The Civil War was also a bloodbath that pitted brother against brother and neighbour against neighbour. By the time the guns had stopped smoking and Franco had signed his final parte de guerra on 1 April 1939, some half a million Spaniards were dead. There were no exact figures, but it is thought that some 200,000 were executed by the two sides. There were also thousands of dead Italians and Germans, who fought for Franco, and other foreigners who had volunteered for the International Brigades. One in thirty Spanish men were dead. Some 400,000 went into exile.
The war dragged on for three years. Franco could probably have won it in a lot less time. But he preferred to avoid an early battle in Madrid and, anyway, he was not just after military victory. He wanted more than that. His fellow generals appointed him ‘Head of Government of the Spanish State’ in September 1936, thinking they were creating a wartime dictatorship. In fact, in the words of one historian, ‘They had created a Hobbesian sovereign endowed with greater powers than Napolean, a sovereign who was to shed few of those powers over forty years.’
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