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The Second Spanish Republic is the name of the regime that existed in Spain between April 14 1931, when king Alfonso XIII abdicated and left the country, and April 1 1939, Victory Day for Francisco Franco's forces at the Spanish Civil War (but no longer a Spanish public holiday). This article deals mainly with the period between 1931 and 1936; for the period between 1936 and 1939, see the Spanish Civil War article.
Proclamation During the last years of Alfonso XIII's reign, General Miguel Primo de Rivera acted as dictatorial head of Government, with the king as head of state. After his resignation in January 1930, elections were called for the following year. The second round took place on April 12 1931 and gave a majority of votes to Republican parties in urban areas. (Traditional, Monarchist forces still won in rural areas, but that was mostly a result of old vote-buying practices.) When the results were public, the Royal Family fled to Paris; the king himself would die in Rome in 1941. The abdication led to a provisional government under Niceto Alcalá-Zamora, and a constituent Cortes to draw up a new constitution. The Republic's problems were evident from its onset, when Alcalá-Zamora resigned in October after he objected to the new State's laicism, only to be instated two months later as President of the Republic. This led to a republican-socialist government under Manuel Azaña. 1931 Constitution The first action of the provisional Government was to call for new elections, whose representatives would work on a new, Republican Constitution. This was approved on December 9, 1931. Among its liberties, established freedom of speech and association, separation between Church and State and a right to divorce and universal suffrage to women. It also stripped Nobility of any juridic status, simplified the Legislative branch to the uni-cameral Congreso de los Diputados and opened a legal way to nationalise public services such as land, banks and railways. Though these never came into effect, it became a source of disruption in the following years. The Republican Constitution also changed the symbols of the country. The Himno de Riego was established as National Anthem and the Tricolour, with three horizontal red-yellow-purple fields as the flag of Spain. Also, for the first time, gave Spain's regions the right to Autonomy. Catalonia (1932) and the Basque Country (1936) exercised this right, with Andalucia, Aragón and Galicia in talks before the breakout of the Civil War. Overall, in spite of a wide range of liberties, it failed to agree in key areas with the conservative right, very rooted in wide, mainly rural areas, and the powerful Catholic Church, which was stripped of schools and public subsidies. (For the later constitution, see Spanish Constitution of 1978.) 1931–33 period The elections of June 28 1931 produced a slender majority for the PSOE, followed by the centre-right Radical Republican Party, led by Alejandro Lerroux and other Republican centre-left parties. Catalan and Basque Nationalists were also represented. Manuel Azaña, leader of the left-wing Acción Republicana party, led the Government until 1933, in coalition with the PSOE and other left-wing parties. Among the main proposals of the Government was the Law of Land Reform, which wouldn't bear fruit due to lack of funding and strong opposition from landowners. This failure fuelled Anarchist bodies like FAI and the CNT union. The Church and most of the Military elites were opposed to these reforms. Shortly after the proclamation of the Republic, uncontrolled mobs burned many churches, convents and other religious buildings without resistance or detentions. The Armed Forces opposed the efforts of the Ministry of War to reform the Military, and as a result, General Sanjurjo tried to stage a failed military coup in August 10 1932. (He would be sentenced to death, later commuted by President Alcalá-Zamora, before being cleared in 1934.) Increasing civil unrest in cities and in the countryside forced the dissolution of Azaña's Government and the calling of new elections for November 19 1933. 