Second Spanish Republic

The Second Republic Spanish (in Castilian, Segunda República Española ) is the mode which the Spain knew 1931 with 1939.

She is proclaimed following the municipal elections the April 14th of 1931. The king Alphonse XIII gives up Madrid with 20:15 and share in exile without to have abdicated.

In July 1931, the Spanish left has the capacity to transform by the legislative social order and economic way of the country.

End of a monarchical dictatorship (1923-1930)

The general Primo de Rivera, had seized the power on September 15th, 1923 by a royal decree following the pronunciamiento of the 13 in the morning in Catalonia; it is only in January 1930 following the economic crisis occurring after five years of relative economic prosperity and social, that the king Alphonse XIII asks him for his resignation.

the advisory National Assembly named by Primo de Rivera, had set up a new constitution project, combining the components elected and corporative. The first disturbed the line, and the second was rejected by the liberals and the left. The king either hardly appreciated a system to him which envisaged to make him share its capacities of dismissal with a Spanish copy of the Large Fascistic Council of Mussolini. This project thus did not open the way of the return to “normality” as the dictator discounted it.

Its decision of raising the censure of the press was worth a rain of criticisms to him. As for the students, they attacked with vehemence. It against him two pronunciamientos missed there, in Valence and in Andalusia. A new era of pronunciamientos seemed from now on open. To finish, Primo tests the need to be reassured and taken the singular decision to send to all the generals of Spain, a telegram requiring of them to get information to know if it still had the support of the senior officers. They answered him by affirming their honesty with the monarch. Firstly then intended itself to recall by the king that if he were Prime Minister, it was not under the terms of the support of the army, but by order of the king; he made him understand that he awaited from him that he presents his resignation to him. It was made thing, and the almost immediate replacement by another, the general Dámaso Berenguer.

“Movement with the service of the Republic”

The republican feelings are propagated in all the country. During the summer 1930, a pact is signed with Saint-Sebastien (known under the name of '' Pacto de San Sebastián ''), between several politicians and intellectual republican, the Socialists and holding them of Catalan nationalism. The first will grant their autonomy to the Catalans who, in exchange, committed themselves supporting a possible republican revolution. In Madrid, three intellectuals, the doctor Gregorio Marañón, Ortega there Gasset and the novelist Ramón Pérez de Ayala, form a “Movement with the service of the Republic”. Ortega (whose criticisms turned well against the Parliament Primo de Rivera had been useful), lance this famous sentence:

“Spanish! Your State is not any more! Rebuild it! Delenda is monarchia! ”

But, more important, of many dissatisfied officers the rebels support, and even the anarchists, overflowed, bring a sympathy aggravated to the middle-class opponents of the king. In December a pronunciamiento is prepared. The conspirators publish the following declaration:

“a need impassioned for Justice spouts out entrails of the Nation. Placing his hopes in a Republic, the people are already in the street. We would have liked to make known wish them of the people by the legal means, but this way was barred to us.

When we asked for Justice, one refused us Freedom. When we asked for Freedom, one offered to us a Parliament tail similar to those of the past, based on fraudulent elections, convened by a dictatorship, instrument of a king who already violated the Constitution.

We do not seek the extreme solution, a revolution, but the misery of the people moves us deeply.

the Revolution will be always a crime or a madness as long as exist the Law and Justice. But it is always just when Tyranny dominates. ”

First rebelled

These republicans saw in the principal idea of the abolition of Monarchy a step towards the modernization of the Spain. The continuations were not made wait and first of all, the garrison of Jaca, in Aragón led by two young exaltés officers, the captain Fermin Galán and the lieutenant García Hernández, was raised against monarchy before the conspirators in the remainder of Spain had given each other the mot. Arrêtés whereas they involved their men in direction of Saragossa, the two officers were shot for rebellion. These executions caused a sharp indignation.

Elsewhere the movement failed; a young captain of the air force, Ramón Franco (which had become a national hero, while crossing the South Atlantic aboard the seaplane Plus Ultra ) took off of the aerodrome of the Cuatro Caminos in Madrid, with the intention to bombard the royal palace, hesitated and finally released leaflets, before fleeing in Portugal. The signatories of the '' Pacto de San Sebastián '' were stopped. In front of the judges, they were defended by saying that the king had violated the Constitution by accepting Primo de Rivera like dictator. After unfruitful talks with the politicians, Alphonse XIII, appointed Prime Minister another officer, the admiral Aznar. The king and, decided to him to probe the opinion by organizing municipal elections, and not general, planned for the month of April 1931.

The Spanish company (1930-1936)

Sources: Historia 16, Ramon Tamames, Javier Tusell, Julio Gil Pecharroman.

Spain of first half of the decade of the Thirties is a country very late and poor, with a great rate of illiteracy and important social and ideological divisions. The conflicts follow one another for this period and the political positions suffer from a very marked toughening.

2 million farmers is without ground whereas 20.000 people have half of Spain .

the clergy consists of 31.000 priests, 20.000 monks and 60.000 nuns and there exist 5.000 convents in 1930 .

the army counts 15.000 officers and 800 generals. A general for 100 men!

the figures :

24.693.000. Inhabitants in Spain in 1931

8 million Spaniards is touched by misery in 1930.

