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SPAIN: Repression under Franco after the Civil War

Regarding the number of Spaniards executed by the Franco regime after the Civil War, Carmen Negrin writes:
In all fairness, I think that Paul Preston should have been fully quoted, his figure was indeed not just 92,000, he wrote that: “An indication of the scale of the repression is given by the fact that the the thirty-six of Spain’s
fifty provinces that have been fully or partially researched have come up with the NAMES of 92,462 persons. Extrapolating the likely results from the provinces still to be investigated, this suggests that, in terms of the
identifiable dead, those mainly the victims of “judicial executions”, the final figure may be in the region of 130,000. However, there were others, probably at least another 50,000, who were killed without even the
simulacrum of a trial. Those whose names have been identified are those who were either executed after a pseudo-trial and/or buried in a cemetery where records were kept. To them must be added those murdered whose names cannot be known.”

In other words, I don’t see that the figures given by the “left” were grossly exaggerated. It rather seems that those given by the “right” (20,000) are very grossly underestimated.

Sergio Millares Cantero who is a Spanish historian, specialist in the Spanish repression under Franco, sent me the information herewith, concerning just the Canary Isl., which were taken by Franco at the very beginning of
the coup d’état. To summarize his text in Spanish:
- 2,000 people assassinated or executed  “legally”.
- 20,000 imprisonned, in five different places (I said “about six”) (2 prisons used as camps, a first concentration   camp, which became too small and then two other concentration camps).
- NO repression from the legally elected government of the Spanish Republic.

In addition, also the following comments from Gabriel Jackson: “Antony Beevor has just published a 900 p. (only in Spanish) new history of the war. In his own review of the controversies about the numbers in what he calls “Franco’s gulag”, he agrees with the estimate being arrived at by a number of Spanish profs studying the paper trail in hospitals, cemeteries, ayuntamientos (city halls), etc. Their estimate is 150,000 plus or minus. In 1986, revising his Brief History of the Civil War, Jackson wrote: “Los nacionales liquidaron de 100,000 a 200,000 de sus compatriotas.” And so Beevor includes in a fn. p. 768 a gratifying sentence: “Lo que vendría a dar la razón a Gabriel Jackson”.

It is logical that the present Spanish “right” and its allies don’t want these figures and many other facts to be known, but, if WAISERs are the least bit objective, the site should help promote the thruth and not perpetuate the false “history” built up by a dictator, with whom the US was perhaps far too indulgent.

RH: I thank Carmen for this statement, which seems completely sensible to me. I will naturally post any objections by informed WAISers.

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