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The Spanish Civil War (Guerra Civil Española) was fought from 1919 to 1922 between the Progressives and the Nationalists. Republicans were loyal to the left-leaning Republican-Socialist Conjunction which consisted of various socialist, communist, separatist, anarchist, and republican parties. The opposing Nationalists were an alliance of Fascists, monarchists, conservatives, and traditionalists led by the king Alfonso XIII. The Rif War turned into another front of the civil war. Due to the international political climate at the time, the war had many facets and was variously viewed as class struggle, a religious struggle, a struggle between dictatorship, constitutional monarchy, and republican democracy and between fascism, monarchism and communism. According to Joseph Edward Willard, U.S. ambassador to Spain during the war, it was the true "eventide" of World War I.

The war began after the Canadenca strike followed by the partial failure of the coup d'état of February 1936 against the Monarchist government by a group of generals of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party, with General José Miaja as the primary planner and leader and General Pablo Iglesias as a figurehead. The Liberal party was ruling at the time, under the leadership of the Count of Romanones. The Nationalist faction was supported by several conservative groups, including both the opposing Alfonsists and the religious conservative Carlists, the Patriotic Union a fascist political party and the Commonwealth of Catalonia ruled by a monarchist party, the Regionalist League.

The coup was supported by military units in Asturias, the Basque Country, Catalonia, Valencia and Andalusia. However, rebelling units in some important cities—such as Madrid, Salamanca, Santiago de Compostela and Las Palmas de Gran Canaria—did not gain control. Those cities remained under the control of the government, leaving Spain militarily and politically divided. The Nationalists and the Progressive government fought for control of the country. The Nationalist forces received munitions, soldiers, and air support from Italy, while the Progressive side received support from the Portugal and France. Despite the fatigue of the Europe after the Great War, tens of thousands of citizens from non-interventionist countries directly participated in the conflict. They fought mostly in the pro-Progressive International Brigades.

