Spain

Non-Soviet revolutionary 1869–1946 ○ Illness · Paris

The UGT worker-leader they called the Spanish Lenin, a prime minister broken between revolution and war

In November 1936 Largo Caballero appointed four CNT leaders to his cabinet: anarchists whose programme was the abolition of the state took ministerial office in one. One of them, the health minister Federica Montseny, was the first woman to hold a ministry in Spanish history.

A man who left school at seven, worked as a stucco plasterer and became a union leader. At the head of the UGT he was sentenced to life for the general strike of August 1917, and under the Primo de Rivera dictatorship he took a seat on the Council of State to keep the organization alive, a choice argued over for the rest of his life. As labour minister of the Second Republic he pushed through the eight-hour day in the countryside, and around the Asturias rising of 1934 he moved so far left that his supporters called him the Spanish Lenin. In September 1936 he became prime minister and war minister, and in November brought four CNT leaders into the cabinet, seating anarchists in a government for the first time; but he clashed continuously with the communists and the Soviet advisers over rebuilding a regular army and over the pace of the revolution. After the May Days of 1937 he refused to outlaw the POUM, lost his ministers and fell. In exile in France he was seized by the Gestapo and held in Sachsenhausen until the liberation of 1945.

Non-Soviet revolutionary 1870–1940 ○ Died in prison

PSOE right-wing leader, Speaker of the Cortes; joined Casado's coup, refused exile, and died in Franco's prison

"The great majority, the masses, they cannot leave, and I, who have always lived with the workers, will continue with them and with them I will stay. Whatever is their fate will be mine," to the socialist daily La Voz, March 1939

A Marxist revisionist who started as a philosophy professor in Madrid and succeeded Pablo Iglesias as leader of the PSOE and UGT in 1925. As Speaker of the Constituent Cortes (1931) he held to a moderate parliamentarism, and his opposition to the armed rising of October 1934 cost him his party base. During the Civil War he stayed in Madrid seeking a negotiated peace, and in March 1939 joined Colonel Casado's coup against Negrín, serving on the National Defence Council; but Franco demanded unconditional surrender. When every other council member fled, Besteiro refused, telling the socialist daily La Voz that he had always lived with the workers and would share their fate; a Francoist court martial sentenced him to life imprisonment and he died in Carmona prison.

Foreign statesman 1880–1940 ○ Died in exile

The last president of the Republic who embodied the republican cause but crossed into France and resigned when Catalonia fell

'Peace, pity, and pardon.' On 18 July 1938, the second anniversary of the rising, Azaña spoke for seventy-four minutes from Barcelona's city hall, pleading for an end to the bloodshed and reconciliation. Neither Franco's camp nor the hardliners in his own Republic would listen.

The last President of the Second Spanish Republic and the symbolic centre of the Republican cause throughout the Civil War. As war minister and prime minister from 1931 he drove military reform, anti-clerical legislation and land redistribution; in 1934 he built the Popular Front and won the 1936 election, becoming president, but once the war began real power passed to his prime ministers. In July 1938 he appealed for 'Peace, Pity, Pardon' from the Barcelona city hall, but Franco would accept only unconditional surrender, and after Catalonia fell in February 1939 Azaña walked the Pyrenees into France and resigned. Condemned as desertion even inside republican ranks, his act stripped the remaining Republic of legitimacy, and he died in occupied France a year later.

Non-Soviet revolutionary 1892–1937 ✕ Murdered

The Marxist who linked the Russian and Spanish revolutions, founder of the POUM

“The working class has solved the problem of the Church simply by not leaving even one of them standing.” — La Vanguardia, August 1936

Catalan Marxist revolutionary. After serving as CNT General Secretary, he joined Trotsky's Left Opposition in Moscow and later founded the anti-Stalinist POUM. He was also the first to translate Russian literature directly into Catalan.

Non-Soviet revolutionary 1892–1956 ○ Heart attack · Paris

The physiologist trained in Leipzig who sent the Republic's gold to Moscow and chose to fight to the end as its last prime minister

The Thirteen Points he put to Franco in May 1938: full Spanish independence, a government chosen by universal suffrage, regional autonomy, freedom of conscience, land reform, and no reprisals for acts of war. Franco''s answer was unconditional surrender.

