On this date in 1936, anticlerical leftists in the Spanish Civil War allegedly subjected a monumental statue of Christ to a ritual “execution”.

“This picture, taken by a Paramount News-reel representative and received by air from Madrid yesterday, illustrates an outrage which has no parallel in the photographs published by “The Daily Mail” of the Spanish Reds’ war on religion. It shows a Communist firing squad aiming at the colossal Monument of the Sacred Heart on the Cerro de los Angeles, a hill a few miles south of Madrid which is regarded as the exact centre of Spain.” (Source)

This outstandingly incendiary image made for great recruiting for the Francoist enemies of the “firing squad” and gave credence to a “crusade” lexicology that insured the devout would break overwhelmingly against the Republic. (Nearly 7,000 men and women in religious orders whose deaths during the war are charged to the Republican account also helped.)

Maybe that was inevitable, anyway.

George Orwell, the English leftist who volunteered for the Spanish Republicans, noted in his Homage to Catalonia that

the people in this part of Spain must be genuinely without religious feeling — religious feeling, I mean, in the orthodox sense. It is curious that all the time I was in Spain I never once saw a person cross himself; yet you would think such a movement would become instinctive, revolution or no revolution. Obviously the Spanish Church will come back (as the saying goes, night and the Jesuits always return), but there is no doubt that at the outbreak of the revolution it collapsed and was smashed up to an extent that would be unthinkable even for the moribund C. of E. in like circumstances. To the Spanish people, at any rate in Catalonia and Aragon, the Church was a racket pure and simple. And possibly Christian belief was replaced to some extent by Anarchism, whose influence is widely spread and which undoubtedly has a religious tinge.

Be that as it may, Republican types suspected photographic fakery.

Just like its inspiration is reported to have done, this statue survived its “execution” in fine shapewas resurrected by public subscription, and can still be seen at Cerro de los Angeles outside Madrid.

The “executed” statue today. (cc) image from bigchus.

On this day..

• 2001: Vishal and Sonu, honor killings
• 1661: Jin Shengtan, literary scholar
• 1849: Celigny Ardouin, Haitian Minister of the Interior
• 1849: Ernst Elsenhans, Rastatt revolutionary
• 1844: William Saville, brutalising scene
• 1933: The Simele Massacre of Iraq's Assyrians begins
• 2009: Li Peiying, corrupt aviation kingpin
• 1864: Li Xiucheng, Taiping Rebellion general
• 1896: Charles Thiede, the first since Utah statehood
• 1930: Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith, strange fruit
• 1859: Ormond Chase, casus belli not quite
• 1777: A British spy, by Israel Putnam