28,3 per thousand. Birth rate in 1931

5 per thousand. Infantile death rate in 1931

50 years. The life expectancy in 1930

Between less than 30 and 48% of illiterates between the population in 1930

1.700. University women in 1930 (1 for the year 1900)

212.360. Stations of telephones in all Spain in 1930

11.576 emitted telegrams and receipts in 1930

1 monk for 493 inhabitants in 1930

4,27 pesetas/day. Average wages in 1931

85.592 km. Roads in all the country

13.000. The schools which were built in 1932

145.007. Pupils of graduate in 1934. In 1931 they were only 76.000.

December 22nd of 1931. The first retransmission of the national Lottery

303.983. Receivers of radio in 1936

3.337. Cinemas. 62 in Madrid and 116 in Barcelona in 1935

69. Official radio stations in 1936

3.765. Books printed in 1935 (2 652 in 1930)

1931, the dubious Republic: an illegitimate, but recognized birth

April 14th, the Republic is proclaimed in Spain, two days after the municipal elections of the Sunday, April 12, 1931 which were interpreted like a defeat of the mode monarchist, even if, with 40%, the coalition antimonarchist does not obtain the majority. This one is only obtained in the big cities, the rural areas voter more for monarchy.

The Socialists and the republicans thought that the moment had come: April 13rd they issue the expulsion of monarchy. They are now the persons in charge of the government of the country and form at once a Provisional government, chaired by Niceto Alcalá Zamora.

The municipal elections did not have the role to change the political form of the state. The Constitution of 1876, then into force, did not provide obviously that such a consultation could involve the fall of monarchy. This is why a certain number of political analysts, generally hostile with the Republic, considered that its proclamation as of on April 14th, 1931, which more is under the pressure of the street inhabitant of Madrid, was a form of “coup d'etat” and a “subversion of the constitutional order”.

One hour before the proclamation of the Republic in Madrid, Francesc Macià proclaimed in Barcelona the Catalan republic, whose leaders had not obtained satisfaction near the first government, that had of arriving at a transaction with the ministers of Macià, transforming the Catalan republic into a Generalitat reinstated within the Spanish State.

The king Alphonse XIII, deprived of political perspicacity, but which did not have anything a tyrant, feared disorders; it did not wish (according to its own words) to preserve its throne at the price of a blood bath. Pushed by this vague antimonarchist and under the recommendations of his closer collaborators, it voluntarily leaves in exile, but “forgets” to abdicate.

The pope Pie XI recognized as of his creation the Spanish Republic and stated that it was ready to consider an installation of the legal settlement. The daily newspaper El Debate , which expressed the positions of the Church, was shown reconciling. Only the Segura cardinal-primacy, whose authority besides was extremely disputed within the Spanish Church, protested violently.

Paradoxically, Niceto Alcalá Zamora and the general Sanjurjo, the commander of the civil guard, had to incite the leaders republican to accept this proclamation, considered to be normal and even desirable, initially because monarchy had discredited and lost these traditional supports.

Several former ministers for the king, in particular Miguel Maura and Alcalá Zamora, had declared themselves the previous year in favor of the republic, joined by some of the most prestigious intellectuals of the time, of which Jose Ortega there Gasset and Miguel de Unamuno. The attitude of Sanjurjo, which was not going besides to be long in plotting against the new mode, is significant.

In addition, as of August 1930, an associating Committee of the republicans of various tendencies, trade-union activists of the UGT (Union General of the Workers), of the Socialists such Indalecio Prieto, the Catalan nationalists and even of former monarchists had concluded the “Pact from San Sebastian”, which considered the nearest installation of a republic and went until drawing up a list of possible ministers.

The army was not any more one block monarchist, like had shown it, on December 12th, 1930, in Jaca, in Aragón, the rising which cost the life to the two captains Galán and García, members of republican military Alliance, as well as a missed attempt officers aviators, among whom Ramón Franco, the young brother of the future Caudillo . It is thus not surprising that Guardia Civil and a good part of the army put herself without difficulty at the orders of new the régime.
Spain inaugurates a second Republic; the first had lasted only of 1873 with 1874.

The Republic of all the hopes

Integrated by representatives of a whole range of Republican parties, Socialist party, and also of the Catalan and Galician Republican parties. Its composition was the following one:

Presidency: Niceto Alcalá Zamora (right liberal republican).
Ministry of State: Alejandro Lerroux (radical).
Ministry for the Interior: Miguel Maura (Right Liberal Republican).
Ministry for Justice: Fernando of los Ríos (socialist).
Ministry of Finances: Indalecio Prieto (socialist).
Ministry for the War: Manual Azaña (republican Action).
Ministry for the Navy: Santiago Casares Quiroga (ORGA Republicana Gallega).
public Ministry of Labor: Álvaro de Albornoz (Left radical socialist).
Ministry for the State education: Marcelino Domingo (Left radical socialist).
Ministry of Labor: Francisco Largo Caballero (socialist).
Ministry for the Economy: Shine Nicolau d' Olwer (Parti Républican Catalá).
Ministry of Communications: Diego Martínez Barrio (radical).

With the most outstanding personalities of this government; Alejandro Lerroux, Miguel Maura, Manual Azaña, Indalecio Prieto and Francisco Caballero Largo; the large theorists of the new mode do not make party of the Cabinet. They had not given up their study. Meditating, advising. They are called, the doctor Gregorio Marañón, that which the people appointed “the obstetrician of the Republic” and as Ortega there Gasset, the author of invertebrate Spain , that which, reference the expensive topics with the generation of the 98, affirm as the essential problem is to give to the people the culture which Monarchy had completely neglected and to Europeanize the nation.