A physiologist turned PSOE politician. He studied medicine at Kiel and Leipzig, became professor of physiology in Madrid at twenty-nine and built the laboratory that trained the future Nobel laureate Severo Ochoa, joined the PSOE in 1929 and entered parliament in 1931. As finance minister from September 1936 he moved the national gold reserve to Cartagena and signed the decision to place it in Soviet hands, and after the Barcelona May Days he became prime minister in May 1937, centralizing the Popular Army under the slogan that to resist is to win. He leaned on the communists and the Soviet advisers because under Western non-intervention there was nowhere else to buy arms, and was called a puppet of Moscow for it for the rest of his life. His Thirteen Points of May 1938 were an attempt to negotiate; Franco would accept only unconditional surrender, and in March 1939 Colonel Casado''s coup drove him out of Spain. Expelled from the PSOE in 1946, he was rehabilitated by the party only in 2008.

Counter-revolutionary forces 1892–1975 ○ Illness · Madrid

The general who turned the rising into victory and ruled Spain for thirty-six years as Caudillo

The last war communiqué of 1 April 1939, signed in his own hand: “Today, with the Red Army captive and disarmed, the national troops have reached their final military objectives. The war is over.” Thirty-six years of dictatorship began.

A career officer who made his name in the colonial war in Morocco and became the youngest general in Europe at thirty-three. His use of the Army of Africa to crush the Asturian miners in 1934 fixed him in the eyes of the right as the restorer of order, and in July 1936 he joined the rising, flew from the Canaries to Morocco and, with German and Italian transports, ferried the Army of Africa to the mainland. In October he was made commander-in-chief and head of state of the rebel zone, and the Unification Decree of 1937 fused the Falange and the Carlists into a single National Movement under his personal rule. Victory in 1939 was followed by mass execution and imprisonment under the Law of Political Responsibilities, costing tens of thousands of lives. He declared non-belligerence in the Second World War while sending the Blue Division to the Eastern Front, and broke out of postwar isolation with the Pact of Madrid and the Concordat of 1953. The growth that followed the Stabilization Plan of 1959 became another pillar of the regime; he named Juan Carlos his successor in 1969, and with his death in 1975 the regime itself began to come apart.

Non-Soviet revolutionary 1893–1968 ○ Natural causes

The Republican general who overthrew Negrín to negotiate peace with Franco, and got only unconditional surrender

On the night of 5 March 1939, Casado went before a radio microphone, declared the Negrín government was preparing a Communist dictatorship and that only his National Defence Council could deliver an honourable peace. In Madrid, street fighting began at once.

A cavalry officer of the Spanish Republican Army who stayed loyal after the rising of July 1936, rose through operations and training posts to command of the Army of the Centre, and became convinced the war was already lost. On 5 March 1939 he staged a coup in Madrid, overthrew the Negrín government and set up a National Defence Council under General Miaja, claiming to forestall a Communist takeover while seeking a negotiated peace with Franco. Franco demanded unconditional surrender, the talks collapsed, and Casado escaped aboard a British warship, living in exile in Britain and Venezuela before returning to Spain in 1961.

Non-Soviet revolutionary 1894–1966 ○ Returned from exile, natural death

The Catholic general who defended the Republic

In January 1939, Rojo told Negrín that the front had ceased to exist.

Vicente Rojo was a professional officer who remained loyal to the Spanish Republic, joining military expertise to a deeply held Catholic faith. He organized the defense of Madrid and planned operations at Jarama, Guadalajara, Brunete and the Ebro, becoming the Republican People's Army's central staff officer. After retreating to France in 1939, he refused Negrín's order to return and chose to care for refugee soldiers, then lived in exile in Argentina and Bolivia. He returned to Spain in 1957, was prosecuted for military rebellion by Franco's regime, and was soon pardoned without serving his suspended sentence.

