page_title: History of Seville
section_title: The Second Republic and Civil War (1931-1939)
hierarchical_section_title: History of Seville / Modern Era / 20th Century / The Second Republic and Civil War (1931-1939)
caption_attribution_description: Español: Fotografía del Jefe Territorial de la Falange Española Sancho Dávila y Fernández de Celis en Sevilla saludando desde el balcón de la casa cuartel de la calle Rioja. Sevilla, 29/09/1936
context_page_description: Seville has been one of the most important cities in the Iberian Peninsula since ancient times; the first settlers of the site have been identified with the Tartessian culture. The destruction of their settlement is attributed to the Carthaginians, giving way to the emergence of the Roman city of Hispalis, built very near the Roman colony of Itálica, which was only 9 km northwest of present-day Seville. Itálica, the birthplace of the Roman emperors Trajan and Hadrian, was founded in 206-205 BC. Itálica is well preserved and gives an impression of how Hispalis may have looked in the later Roman period. Its ruins are now an important tourist attraction. Under the rule of the Visigothic Kingdom, Hispalis housed the royal court on some occasions.
  In al-Andalus the city was first the seat of a kūra, or territory, of the Caliphate of Córdoba, then made capital of the Taifa of Seville, which was incorporated into the Christian Kingdom of Castile under Ferdinand III, who was first to be interred in the cathedral.
context_section_description: In the country-wide municipal elections held on 12 April 1931 the Republican leftist parties won in the principal Spanish cities. In Seville the Republican Socialists got 57% of the votes versus 39% for the Monarchist coalition. As a result, King Alfonso XIII went into exile and proclaimed the Second Republic.
  The convulsions of the Spanish Civil War were fully felt in the Andalusian capital, where since February 1936 the military had been planning a coup. On July 18 General Gonzalo Queipo de Llano quickly gained control of the 2nd División Orgánica, arresting a number of other officers.  In poor neighbourhoods such as Triana and La Macarena the unions and leftist parties mobilised militias but Queipo defeated them by a combination of superior weaponry, cunning and harsh repression. Seville was thus occupied by the rebels along with Cadiz and Algeciras, providing General Francisco Franco, Chief of the General Staff, sufficient ground to safely move the Ejército de África (Army of Africa) to Andalusia by air. Seville then became a rearguard city, acting as a bridgehead for the occupation of the rest of the peninsula by the Army of Africa, being the most populous of all the cities occupied by the partisan army. Repression in the city between July 18, 1936 and January 1937 caused the deaths of 3,028 people, including the mayor, Horacio Hermoso Araujo, the Republican former mayor Joseph Gonzalez Fernandez de Labandera, and the president of the Provincial Council, José Manuel de los Santos Puelles. Altogether some 8,000 civilians were shot by the Nationalists in Seville during the course of the war.
caption: A group of falangists making the fascist salute from a city balcony in September 1936.
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