Queipo de Llano's microphone

This elegant looking object, 58 centimetres tall, made of chrome and bakelite, belonging to Unión Radio in Sevilla, was in many ways the symbol of the widespread and lethal repression that took place in parts of Spain that fell under the control of the rebels.

Shortly before 9 pm on 18 July 1936, General Gonzalo Queipo de Llano, who had just become rebel military commander in southern Spain, sat down behind this microphone to deliver the first of what would be a series of bloodcurdling 15 to 20-minute radio addresses. Intended both to  convince his supporters of the barbarity of the Republicans and to terrify the enemy, these would be broadcast every night at 10:30 until 1 February 1938.

British writer Gerald Brenan heard the harangues in Málaga, where he was living, and described them as “replete with vile anecdotes, jokes, absurdities, all extraordinarily colourful but hair-raising when we learned about the executions”. On 23 July, in one of the most outrageous and controversial of these harangues, he threatened Republican women with mass rape: “Our valiant Legionnaires and Regulares have shown the Red cowards what true men are. And their women as well. This is totally justified because these Communists and anarchists  advocate free love. At least now they will know what real men are, not militia gays. They will not escape, however much they kick and scream.”

Queipo de Llano’s nightmarish broadcasts were the verbal reflection of the very flesh-and-blood repression that had been taking place in western Andalucía with his authorization since the beginning of the uprising. On 18 July, he issued a decree giving his troops and their civilian sympathizers carte blanche to execute anyone who resisted. The conquest of the city of Sevilla involved using women and children as human shields for the soldiers fighting their way into working-class areas and aerial bombing of the Macarena district. This was followed by his prohibition of any public sign of mourning for those killed. The death toll in the city was at least 3,000.

This repression was not limited to the areas under Queipo’s command. Wherever the rebels took control, from a major city with an important labour movement like Sevilla to villages in staunchly conservative rural regions such as Burgos, the New Spain they said they were building emerged from a sea of death. Many, especially early in the conflict, were killed by army units or Carlist and Falange squads without any trial. Currently, the best calculation of the number of people they executed in the rearguard during the war and in the immediate postwar years, is 130,199. The remains of many continue to lie in mass graves. This compares to 49,272 executed in the Republican zone.