Non-Soviet revolutionary 1895–1942 ✕ Suicide due to illness

From baker to General Secretary: the leader who steered Spanish communism through the Popular Front and Civil War

“We are fighting for the Democratic Republic, for a democratic and Parliamentary Republic of a new type, with deep social content.” — Report to the PCE Central Committee, Valencia, 5 March 1937

As General Secretary of the Communist Party of Spain (PCE), José Díaz led the party through the Popular Front strategy, transforming it from a small sect into a mass party central to the Republican war effort. A Sevillian baker who cut his teeth in the anarcho-syndicalist CNT, he joined the PCE in 1927 and rose to General Secretary in 1932. At the 7th Comintern Congress (1935), he stood with Georgi Dimitrov in championing the anti-fascist united front, and during the Civil War he committed the party wholly to military victory under the banner of a “democratic republic of a new type.” Stricken by stomach cancer, he died in Tbilisi in 1942; his decade of leadership laid the foundations of the Spanish communist tradition for generations.

Non-Soviet revolutionary 1895–1989 ○ Natural causes

“¡No pasarán!”: the voice of anti-fascism that refused to let Franco's armies pass

“If we let the fascists continue the crimes they are committing in Spain, aggressive fascism will fall upon other peoples of Europe too. The Spanish people prefer to die on their feet than live on their knees.” — Paris solidarity rally, 3 September 1936

The iconic leader of the Spanish Communist Party (PCE), whose cry of "¡No pasarán!" during the Civil War became the universal rallying cry of anti-fascism. She resisted the Franco dictatorship from exile and publicly opposed the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia.

Non-Soviet revolutionary 1896–1936 ✕ Killed at the Madrid front

The anarchist metalworker who broke the rising in Barcelona and led the column that carried his name

Reported from an interview with the Canadian journalist Pierre van Paassen in Barcelona in 1936: “We are not in the least afraid of ruins. We are going to inherit the earth. The bourgeoisie may blast and ruin its own world before it leaves the stage of history. We carry a new world, here, in our hearts.” The words are famous, though the exact wording of the interview is disputed.

A metalworker born into a railwayman''s family in León. Sacked after the general strike of 1917, he fled to France and became an anarchist, and through Los Solidarios and Los Errantes he passed from bank expropriations and an attempt on the king''s life to prisons across Europe and Latin America. In July 1936 he led the workers who stormed the Atarazanas barracks and broke the military rising in Catalonia, losing his old comrade Francisco Ascaso in the fight. He then raised the six-thousand-strong Durruti Column, took it to the Aragon front and pressed the collectivization of land and factories in the liberated zone. In November he joined the defence of Madrid, was shot at the Casa de Campo front on the 19th and died the next day; whether the bullet came from the enemy, from his own side or from his own malfunctioning weapon is still argued. Hundreds of thousands followed his coffin through Barcelona.

Non-Soviet revolutionary 1896–1973 ○ Natural death

A revolutionary who pursued workers' unity across communist divisions

After his arrest in 1936, Maurín remained in prison throughout the war, leaving the POUM under Andreu Nin's leadership in his absence.

Joaquín Maurín was a Spanish communist politician and labor activist who sought a mass revolutionary politics rooted in Catalonia. He led the Workers' and Peasants' Bloc while breaking with the Communist Party's Stalinist line, then co-founded the POUM with Andreu Nin in 1935 and became its first general secretary. Trapped in the insurgent zone when the military uprising began in 1936, he was arrested and spent the Civil War in prison, leaving Nin to lead the party in his absence. After his release and exile, he worked in New York as a writer and news-agency organizer, documenting the experience of the Spanish revolution.

Non-Soviet revolutionary 1897–1975 ○ Death sentence commuted; died in exile

The anarchist IV Army Corps commander who saved Casado's Madrid coup from Communist counter-attack

'I was aghast at donning a military uniform, but I could see no other option. From here on my conduct will bear witness to my integrity.'

