While at War

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• 55   Metascore
• 2019
• 1 hr 47 mins
• Drama, Documentary, Action & Adventure

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July 18, 1936. Salamanca, Castilla and León (center to Spain). The Spanish army declares the state of war in the city, hoping to extend it to the rest of Spain and improve the unstable situation in the country after the proclamation of the Second Republic five years ago. An aging Miguel de Unamuno, not only writer and academic teacher but one of the most recognized intellectuals in Spain, disappointed with the Republic that publicly he helped to create, supports the new revolt in the hope to clean the country of the undesirable elements for desperation of his close friends teacher Salvador and priest Atilano, creating too many problems in his house where Miguel lives with his daughters María and Felisa, his housemaid Aurelia and his grandson Miguelín. At the same time that Salamanca's mayor Casto Prieto is arrested without cause apparent and his wife Ana asks help Miguel de Unamuno, the Joint Chiefs of Staff meet to decide the strategy to take the power, where the merciless one-eyed, one-armed and one-legged General Astray-Millán, General Franco's right-hand, proposes to elect the own Franco as leader despite the opposition of General Cabanellas, who fears Franco kills the Republic he loves to change it for a dictatorship. When Atilano is missed suddenly, his wife Enriqueta reports Miguel de Unamuno about his arrest while Salvador tries to alert him about the real intentions of the military revolution: turn Spain in a fascist state. Reluctant to believe it, when later Salvador is arrested in front of him, an ashamed and sad Miguel de Unamuno questioning himself and his posture about the revolution asks to meet Franco, named Chief of Staff of the Spanish Army with full powers politics and military after the Alcázar de Toledo's battle, to make a special request, being first-hand witness of the events that will change Spain forever.