The Republic is attacked as of the beginning with several important reforms, bearing on:

the distribution of the grounds
nationalisms (in particular by the granting of the right to request a statute of autonomy, though the Republic was not designed initially like federalist)
relations between the Church and the State
the reorganization of the Army
the Monocaméralisme
extension of the vote for all to the women and the soldiers
the creation of a Court of Guarantees, to regulate the problems of unconstitutionality
recognition of the private property, although the State reserved the right to cancel it the community property would require it
the renunciation of the war and adhesion with the Company of the Nations.

June 28th 1931 took place of the elections in the Cortes Constituantes, which give the triumph to a majority of the republicans and Socialists.

The Cortes make write a democratic Constitution and separatist, inspired of the Constitution of Weimar F; the new constitution makes of Spain a République of the workers of all the classes , a State integral, compatible with the autonomy of the Municipalities and the Areas .

The Constitution was approved on December 9th, 1931 and in the parliamentary debates arose serious difficulties in the discussion of the articles relating to the suppression of religious teaching in the schools and the possibility of dissolving the religious orders. The discussion caused the first cabinet crisis. The catholics Niceto Alcala Zamora and Antonio Maura resign.

In an attempt to attract towards the sectors of more moderated republicans, Manuel Azaña is named chief of the government and Alcala Zamora chairs Republic.

Draft Azaña the Handbook: to control “ by the reason ”.

The shortly after its election to the presidency of the Republic, Niceto Alcalá Zamora had named Manuel Azaña chief of the government. Fifty years old, Azaña was incontestably the key man of the new mode, most remarkable by its culture and its gifts of speaker, in spite of his not very tempting physical appearance. It had a good legal formation, knew English and French and had made two important stays in France, in 1911-12 and 1919-20. He admired the institutions of the adjoining country and dreamed to transform Spain according to this model of laic company, controlled by the laws of the middle-class democracy.

Personally knowing the most prestigious intellectuals of Spain, it had made sign proclamation of the Spanish democratic Union by Menéndez Pidal, Ramón Pérez de Ayala, Miguel de Unamuno and Américo Castro.

It was by no means socialist, and acknowledged its ignorance of the Marxism, dogma of the PSOE. However, it could need the support of the Socialists to carry out the project which it had conceived. Though of Jacobin spirit, it also knew that it would obtain the collaboration of the Catalans only by the recognition of their specificity, even of their nationality .

A laic company required the separation of the Church and the State but, obviously, in a country where the Catholic church and the religion had since centuries held an important role, the realization of this objective was not possible that at the price of delicate negotiations. It was necessary to benefit from the good provisions of Pie XI, which had condemned all at the same time the French Action and Communism, and which had just affirmed its social concerns in the encyclical Quadragesimo Anno (1931).

For Azaña, the Spanish democracy could be established durably only by the rise in the cultural level and the disappearance of a very widespread illiteracy (44% in 1930 according to certain authors and, in any assumption, 30%). Since 1911, in a conference on “ the Spanish problem ”, it had underlined the existence of an institutional link between culture and democracy. It was necessary, ensured it, to develop in priority primary school education because a million children approximately were not scolarisés.
Helped by an excellent director of primary school education, Rodolfo Llopis, it created from the start 7.000 posts of teacher and put in building site 7.000 schools new; at the same time, it made increase by 20 to 40% the very weak teacher salaries, whereas a little everywhere in Europe, the economic crisis was pretext with their reduction.

The realization of the program of Azaña Handbook would have made of Spain a country righter, freer, better balanced; it was, except for some insufficiencies, beautiful and beautiful project. But obviously, it injured interests, ran up against convictions, abused practices. And that more especially as he intended to put order in the army and the promotion tables. It had been allotted, for this purpose, the wallet of the War in addition to the presidency of the Council. However it was impossible simultaneously to carry out the various elements of this program. To try amounted gathering in a common opposition all the permanent or occasional adversaries of the new mode.

To control Spain “ by the reason ”, as Azaña claimed it, it had been relevant to determine the urgencies, to apply reform them which raised less objections, and to act consequently. The debate on the Constitution had revealed the extreme sensitivity to the religious problems of holding of the tradition, but also catholics rejoined with the Republic (Alcalá Zamora, Miguel Maura, Claudio, Sanchez Albornoz). The adoption of articles 26 and 27 had caused the resignation of Alcalá Zamora and Maura of the provisional government.

the priorities were essential:

Établir the separation of the Church and the State, basic element of secularity, which was possible starting from a renegotiation of the legal settlement in force.
To guarantee a freedom of conscience and authentic worship.
Instituer the civil wedding and divorce by consent, which hardly made difficulty, since the church wedding was maintained.
These innovations had already the direction of a “Cultural revolution”, and it was necessary to leave it there, the more so as the vast program of primary school education, of which the effect, with long, would be considerable, did not raise a major objection. It was unreasonable and even absurdity to prohibit the congregations from starting from October 1st, 1933 teaching, whereas they provided education for more than 350.000 pupils of the secondary. It is however this nonsense which article 26 made “constitutional”.
the law of May 17th, 1933 which declared public propertys the cultural churches and other buildings could not, in this economic situation, which to seem a provocation with the eyes of the Church. It had been much more relevant, and more skilful of exproprier, under the terms of article 44, and for the benefit of the land reform, a few hundreds, even two or three thousands of the 11.921 fincas (farms) which had the Church in Spain, still strong rich person, thus taking it with the trap social justice of which it was claimed.

