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  Countries like the Soviet Union had much more importance 
  as they were the main supporters of 1934 "Asturias' 
  revolution" that tried to make Spain a proletarian 
  dictatorship and URSS satellite. Stalin will influence the 
  war removing Largo Caballero and putting his lackey Negrin 
  as leader of the republicans.

  Germany also had great influence as they considered 
  essential not letting his enemy URSS get more power in 
  Spain.

This is so not true.

In fact, the "Asturias Revolution" of 1934 was organized by anarquists (CNT) and social democrats (UGT) and anti-stalinist communist groups like the (BOC).

The pro-russian Communist Party in Spain had little support among Spanish workers, and it only gained power after the country was long into war and the URSS became the only international supporter of the Spanish goverment.

Germany supported the rebellion since early on because of their affiliation with the fascists ideas of the uprising in the 1936 coup-de-etat.

Your views reflect the historical revisionism of the Spanish right wing to paint Franco as someone that saved Spain from the soviets. However, the uprising was motivated by the loss of power from the Church, big land-owners and capitalists during the republic.

So you agree that Germany (and the URSS, only later) had much more influence than UK in the war, which is clearly the point of the comment you're answering to.

About revisionism... there was blood in both sides' hands. To mention just the most obvious fact: the spark that ignited the war was the assasination of the opposition's leader. That happened in downtown Madrid with total impunity. Do you really believe that can happen in a normal situation? That's terribly one-sided.

> So you agree that Germany (and the URSS, only later) had much more influence than UK in the war, which is clearly the point of the comment you're answering to.

I agree. The UK still had significant indirect influence in that Churchill convinced France an other European powers to not support the Republic. That support might have diminished the URSS influence, or maybe just started WWII earlier, or prevented it... all that is political fiction of course, the truth is that Germany and (later) the URSS were the only significant international powers in action.

> About revisionism... there was blood in both sides' hands. To mention just the most obvious fact: the spark that ignited the war was the assasination of the opposition's leader. That happened in downtown Madrid with total impunity. Do you really believe that can happen in a normal situation? That's terribly one-sided.

I agree that the situation was not specially peaceful before the war (I did not imply that in my parent comment). Still, documentation says that the coup was planned before the leader of the opposition was killed. But as another comment says, there are many forces into play and it is hard to quantify the impact of particular events... It is also hard to discuss the war without entering into moral positions (i.e. what justifies what.).

I don't need to go further into analyzing this... I am happy that we agreed on the influence of Germany and URSS.

Btw, last year I read "Homage to Catalonia" by Orwell, in which he talks about his experience during the war. Of course it is a very one-sided account (he fought for the republic) but nontheless interesting from a literary and anecdotal point of view, and it might appeal the english-speaking crowd here.

This does not seem to bear on the claim being reported here, which is that Douglas Jerrold, Hugh Pollard and Louis Bolin chartered a light aircraft, flew to the Canary Islands where they picked up Franco and transported him to Morocco.

Either that happened, or it didn't, but your comment doesn't seem to shed any light one way or another?

The article claims much more than what you say. Did they bring Franco to mainland, helping the nacional side? OK. Did they "engineered start of Spanish civil war"? That's a terrible hyperbole.

The article put that in quotes, just as you did.

Somewhat related, there was an NPR interview recently and it had proper Colombians as well as some an American sympathetic to Colombian "campesinoes" who spent some time there.

The Colombians were pretty positive about the surrender by the FARC. They spoke about FARC and its tactics which affected many thousands of Colombians. The US sympathizer would "correct" actual Colombians about their understanding and always implicate the US in a negative way. Some people just need to have an anti-something slant to things, no matter what.