[The Local] Eighty years ago, on April 1st 1939, the civil war came to an end in Spain, a painful, bloody wound that has yet to heal.A dark prelude to World War II, the conflict unleashed passions around the world for close to three years and led to a decades-long dictatorship.
It all started on July 18, 1936, when army generals staged a coup against a fledgling republic that had been established five years prior in a restive, poor country.
The coup failed but divided the country between those who supported the Republic and the "nationalist" rebels.
Among these was General Francisco Franco, in command of the army in the Spanish protectorate of Morocco.
He promptly gained the support of German and Italian dictators Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, whose planes transported troops onto the mainland in what is known as the world's first major airlift.
The planes would go on to regularly bomb cities around the country, and destroy the town of Guernica in the Basque Country, made famous by Picasso's haunting painting.