The historian Joseph Pérez, inter alia, estimates that, for the chief of the government, as his Minister for Justice Fernando of los Ríos, the hour of revenge had sounded for “us, the Spanish hétérodoxes, the spiritual sons of all those which, during centuries, saw their freedom of strangled conscience ”. Comprehensible attitude because the dispute between the Church and the intellectuals free-thinkers was heavy, but in policy, the spirit of revenge is a bad adviser. It can even have fatal consequences.

Azaña let flame, in May 1931, without intervening, a dozen convents inhabitants of Madrid and sévillans, and one lends to him, at the time of these disasters, some remarks off-hand. The republicans anticlericals will neglect to exploit the intentions of the low clergy whose one knows the role that it had played in the French revolution and Azaña was deprived of the possibility of involving part of these catholics on the ground of the social laws by calling upon the pontifical recommendations, and, by doing this, to divide them.

the most obvious urgency was well the scandal of the daily misery, which affected million Spaniards: peasants without ground of Andalusia, Extrémadure, the News-Castille, condemned to unemployment most of the year, minifundists of Galicia, workmen without qualification of the industrial suburbs. The survival of the Republic was played on this ground much more than in the sacristies. Azaña knew it or, at least, would have owed the knowledge. One would however believe, one would even swear, to read his Newspaper, which it had reversed the urgencies.

In spite of this strategic error, Azaña initially appeared to be able to succeed. The coalition which it directed had triumphantly gained the elections in the Cortes of June 28th, 1931. It obtains some 265 seats, whereas the center had only 148 and that the line obtained from them only 60. It is true that the line had not had time “to digest” the regime change, and that much as of its voters abstained from. But the participation had been of 65% and the victory of the left was undeniable.

the adoption of the statute of Catalonia, on June 15th, 1932, was carried to the credit of the government. Manuel Azaña had not spared its sorrow to make vote for by the Cortes a text which, while granting to Catalonia the institutions, whose Generalitat , to which she had aspired for one century, was compatible with the Spanish Constitution. The Generalitat being held by the Esquerra , it acted of an invaluable supplement for the government. On the other hand this one did not put any eagerness to advance the claims of the nationalists Basque, catholic good dye and held for hostile with the Republic, which, until 1936, was true on the whole.

Ensuring a success the new mode, the Minister of Finance, the Catalan banker To square, made spend on December 20th, 1932, one reforms important and socially just: the creation of a graduated income on the income.

Indalecio Prieto managed with serious, but too much timidity, in an economic situation it is true difficult, the budget of the State and deserved the praises of El Debate .

With, Ministry of Labor Caballero the Largo, which had important experience in this field, acquired in particular during the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera, made the important advanced ones. Thanks to several laws: fixing of a minimum wage, eight hours day, insurance accidents, health insurance, it obtains in a few months of the Cortes an marked improvement of the working condition. It made approve the establishment of a Joint Committee of arbitration of the industrial disputes, with, a satisfactory working representation, under the control of factory inspectors named by the minister.

The 3 legislative ones (results)

the legislative ones of June 28th, 1931

Broad victory of the coalition of the republicans and the Socialists, with a participation of 65% of the electorate. The new composition of the Cortes implies a radical rupture with the system of the parties of Monarchy.

the legislative ones of November 19th, 1933

First really democratic elections, with for the first time, the participation of the women. The abstentions were numerous in the zones with anarchistic majority, but much less in those of right-hand side. The left lost initially because in a system favorable to the coalitions, it was divided and in the second place, the nourished propaganda of the right-hand side (gathered with the tower of YIELDED), manages to minimize the achievements of the republicans. The participation of 67,45% exceeds the preceding ones slightly.

the legislative ones of February 16th, 1936

The Popular front, formed by the republicans, the Socialists and the Communists gains the elections. It is about a return of the Spanish political panorama which leads to the victory the left plural, battées in 1933. Rate of participation is incontestably by far highest of the two last, 73%. They were also the last before the tragedy.

The Republic fails (1931-1936)

The bienio of reform (1931-1933)

The advent of a republic had awaked so much hope in the workmen and the peasants, whom one did not have to disappoint them under penalty of dissociating again a community also with difficulty formée.
While attacking most urgent, the government is given for mission of distributing the grounds equitably and undertakes reforms it agrarian. It runs up against a wall; the republicans - Communists, Socialists, and liberals - are not agreement on the principles. “To which belongs the grounds? ” “With those which work them? ” “In the State? ” “With the family? ” Of the Special subcommittees proceed to the study of the problem, or of the problems, the grounds classify, propose solutions. One created the Institute of Land reform.

But the reforms go too slowly and the peasants thunder. The republican Constitution specifies that the richness of the country, whatever the owner, is subordinated to the interests of the nation's economy and could be nationalized, if the social need requires it. Under the terms of this text, the fundamental law of the land reform orders the expropriation of the grounds - some of these owners are expatriates with the fall of Monarchy -, to install fifty thousand peasants there each year. Then, the State will concede appropriations with the plowmen, who will be able to organize itself in communities or producers' associations. This reform applies only to latifundiums.

