White Terror (Nationalists)

• Political terror was part of a deliberate policy to remove political enemies and potential threats to Nationalist control. Franco supported the killings of trade unionists, socialists and communists.
• Initially, the focus was upon anyone who had openly opposed the military coup. After every victory the Falange, supported by military units, executed and publicly humiliated any supporters of the republic. Many joined the Falangists to avoid execution. The use of terror and violence meant very few people were willing to directly oppose the Nationalists.
• The Nationalists also used terror to remove what they perceived as evil elements from Spanish society, such as gay men and lesbians. Some gay men were intimidated, some imprisoned and some killed. Lesbians were subject to a range of punishments, some of which were designed to 'cure' them, such as forced isolation and 'electroshock therapy'.
• Women who refused to conform to traditional gender roles were also persecuted, particularly by the Falange. Franco and the Falange viewed heterosexual monogamy within marriage as the only acceptable expression of sexuality and liberated women were seen as a threat to social order.
• Every time rebels took a centre of population, atrocities ensued. Victim's bodies were left in the streets to terrorise the population and then heaped together in a cemetery and burned without burial rights.
• Atrocities and killings partly represented an attempt to launch a moral crusade against the enemies of the Catholic Church. This can be seen with the execution of famous Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca, who was openly gay. In Pamplona mass executions were conducted on the annual celebration of the Virgin Mary in August 1937.
• • In Extremadura, 1800 peasants were executed and land was given back to landowners. The bodies of peasants were left to rot in surrounding fields.
  • In February 1937, Nationalists killed 4000 people in Malaga after capturing the town.
  • In the Teruel region, they executed more than 1000 men, women and children who had allegedly been critical of the nationalist cause.