How does authoritarian repression affect authoritarian and post-authoritarian politics? Past research claims that the effect of repression depends, among other things, on the type of violence and target. While indiscriminate violence tends to generate backlash, extant literature exalts the deterring effect of selective repression. This paper claims that the effect of selective violence might partially depend on the social role of the target. Repression towards incumbent socio-economic elites may allow for its more efficient replacement by pro-regime community leaders and yield human capital loss anti-regime dissent structures. Underdevelopment of anti-regime opposition might help scaring-off popular dissent, increase the regime's capacity to co-opt aligned elites, and eventually limit alternatives other than authoritarian successor parties in post-authoritarian elections. This paper examines the implications derived from these claims by drawing on archival records of individual trials executed by the Fascist war court during the Spanish civil war (1936-1939) in Galicia, a territory that the revels occupied without military resistance or the settlement of frontlines. I explore the consequences of highly targeted repression on popular involvement in undemocratic institutions (1940-), and turnout and behavior in authoritarian (1957-1974) and post-authoritarian democratic elections (1977-1996). Preliminary results suggest that opposition decapitation enhances popular support for the authoritarian regime and successor parties. Out-of-sample tests in Chile suggest that this effect might travel to other authoritarian regimes such as military ones.