Spain, a brief chronology of key events[1]
18th July 1936: Military uprising against the democratically elected government of the Republic.
1936-39 - Spanish Civil War: 500,000 Spaniards killed in the conflict.
1939 - General Franco leads Nationalists to victory. General Franco's fascist dictatorship spans over nearly four decades defined by hunger, indiscriminate state violence and terror. Republicans are summarily executed, jailed or exiled.
1946-50 – Franco regime ostracised by United Nations after the fall of the Axis; many countries cut off diplomatic relations.
1953 – Spain-US treaty: in the midst of the Cold War, Spain provides military bases to the US in exchange of military, political and economic backing.
1955 - Spain admitted to UN.
November 1975 - Franco dies. Succeeded as head of state by King Juan Carlos I. With Juan Carlos on the throne, Spain makes transition from dictatorship to democracy.
June 1977 – “Ley de Amnistia”; First democratic elections in four decades.
February 1981 - Failed military coup.
1982 - Spain joins NATO.
1986 - Spain joins the EEC.
2000 – Spanish archaeologists, anthropologists and forensics scientists found the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory (Asociación para la Recuperación de la Memoria Histórica or ARMH in Spanish) The group tries to locate the mass graves and identify the remains of those missing from 1936 to the 1970s.
2001 - Parliament grants political recognition to Republican guerrillas - known as the maquis - who continued resisting the nationalist dictator, General Francisco Franco, after the Spanish Civil War ended in 1939.
November 2007 - Parliament passes a bill formally denouncing Franco's rule and ordering the removal of all Franco-era statues and symbols from streets and buildings; Backing of initiatives to uphold the memory of the victims of the Civil War, including the exhumation of mass graves, most thought to be Republican; Researchers for the mapping of mass graves programme in Andalucia estimate over 648 sites and 53,000 victims in that region alone.
[1]Sources: Hugh Thomas, “The Spanish Civil War”. London, Penguin, 2003 (reissue); Pierre Vilar, “Historia de España”. Barcelona, Critica, 1990 (reissue); BBC Website: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/country_profiles/992004.stm ; El Pais: http://www.elpais.com/articulo/andalucia/mapa/fosas/contabiliza/53000/victim%20as/comunidad/elpepuespand/20071130elpand_9/Tes
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