This Article only mentions Converted and original .303 British P14's used by the Republicans and does not mention at all the M1917 that were made up into 8x57mm. If you look at the pictures above it is clear to those that know the differences between a P14 and a M1917 that the above rifle is more M1917 than P14. For starters, the bolt release, stock, mag box, follower, extractor and bolt are all genuine M1917, the only part that I can confirm in these pictures from a P14 is the rear sight which probably more closely matches the 8x57mm round trajectory than the 30-06.
Besides it is a lot easier to convert a M1917 which is set up for a rimless cartridge that is almost the same in case dimensions (30-06 to 8x57mm) than to a rimmed cartridge rifle to a rimless cartridge one that needs considerable modifications to feed reliably.
Also the Monarchy and church and Military (all very old established institutions in Spain) who were behind the Franco lead forces always regarded the recently elected Communist lead Republican forces to be the rebellion (new order trying to change the old established ways). In the end the Franco forces won and formed the longest running post war government in Europe, only ending with his death in 1975.
This is what Wikipedia has to say about Franco's government -
"During the 1960s Spain experienced further increases in wealth. International firms established their factories in Spain: salaries were low, taxes nearly non existent, strikes were forbidden, labour health or real state regulations were unheard of, and Spain was virtually a virgin market. Spain became the second-fastest growing economy in the world, just behind Japan. The rapid development of this period became known as the Spanish Miracle. At the time of Franco's death, Spain still lagged behind most of Western Europe, but the gap between its GDP per capita and that of the major Western European economies had greatly narrowed; in world terms, Spain was already enjoying a fairly high material standard of living with basic but comprehensive services."
Of course this has now all now gone to pot since the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party took power in 1982 and were only kicked out in 2011. This is what they had to say about his replacement -
"Spain suffered a severe setback from October 2008, when it saw its unemployment rate surging to 1996 levels. During the period October 2007 – October 2008 Spain had its unemployment rate climbing 37%, exceeding the unemployment surge of past economic crises like 1993. In particular, during the month of October 2008, Spain feared its worst unemployment rise ever recorded and,[SUP][/SUP] so far, the country is suffering a big unemployment crisis.[SUP][/SUP] By July 2009, it had shed 1.2 million jobs in one year.[SUP][/SUP] Spain's unemployment rate hit 17.4% at the end of March, with two million people losing their jobs; with the oversized building and housing related industries contributing greatly to the rising unemployment numbers.[SUP][/SUP] In this same month, Spain had over 4,000,000 people unemployed,[SUP][/SUP] an especially shocking figure even for a country which had become used to grim unemployment data.[SUP][/SUP] Since 2009 thousands of established immigrants began to leave, although some that did continued to maintain homes in Spain due to poor conditions in their country of origin."[SUP][/SUP]
