‘We are waging war because it is being waged on us’, said Manuel Azaña in his speech in Valencia's city hall on 21 January 1937. A terrible war, which in barely half a year saw the cruel terror of the rebel army and Falangists, accompanied by a violent upheaval of the social order. And the Republic was indeed forced to fight in a war that it did not start, and the political organisations of the left had to adapt to a military activity that they knew practically nothing about. The varying ideas on how to organise the State and society held by the parties, movements and people who fought on the republican side ostensibly played a major part in frustrating a united policy against the military rebels. And there was nothing new in this situation, as it had been going on for years and had complicated the life of the Republic in peacetime as well.

Furthermore, as we have seen, the civil war was fought under the circumstances of the Non-Intervention Agreement imposed by the United Kingdom and France. For the Republic, this meant a marked international isolation, which placed it, and it alone, in a situation of material disadvantage. Non-intervention, in the words of Helen Graham, ‘brought the daily erosion not only of the Republic's military capacity, but of its political legitimacy as well’.