Money and Exploitations

Following the failure of the coup of 18 July, the rebels and their principal civilian allies used a battery of measures to obtain as many resources as possible to support the insurgents’ war effort and ensure their control over the rearguard. Those resources were acquired through gifts, collections, coercion, and fines, using ad hoc legal measures or without them. Some of these various measures were short lived; others were responses to the needs and opportunities that rose during the conflict, but they all also served as mechanisms for controlling the civilian population.

The most emblematic example of this double benefit was probably the onerous couple of the “One Dish Meal Day” and the “Day Without Desert”.  The former, which required people to eat a lunch consisting of one dish only on the 1st and 15th of each month and contribute the difference in cost from a full meal to help the poor, came first. It was followed by the latter whose takings were intended to pay soldiers or support soup kitchens for the poor, but widespread corruption meant that this was not always the case. 

Contributions in cash or in kind, or the charitable collections, emblems and blue cards denoting a commitment to make regular donations to the Social Assistance organization were also important and exemplified this social control effect.  With Galicia under rebel control, any generous support for the cause helped calm the nerves of people seeking guarantees of avoiding persecution or reprisals. There were also people who used donations as a means of social mobility, as well as those who donated out of simple ideological affinity.

Finally, there were the notorious confiscations and expropriations of property from individuals and organizations who fell under the capacious label of “supporters of the Popular Front”. Meeting rooms, printing presses, union halls and even Republican newspapers were all confiscated – with or without legal cover – and then auctioned off or taken over by forces aligned with the coup, such as the Falange. The confiscation of the Vigo newspaper El Pueblo Gallego that belonged to liberal politician and former prime minister of the Republic Manuel Portela Valladares which then became a mouthpiece of the Falange became a symbol of the new order of things.

GUPC/MCV