When on July 18, 1936, the Spanish army rose up against the Republic, thus starting the civil war, the coup plotters proclaimed to be waging a “crusade” against the enemies of the nation and religion. Historians find it controversial to define Francisco Franco's 40-year dictatorship as fascist, and instead have termed it as “national Catholicism” to define the essence of his regime.
The Catholic Church was one of the social and ideological pillars of Francoism from the moment of the coup, as evidenced by the ‘Collective letter of all Spanish bishops’, made public July 1, 1937 to support a movement that “has strengthened the sense of homeland” and “has guaranteed order in the territory.” The same regime that was born out of a “crusade” with the purpose of shielding the power and traditional privileges of the church, ended up creating a prison to imprison priests critical of power. Neither Enver Hoxha's Albania nor Nicolae Ceausescu's Romania went to that extreme.
The creation of the concordat prison in Zamora is the story of how part of the church and the Spanish faithful distanced themselves from Franco’s dictatorship
Read Full Article »