Conclusion - Costs and Consequences

Summary

The civil war was the most destructive experience in modern Spanish history, rivaled only by the French invasion of 1808. It resulted in great loss of life, much human suffering, disruption of the society and the economy, distortion and repression in cultural affairs, and truncation of the country's political development. Franco's regime continued for nearly four decades, until the aged dictator's death in 1975, even if during this long life it changed from a brutally repressive semi-fascist regime to becoming a sort of “progressive dictatorship,” however incongruous the concept.

It is not possible to generate precise statistics about the war and its aftermath, but the cost in military deaths alone was not as great proportionately as in the First Carlist War or the American Civil War. Military deaths for both sides combined amounted to little more than 150,000, to which must be added perhaps as many as 25,000 foreign participant fatalities. As indicated in Chapter 6, the total number of victims of the repression remains problematic, but was probably at least equal to the number of Spanish military deaths, with approximately 56,000 executions by the Republicans and a somewhat higher number by the Nationalists. In addition, on both sides combined, about 12,000 civilians died from military action (mostly in the Republican zone), to which must be added thousands of deaths beyond the normal rate as a result of stress, disease, and malnutrition. The total for victims of violence amounted to approximately 1.1 percent of the Spanish population. If all civilian fatalities beyond the norm are added, the number of deaths attributable to the civil war would reach approximately 344,000, or nearly 1.4 percent. To this may be added several hundred thousand fewer births than normal for the four years between 1936 and 1940.