All investigation into the Francoist repression begins with Francisco Moreno Gómez’ work. It is the starting point and researchers’ baseline of reference for their interpretation of the violence com-mitted by the insurgents during the Spanish Civil War and afterwards, throughout the Francoist dictatorship, beginning with his book La guerra civil en Córdoba, 1936-1939 [The Civil War in Córdoba, 1936-1939] (1985), This book clarifies one of the oft-repeated yet ignored premises: civil war in Spain is the same as the repression carried out in those provinces that, like Córdoba, fell into the hands of the insurgents. A war of extermination to ensure the submission of the population through the actions of the military insurgents and paramilitary troops consisting of Falangists and their cronies. Trincheras de la República [The Republican Trenches] (2013) again addresses the civil war as he investigates the civil war in a region that needed studying, the north of Córdoba province.
One of his seminal books 1936,el genocidio franquista en Córdoba [The Francoist Genocide in Cordoba] (2008) provided the basis for his future exhaustive analysis of the post-war repression, particularly before 1950. By extending the date to the beginning of the 1950s, he tells us of the heroic survival of a guerrilla force that was isolated from everything and everyone until it was finally exterminated. The gamut of subjects that he investigates in minute detail range from those that occurred during the civil war until the 1950s when the United States and its allies’ patronage of the Francoist dictatorship indirectly changed the situation.
Francisco Moreno’s first book dedicated to the study of the violence committed by the insurgents in Cordoba province, district by district, enabled him to obtain an extremely detailed X-ray of the Francoist genocide in the province and made it a model for this research in the rest of Spain. From the moment it was published, there have appeared reports and proven facts that provide the grounds for charging the military insurgents with a criminal repression throughout Andalusia, albeit centered in Córdoba and the province of the same name. In one of his recent books, La victoria sangrienta, 1939-1945 [The Bloody Victory, 1939-1945) (2014), the only one of his books translated into English, the facts clearly show that we can again speak of genocide.
All who are researching and have some knowledge of the combative and progressive Spain, owe a great deal to Francisco Moreno Gómez, much of whose work is still not known to the general public and has seldom been studied in the schools and academic circles where the author has taught for decades. Thanks to Francisco Moreno’s mastery of the history of the Democratic Republic, its importance to Spanish History and Literature, his scientifically-led research into the military coup, we now have a first-class weapon with which to work against the victors’ enduring desire to obliterate all recollection of those who perished and to dilute the pain and injustice suffered in silence by the defeated, despite multiple latter-day Francoist attempts to erase their memories and re-write History.
Mirta Núnez Diaz-Balart, Madrid, 2018
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Francisco Moreno Gómez has a blog on which he is publishing the numerous articles he has written on Spanish History, notably on subjects related to the Civil War. In Spanish, they will be eventually posted here with the original text, as each is translated into English. Historia, Memoria y Literatura http://www.franciscomorenogomez.com.
