Civil War, Genocide and Beyond: How to Re-found the Narrative Framework on the Destruction of the Spanish Democratic Republic after 1936

Abstract

This article contends that the category of civil war is not suitable for studying the massacres of civilians during the Spanish 1936–1039 war and its aftermath. In trying to build an alternative narrative for the understanding of the destruction of the democratic republic of 1931 founded on the human rights paradigm, an analytical framework is devised based on the deficit in deliberation processes allowing for the re-classification of social constituencies as ontological enemies. By showing that the repression by Franco's followers supplemented institutional logics and rationalities from colonial warfare and religious wars, the article also provides insights for a qualitative differentiation in repression between the two contending sides.