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Spain REPUBLICAN SPAIN
Antimonarchist parties won a substantial vote in the
1931
municipal elections. Alfonso XIII interpreted the outcome
of the
elections and the riots that followed as an indication of
imminent civil war. He left the country with his family
and
appealed to the army for support in upholding the
monarchy. When
General Jose Sanjurjo, army chief of staff, replied that
the
armed forces would not support the king against the will
of the
people, Alfonso abdicated.
A multiparty coalition in which regional parties held
the
balance met at a constitutional convention at San
Sebastian, the
summer capital, to proclaim the Second Republic. The goals
of the
new republic, set forth at the convention, included reform
of the
army, the granting of regional autonomy, social reform and
economic redistribution, the separation of church and
state, and
depriving the church of a role in education. Niceto Alcala
Zamora, a nonparty conservative, became president and
called
elections for June.
The first general election of the Second Republic gave
a
majority to a coalition of the Republican Left (Izquierda
Republicana--IR)--a middle-class radical party led by
Manuel
Azana, who became prime minister--and labor leader
Francisco
Largo Caballero's PSOE, backed by the UGT. Azana pledged
that his
government would gradually introduce socialism through the
democratic process. His gradualism alienated the political
left;
his socialism, the right.
Azana's republicanism, like nineteenth-century
liberalism and
Bourbon regalism before it, was inevitably associated with
anticlericalism. His government proposed to carry out the
constitutional convention's recommendations for complete
state
control of education.
In 1932 the Catalan Generalitat gained recognition as
the
autonomous regional government for Catalonia. The region
remained
part of the Spanish republic and was tied more closely to
it
because of Madrid's grant of autonomy. Representatives
from
Catalonia to the Madrid parliament played an active role
in
national affairs. Efforts to reform the army and to
eliminate its
political power provoked a pronunciamiento against
the
government by Sanjurjo. The pronunciamiento, though
unsuccessful, forced Azana to back down from dealing with
the
military establishment for the time being.
Azana's greatest difficulties derived from doctrinal
differences within the government between his non-Marxist,
bourgeois IR and the PSOE, who, after an initial period of
cooperation, obstructed Azana at every step. Opposition
from the
UGT blocked attempts at labor legislation. The PSOE
complained
that Azana's reforms were inadequate to produce meaningful
social
change, though there was no parliamentary majority that
would
have approved Largo Caballero's far-reaching proposals to
improve
conditions for working people. Azana's legislative program
may
not have satisfied his ally, but it did rally moderate and
conservative opinion against the coalition on the eve of
the
second general election in November 1932.
Azana's principal parliamentary opposition came from
the two
largest parties that could claim a national constituency,
Lerroux's moderate, middle-class Radical Republicans and a
rightwing Catholic organization, the Spanish Confederation of
the
Autonomous Right (Confederacion Espanola de Derechas
Autonomas--
CEDA). Lerroux, who had grown more conservative and
tolerant
since his days as an antimonarchist firebrand, capitalized
on the
left's failures to reach a compromise with the church and
to deal
with industrial unrest and with the extragovernmental
power of
the UGT and the CNT. He appealed for conservative support
by
showing that Azana was at the mercy of the unions--as he
was when
in coalition with Largo Caballero.
CEDA was a coalition of groups under the leadership of
Jose
Maria Gil Robles, a law professor from Salamanca who had
headed
Popular Action (Accion Popular), an influential Catholic
political youth movement. As a broadly based fusion party,
CEDA
could not afford a doctrinaire political stance, and its
flexibility was part of its strength. Some elements in the
party,
however, favored a Christian social democracy, and they
took the
encyclicals of Pope Leo XIII as their guide. CEDA never
succeeded
in establishing a working-class base. Its electoral
strength lay
in the Catholic middle class and in the rural population.
Gil
Robles was primarily interested in 1932 in working for a
settlement favorable to the church within the
constitutional
structure of the republic.
In the November election, the IR and the PSOE ran
separately
rather than placing candidates on a common slate. Combined
electoral lists, permitted under the constitution,
encouraged
coalitions; they were intended to prevent parliamentary
fragmentation in the multiparty system.
The government parties lost seats, and CEDA emerged as
the
largest single party in parliament. CEDA's showing at the
polls
was taken as a sign of conservative Spain's disenchantment
with
the Republic and its anticlericalism. But there was no
question
that the Catholic right was being called on to form a
government.
President Zamora was hostile to CEDA, and he urged Lerroux
to
head a minority government. Lerroux agreed, but he entered
into a
parliamentary alliance with CEDA a little more than a year
later.
Lerroux did not welcome the center-right coalition;
however, he
knew the coalition presented the only means by which a
parliamentary majority that included his party could be
obtained.
Gil Robles was appointed minister for war, with a role in
maintaining public order, in the new government.
Unions used strikes as political weapons, much as the
army
had used the pronunciamiento. Industrial disorder
climaxed
in a miners' strike in Asturias, which Azana openly and
actively
supported. The police and the army commanded by Franco
crushed
the miners. The strike confirmed to the right that the
left could
not be trusted to abide by constitutional processes, and
the
suppression of the strike proved to the left that the
right was
"fascist." Azana accused Gil Robles of using republican
institutions to destroy the republic.
The Lerroux-Gil Robles government had as its first
priority
the restoration of order, although the government's
existence was
the chief cause of the disorder. Action on labor's
legitimate
grievances was postponed until order was restored. The
most
controversial of Gil Robles's programs, however, was
finding the
means to effect a reconciliation with the church. In the
context
of the coalition with Lerroux, he also attempted to expand
his
political base by courting the support of antirepublican
elements. The government resigned in November 1935 over a
minor
issue. Zamora refused to sanction the formation of a new
government by CEDA, without the cooperation of which no
moderate
government could be put together. On the advice of the
left,
Zamora called a new general election for February 1936.
The Asturian miners' strike had polarized public
opinion and
had led to the consolidation of parties on the left from
Azana's
IR to the Communist Party of Spain (Partido Comunista de
Espana--
PCE). The PSOE had been increasingly "bolshevized," and it
was
difficult for a social democrat, such as Largo Caballero,
to
control his party, which drifted leftward. In 1935 Soviet
leader
Joseph Stalin had sanctioned communist participation in
popular
front governments with bourgeois and democratic socialist
parties. The Left Republicans, the PSOE, the Republican
Left of
Catalonia (Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya), the
communists, a
number of smaller regional and left-wing parties, and the
anarchists, who had boycotted previous elections as a
matter of
principle, joined to present a single leftist slate to the
electorate.
The Spanish Popular Front was to be only an electoral
coalition. Its goal was not to form a government but to
defeat
the right. Largo Caballero made it clear that the
Socialists
would not cooperate in any government that did not adopt
their
program for nationalization, a policy as much guaranteed
to break
Spain in two and to provoke a civil war as the appointment
of the
CEDA-dominated government that Zamora had worked to
prevent.
The general election produced a number of
irregularities that
led the left, the right, and the center to claim massive
voting
fraud. Two subsequent runoff votes, recounts, and an
electoral
commission controlled by the left provided the Popular
Front with
an impressive number of parliamentary seats. Azana formed
his
minority government, but the front's victory was taken as
the
signal for the start of the left's long-awaited
revolution,
already anticipated by street riots, church burnings, and
strikes. Workers' councils, which undertook to circumvent
the
slow-grinding wheels of the constitutional process, set up
governments parallel to the traditional bodies. Zamora was
removed from office on the grounds that he had gone beyond
his
constitutional authority in calling the general election.
Azana
was named to replace him, depriving the IR of his strong
leadership.
Data as of December 1988
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