A Madrid bricklayer who led the CNT construction union and was jailed on the eve of the war, he was freed when the rising began and organized a column that crushed the revolt in Guadalajara and Cuenca. Rising to command the 14th Division and then the IV Army Corps, he routed the Italian CTV at the Battle of Guadalajara and became one of the Republic's most prominent anarchist commanders. In March 1939 he backed Casado's coup against the Negrín government's Communist dependence, and when Communist forces were closing in on Madrid, Mera's IV Corps reserves entered the city and crushed the resistance in three days, sealing the path by which the war would end.

Non-Soviet revolutionary 1906–1969 ○ Natural death in exile

A field commander of the defeated Republic

Juan Modesto rose from organizing Communist militias to become one of the Republic’s principal commanders. Leading the Fifth Regiment and later the Fifth Army Corps, he embodied the wartime effort to turn fragmented militias into a regular army. As commander of the Army of the Ebro in 1938, he directed the Republic’s last major offensive, but a prolonged battle could not overcome its material and manpower disadvantage. After defeat, he lived in exile in the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia and recorded his wartime experience.

Foreign statesman 1914–1988 ○ Natural death

The double agent who made fiction a strategic weapon

On 9 June 1944, he told German commanders that the Normandy landings were only a diversion.

Juan Pujol García was a Spanish double agent who penetrated German intelligence while remaining loyal to Britain during the Second World War. From Lisbon, he built a fictitious network in Britain from public sources and won the confidence of his German handlers. After joining British intelligence, he combined invented agents with carefully timed real information to shape German decisions. In Operation Fortitude, his reports reinforced the story that Normandy was a diversion and that the main assault would come at Pas-de-Calais.

Non-Soviet revolutionary 1915–2012 ○ Natural causes

The Eurocommunist architect who lit a cigarette at gunpoint

23 February 1981: 200 Civil Guards under Lt. Col. Tejero storm the Spanish parliament, firing submachine guns. As every deputy dives for cover, 66-year-old Santiago Carrillo remains seated, takes out a cigarette, and calmly lights it.

General Secretary of the Communist Party of Spain (1960–1982), Carrillo was a key architect of Eurocommunism alongside Berlinguer and Marchais. He broke with Moscow after the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia, charting a democratic socialist course and arguing in Eurocommunism and the State (1977) for a parliamentary path to socialism. Returning secretly after Franco's death, he was decisive in Spain's peaceful democratic transition through dialogue and reconciliation. During the 1981 23-F coup attempt, as Civil Guards fired inside parliament, he was one of only three deputies who refused to drop to the floor, calmly lighting a cigarette instead.

Scholar 1941–

The Spanish Civil War historian who demolished Francoist myths with archival evidence

There is not a single conservative or neo-Francoist historian who does not manipulate the evidence; what they sell are bold-faced lies.

A historian, economist and diplomat who has systematically dismantled Francoist historical narratives through archival research on the Spanish Civil War and the Franco regime. Beginning with his investigation of Nazi Germany's financing of Franco's rising while a graduate student in Bonn, he demolished the myth of the 'Moscow Gold' in 1976 and went on to show, in a four-volume Republic series, how arms embargoes and international diplomacy decided the war. When the Royal Academy of History published a national biographical dictionary in 2011 that failed even to call Franco a dictator, Viñas rallied thirty historians and produced a 976-page counter-dictionary, En el combate por la Historia (2012), a watershed in Spain's 'history wars'.

Scholar 1948–

Former Maoist urban guerrilla turned Francoist revisionist historian who reignited Spain's Civil War debates

Asked in a 2008 interview whether he condemned Franco's regime, he refused, declaring that "Franco deserves the gratitude and recognition of the majority of Spaniards."

A controversial Spanish writer who evolved from a founding member of the Maoist urban guerrilla group GRAPO into Francoism's most prominent revisionist historian. He argues that the left, not the right, bore primary responsibility for the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, contending that the Socialist-led insurrection of October 1934 was the conflict's true beginning. His 2003 bestseller Myths of the Civil War sold 150,000 copies and ignited the post-2000 revisionism debates, drawing praise from Stanley G. Payne and fierce rejection from mainstream historians including Paul Preston and Alberto Reig Tapia.