Spanish Confederation of the Autonomous Right

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This article is about the Spanish political party. For other uses, see CEDA (disambiguation).

The Spanish Confederation of the Autonomous Right (Spanish: Confederación Española de Derechas Autónomas, CEDA) was a Spanish political party in the Second Spanish Republic. A Roman Catholic conservative force, it reunited tendencies which ranged from Christian Democracy to Fascism. It has also been described as accidentalist in that it gave no ideological support to republicanism, but merely accepted it as the constitutional structure of the time - many of its supporters advocated a return to monarchy.

It was founded on March 4, 1933 by José María Gil-Robles y Quiñones and bishop Ángel Herrera Oria, as the union between Acción Popular and Acción Católica. Its youth wing, Juventudes de Acción Popular (JAP), was active in street disturbances with socialist and anarchist rivals.

In the 1933 elections, the CEDA won the most seats in the Cortes. President Niceto Alcalá Zamora refused to ask its leader, José Maria Gil Robles, to form a government, and instead assigned the task to Alejandro Lerroux of the Radical Republican Party. CEDA supported the centrist government led by Lerroux; it later demanded and, on October 1, 1934, received three ministerial positions. They suspended most of the reforms of the previous Manuel Azaña government, provoking an armed miners' rebellion in Asturias on October 6, and an autonomist rebellion in Catalonia - both rebellions were suppressed (Asturias rebellion by young General Francisco Franco), being followed by mass political arrests and trials.

In elections on February 16, 1936, CEDA lost power to the left-wing Popular Front. Many of the party's supporters welcomed the military rebellion in the summer of 1936 which led to the Spanish Civil War, and many of them joined Franco's National Movement. However, General Franco was determined not to have competing right-wing parties in Spain and, in April 1937, CEDA was dissolved.

It was not active throughout the Franco dictatorship, but its roots led to the establishment of an Alianza Popular, formed during the transition period that followed Franco's death. Alianza was to be the basis for the successful Partido Popular.