Red Terror (Spain)

Red Terror (Spanish: Terror Rojo) is the name given by historians to various acts of violence committed from 1936 until the end of the Spanish Civil War by sections of nearly all the leftist groups involved. The May 1931 arson attacks against Church property throughout Spain and the determination of the Republican Government to never compromise upon and strictly enforce its ban against classical Catholic education were the beginning of a politicidal campaign of religious persecution against the Catholic Church in Spain. No Republican-controlled region escaped systematic and anticlerical violence, although it was minimal in the Basque Country. The violence consisted of the killing of tens of thousands of people, including 6,832 Roman Catholic priests, the vast majority in the wake of the rightist military coup in July 1936, the Spanish nobility, small business owners, industrialists, conservative politicians, and known or suspected supporters of the right-leaning parties or the anti-Stalinist Left, and the desecration and arson attacks against monasteries, convents, Catholic schools, and churches. A process of political polarisation had already characterized the Second Spanish Republic; party divisions became increasingly embittered, and whether an individual continued practising Catholicism was seen as a sign of partisan loyalty. Electorally, the Church had identified itself with the Conservative and far-right parties, which had set themselves against the far-left. While the violence long preceded the failed coup of July 1936, the immediate aftermath let loose a violent onslaught on everyone that the revolutionaries in the Republican zone identified as enemies; "where the rebellion failed, for several months afterwards, merely to be identified as a priest, a religious, or simply a militant Christian or member of some apostolic or pious organization, was enough for a person to be executed without trial." Some estimates of the Red Terror range from 38,000 to 110,965 people killed. Historian...