There are times when doing your boring job honestly takes heroism.
I had to review the definition of beatification. That article links to another interesting article on how beatification changed under Francis:
"Beatification of Romero signals new understanding of martyr"
That said, I bet the boundaries of what counts as martyrdom were stretched in the other direction before Francis. I looked up beatifications under Benedict and quickly found Father Josep Samsó Elías, shot in Barcelona in 1936, presumably by leftists, evidence of religious motivation unclear, though there was some of that floating around urban Spain at the time.
I also learned in 1964, Pope Paul VI put on hold all beatifications of Spanish Civil War deaths, because "further investigation was needed in order to determine if those proposed for canonization were killed 'in odium fidei' (in hatred of the faith) and not for political purposes"; John Paul II restarted those processes in 1996. Probably the church in Spain, which was under Franco's thumb, got a lot of Nationalist martyrs starting to go through the process. And indeed, when the work restarted, Elías was beatified under someone who had become a bishop under Franco.
I learned about beatification from Camber of Culdi. I presume that was completely and inerrantly accurate.
Ah, here a lot of them are discussed collectively. Trouble is it really is true that the Church in Spain was full of batshit right-wingers:
Church played a central role in the political life of the Nationalist zone. With the exception of the Basque clergy, most Spanish priests and religious sided with the Nationalists. They denounced the 'reds' from their pulpits. They blessed the flags of Nationalist regiments and some - especially Navarrese priests - even fought in their ranks. Clerics took up the Fascist salute. As early as mid-August 1936, Bishop Marcelino Olaechea Loizago of Pamplona had already denounced the Republicans as 'the enemies of God and Spain'. In the last week of August, Bishop Olaechea and two Archbishops, Rigoberto Doménech of Zaragoza and Tomás Muniz Pablos of Santiago de Compostela, declared the rebel war effort to be a religious crusade. Catholic Action declared its enthusiasm for the alzamiento at its congress in Burgos in September 1936.
And after Guernica, when faith was wavering, Cardinal Gomá, Archbishop of Toledo and Primate of All Spain, organized a collective letter that among other things "rejoiced that on their executions the Nationalists' enemies had become reconciled to the Church. It was signed by two Cardinals, six Archbishops, thirty-five bishops and five vicars-general." (Paul Preston, The Spanish Civil War: Reaction, Revolution and Revenge.) The Vatican sent Franco a delegate in 1937 and a nuncio in 1938.
So the Church was correctly seen as virtually indistinguishable from the Nationalist uprising, and you got some killings and church burnings in reaction. But all the masses Franco's side killed presumably do not include many beatifiable.