spanish Civil War History, [in:] Caroline Angus 27.03.2019
↑ "Many studies have found that among Republican ranks, 50,000 supporters of the rebellion were shot, whereas, among the Nationalists, the death toll reached as high as 120,000 to 150,000. In addition, after winning the war, the Francoist authorities strongly repressed the supporters of the Spanish Second Republic, producing a further 150,000 to 400,000 victims", Rafael Pérez Baquero, Rethinking the Historiography of the Spanish Civil War: Multifarious approaches to a contested past, [in:] Hist.Mem 25 (2022), p. 278
↑ the work of Solé and Villaroya (1998), at the time presented as a model work, advanced the figure of 8,156 killed by the Republicans in Catalonia; a non-academic historian César Alcalá came out with 26,606 as a minimum (2021), Un libro revela que ERC amparó más de 26.000 asesinatos al comienzo de la Guerra Civil, [in:] Servimedia 11.07.2021. The article is a review of César Alcalá, La cobardía de E.R.C: Los diez primeros meses en la guerra civil, Madrid 2021, ISBN 9788418816116
↑ e.g. the work of Piñeiro Maceiras has not even been recorded in the scientific bibliographical listing of Dialnet Unirioja, let alone be reviewed in a historiographic periodical
↑ Stanley G. Payne, ¿Por qué la República perdió la guerra?, Barcelona 2020, ISBN 9788467036441, p. 114 (chapter 6: Terror). In the earlier English-language version (chapter 7: Terror) he claimed 77,000 Nationalist killings and 50,000 Republican ones, see Payne 2012, p. 110. In 2020 Payne also lowered the total number of the executed from 150,000 to 130,000 (compare Payne 2020, p. 106, vs. Payne 2012, p. 110)
↑ e.g. the 76-year-old Alberto Reig Tapia charged the 91-year-old Stanley G. Payne with "enajenación mental", Reig Tapia 2025, p. 112. Some 40 years earlier Reig Tapia when discussing historiography on repression placed Payne in the "pro-republican historians" rubric (himself he posed as unbiased scholar, neither "pro-republican" nor "neo-franquista"), compare Alberto Reig Tapia, La represión franquista y la guerra civil: consideraciones metodológicas, instrumentalización política y justificación ideológica [PhD dissertation Complutense], Madrid 1983, pp. 90-93
↑ e.g. two Polish academic Hispanists and co-authors of a synthetic history of Spain (Tadeusz Miłkowski, Paweł Machcewicz, Historia Hiszpanii, Wrocław 2009, ISBN 9788304049369) present entirely different views on rearguard terror during the war. According to Miłkowski, "frankiści zabili dwa razy tyle" - Francoists killed twice as many [as the Republicans], compare footage from the 2019 Międzynarodowa Konferencja Dąbrowszczacy w trzech odsłonach, [in:] YouTube 1:41:13. According to Machcewicz, the Nationalists killed 40,000 and the Republicans 50-55,000, Tomasz Leszkowicz, Paweł Machcewicz: terror istniał po obu stronach, [in:] HistMag 26.04.2014
Further reading
Francisco Espinosa Maestre, La investigación de la represión franquista 40 años después (1979-2020), [in:] Vicente A. Gabarda Cebellán (ed.), Violencia, conceptualización, memoria, represión, estudios, monumentalización, exhumaciones, Pamplona 2021, ISBN 9788477958628, pp.91–114
Francois Godicheau, La represión y la guerra civil española. Memoria y tratemiento histórico, [in:] Prohistoria 5 (2001), pp.103–122
José Luis Ledesma, Del pasado oculto a un pasado omnipresente. Las violencias en la Guerra Civil y la historiografía reciente, [in:] Revista de historia Jerónimo Zurita 84 (2009), pp.163–188
Rafael Pérez Baquero, Rethinking the Historiography of the Spanish Civil War: Multifarious approaches to a contested past, [in:] Hist.Mem 25 (2022), pp.275–308
Alberto Reig Tapia, Memoria de la represión de la guerra civil y el franquismo, [in:] Juan Andrés Blanco (ed.), Memoria histórica y memoria democrática en la España actual, Salamanca 2025, ISBN 9788410910669, pp.109–124
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