In two years one had installed in little month five thousand families out of 90.000 hectares of expropriées grounds. The result does not answer the objectives of the Components. In addition, the agricultural wages are in increase and in parallel unemployment too.

The State becomes owner and the colonist does nothing but change owner.

The Caciquisme is substituted by state intervention. The working reform continues with the same methods. The State intervenes the production, and the increase in the cost of living, result of the world economic crisis, cancels the effect of the wage increases. The trade unions and the law and order are in constant collision. Repeated strikes worsen. Workmen and plowmen, dissatisfied and disappointed, derive each time towards anarcho-syndicalism and listen to with kindness the exhortations Bolsheviks.

A statute approved by plebiscite of the population, then ratified on the Cortes, confers on Catalonia an independence in fact. The Basque Country, Navarre, Galicia and Aragon, stimulated by the Catalan example, will also prepare them in their turn, the respective statutes of autonomy. There was thus a danger of national break which one did not occult at the central government. The contagious propagation of separatism threatens to destroy “the national unit”, still too fragile.

Statutes of Autonomy

In September 1931 a first project of Statute Basque, is rejected in the Cortes Constitutives to have exceeded the constitutional limits.

on September 9th of 1932 after long debates the Catalan Statute is accepted.

an regional assembly of all the Galician communes approves in 1932 a proposal of Statute of autonomy which would be subjected to plebiscite four years later, on June 28th, 1936, in agreement with the standards of a decree of the presidency of the State of May 1933.

the project of Statute of autonomy of the Galicia was presented by Castelao in front of the Cortes on July 15th, 1936, just like that of Aragón and transferred to the Congress from the Deputies so that they are allowed for approval.

It is fixed for last Sunday of September 1936, that the National Assembly intended to discuss and modify the preliminary draft and to approve the project of Statute of autonomy for the Andalusia.

on October 6th, 1936, the Cortes approve by a vast majority the Statute of autonomy of the Basque Country.

on February 1st, 1938, in full civil war would be approved in the Cortes the Statute of autonomy of Galicia.

The black bienio (1933-1935)

end of the illusions and walk with the abyss

The line, which had been taken of runs by the fall of monarchy, is seized again and is organized in 1933, when Jose Maria Gil Robles managed to gather in YIELDED ( Confederación Española de Derechas Autónomas ), around the Acción Española , several other formations (Valencian regional right-hand side, agrarian, preserving Republican party, etc). It thus set up an electoral coalition which missed homogeneity and the participation of agrarian, started from class, mortgaged any authentic engagement of YIELDED in favor of the land reform.

The withdrawal of the Socialists of the Azaña government and the non-participation with the cabinets of transition formed to the call from chairing Republic will carry a fatal blow to the Republican left. The first dissolution of the Cortes, in October 1933, was indeed followed of a broad victory of the right-hand side to the elections of November 19th, amplified by the perverse effect of the electoral law. By an irony of the history, persuaded Azaña that it would carry it, had made pass with the support of the PSOE one reforms electoral which reinforced with excess the majority premium, i.e.:

This electoral law instituted a list system for each province of Spain to which a certain number of deputies was allotted, according to its population. If a list (of coalition or not) obtained the absolute majority (51% for example), it raflait 80% of the seats, the others being distributed with proportional the .

The instructions of abstentions from the anarchists, holding of the policy of worst with the reason than a government “reactionary” would make easier the call to the revolution, had also exerted a notable influence.

The line obtains 242 seats of which 115 for YIELDED become the first party of the Cortes. The left had nothing any more but 99 of them, including 58 for the PSOE. The Spanish Communist party obtained its first deputy. The Acción Republicana of Azaña, itself elected in Bilbao on a list of union, was rolled (6 elected officials). The center, where the radicals of Lerroux dominated had 131 seats and rate of participation, more than 67%. Á to start from this poll, the political system of the Spanish Republic was put out of order completely and will give the name of bienio negro to the period since 1933 à1935. The shortly after the elections, Alcalá Zamora, had had, in spite of its enmity with regard to Gil Robles, to impose the presence of YIELDED to the new government and preferred that it is directed by the Lerroux radical. This natural sanction of the consultation had been accepted without much difficulty at that time. But when he resigned himself to the entry, already late, of three ministers of YIELDED in the government in October 1934, makes that this last held episode as a “provocation” started a movement of revolution, shows enough that the republican institutions entaient neither included/understood nor accepted.

On the social field, the industrial disputes were many and important in 1934, year when more day's works were lost. However the production had left to the rise, with in premium, the excellent cereal harvest of 1934, equalizes with that of 1932, and a light retreat of unemployment. For its part the extreme left multiplied proclamations, crashing to pieces and incidental.

Other worrying signs were perceptible. Several formations of extreme right-hand side of recent creation affirmed their will to reverse the Republic by violence; most important was fusion between the group of Ledesma Ramos and that of Onesimo Redondo which gave rise to the JONS (offensive Juntas national-trade unionists), whose influence remains however limited to the Old woman-Castille and Madrid. Finally especially, on October 29th, 1933, in the theater of the Comedy, Madrid Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera defines the aspirations of the Spanish Phalange, movement which it came to found in company of Jose Ruiz de Alda, and which amalgamates with the JONS in February 1934 to form the FE-JONS.