1934-35 Period and Miners Uprising In these elections, the José María Gil Robles-led CEDA, a coalition of centre-right and right-wing parties ranging from Christian Democracy to Fascism, gained a majority and allied themselves to the Radical Republican Party of Lerroux, second in number of Congress representatives. Azaña and his socialist allies came third, probably due to their failed reforms. With Lerroux as head of Government, this new Executive suspended most of the reforms of the previous one. The entry of three CEDA ministers into the government on October 1st 1934 led to a general strike and an armed uprising by socialists and anarchists in Asturias on October 6. Miners in Asturias occupied the capital, Oviedo, killing authorities, clergymen and burning theatres and the University. The Army, led by General Francisco Franco took two weeks to eventually crush the rebellion, destroying large areas of the city in the process. There was another rebellion in Catalonia of an autonomist nature, which was also suppressed and followed by mass political arrests and trials. The suppression of the land reforms tried by the previous Government and the failure of the Asturias' uprising causes a more radical turn within the left parties, especially in PSOE, where the moderate Indalecio Prieto was losing voice to Francisco Largo Caballero, who advocated a socialist revolution regardless of cost and consequences, much like in the USSR. Also, the involvement of Lerroux's party in the Straperlo scandal deeply weakens the Centre party and further polarises the political spectrum between far-right and far-left parties, something that will become evident in the 1936 election. The 1936 Election On January 7 1936, new Elections were called and Socialists, Communists, Catalan and Madrid-based left-wing Republicans, in spite of their major rivalries and differences, decide to go together under the name of Popular Front. The results of the election on February 16 gave a lead of 263 MPs in favour of left-wing parties against 156 right-wing MPs, grouped within the National Front (coalition with CEDA, Carlists and Monarchists). This wide margin was achieved despite a difference of votes of 4.65 million to 4.50 million. Centre parties virtually disappear, with Lerroux's group going from 104 (1934) to 9 representatives. Manuel Azaña was again named President of the Government, but in April Alcalá-Zamora was dismissed and Azaña took his position as Head of State on May 10, thus removing from Government the leader more capable of bringing together all the different factions in the Spanish republican left. In the following months, violence between left and right-wing extremists spread. As a result, the Spanish Phalanx, a Nationalist party led by José Antonio Primo de Rivera (son of the former dictator) and inspired by Fascism rose sharply. From having only 0.7 per cent of votes in the election, it had by July 40,000 members. On July 12, Lieutenant José Castillo, an important member of the anti-fascist military organization Unión Militar Republicana Antifascista (UMRA), was murdered by Falangist gunmen. The following day, several of Castillo's comrades shot dead José Calvo Sotelo, then leader of the right-wing opposition. Calvo Sotelo was the most prominent Spanish monarchist and had protested against what he viewed as an escalating anti-religious terror, expropriations, and hasty agricultural reforms, which he considered Bolshevist and Anarchist. Calvo Sotelo had declared that Spanish soldiers "would be mad to not rise for Spain against anarchy". Sotelo's murder aroused suspicions among the right of government involvement in the act, and is sometimes seen as the catalyst for further political polarization. Yet well before this, Falangists and rightist civilian conspirators such as Juan de la Cierva had been coordinating with Francisco Franco and other rebel officers with the intent of launching a coup d'état. Both Castillo and Calvo Sotelo were buried July 14; fighting between Police Assault Guard and fascist militias broke out in the streets surrounding the cemetery of Madrid, resulting in four deaths. Three days later (July 17), the army uprising began more or less as planned in Spanish Morocco, spreading to several regions of the country. That the uprising did not "take" outright as did previous military coups resulted in its development into a full-blown civil war with the Madrid government. Civil War See Spanish Civil War Conclusion Although full of good intentions, the Second Republic was marked by a period of worldwide economic depression, and high unemployment affected workers, which in turn increased their demands and their animosity against the regime. Thus, civil unrest in the form of assassination attempts and revolutionary general strikes followed and increased. In the context of the rise of fascism in Germany and Italy, as well as Stalinism in Russia, political discourse became increasingly polarized. Rather than working towards consensus between political forces, politicians leaned towards radicalization and resorted to violence: By 1936, politicians such as Largo Caballero called openly for a "bloody workers' Revolution". Therefore, the Civil War that ensued cannot be considered on its own but as a direct result of the unstable years that preceded it. | ||||||||
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