Vengeance, hatred, murder. The "new" Spain is here. It will be cleansed of all "evil". Thousands will have to die, in a time near to 10% of the population will be imprisoned. But the church will grant absolution.

And what Spain had to suffer, will come in a few months to all Europe, causing the death of millions of people.

A few weeks ago, during the fall of Catalonia. French Garde Mobile soldiers are disarming retreating Republicans, crossing into France. A member of the Garde Mobile says to another, not knowing that the Republican Army officer they are currently checking speaks French: "This rubble calls themselves an army?". Hearing this the Republican officer replies: "We resisted nearly three years. Soon we will see how long you will resist".

General Franco: "Today the National troops, after disarming and capturing the Red army, reached their last military goals. The war is ended."

Recognition of the Franco regime by the United States Of America.

Fascist soldiers, police forces and militias search throughout the country for all those even slightly connected to the Republican authorities, especially soldiers, policemen and teachers, but also postmen and others. Many of those arrested never make it to the martial courts, they are murdered shortly after their capture.

A few examples: In Madrid, continuing for months, between 200 and 250 prisoners are executed every day. In Barcelona the Fascists murder around 35.000 people in the first weeks after the occupation. In the prison of Ocana 8500 prisoners are executed, in Saragossa 7000. Some of these people die under horrible circumstances. The Communist Heriberto Quinones is tortured by his captors, then they break his spine, tie him on a chair and shoot him dead.

If the Fascists cannot get hold of a suspect, they let his or her family pay. The father and one sister of Republican war hero El Campesino are hanged on a public place and left there for several days as a warning to others.

17 year old Juan Goya escapes from a lorry carrying him and fellow prisoners to their execution. He tries to hide in the house of his grandfather and his uncle, but both men are afraid of helping him, they don't let him into the house. When the Guardia Civil arrives, the exhausted Juan Goya is shot dead in the street. His hands were still tied as they were all the time in his short escape.

More then 300.000 Republican soldiers are gathered together in camps, thousands of them executed during the next months, other prisoners die under hard labor conditions and starvation. The total number of imprisoned Spaniards exceeds 2 million (out of a population of 25 million)

Now is also the time to execute those captured military officers who stood loyal to the government, like the Generals Aranguren, Escobar, and Martinez Gabrera.

The church praises Franco's victory over the Spanish government as God's will and behave like it was their own victory. Showing no mercy to the defeated, the Spanish church solidarize itself completely with the Fascists.

In the newspapers, November 2002

Spain condemns Franco regime

Twenty-seven years after Franco's death, Spain's parliament for the first time condemned his fascist regime and gave recognition to the victims of the 1936-39 civil war that brought him to power.

The motion was the result of growing pressure in Spain for public recognition of repression under Franco, which has remained a taboo subject since the country's transition to democracy in the mid 1970s.

The unanimous motion was approved late on Wednesday on the anniversary of the death of Franco on November 20, 1975.

It called on the government to set up some sort of plan for economic and social compensation for Spaniards who fled the country during the civil war and never returned home.

The text stressed it was the "duty of a democratic society" to give moral recognition to "all men and women who were victims of the civil war as well as those who later were subjected to repression under the Franco dictatorship."

For the first time, the parliament also backed initiatives that would set history straight and uphold the memory of victims of Spain's civil war.

This notably involves the exhumation of some 30,000 unidentified people, thought to be mostly Republicans, buried in common graves for more than six decades.

AFP