Report on the state of the church in Spain, presented by the Basque republican minister Manuel de Irujo (1) at a cabinet meeting on January 7, 1937:
“The actual situation of the church since July of last year across all the territory that remained loyal to the republic (excluding the Basque provinces) is as follows:
a) All altars, images, and liturgical objects have been destroyed, with few exceptions, often desecrated.
b) All churches were closed and worship services were completely interrupted.
c) A large number of temples were burned, and this occurred regularly in Catalonia.
d) Depositories and official institutions received bells, chalices, monstrances, candlesticks, and other liturgical objects, melted them down, and used this material for industrial purposes or for war efforts.
e) Churches were turned into storage facilities of all kinds, markets, garages, stables, lodging houses, or shelters, or were used otherwise…
f) All convents were cleared out and religious life in them was disrupted. Buildings, liturgical objects, and any other properties were occupied, burned, looted, and demolished.
g) Priests and religious were arrested, thrown into prison, and shot by the thousands without trial. These acts, although to a lesser extent, still occur, not only in villages where there is a brutal hunt for church leaders and they are barbarically killed, but also in larger towns and cities. In prisons in Madrid, Barcelona, and other major cities, there are hundreds of detainees who found themselves there for no known reason other than being priests or religious.
h) Currently, it is completely prohibited to privately own holy images and liturgical objects. The police conduct home searches and look within homes, in the intimate settings of individuals or families, violently and mockingly destroying images, publications, religious books, and everything that has anything to do with religious beliefs or reminds of them.”
(1): Manuel de Irujo /1891–1981/, a lawyer, leader of the Basque nationalist party, as a minister /from September 26, 1936; in exile since 1939/ sought to free imprisoned priests and religious and to restore liturgical life. In his report, he documents the contradiction between the constitution, which at that time guaranteed freedom of belief, and the actual situation in the country.
(A. Riccardi, Century of Martyrs, KNA 2014, p. 346)
