For decades after its conclusion, the Spanish Civil War (1936–39) was officially described by the newly imposed dictatorship as a Crusade. However, the appropriation of a mythologised medieval past was not just the product of post-war legitimisation. This article explores how, using “crusade” as a placeholder for Reconquista, the rebel army and its supporters responded to three distinct developments: a reaction to Republican anticlericalism; the imposition of a national identity in which Catholicism was understood as an essential element of Spanishness and the basis for its greatness; and a very practical need for popular mobilisation both at home and abroad. However, as this study demonstrates, the adoption of a crusading rhetoric and medieval mythology was a transnational development, in which distinct anti-Bolshevik campaigns, with origins in Rome and Spain, fed off each other and intersected, sometimes in intricate and hidden ways, within the increasingly polarised international context of the 1930s.

在结束后的几十年里，西班牙内战（1936-39 年）被新强加的独裁政权正式描述为十字军东征。然而，对神话般的中世纪过去的挪用不仅仅是战后合法化的产物。本文探讨了使用“十字军东征”作为 Reconquista 的占位符，叛军及其支持者如何应对三个不同的发展：对共和党反教权主义的反应；强加一种民族认同，其中天主教被理解为西班牙性的基本要素及其伟大的基础；以及国内外群众动员的现实需要。然而，正如这项研究表明的那样，采用十字军修辞和中世纪神话是一种跨国发展，其中不同的反布尔什维克运动，