Though widespread and often cruel, the violence inflicted by leftists was, on the whole, unplanned; it was carried out by mobs or by small groups acting on their own authority. On the Nationalist side, by contrast, the violence was part of a campaign of systematic terror, ordered from above. Vowing to “purge” Spain of all its internal enemies, Nationalist forces executed politicians, left-wing members of parliament, teachers, Freemasons, doctors, trade unionists, and sometimes people whose only crime was to be wearing glasses and thus to look like intellectuals.
