What if the Spanish Civil War never happened?

I wonder about the Spanish gold reserves... Did the Soviets ever actually pay anyone using gold? Or did they mostly just default on everything and only pay loans as part of larger deals? And on a matter more closely related to Spain, how was the treatment of Riffians before the war? I know that during it the Nationalists had a mass 'baptism' and used them as troops in mainland Spain. Apparently some Spaniards would frustrated that they kept taking pots and pans from locals, but that was more because they found it inconvenient to ship it back to the families of those from the Rif, though knew that it was good advertisement that Riffians could get war booty.
 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_gold

my understanding the (future) Axis powers armed the Nationalists "on credit" whereas the Soviets were on "cash basis" (or rather gold) so the Republicans would be at an increasing disadvantage if not immediately toppled.

also during the historical Spanish Civil War it was not widely known or understood that the ENTIRE gold reserves of the country had been sent abroad? the Nationalists would likely announce capturing them? and/or print new currency? and entire ability of Republicans to operate, not just buy arms, would collapse.
The Germans got their payment out of the industrial products from Catalonia and the Basque Country. Areas which were quite cnservstive, but joined with the Republicans because they wanted their rights accepted. Having a military junta based on a more chauvinistic strain of Castilian nationalism would not have went well for them. Apparently a bishop in the Nationalist areas gave a speech at a meeting with other Nationalists, but wasn't booed when he said that he himself had Basque blood and that it didn't mean they were all traitors or anything. Think he committed suicide after that. Been a decade since I read the book it was in.

Ahh, and as for the gold... The Soviets only demanded payment AFTER the gold was in Russia. They overcharged for what they previously stated to be gifts, plus they undervalued the gold, not taking into account antique value or gold weight. I think they stuck to face value. And taking into account how the value of gold and common currency has changed.... ahhh, yes. And they also lied (or were ordered to lie) about where the gold was being sent. They were to say it was going to New York, where it would be safe and easy to use.
 
do you think a Nationalist regime (whomever the leader) would remain close to GB? or the British would have no qualms about (any) naval construction program?

and whether their construction program might be upset somewhat by any purge of the navy leadership?

(my estimation of their fleet and aims may have been influenced by their OTL poverty during and after civil war, and be far off base with a still wealthy Spanish regime?)
Good questions, none of which I'm qualified to answer.

AFAIK Franco was an opportunist/pragmatist who played both sides for all he could get. Also AFAIK he was only friendly to the Germans and Italians because of the help they gave him in the SCW. (Although IIRC he Franco and Mussolini became good friends and the latter confided in the former that he wished he had stayed out of the war and that contributed to Franco's decision to resist the Great Temptation.)

AFAIK the Spanish were self-sufficient in forms of naval armaments apart from the capital ship calibre guns. IIRC from one of Friedman's books Vickers-Armstrongs tried to sell 8" cruisers built by S.E.C.N. to South American Navies in the 1930s because it wasn't allowed to make the guns in the UK because of the London Naval Treaties. The British might be buying arms from Spain in the late 1930s to make up for the neglect of their own arms industry during the Ten Year Rule Era. IOTL there's the well known purchase of Czech armour. Less well known are the hundreds of aircraft ordered from Caprioni before Italy entered the war (Count Caprioni was pro-British).

AFAIK it was the Republican Government that purged the navy's officer corps who were pro-nationalist and it was the men that were overwhelmingly Republican. Again AFAIK that upset the RN officer corps many of whom had friends in the Spanish Navy. So ITTL there would be no purge of the navy leadership. Therefore no upset to Spain's naval programmes. As an aside Juan de Borbon y Battenberg, son of Alfonso XIII and father of Juan Carlos I went to RNC Dartmouth and qualified as a lieutenant in the Royal Navy, but didn't take the King's Commission because he would have had to renounce his Spanish nationality.

I agree that they won't be able to build all of their wish list, but they'll do a lot better than they did IOTL. They've also avoided the losses suffered in the OTL SCW which included both surviving dreadnoughts and one of their two County class cruisers. Plus the ships that survived the SCW IOTL will be in better material condition due to avoiding 3 years of war service.
 
I've just remembered that Argentina bought 2 Spanish built destroyers in the 1920s. With no SCW ITTL they might buy another 7 from SECN in the late 1930s instead of the 7 (of 12 planned) that they purchased from the UK.

That might suit the Royal Navy because it means the overstretched British yards can concentrate on their Admiralty contracts.
 
I found these notes that I made from Battleships and Battlecruisers 1905-70 by Siegfried Breyer

Spanish Naval Programme 1940
4 battleships of 35,000 tons armed with eight or nine 38cm guns
14 armour clad ships of 15,000 tons
18 destroyers
14 submarines

If the SCW had been avoided because 1936 coup had been successful the above is likely to have been brought forward 4 years. There's no chance of the battleships and armour clads being built, but the destroyers and submarines would have been feasible had there been no SCW.
 
One of the most plausible PODs to avoid the SCW could be that the Popular Front loses the February elections of 1936 and, instead, that the CEDA wins, establishing a right-wing, Catholic, reactionary, conservative and anti-communist republican regime (even pseudo-fascist) with a corporatist system, based on the Austrian regime of Dollfuss, and the essential support of the army.
 
Were there any plausible alternative dictators to Riviera? If the King had appointed any of they them could they have managed the Spanish economy better so that the Second Republic and the SCW were avoided that way?
 
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