The son of the dictator preached the suppression of the political parties and, under the influence of Italian Fascism, the establishment of a mode supporter of corporatism. The Phalange, which sought from the start to penetrate the work world and the University, was obviously a movement anti-republican.

Primo de Rivera and Jose Calvo Sotelo (chief of the national Block) mark well, by their options and their behaviors, the distance which separates them from the republic.

In September and October 1934, of the socialist insurrections and anarchistic planned like coup d'etat by their chiefs, takes place in addition to 20 provinces, amongst other things in Catalogne, with Madrid and in the mines of the Asturies. The latter is subdued in blood by the troops of Africa ordered by Franco. The agreement between left and right-hand side seems increasingly impossible: these events polarize the positions and one witnesses a fulgurating rise of the extremes.

In January 1936, when Jose María Gil-Robles, the chief of the majority party, YIELDED, request with the President of the Republic to invite it to form a new government, the president Niceto Alcalá Zamora prefers to dissolve the the Cortes.

The situation will lead to the last elections of a Parliament at the edge of the chasm towards the civil war.

Elections of February 16th, 1936 and victory of the Popular front

Of these elections the president of the Republic thus hopes, while exploiting the majority system, to release a majority of center right. The conditions under which will be held the poll on the contrary will support the left. This one was beaten in 1933 because it was divided, and that it missed the libertarian voices. The rise of Fascisms, the renunciation of the International Communist of a strict application of the principle of the class struggle support everywhere in Europe a regrouping of the lefts.

In Spain as in France, the year 1935 is remembered by a bringing together of the forces “antifascists”. October 20th, 1935 is formed a Popular front , which gathers the Socialists and the Communists, the republican groups of left (Republican left and republican Union), Esquerra Catalan woman, and ORGA, left Galician separatist; it is a somewhat heteroclite coalition, but whose leaders also agree to play the “democratic” game. The program thus announced on January 15th, 1936, remains extremely vague in its principles: economic recovery, lowers taxes, regional autonomy. But it introduces in all priority of measurements of repair with regard to the victims of repression, amnesties political offenses, rehabilitation in their civil service posts “purified” following the insurrection, compensations granted to the families for the victims. These measurements of circumstance are important. The program reformist of the Popular front was made little to attract crowd; the promises of amnesty cannot leave indifferent a population sensitized to the extreme by the confrontations of 1934.

The anarchists cannot disregard these engagement, and, whatever their reserves with regard to the left coalition, they will raise their instruction of abstention. Even libertarians as intransigent as Durruti recommends the participation in the elections openly.

The line does not seem to be aware of the danger which threatens it. YIELDED is undoubtedly too strong rising, and its recent experiment shows the difficulties which it has still to impose its policy in a context which is however favorable for him. There are certainly alliances on the right like on the left, but these coalitions of the first moment are not always convincing, and badly hide the opposition which exists between the partisans of a parliamentary solution and an authoritarian regime, monarchy or dictatorship. The Basques, in spite of their preserving positions, refuse to join a majority which has just refused any form of autonomy to them. This excess of confidence Spanish line was fatal for him. One can admit all the same that the abstentions (33%) decrease considerably compared to the figures of 1933.

The result of the elections of February 6th ensures the Popular front a victory skimped and, once more, difficult to measure with precision. Various calculations at least allot to him an advance of 15.000 votes and 840.000 at the most, with intermediate estimates. The fraud, which had profited with the right-hand side in the majority from the former consultations, profited this time at the left, when two victories of the right-hand side, in the province of Cuenca and of Grenade, were cancelled for this reason. The electoral campaigns which followed these cancellations unrolled in a climate that the victory of the Popular front in these two provinces seems very suspect. Indalecio Prieto, socialist president of the electoral commission was very shocked by handling that it discovered there, it does not chew its words. It is very probable, that the victory of the Popular front had not been called into question by the cancellation of the contestable results. It only more exiguous, had been even amplified by the majority premium.

The left and the extreme left laid out, with the supplement of the Catalan formation, of 278 seats out of 473 by the Cortes, comfortable majority which gave to its holders the misleading impression to be Masters of the country. In progress, the PCE obtained only 17 seats, against 99 to the PSOE and 126 to the two formations of the left “middle-class”, left and right republican. There thus does not exist “Marxist danger” imminent, in spite of the theoretical standpoint of the PSOE in favor of this ideology. And, in the country, the anarchists constituted a force at least equal to that of the Socialists.

On the right (137 seats), YIELDED it remained the principal force with 88 deputies, and the Phalange of Jose Antonio, having collected only 40.000 votes, did not obtain one seat.

The Center, was tiny room to 56 deputies divided between radicals, progressists, PNV, Lliga, centrists and various centers.

As of on February 19th, Manual Azaña, held again for the essential man, formed the new government. This time still, the PSOE, party of the majority arrived at the head, does not take part in the cabinet. In May, Azaña, elected president of the Republic, to replace Niceto Alcalá Zamora (relieved by the constitutional Cortes), in Indalecio Prieto the direction of the government proposes, it accepts immediately, because it was convinced that an alliance with the republicans of left would make it possible to the Socialists to impose an advantageous legislation to the workers by the means of a planned economy, whereas a too fast social revolution would produce only one “socialization of misery”, while precipitating the narrow Spanish middle-class towards Fascism.

