The General Reparations Fund: economic repression, class repression (1936-1939)

During the Spanish Civil War, social class served as a catalyst for the repression exerted by republican forces. In this article we explore the process by which expropriations were directed against people identified by their economic, social and cultural capital. Our principal sources are the records of the General Reparations Fund, an institution created by the Republic in September of 1936 to seize the assets of suspected collaborators with the military coup. Extraordinary detailed sources allow us to understand how the seizing of assets of << rebels and disaffected persons >> rested upon the underlying desire to nationalize large companies and to persecute class enemies.