Even though people in Argentina had sensed indications of a possible violent conflict in Spain ever since the Popular Front victory in the elections of February 1936, the outbreak of the Civil War and the events of the first few weeks of the conflict perplexed Argentinian society and led to responses that were as varied as they were engaged. This was not simply the result of ideologies such as Catholicism, nationalism, communism, anarchism and socialism that connected Argentines to the conflict between fascist and pro-democratic forces in Spain. Rather in addition to its past as a Spanish colony, the fifty years between 1880 and 1930during which millions of Spaniards had chosen Argentina as the place to realie their “American dream”, the country was home to the largest Spanish diasporic community in the world. As historian and politicians Enrique Pereira put it, “Argentina was like an enormous projection of Spain; Buenos Aires alone was home to more people from Galicia than Santiago de Compostela”.
