members and religious people. May 1931: 100 church buildings are burned while firefighters refuse to extinguish the flames. 1932: 3,000 Jesuits are expelled. Church buildings are burned with impunity in 7 cities. 1934: 33 priests are murdered in the Asturias Revolution. 1936: one day before July 18, the day the war started, 17 clergymen are murdered. From July 18 – August 1: 861 clergymen are murdered in 2 weeks. August 1936: 2,077 clergymen are murdered, more than 70 a day, 10 of them bishops. September 14: 3,400 clergymen are murdered during the first stages of the war. Attitudes Republican side Attitudes to the "red terror" varied on the Republican side. President Manuel Azaña made the well-publicized comment that all of the convents in Madrid were not worth one Republican life. Yet equally commonly cited, for example, is the speech by Socialist leader Indalecio Prieto on the Madrid radio on 9 August 1936 pleading Republican militiamen not to "imitate" the murderous actions of the military rebels and the public condemnation of arbitrary "justice" by Julián Zugazagoitia, the editor of El Socialista, the Socialist Party newspaper, on 23 August. Julius Ruiz goes on to note, however, that "not cited... are El Socialista'''s regular reports extolling the work of the Atadell brigade", a group of Republican agents who engaged in detentions and frequently murders of (in the end) up to 800 alleged Nationalists. "On 27 September 1936", Ruiz continues, "an editorial on the brigade stressed that its 'work, more than useful, is necessary. Indispensable.' Similarly, the Prieto-controlled Madrid daily Informaciones carried numerous articles on the activities of the Atadell brigade during the summer of 1936". Nationalist side The hierarchy of the Catholic Church in Spain believed that the Red Terror was the result of a plan, "a program of systematic persecution of the Church was planned to the last detail". Before he was himself abducted and shot without trial by Indalecio Prieto's bodyguards just 5 days prior to the coup, Monarchist politician and leader of the opposition José Calvo Sotelo told the Spanish Parliament in April 1936 that in the six weeks since the government, from mid-February 15 to April 2, 1936, had been in power, some 199 attacks were carried out, 36 of them in churches. He listed 136 fires and fire bombings, which included 106 burned churches and 56 churches otherwise destroyed. He claimed they there were 74 persons dead and