Franco Seizes Madrid: Spanish Civil War Ends

Madrid fell without a fight. On March 28, 1939, Nationalist forces under Francisco Franco entered the Spanish capital after a siege that had lasted nearly three years, ending the Spanish Civil War. The Republican government had already collapsed; its military commander in Madrid, Colonel Segismundo Casado, had staged a coup against the Republic's own prime minister a month earlier, hoping to negotiate better surrender terms. Franco refused to negotiate anything. The Civil War had begun in July 1936 when a military coup against Spain's elected Republican government split the country. Franco emerged as the leader of the Nationalist faction, backed by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, who sent troops, aircraft, and weapons. The Republic received support from the Soviet Union and the International Brigades, volunteer fighters from over 50 countries who came to Spain to fight fascism. The war killed an estimated 500,000 people, including tens of thousands of civilians murdered by both sides. Madrid had been a Republican stronghold from the war's first days. The famous rallying cry "No pasaran!" (They shall not pass) was coined during the siege of Madrid in November 1936, when Republican defenders, including International Brigade volunteers, stopped the Nationalist advance. The city endured nearly 30 months of shelling, bombardment, and starvation. By March 1939, the population was starving, and the military situation was hopeless. Franco established a dictatorship that lasted until his death in 1975. His regime executed an estimated 30,000 to 50,000 political prisoners after the war ended, buried them in mass graves, and spent decades erasing the Republic's memory from Spanish public life. Spain did not become a constitutional monarchy until 1978, and the country's reckoning with its civil war history remains incomplete to this day.