The last chance, to suppose that it existed, to avoid the civil war disappeared because of non-participation from the PSOE to the government. Manuel Azaña had drawn, at least for a share, the lessons of its preceding failure. Hardly places from there, it took a decree of amnesty for the benefit of condemned of 1934, then restores the statute of Catalonia and gave a blow of accelerator to the land reform.

The epilog announced towards the coup d'etat

The disintegration of the political system of this Spain left room only with replasterings or bastard solutions. To restore the authority of the State by a military dictatorship, to try to create, within a republican framework, the conditions suitable for 1 ' establishment of a parliamentary democracy, these solutions do not make it possible to regulate the basic problems, or approach them only superficially. Neither the mode installed by Primo de Rivera, nor IIe République went until the end of their logic. The first intends to maintain the domination of the oligarchical class, but without completely breaking resistances to its domination; the second starts only reforms of structures, which it has neither the means, nor the desire to undoubtedly complete.

The dominant class thus keeps its capacity, and the social dispute, which cannot be expressed in the traditional institutions related to an always long-lived caciquism, results in violence. The leaders of the trade unions and, of the political parties are often overflowed by their troops. The republican State, rejected at the same time by the preserving forces, Église, army, oligarchy, which consider it impotent to maintain the unit of the Nation, and by, the popular forces, which see in him only the last misadventure of an oppressive State, must face terrorism: with armed confrontations with the revolutionary riots. The revolt asturienne of 1934 and the repression which puts an end to it are testimonys of the recourse to the constraint like only means of making triumph the social claims, or of ensuring the order.

The military rising of July 1936 and the outburst of violences which accompanies it or which follows it are thus not surprising. What astonishes, which is new, it is the capacity of resistance of the popular forces, and especially duration of this resistance, encouraged by all those which, beyond the borders, see in it the symbol of the defense and the maintenance of freedoms.

Because the coup d'etat of July 1936 causes the collapse of the republican State. But the extent even of the conflict and the revolutionary movement that it involves give him of unforeseeable dimensions. Spain becomes the place of confrontation of the great powers and the parade ground of the European large armies. The military dictatorship born from the war remains marked during years by its alliances, even if it does not take part directly in the world conflagration.

the war

The major conflicts of Spain of and the beginning of the 20th century, fight around the Constitution, rise of the labor unrest and the anticlericalism, colonial wars and regionalisms, were reinforced during this IIeRépublique and are at the origin of the civil war. It begins July 17th and 18th 1936 with a military coup d'etat organized by the Mola general with for chief designated the Sanjurjo general. Free did not take part in its preparation and adopts there only the last moment.

The putschists do not want to reverse the Republic, but the government of the Popular front, elected official in February 1936. The coup d'etat fails: the insurrectionists do not manage to dominate the whole of the territory. It causes the collapse of the central capacity however.

As of on July 19th the organized labor armed with the socialist parties, Communists and anarchists, as well as the Basque and Catalan separatists exerts the reality of the capacity and assumes the defense of the Popular front. Consequently really the civil war starts which juxtaposes a military conflict between two camps and of the internal conflicts in the republican camp.

In the camp of the nationalists, Franco is elected on October 1st, 1936 “chief of the government of the Spanish State” by a junta which, seeking a successor with Sanjurjo, died in an air crash at the beginning of rising, chooses it in particular because it is not marked too much by his affinities with one or the other of the involved clans.

The accidental death of Mola will give him then a full authority. Helped by Germany and Italy, he manages to operate in September 1936 the junction of the two sectors taken as of July by the rebellion, the south of Andalusia and part of the North-West, thus separating the Pays Basque from the remainder of the republican territory.

Failing to take Madrid in 1936-1937, it conquers the Basque Country in October 1937. The war concentrates then on Aragon and Catalonia. Barcelona falls on January 26th, 1939 and Madrid on March 28th. The end of the war is proclaimed on April 1st.

Conclusion (S)

Spain, not more than the other countries undergoing the same constraints, was not able to escape the dilemma, either to continue its Europeanization and to defend the Genevese principles, or to draw the conclusions from the existing tensions and to take its distances with the outside world. In this direction, constant interior agitation to which it was subjected during these five years, as well as ministerial instability and the major policy changes in 1933 and 1936, resulted certainly in recreating this impression of continuous oscillations between one and the other option, and it is not very doubtful that the Spanish policy undergoes in this interval of the very diverse orientations, under the influence of divergent ideological affinities of the ones and others.

should it be concluded from it in so far as the new mode was interested only in the interior problems, giving a very detailed attention to the economic and social problems, with in particular the land reform, and that she conceded a very secondary interest with the external businesses? The question deserves to be posed and to be analyzed in detail starting from the concrete action that the republican ministers and diplomats achieved abroad.

At the end of this short period of democratic experiment, the Second Republic was brutally forced to deal with new interior threat, this time much more serious than the missed coup d'etat organized in August 1932 by the general Jose Sanjurjo. Rising, of the July 17th and 18th 1936, party of Spanish Morocco to extend to the Iberian peninsula in the days which followed, marked the kickoff of a fratricidal war - the war of Spain - whose immediate external implications call in question the expression of “civil war”.

