Spanish immigrants mobilize to support the Republic

The government of the Republic made great efforts to sensitize Spaniards living in the America to the importance of defending legality and the ideals of the Republic. Domingo Rex Muñoz, representative of the Cultural Relations Committee of the Education Ministry, who took up his post in Brazil in early 1936, worked hard to defend his government. He spoke frequently on Rádio Educadora Paulista, a local radio station, and he increased his activity once the war had broken out. 

His activities in Brazil were surveilled by the Department of Political and Social Order (DEOPS), and documents such as this one demonstrate that his activism reached beyond the Spanish community of São Paolo, in this case among the university students who invited him to deliver a lecture about the situation in Spain. 

A significant part of the Spanish community in Brazil mobilized to support their compatriots on both sides of the conflict in Spain. Thousands joined associations devoted to cultural and charitable activities, providing moral and material assistance to those defending the Republic. 

The Central Committee for Propaganda on Behalf of the Spanish Republic (CCPER) was created in São Paolo in the middle of 1937 with the goal of coordinating the activities of the pro-Republican centres in São Paulo, Santos, Sorocaba y Porto Alegre. The CCPER sent the funds it received from organizing theatre festivals or through donations from across the region to Spain, mostly through the Spanish embassy in Paris. 

Republican sympathizers in São Paolo even funded a radio program, The Spanish Brazilian Hour, devoted to providing information about events in Spain. Co-ordinated by Rex Muñoz, it combined the Reading of articles about the political and military situation in Spain with publicity about pro-Republican events and activities. 

The government closed down the pro-Republican organizations in November 1937, months before the 1938 Decree-Law 383 that prohibited foreigners from carrying out political activities. The records of these organizations were also confiscated, and thousands of documents of all sorts: letters, reports, notes, circulars, were used as “documentary proof” of their subversive activities. Many of the members of these organizations already had had dealings with the political police for belonging to trade unions or political organizations. DEOPS identified most of them as communists or anarchists. 

The documentation generated by the political police about the repression of partisans of the Republic, demonstrate how the Spanish Civil, War and the idea of an international conspiracy and permeated the political imaginary of groups identified with the rebels. Fort he Vargas government, the Republic was an example to be avoided.