After the rebellion of July 18, 1936 failed in much of the Spanish peninsula, the leadership of the coup was faced with the necessity of fighting a civil war. They had control of about 100,000 troops of various types. 30,000 of these were from the Army of Africa: Legion Extranjera (Foreign Legion), Cazadores (light infantry), Regrulares (Moroccans), and MehaPla (troops of the puppet caliph of Morocco) - Spain's only combatready force.

About 35,000 were made up of various police forces, Guardia Civil, Asaltos, and Carabineros. The rest were from Spain's ill-equipped metropolitan army. This modest force would ultimately grow to an army of 60 divisions and would win the war. They called themselves Nationalists; their enemies called them Fascists. Insurgents were what they were, rebels against their government.

The Nationalists had one very significant advantage over their Republican opponents: unity. The other side spent immense energy in fratricidal (literally) bickering, and every army corps was run as its commander's feudal princedom. The Nationalists were united under the command of Generalissimo Francisco Franco y Bahamonde, by Grace of God Head of the Spanish State and Capitain General of the Armed Forces titles that only the king could use in the past.

Franco had established his dictatorship after he was elected head of the rebel junta in late September 1936. Quickly he had moved to seize all power and to control those elements on the Nationalist side which he could not count on. He calculated that the Army would go along with whatever he did.

The Falangistas, Spain's Fascists, were given a great deal of publicity, and Franco took on the title of Caudillo (chief), similar to Fuhrer and Duce. This pleased Hitler and Mussolini, both of whom wanted a new Fascist state established in Spain. In reality, the Falange was emasculated and turned into a sort of huge patriotic club. The Monarchists were mollified by the ostentatious Catholicism of the new regime and the constant evocation of Spain's imperial past. Attempts by both these groups to found separate politically dominated military hierarchies, like the Black Shirts of Italy and the S.A./S.S. in Germany, were crushed.

Franco's Armed Forces Spanish Civil War

Introduction
Growth and Organization
Equipment
Army
Air Forces
Nationalist Navy