Resist the Italian invasion of Spain!

The Spanish Civil War, like the Russian and Finnish civil conflicts before it or the Greek and Chinese ones after it, brought the direct of hidden intervention of the great powers. In Spain, the presence of tens of thousands foreign fighters supporting the Republic or the rebels, turned the military coup into an international conflict whose ideological and symbolic aspects had almost global reach. In the face of the massive presence of foreign volunteers, soldiers, and military advisors, “Out with the invader!” was a slogan shared by both sides, who employed a similar nationalist rhetoric derived from the myths of a common past.

Of all the assistance received by the two sides, none equaled that provided by Fascist Italy: men, arms, transport, artillery, and aviation. This help was agreed with the plotters even before the invasion of Ethiopia, in spite of the condemnation by the League of Nations and came in the context of a sharp increase in military spending from 2.6 per cent of national income in 1923 to 18.4 per cent in 1936. For Mussolini, the conflict in Spain was a “fascist war” that was crucial in his road to creating a totalitarian, imperialist, and permanently mobilized society. It also cemented his alliance against the democracies, and of course the Soviet Union, with Nazi Germany.

In August 1936, Italy signed the Non-Intervention Agreement and the following month sent its representative to the Non-Intervention Committee that was established in London to oversee the fulfilling of the agreement. However, a few days earlier, the secret services of Italy and Germany, headed by Admiral Canaris and General Mario Roatta, met in Rome to analyze how best to satisfy the requests for assistance from General Franco. The January 1937 “Gentlemen’s Agreement” with Great Britain gave definitive, tacit British consent to the massive dispatch of Italian troops to Spain in the shortest possible time.

For the Republic, the Fascist invasion described in this poster was nothing other than an attempt to submit the Spanish people to “the yoke of slavery”. 

FJMS