The 'Red Terror': Repression in Republican Madrid during the Spanish Civil War

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There are two very different representations of Madrid during the Spanish civil war. The first, which is probably the most familiar, is the anti-fascist city of 'no pasarán!'. This representation emphasises the heroism of the city's inhabitants in defeating the military rebellion in July 1936 and defying the forces of international fascism for a second time at the gates of the city that November. My research concentrates on the second Madrid: the city of the 'red terror' Madrid. It indicates that out of an estimated 50,000 executions in Republican Spain, a minimum of 8,500 took place in Madrid in 1936. Very little work on the Republican repression in Madrid can be found in English. In general accounts of the civil war, such as those written by Paul Preston and Helen Graham, the terror in the city is subsumed in a general analysis of Republican violence that stresses that it was largely the work of unorganised 'uncontrollables' who flourished when Republican state authority collapsed as a result of the military rebellion. Such an approach emphasises that mass murder came to an end following the restoration of state authority in the winter of 1936-37 and claims that from 1937, terror is mainly directed not at the right but at the revolutionary left, such as the anti-Stalinist POUM. An important feature of such arguments is the depiction of the perpetrators of terror in 1936 as either marginal elements of society ('criminals') or anonymous collective entities; attention is paid instead to those Republican leaders, such as the President Manuel Azaña, who condemned the violence.My research rediscovers the identities of the so-called 'uncontrollables'. Indeed, my article published by the Journal of Contemporary History in January 2007 dealt with the most infamous 'uncontrollable' in Madrid: Agapito García Atadell. This article demonstrates that Atadell was a prominent Socialist leader whose murderous brigade consisted of skilled unionised workers. It also shows that Atadell was enormously popular within the Socialist Party and among 'ordinary' Republicans because he was perceived to be defending the city from the 'fifth column' (this term was coined by the Nationalist leader General Mola in 1936 to describe clandestine Nationalist supporters in Madrid). My research on other perpetrators suggests that Atadell and his men were not exceptional; terror against 'fascists' was organised and took place with the approval and cooperation of many 'ordinary' Republicans. It is important to stress that my work is not an attempt to revive the Francoist thesis that the terror reflected a 'communist' programme of extermination. In its examination of the forms of violence employed in 1936, it questions the common use of the term 'cheka' to describe the revolutionary tribunals that sentenced victims to their deaths. In 1936, these tribunals were rarely, if ever, called 'chekas' but 'popular investigation committees' or 'committees of public safety', recalling more the Terror of 1792-94 than Soviet terror after 1917. Similarly, the way in which victims were often executed- the 'paseo' (being 'taken for a ride') - evokes the Hollywood gangster films of the early 1930s (extremely popular in Madrid before and during the civil war) rather than the benign influence of Soviet communism. My work does not deny the important distinction between the murderous 'arbitrary' repression of 1936 and the 'institutionalised' persecution of real and suspected Republican enemies from 1937. But it is interested in examining the continuities between the two periods. For example, it shows the extent to which the perpetrators of 1936 were recruited into the re-constituted Republican police force. Finally, since this project followed my doctoral research on the Francoist repression in Madrid after 1939, my manuscript will conclude with a re-assessment of the common distinctions made between 'organised' Francoist and 'spontaneous' Republican violence.