It did not have there in Spain of 1936 qu ' an embryo of middle-class, well too narrow to assume the role of guide and the responsibility for a transition adapted to the circumstances from the country. The “middle-class” republicans and the “reasonable” Socialists were too can many to make admit the need for intermediate stages before the advent of a less unjust democracy. The PSOE, convert with dictatorship of the proletariat, believed in the value of the Russian model and did not have experience sufficient for the direction of the businesses. The Communists, whose influence developed, were completely dependant on Moscow. Many men of the right, of one afflicting political myopia, were claimed catholic, but threw to the nettles the pontifical encyclicals as of which their immediate interests opposed, and saw of a dry eye the inhuman condition of disinherited. The militants of extreme right-hand side who were sensitive to excesses of the social injustice believed only in the force to make prevail their solutions.

There exists a mythology of the Second Republic, experiment single and carrying great hopes in the history of Spain. Long time of an astonishing cultural flowering, which one would wish to preserve this brilliant image: blossoming of a pleiad of writers of great talent, original creators, painters, sculptors and musicians; University equipped with prestigious Masters; launching of a policy of state education finally worthy of passed of a large country and even, projections of an essential working legislation.

the Second Republic was very far from marking a pause in the conflicts which afflict the country. They were due at the same time to an exacerbated class struggle and a war of religion, and they were complicated by the claims of specific national identities and the influence of “imported” ideologies. It is forgotten too much that the country remained divided, that the mode manages to ensure neither the constitutional order nor the order public. These years 1931-1936 were the foreword of the one of the greatest dramas of the 20th century.

Presidents of the Republic

1931-1936 Niceto Alcala Zamora . Relieved on February 16th 1936. Born in 1877 - died in 1949.

1936-1939 Manual Azaña there Diaz. Born in 1880 - died exiled in France, 1940

Governments of the Republic (1931-1936)

16 governments will follow one another during the 5 years of Spanish Republic.

See: chronological List of the governments of the Republic (1931-1936)

Symbols of the new mode

the Tricolor, replaces two-tone old mode (national flag since the time of Isabelle II)

the centenary Himno de Riego (the Anthem of Riego), pays homage to the liberal-democratic tradition of the 19th century, replaces thus the Marcha Real.

the allegory of the female figure with the balance with the hand is the symbol of Social justice.

Thirteen days after the proclamation of the Republic, the provisional government promulgates a Decree, published in the Gazeta of Madrid of April 28th, 1931, the adoption of the national flag which determines the first republican distinction, whose main feature is the mauve color of the revolution; the red and the yellow are the colors of Aragón, this republic is also identified with the triad of:

“ Equality, Freedom and Fraternity ”.

The election of the anthem of Riego the choice was extremely influenced by Manuel Azaña. The future president of the Republic wanted to pay homage thus to all the liberals of the 19th century. This anthem had been official of 1820 to 1823, during the triennial liberal. Many the words of this music are originating in this time, until a composition of Antonio Machado. The most pointed out version is that of a satirist who sang Gabino Diego in the film Belle Time :

If the priests and monks knew the beating which they will receive, would leave the cloister by shouting freedom, freedom, freedom .

The Republic of the intellectuals (1931-1936)

Like the Trust of the lefts in France, the Republic is for the peninsula the baptismal certificate of the intellectual in policy, of which it thus underlines the idealism. “ the hour of the great task with sounded for the Spanish intellectual ”, envisaged Ortega there Gasset in 1922. A little later Antonio Machado confirmed this choice of modernity, at the expense of the folklore and the past, by this creed: “ fué toda España de Mérimée ” ( all Spain de Mérimée disappeared ). However, much, désappointés by the violence of the political struggles, ended soon up taking refuge in their ivory tower, far from the bitterness of engagement. Thus the project to build a Spanish new business died it, choked under the violence of political passions.

It does not remain about it less than the Republic was one spring for the life of the spirit and arts. Pictorial renewal, with surrealist the Joan Miró (1893-1983) - after the cubist Juan Gris (1887-1927) -, Salvador Dali (1904-1989) and Pablo Picasso (1881-1973). Poetic blooming, also, with the generation of 1927 which reconciled European avant-garde and formal tradition of the Century of Gold: Jorge Guillén and its pure verb, Vicente Aleixandre, Pedro Salinas and the intimacy of its work in love, Shine Terruda, Rafael Albert! and the Andalusian virtuosity of its first poems, Federico Garcîa Lorca (1899-1936) and its spouting out inspiration which draws with the sources of the tradition and the Grenade gipsy. The force of their political commitment leads us to insist on these the last two authors. Alberti made its works a revolutionary combat as from 1929 when it turned to the PCE; “poet in the street”, it recited his texts there; playwright, it made Fermin Galàn , the first committed part of the Spanish theater, the hagiography of a martyr of the Republic. The republican defeat, in 1939, led it to be exiled, like the whole of the intelligentsia, dispersed with the four corners of the world. In the same way, Federico Garcia Lorca it had chosen to fight for justice at the sides “of those which do not have anything and with which one denies until the peace of nothing”; it brought to them the enrichment of the theater thanks to the itinerant university company of Barraca. Its Grenade execution, its fatherland, by the pro-Franco troops, symbolizes the tragedy fratricidal tearing of the civil war.

External bonds

Documentation on the II Spanish Republic and the war of Spain 1936-1939 * the Constitution of 1931 See also:
the 75 {{E}} birthday in Toulouse

75 {{E}} birthday of the Spanish Republic

Aniversario of Republica

Anniversario of Republica in ABC

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