Jon and I walked in early November up in the mountains north of Granada, Spain, where the young poet, playwright and theatre director Gabriel Garcia Lorca was shot in August 1936 by the Nationalist (‘right’) government. There’s a beautiful memorial garden near Viznar ‘marking the spot’ and the young, good-looking Lorca’s become a sort of poster-boy for a host of ‘leftist’ victims.

The monarchist Nationalists had launched a coup against the legitimate leftwing government. A scenario that could plausibly have followed in the UK had Jeremy Corbyn been elected prime minister. 

The 'right' viewed the Civil War they deliberately unleashed as a holy war against a ‘Judeo-Masonic-Bolshevist’ conspiracy that had somehow produced a Republican government of moderate socialists and democrats (plus a few radicals).

The ‘leftwing’ government and its supporters, the grass roots, responded violently to the attempted coup.

In the end there was undoubtedly massive violence on both sides. About 300,000 innocent civilians died, and about 200,000 soldiers (from both sides). Republican women were often killed in revenge when their husbands, brothers, fathers had gone into hiding in the hills. Once Franco had won there were mass executions (100,000) and scores settled. More than 500,000 individuals were rounded up and sent to about 60 concentration camps.

Punishment was still being meted out to Republicans in hiding in the 1960s.

Go see The House of Bernarda Alba by Lorca at the National Theatre, London - and see why Lorca may have been regarded as an enemy by the right who sought to control women.

There are parallels everywhere one looks at the moment

Due to our personal politics, our natural sympathies have always been with the leftists. They mostly weren’t communists or anarchists, they mainly were workers fighting for their rights to justice, representation and an end to ‘feudalism’ represented by the propertied establishment and Catholic Church.

But of course we abhor all the killing on either side and this week something pulled on our heart strings from a different direction. It was a scarf with three names on: Carmen, Rosa and Magdalena. A present from new friends in the inclusive, ecumenical Immaculate Heart Community in Los Angeles who work to stand with the marginalized, resist injustice and protect the planet. Everything we support.

Carmen, Rosa and Magdalena Fradera, aged 41, 36 and 34 became innocent victims of the Spanish Civil War because of their connection with the Catholic Church. They were nuns from the Most Holy and Immaculate Heart of Mary community of Gerona (Barcelona) the ‘Mother-house’ of my friends in Los Angeles. 

As the persecution of Catholic clergy in areas held by Republicans took off – known as the ‘Red Terror’ – the three sister nuns were sent home by their convent in July 1936 and told to remain ‘incognito’. Anyone who’s ever lived in a Spanish village knows what a far-fetched idea that is! They hadn’t been home more than a couple of months before armed ‘Rojo’ (‘Red’) soldiers came knocking on the family door, apparently to ask for donations for the war effort.

Well, the three Sisters knew what was likely to happen next and refused to run away. They told their family: "If they come for us, we embrace it; we are willing to die for Christ." Two days later the militia arrived just before dawn. And despite the pleas for mercy from their family the three nuns were taken away and brutally abused and then murdered in an oak forest. There are parallels everywhere one looks at the moment.