My impression is that the Italian forces in Spain have been the victims of propaganda, both from the Republicans, wanting to emphasize their one victory over the Italians at Guadalajara, and by the Nationalists, who do not want to concede a major role to non-Spanish nationals.

The first point to note is that the Italian ground formations used were not elite fascist military units, as Republican propaganda would have it. The units were improvised and many of the men had originally been enlisted for labour service in Ethiopia!

Secondly, Guadalajara was the ONLY significant defeat suffered by the Italians in three years in Spain, and even this has been greatly exaggerated.

Thirdly, the Italian corps was one of the three elite offensive corps used by the Nationalists to head all their successful advances. If there was a major Nationalist advance without the central participation of the Italians after the capture of Malaga in 1936, I would be very surprised.

Finally, the Italian Air Force conducted the most influential air raid of the inter war years when it first bombed Barcelona from the Balearics. In full view of numerous international journalists twelve SM79s hit the city in daylight.

Because the raid and its results were so public and quantifiable, international aviation experts were able to divide the weight of bombs dropped into the number of civilian casualties caused and it was from this single raid that all the major powers worked out the likely effect of enormous bomber fleets on their cities. For example, it set in train the great evacuation plans used in Britain at the outbreak of WWII, greatly inhibited French will power when confronting Germany at Munich, led to the construction of millions of air raid shelters all over Europe and gave an enormous spur to air defence construction everywhere.

However, the calculations were wrong because exceptional circumstances had made the Barcelona casualties exceptionally high. The Barcelona civilian population had not been bombed before and so had no shelters and did not take cover. Furthermore, an ammunition truck had exploded causing exceptional casualties. There had also been widespread panic amongst the unseasoned population. None of these effects were reproduced by later raids on Barcelona, but this went unnoticed.

Thus, the first Italian Barcelona raid was far more influential than German raid on Guernica at the time and gave Europe an exaggerated appreciation of the true air threat.

There is a lot of Propaganda about the Spanish Civil war:

-Guernica Raid- It is said that there wasn’t any important military objective (I think a Gun Factory is). It really was a sad act, because the fire propagated over the wooden roofs and caused most of the victims, but there were also raids over Madrid and Barcelona and they are not as famous, I think the Republica need Propagando to offer to the other countries. (When Picasso was ordered to paint it, he didn’t like their own work)

-The internationals brigades didn’t fight as well as people think.

-Besides firing churches and killing priests and violating nuns, the Republican killed a lot of people (8000 in Paracuellos de Jarama ordered by Soviet agents) and most of people only know of Nationalist victims.

-People consider that Legion Condor and CTV were only mercenaries without knowing their actions during the war.