The Spanish Civil War (1936-39) is one of the wars in which the losers are documented much more than the winners. The ideological spectrum of the socialist Republican side of the war has been explored inside out, but their opponents, General Francisco Franco's Nationalists are portrayed simplistically as reactionaries, who merely represented the interests of the Church and powerful landowners, and wanted to return Spanish society to feudal times.
This is particularly true of history writing that centres on the foreign volunteers of the Republican International Brigades, which involved 32,000 to 35,000 left-wing and non-political defenders of democracy from different countries. In his 2003 book, Suomalaiset Espanjan sisällissodassa (Finns in the Spanish Civil War), Jyrki Juusela closely follows the steps of the Finnish members of the International Brigades, but only a few dozen pages are dedicated to Finnish fighters on the nationalist side. In leftist mythology the Spanish war was an international crusade on behalf of democracy and egalitarianism, which drew militant idealists from all over the world, including Asia and Latin America.
But, actually, the proportion of foreigners in Franco's nationalist forces was even greater. Along with 15,000 German and 80,000 Italian professional soldiers who were sent to help Franco, almost 90,000 foreign volunteers fought on the nationalist side.
