Spain · Animated schematic fronts
Spanish Civil War
A military uprising against the republic led to civil war with foreign intervention: Germany and Italy backed the rebels with troops, aircraft and arms, the Soviet Union and the International Brigades the Republic. Franco’s Nationalists won; both camps committed violence against civilians, and executions and repression continued under the ensuing dictatorship.
Schematic front lines at dozens of dated moments, simplified by hand from overview maps; movement in between is smoothly interpolated, so this is not a day-by-day reconstruction. The first weeks show how the country was divided after the failed coup; then come the main front, the cut-off northern zone (until October 1937) and, after the breakthrough to the sea in April 1938, the fronts of Catalonia and of the central zone. Sieges and encirclements appear as rings, advances as arrows, and armies, foreign corps and fleets as counters placed roughly in their sector. The Balearic Islands, the Canary Islands and Spanish Morocco are not coloured in; the closing edges of the coloured areas follow coast and borders only in outline.
Estimates & margins
- Deaths350,000 – 500,000
Estimate for the war years. About 200,000 people were killed at the fronts; in addition an estimated 150,000 died through executions and murder behind the lines, some 50,000 of them in Republican and 100,000 or more in Nationalist territory. The higher totals also count deaths from hunger and disease; the executions after 1939 come on top of that.
- Displaced people440,000 – 500,000
Refugees who crossed the French border from Catalonia in January and February 1939 ('La Retirada'); many ended up in camps on the beaches of Roussillon. A large part returned in the months that followed.
Historians disagree on exact figures; the range shown reflects the scholarly literature.
- Front line
- Attack
- Encirclement (pocket)
- Siege
- Army unit
17–21 July 1936: the military rising begins in Spanish Morocco and spreads to the mainland. The map shows the division as it stands after four days.
- 1 unit shown
- Republic and allies
- Nationalists and allies