Read history: There was no 'good' side in the Spanish Civil War

You will find it astonishing that in almost every movie, Hollywood or foreign about the Spanish Civil War, the propaganda about the legally elected 'democratic' side of the conflict is first propagated then ripped apart throughout the movie to show in the end, the so-called good side, the Spanish Republicans, were little better than the fascist Nationalists.

The readable history of the Spanish Civil War is on Google so I won't repeat it here. But in its day, 1936-1938, it was the biggest front page news all around the world. For non-Spanish, the war was daily newspaper and newsreel entertainment. Few people knew an even bigger global conflict was only a year away that would land in their laps.

The problem in the Spanish Civil War was this. The fascist Nationalists were almost a perfectly united front with virtually no inner dissent. It prospered from a united vision and purpose and unity of military command. In contrast, the Republican side harbored anyone and everyone from outright communists to socialists, to American and British-type democracy advocates, to anarchists. The Republican side suffered greatly from internal dissent and even though it initially put up a surprisingly stiff fight at first, began to disintegrate in its own center and this reflected upon its military forces.

The problem included that there was no moderate, western-style democracy party to coalesce around. The Republican side showed disturbing Marxist and anti-democracy tendencies that deepened as the civil war progressed. The Republican side was officially virulently anti-Roman Catholic Church and this robbed the Republican cause of many religious-minded Spaniards who then either refused to take sides or sympathized with the Nationalists to the point of siding with them.

Every movie ends with its protagonists wondering just what where they fighting for and whether their Republican side was even worth the sacrifice. To my knowledge, every movie has been filmed from the Republican viewpoint. There has never been a Spanish Civil War-based movie that took the viewpoint of the Nationalist side. Oddly, the sci-fi/horror movie, Pan's Labyrinth, is set at the end of the civil war within a Nationalist family viewpoint.