The Spanish Civil War 1047

maps in a spring 1937 ground battle. The Italians fared somewhat better in
the air, where they faced virtually no opposition. Mussolini’s pilots helped
destroy loyalist supply lines. Hitler used the Spanish Civil War as a mili­
tary training ground, sending planes, guns, munitions, and other supplies
through Portugal. German advisers trained nationalist pilots and military
personnel. The pilots of the German Condor Legion flew bombing runs
against loyalist forces, as well as against civilians. On April 26, 1937, Ger­
man and Italian planes bombed and strafed the small town of Guernica,
killing more than 100 residents. Within a month, the Spanish-born painter
Pablo Picasso had immortalized the martyrdom of Guernica on his canvas
depicting the horrors of modern warfare.
When the nationalists attacked Madrid at the end of August 1937, the
Communist militant Dolores Ibarruri, known as ‘‘La Pasionaria” (1895—
1989), rallied loyalists with her defiant shout, “They shall not pass!” How­
ever, in the north, the nationalists reached the Atlantic coast, cutting off
the loyalist Basque region from France. The loyalists struggled along an
imposing front that stretched from the Mediterranean south of Granada to
the Pyrenees. When Franco’s army reached the Mediterranean Sea, it iso­
lated Catalonia from remaining loyalist territory. Barcelona fell in January

1939. Britain and France (where the Popular Front had fallen from power)
      quickly recognized the Franco regime. Republican refugees carried what
      they could through the mountains and snows of the Pyrenees to France.
      Those who fled into Portugal, where the republic had been overthrown in
      1926, were returned to Spain by the dictatorship of Salazar to be killed or

(Left) Communist leader Dolores Ibarruri, “La Pasionaria.” (Right) General Fran­

cisco Franco.