Revue Moderne, mai 1937

Quebeckers read about the Spanish Civil War. If some learned about this bloody conflict from a friend or a relative who joined the Mackenzie-Papineau battalion, most got their information from newspapers, pamphlets, and magazines.  

The Quebec ideological landscape during the 1930s was hostile to any leftist ideologies. Political, social, and particularly religious elites were vehemently anti-communist. The Catholic Church, which was a key political and social actor in Quebec at the time, embraced the anti-communism which was predominant within the church worldwide. During this period of economic and ideological turmoil, the Catholic Church and political and social elites supported Franco. Quebec elites leaned towards Franco because they were concerned by the economic devastation that the Great Depression had brought. Fearing that communists would weaponize this economic misery to foment dissent and revolution, the Catholic church and lay elites opposed them. Repression was an absolute necessity since communism constituted a social and national threat. The Catholic Church and lay leaders launched anti-communist campaigns labelled as nationalist since communism threatened French-Canadian identity: religion, families, and their institutions. Therefore, they pressed the Quebec government to end communist propaganda. For instance, at a rally in Quebec City in October 1936 attended by 15,000 people, religious and political leaders launched a crusade against communism. They applauded provincial parliamentarians when they passed the Act Respecting Communistic Propaganda, popularly known as the Padlock Law, in 1937. This law gave powers to provincial police forces to close (with a padlock) any buildings claimed or suspected of being used by Communists for up to one year. It also gave the state the authority to imprison individuals without appeal for one year if convicted of spreading Communism and made it illegal to print and publish communist propaganda.  

At the same time, the Catholic Church believed that the economic depression provided fertile ground to those who felt that strong men like Francisco Franco were needed to guide the nation and that support and prayers were required for his triumph in this international struggle against communism.  

Since French-speaking elites were fiercely anti-communist, Franco received favourable coverage in several newspapers and magazines. They encouraged French-speaking people to support Franco as part of this anti-communist crusade. In the battle to win Quebeckers’ minds, several newspapers and magazines opened their pages to pro-Franco writers. This campaign targeted a broad audience. This article is from a French-language magazine, which explained the true meaning of the Spanish Civil War to its female readership. According to the author, the Spanish leftist government had no popular legitimacy. He predicted that Spaniards would live under a red or a white (Nationalist) dictatorship at the end of the conflict.