to the rebellion. The civil governor, José María Varela Rendueles, was sentenced to death by the rebels, but the sentence was reduced to 30 years' imprisonment. A general strike was ordered by the trade unions, the workers withdrew into their own districts of Triana and La Macarena and built barricades, but they only had a few weapons. The rebel troops (4,000 men) seized the nerve centers of the city, occupying the telephone exchange, the town hall and the radio station, and establishing control routes into the center of the city. On 20 July, the rebels bombed the working-class districts of Seville, and after the rebel troops supported by the troops of the Spanish Legion arrived from Africa, 50 civil guards, 50 requetes and 50 falangists entered in the Triana and Macarena districts, using women and children as human shields, and started a bloody repression. The legionaries killed with knives all the men whom they found. On 21 July, the Castejon's V Bandera of the Spanish Legion assaulted the districts of La Macarena, San Julián, San Bernardo and El Pumarejo. By 25 July the Nationalists occupied all Seville. According to the Queipo's press assistant: "In the working-class districts, the Foreign Legion and Moroccan regulares went up and down the streets of very modest one-story houses, throwing grenades in the windows, blowing up and killing women and children. The Moors took the opportunity to loot and rape at will. General Queipo de Llano, in his night-time talks at the Radio Seville microphone...urged on his troops to rape women and recounted with crude sarcasm brutal scenes of this sort.". Aftermath After the coup, all persons of Republican and Left connections were rounded up by the Nationalists and imprisoned. The repression in Seville was organized by the captain Díaz Criado, who was reported as signing death sentences at a rate of 'about sixty per day'. Three thousand Republican supporters were shot in the first weeks after the coup. The Republicans had killed thirteen supporters of the Nationalists (among them seven civilians in the neighborhood of Triana) during the coup. After the coup Queipo de Llano sent mixed columns made up of Civil Guards, Falangists, requetes and soldiers, financed by wealthy landowners, in order to occupy other towns in the province. Large numbers of prisoners were sent by these columns to Seville and executed. Seville was a strategic victory for the rebels, because in August