Coup
17 July: Melilla
The leader of the plot, Emilio Mola, had ordered the Army of Africa to revolt at 5 a.m. on 18 July. However the plan was discovered by Republican officers of Melilla on 17 July, prompting the leader of the plot in the city, Colonel Segui, to initiate the uprising. Segui arrested General Romerales and seized the radio station proclaiming the estado de guerra. The Legionnaries, the Regulares, and the Assault Guards in Melilla joined to the rising. Seizing key buildings, they crushed the resistance in the working class quarters. General Romerales, the major of Melilla, the government delegate, the aerodrome commander, Virgilio Leret Ruiz, and all those who resisted the rebellion were shot. When General Morato discovered the uprising, he took an airplane to Melilla, but was arrested by the rebels upon landing.
17 July: Ceuta and Tetuán
Seguí then telephoned Ceuta and Tetuán and sent a telegraph to Franco at Las Palmas. Colonel Juan Yagüe Blanco, with the II Battalion of the Spanish Legion, seized Ceuta while Colonel Saenz de Buruaga, with the V Bandera of the Spanish Legion, took Tetuán.
The rebel troops in Ceuta occupied the working class districts and killed prominent unionists and the major of the city, and in Tetuán, the Foreign Legion seized the Casa del pueblo and executed the union officers and all persons found with arms. Furthermore, Colonel Jan Luis Beigbeder gained the support of the Grand Vizier of Tetuán, Mulay Hassan, and Moroccan volunteers started to join the rebellion.
18 July
In Larache the coup started at two o'clock in the morning of 18 July. Several engagements followed in which five assault guards and two rebel officers were killed, but by dawn the town was in the hands of the rebels. By mid-morning the only remaining centres of resistance were the High Commissioner's residence and the air force base at Tetuán.
The rebels threatened to bomb both and after a few hours the defenders surrendered to the Nationalists; all of them were executed, among them the high commissioner and the Major de la Puente Bahamonde – Francisco Franco's cousin. The same day, the workers of Tetúan and Melilla attempted a general strike, but were crushed by the insurgent troops.
Nationalist repression
On his secret instructions of 30 June for the coup in Morocco, Mola ordered: "to eliminate left-wing elements, communists, anarchists, union members, etc". The same day as the rising all the members of trade unions, left-wing parties, Masonic lodges and anyone known to have voted for the Popular Front were arrested. On the first night, the Nationalists executed 189 civilians and soldiers. On 20 July, the Nationalists opened their first Francoist concentration camp in Melilla.
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The Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) broke out with a military uprising in Morocco on July 17, triggered by events in Madrid. Within days, Spain was divided in two: a "Republican" or "Loyalist" Spain consisting of the Second Spanish Republic, and a "Nationalist" Spain under the insurgent generals, and, eventually, under the leadership of General Francisco Franco.
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The siege of Madrid was a two-and-a-half-year siege of the Republican-controlled Spanish capital city of Madrid by the Nationalist armies, under General Francisco Franco, during the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939). The city, besieged from October 1936, fell to the Nationalist armies on 28 March 1939. The Battle of Madrid in November 1936 saw the most intense fighting in and around the city when the Nationalists made their most determined attempt to take the Republican capital.
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The Spanish coup of July 1936 was a military uprising that was intended to overthrow the Spanish Second Republic but precipitated the Spanish Civil War; Nationalists fought against Republicans for control of Spain. The coup was organized for 18 July 1936, although it started the previous day in Spanish Morocco. Instead of resulting in a prompt transfer of power, the coup split control of the Spanish military and territory roughly in half. The resulting civil war ultimately led to the establishment of a nationalist regime under Francisco Franco, who became ruler of Spain as caudillo.
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The July 1936 military uprising in Barcelona was a mutiny that occurred in Barcelona, the capital and largest city of Catalonia, in the Second Spanish Republic from 19 to 21 July 1936. It was one of the main events that marked the start of the Spanish Civil War.
The siege of the Montaña Barracks was the two-day siege which marked the initial failure of the July 1936 uprising against the Second Spanish Republic in Madrid, on 18–20 July 1936, at the start of the Spanish Civil War. The bulk of the security forces in Madrid remained loyal to the government, and supported by workers' militias, crushed the uprising.
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The final offensive of the Spanish Civil War took place between 26 March and 1 April 1939, towards the end of the Spanish Civil War. On 5 March 1939, the Republican Army, led by Colonel Segismundo Casado and the politician Julián Besteiro, rose against the socialist prime minister Juan Negrín, and formed a military junta, the National Defence Council to negotiate a peace deal. Negrín fled to France but the communist troops around Madrid rose against the junta, starting a civil war within the civil war. Casado defeated them and started peace negotiations with the Nationalists. Francisco Franco, however, was willing to accept only an unconditional surrender. On 26 March, the Nationalists started a general offensive and by 31 March, they controlled all of Spanish territory. Hundreds of thousands of Republicans were arrested and interned in concentration camps.
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The Spanish airlift of 1936 was a military operation, carried out by the Nationalists during the early phase of the Spanish Civil War. It did not have any specific code name. Its objective was to bypass the Republican naval blockade of the Strait of Gibraltar and transport by air the soldiers stationed in the Spanish Morocco to the rebel-controlled part of Andalusia. The undertaking was hugely successful; during 85 days between July 19 and October 11 the Nationalists transported at least 14,000 men and at least 270 tons of war materiel. The success was possible thanks to German and Italian assistance, as aircraft sent by Hitler and Mussolini carried most of the troops and equipment. The operation is viewed as innovative, as it was the first ever large-scale military transport by air. Since there was no major Republican counter-action, the airlift was a challenge in terms of logistics and technology rather than combat. The opinion prevailing in historiography is that the airlift was vital for the Nationalists and helped to turn the failed coup into a long-lasting civil war.
On 18 July 1936 the Moroccan city of Tetouan was the target of an aerial bombardment, carried out by Spanish aircraft loyal to the Second Spanish Republic, barely hours after the beginning of the rebellion that triggered the Spanish Civil War.
Juan Seguí Almuzara (1885–1936) was a Spanish military officer who ascended to the rank of lieutenant colonel. In the 1910s he served mostly in Morocco, while in the 1920s he was a military attaché in Paris and Brussels. However, he is known mostly for his engagement in the July 1936 coup. In Melilla he emerged as one of few key leaders of the conspiracy and played a vital role in rebel takeover of power in the area.
Spanish Republic 
Nationalist rebels 
