Popular Action (Spanish:Acción Popular) was a Spanish Roman Catholic political party active during the Second Spanish Republic.
The group was formed after the fall of the monarchy in order to defend the interests of Roman Catholics in the new Spanish Republic.[1] It emanated from the Asociación Católica Nacional de Propagandistas and effectively formed a political party based around this hard-line monarchist movement.[2] The main leader of Popular Action was editor of El Debate and future cardinal Ángel Herrera Oria.[3]
Popular Action failed to gain much popular support and after the party suffered heavy losses in the 1931 elections a rethink of their structure and relationship with other monarchists followed.[3] The group thus became the core of the monarchist party the Spanish Confederation of the Autonomous Right (CEDA) when it was established in 1933.[1]
Even after the formation of CEDA the party's youth movement, Juventudes de Acción Popular (commonly known as the Greenshirts) continued to organise.[3] However in the spring of 1936 the decline of Popular Action was underlined when 15,000 Greenshirts left the movement to join the Falange instead.[4] On the eve of the Spanish Civil War Popular Action had around 12,000 members.[5] When Francisco Franco announced his decree establishing the Falange Española de las Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional Sindicalista on 19 April 1937 Popular Action was one of a number of parties absorbed into this new pan-right group.[6]