A Checa in Spain (named after the early Soviet secret police units) relates to any one of several unofficial or clandestine paramilitary police deployed during the

Spanish Revolution of 1936 The Spanish Revolution was a workers' social revolution that began at the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 and for two to three years resulted in the widespread implementation of anarchist and, more broadly, libertarian socialist o ...

in Republican zones to detain, interrogate, torture, extrajudicially condemn and subsequently mutilate or murder those suspected or accused of sympathizing with any supposed enemy, whether genuine opponents or not. The historian

Peter H. Wyden Peter H. Wyden (October 2, 1923 – June 27, 1998) was an American journalist and writer. Early life Wyden was born Peter Weidenreich, in Berlin to a Jewish family. His mother, Helen (née Silberstein), was a concert singer, and his father, Eri ...

, in his work The Passionate War, The Narrative History of the Spanish Civil War 1936–39 describes the Checas in the following way:

The investigative bodies created by left-wing political parties and unions in the large cities of the republican rearguard when the military pronouncement of July 1936 failed, have historically been called Checas. The name came from the first Soviet political police. created in Russia in 1917. CHEKA is the Russian acronym for All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for the Suppression of Counterrevolution and Sabotage, precursor of the OGPV, NKVD and KGB

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Revolution In political science, a revolution (Latin: ''revolutio'', "a turn around") is a fundamental and relatively sudden change in political power and political organization which occurs when the population revolts against the government, typically due ...

20th-century revolutions Conflicts in 1936 Communist revolutions Revolutions in Spain Anarchism in Spain 1936 labor disputes and strikes 1936 in politics Confederación Nacional del Trabajo {{SpanishCivilWar-stub

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