Valle de los Caídos civil war monument in Spain. Photo by Jess Gambacurta in 2005, CC-BY-NC-ND 2.0, here
There is something curious about certain anti-Catholic opinions regarding Spain. They fault the Church for both the Inquisition and for supporting Franco in the civil war, even though the side of the Republic killed many priests.
One of the main things the Catholic Church is constantly accused of is the Spanish Inquisition. The endless comments range from jokes, like the Monty Python skit, to vicious accusations of hundreds of thousands or even millions of victims. Historical facts don’t really matter for this attitude.
The real number of victims who were killed is estimated to be about 3000 – in a time period of about 300 years. Unlike state courts, who could use torture as much as they wanted, in the Inquisition, there were strict limits placed on it.
The German priest Ulrich Filler points out in his book that the infamous grand inquisitor Torquemada had about 700 employees for Spain and its colonies, with half of them only working half-time, so it wasn’t comparable for example to the German secret police, the Stasi, which had 91,000 official and about 100,000 unofficial employees. (p. 49)
Also, in Spain, the main inquisitor was named by the king, not the pope, so the Inquisition was partially a state-run operation.
When the Spanish Civil War broke out, militias on the side of the “Republic” (not Franco!) started massacring priests, monks, nuns and lay people for their faith. Mostly in the first six months of the war, 13 bishops, at least 6500 priests, religious and seminarians as well as 3000 lay people, especially members of the Catholic Action, were martyred for their faith. Most of them were shot, some tortured beforehand. Many of them died shouting “¡Viva Cristo Rey!” (“Long live Christ the King!”).
The persecution was most severe in the Diocese of Barbastro (the “martyr diocese”) in Huesca province. According to history professor Martín Ibarra Benlloch, who researched on this subject extensively, 84% of the priests of the diocese were murdered, along with the bishop.
There was even the case of Alfonso Muñoz Tejada (1886?-1936), who ran a drug store in Madrid. After the civil war broke out, five members of the Popular Front came to his house and told him that he is arrested. When he asked why, they replied: “Aren’t you a practicing Catholic? Isn’t that reason enough for you?” He was brought to a zoo, where they tied his hands and beat him up, demanding that he utter blasphemies. When he refused, he was shoved into the lion’s cage. The next day, some of his remains were thrown in the trash by the zoo guards.
987 martyrs of the civil war have been beatified and the priest Pedro Poveda Castroverde, canonized. This is a significant portion of the about 6000 saints and blesseds declared since the 17th century. Jorge Bergoglio invalidly beatified about 1100 others.
However, the Church is blamed for even honoring these people. Before the beatification of the 498 Spanish Martyrs by Pope Benedict XVI in 2007 for example, there was criticism in the press. Since many Church leaders supported Franco during the war, it is claimed that the beatifications are a continuation of this legacy.
There is no doubt that some Church leaders went too far in supporting Franco and tried to create a theological justification for him, even calling the civil war a “cruzada” (“crusade”). However, can one really blame them for not supporting those people who massacred so many priests, but the other side?
When Catholic priests are killed, it is their fault, according to these kinds of attitudes.
A plaque commemorating the Claretian martyrs of Barbastro on the church of Saint Francis of Assisi. The plaque was often vandalized and the local government pressured the Church in 2022 to remove the Franquist symbolism from the plaque, which they did. Fair use.