Bourgeois Republicans?

[durb]

Republicans, but not Reds

One question that has some interest in my opinion is were all Republicans really "Reds"? I came up to this problem when I made a study of Basque nationalism and about PNV (Partido Nacionalista Vasco) some years ago. The Basque nationalists fought for the Republic in the Spanish Civil War, but they can not be called as "Reds" by any measure. For what I know Basque Nationalism at that time was conservative catholic party based on the principles of it´s founder, very religious Sabino Arana Goiri. Even today I would consider PNV to be a Christian Democratic party.

Both Basque and Catalan nationalists fought for the Republicans, as the Republic had guaranteed the autonomy for both the Basque Country and Catalonia. Their alliance with leftist and extremeleftist parties of the Republicans was not an easy one, but it was considered lesser evil than what Franco offered (abolition of autonomy, public denial and persecution of "separatism" and to forbid the use of the both euskara and catalan languages).

A small, but interesting "bourgeois" element in Republican Army were the Spanish protestants. Some of them enlisted to Republican army because the Republic had guaranteed the freedom of religion. The very strong catholicism of the Spanish Nationalist camp made Spanish Protestants to do the same choice as Basque and Catalan nationalists: the Republic was lesser evil than the ultracatholicism supported by various elements of Franco´s coalition.

This makes me to think that there should at last be some book or article referring to this side of history. I feel a bit angry when I hear even today someone referring the Basque priests as "Red priests" due to their action during the Spanish Civil History. They were not Red, they were supporting Basque nationalism.

By the same token it does not make justice to call all the supporters of Franco simply as "fascists". There were various elements (traditional conservatives, monarchists, carlists, falangists) in his camp and there were discrepancies among them. I would not even consider Franco himself as a fascist but as a hardline catholic conservative. And he was also a Spanish nationalist in the strong unitarist way. He could not accept any compromises with Basque or Catalan nationalists.

The simplifying labels "Reds" and "Fascists" influenced very much the foreign volunteers who fought on both sides in Spanish Civil War. If you read their memoirs, the enemy is almost always "Red" or "Fascist". But the truth was not so simple.