The many wars of Madrid (1936-1939): everyday life and everyday violence

The military uprising against the government of the Second Republic, which succeeded in some parts of the country and was defeated in others, ended in a civil war that lasted almost three years. For several decades, the understanding of the war in Madrid was focused in three moments considered key to the development of the conflict. Three specific images that also endured so long due to the importance of three specific books. The coup was held off during the famous "three days of July" portrayed by Luis Romero, which became the very first descriptive image of the war in the capital. From that point on, the rebels' military operations focused on the occupation of Madrid. However, the city did not fall and starting November 1936 it suffered a siege that had a profound impact on its population's daily life. Its heroic resistance was the second image left by the conflict, fuelled by the propaganda produced by the Junta de Defensa de Madrid (Madrid's Defence Council) the institution that rested in charge of managing the city after the government moved to Valencia. The third long-standing image of the war in the city symbolically closes the circle opened in July 1936 and is summed up in its military occupation because of a coup d'état in the Republican rearguard itself, after 28 months of siege and with an exhausted population. Three years of war, three specific images, three major books, and still many questions to be asked. As the capital of the Second Republic, Madrid has hardly been studied from its urban component. Although essential to understanding the anti-fascist resistance, we hardly knew anything about its rearguard, about the supply and about how everyday life and everyday violence marked that resistance that made that same resistance possible. Despite being the first city to be systematically bombed and to suffer the rigours of the 'total war', military history had only considered the difficulty that the rebel columns faced to take the capital in the autumn of 1936. This chapter deals with this set of dichotomies to outline the historiography focused on analysing the most important events in Spanish 20th century history from Madrid. Each section starts with a brief description of the main historical events that are related to the three key milestones mentioned before, and follows with the analysis on how the historical literature has dealt with them.