The primordial difference between a war and a revolution is its reason. Wars are made for power, money or any other thing that can potentially lead to either; revolutions are made for ideas and ideologies. This is one of the main reasons why the United States to these days refer to their Independence War as the American Revolution, by the way, but that is not relevant as of now.
Of course Spain knew that – he was an old country, with more than a few wars behind him. The difference is that the current war wasn't against a concrete enemy, but against himself. The fight might seem ideological at first, which was how it always started, after all.
From the moment the Soviet Union got in the War, it stopped being just on the inside. Spain found himself as being merely a landscape, a battlefield between the communism and the capitalism. Yet again, it could sound like an ideological fight, but…
In the end, he surmised, it was all territory. He would know.
Not his people.
"Oh, they do know. They've just forgotten. But they will remember as soon as they don't have it anymore."
He didn't take sides at the War, even though his bosses did. It wouldn't make a difference, in the end, which side won. It would be another pointless bloodbath, blood from ordinary people that thought they were doing what was best for the country. They didn't see, didn't remember now, that the blood splattered on both sides of the board was the same color.
But they would remember it, later, and they would swear they would never forget it again.
Until the next war, of course.
By April first of nineteen thirty-nine, the newspapers declared the End of the Spanish Civil War. It wasn't quite so for the thousands of former militants that got executed, of course.
By November twentieth of nineteen seventy-five, burning the Coat of Arms was the best feeling in the world.