The body counts just show that you're always better off under the fascists. The point is that in Spain there was no real "democratic" center anymore. The communists were trying to pretend to be moderates to avoid alienating the European support they needed during the civil war, but we know exactly where every communist regime ends up - there is not one that hasn't ended up murdering millions of people (unless the population is small, like in Cuba, but even they probably murdered 15,000 people, and that's even after over 1 million fled the island in time to avoid execution). Stalin killed at least 15 million, Mao probably killed 30 million, and Pol Pot only killed 2 million but it was 25% of the population of the country.

By contrast, if you take Hitler out of the equation, fascists are pretty damn decent, all things considered. Pinochet probably only killed 1500 people (and they were communists anyway, so I myself probably would have had no compunction shooting them), and Mussolini only convicted 291 people to death in 20 years of rule for political reasons, though only about 40 of those were actually executed because the rest were amnestied. Franco executed most of his enemies during the civil war, and afterwards the numbers dropped rapidly (though admittedly he did kill more people, though that was probably because there were so many damn communists, anarchists and socialists in his country - and it's probably too bad he didn't kill more). On the contrary, communists not only killed their enemies, but the innocent FAMILIES of their enemies as well, because the enemies were based not on actual opposition to a regime, but on the basis of class - if you were middle class or upper class, to say nothing of aristocrats, your entire family would be ruthlessly butchered.

As a result, I support the executions of communists and socialists by Franco. I think that a constitutional system is best, but if the socialists started trying to undermine the constitution, I would happily execute them in the thousands rather than let them murder innocents from the wrong "class".