Spanish Civil War
#Inthisday, July 18, 1936, the military uprising of the forces commanded by Franco, the “alzamiento” against the Republic, began the Spanish Civil War and one of the bloodiest periods in European history.
If the future of Europe was at stake in Spain, Salazar knew that in the Iberian Peninsula it would be difficult for regimes of the opposite sign to co-exist, and so the survival of the Estado Novo was also at stake.
Between 1936 and 1939, under the sign of the “danger from Spain”, we have one of the most violent periods in the history of the Portuguese dictatorship, of greater arbitrariness in the actions of the political police and the highest number of arrests made (9575).
They were particularly deadly years, with 38 known deaths, most of them in prisons and in the Tarrafal Concentration Camp opened precisely in that year, 1936.
The uprising of Franco’s nationalists, #inthisday on July 18, 1936, started the Spanish Civil War.
Salazar, realizing the importance of what was happening in the neighboring country for the survival of the Portuguese dictatorship, will not deny support to Franco.
In the first room of the Permanent Exhibition of the Aljube Museum, the film “Memories of a Present Past” tells us a little about the Spanish Civil War and the rise of fascism in Europe. There were many Portuguese, anarchists, communists or republicans, caught at this crossroads of history and who in various ways fought the Iberian dictatorships.
85 years after the “alzamiento” of 18 July 1936, Spain has not yet been able to deal with its past.
Silence and amnesia prevail, the victims of Francoism – many to be identified and exhumed – have not yet seen justice done to them, the executioners remain free to judge and the coup of July 18, 1936 and the dictatorship remain officially uncondemned .
“18 de julio nunca más!” is what many demand that the Spanish State unequivocally affirm.
