I just read Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia. Couldn’t tell who the bad guys were.
The Loyalists won. One could certainly make an argument that forty years of Franco cost Spain dearly as far as moving into and through the twentieth century.
The movie industry and Hemingway obscured and hid the communist activity on the Republic side and made the commies into heroes. Franco was no saint, but he was the type of mean bastard they needed to save them from a lot worse.