The Civil War in the Spanish territories of the Gulf of Guinea: the perception of the conflict from remote lands and the conflict in the colony

Abstract

The Spanish Civil War is an inexhaustible source of publications carried out by both Spanish historians and journalists and those from other latitudes. However, there is still much to tell, and among what is missing I have dared to investigate a part of the history of the armed conflict in little-known lands to which few have paid attention. We tend to forget that Spain during the Republic and Francoism had possessions beyond the Peninsula and the Canary Islands. This is the case of Spanish Guinea in the heart of tropical Africa, which during the Second Republic was baptized as the Spanish Territories of the Gulf of Guinea.

In this article, prompted by the preparation of a class that I have taught in the subject Colonial Spaces and Borders of the Master of Latin American Studies at the University of Barcelona, I propose to present how the beginning of the Civil War in Guinea was perceived and how The conflict was experienced in those lands. We will learn what the political, social, and economic situation was like before the war, we will witness an armed confrontation in the jungle, and a bombing of a ship in Bata Bay. And we are going to see this with some bibliography but above all with journalistic sources through the pages of the newspaper La Guinea Española and also La Vanguardia.