| Spanish Republic República Española República Espanyola Espainiako Errepublika |
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| Motto "Plus Ultra" (Latin) "Further Beyond" |
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| Anthem El Himno de Riego |
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| Territories and colonies of Spain during the Second Republic. Green: Integral constituent of the Spanish Republic (includes Spanish Sahara and Spanish Guinea) Lime: Protectorates Orange: International joint administrations |
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| Capital | Madrid (1931 - 36) Valencia (1936 - 37) Barcelona (1937 - 39) |
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| Language(s) | Spanish (Catalan, Basque and Galician would gain formal officiality with the approvals of their Statutes of Autonomy) |
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| Religion | Laicism | ||||
| Government | Parliamentary republic | ||||
| President | |||||
| - 1931–1936 | Niceto Alcalá-Zamora | ||||
| - 1936–1939 | Manuel Azaña | ||||
| Legislature | Congress of Deputies | ||||
| Historical era | Interwar period | ||||
| - Monarchy abolished | April 14, 1931 | ||||
| - Spanish Civil War | 1936–1939 | ||||
| - Republic in exile dissolved | July 15, 1939 | ||||
| Currency | Spanish peseta | ||||
The Second Spanish Republic was the government of Spain between April 14, 1931, and its destruction by a military rebellion, led by General Francisco Franco.
The Second Spanish Republic was proclaimed when King Alfonso XIII left the country following municipal elections in which republican candidates won the majority of votes. Its government went into exile on April 1, 1939, when the last of the loyalist Republican forces surrendered to rebel forces (calling themselves nacionales) led by Generalísimo Franco at the end of the Spanish Civil War.
The government in exile of the Second Spanish Republic had an embassy in Mexico City until 1976 and was formally dissolved the following year.[1]
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The Second Spanish Republic came to power in April 1931 in an attempt to build a modern Spain. Economic hardships led to the downfall of General Miguel Primo de Rivera's government on January 29, 1930, in the wake of the 1929 Wall Street Crash. Popular sympathy for the monarchy was greatly undermined following the king's support for Primo de Rivera's dictatorial regime.
Alfonso XIII was sidelined by the Spanish people. For the working class he was the symbol of oppression, the middle class would not forgive or forget the dictatorial Primo de Rivera, and even the nobility and ruling class considered that his continuity was not an option. General Damaso Berenguer, handpicked by general Primo de Rivera led a new government and tried unsuccessfully to return to the democratic landscape prior to the dictatorship, but popular support was impossible. In the summer of 1930 there was a pact between various sectors of the "new" Republicanism.
The municipal elections of 1931 that established the Second Republic brought to power an anticlerical government.[2] The controversial constitutional articles 26 and 27 stringently controlled Church property and barred religious orders from engaging in education.[3] Scholars have described the constitution as hostile to religion, one scholar characterizing it as one of the most hostile of the 20th century.[4][5] Jose Ortega y Gasset, stated "the article in which the Constitution legislates the actions of the Church seems highly improper to me." [6] Pope Pius XI condemned the Spanish Government's deprivation of the civil liberties of Catholics in the encyclical Dilectissima Nobis."[7]
The "Pact of San Sebastián" was the key to the transition from monarchy to republic. The Republicans of all tendencies were committed to the Pact of San Sebastian in overthrowing the monarchy and establishing a republic. The restoration of the Bourbons was totally rejected by large sectors of the population who were strongly against the King. The pact, signed by representatives of the main Republican forces allowed a joint anti-monarchy political campaign that ended with the suspension in the exercise of Royal power on April 17, 1931 self-proclaimed by the monarch who immediately exiled himself.[8]
The king's departure led to a provisional government of the young republic under Niceto Alcalá-Zamora, and a constituent Cortes which drew up a new constitution, adopted on December 9, 1931.
The new constitution established freedom of speech and freedom of association, extended suffrage to women, allowed divorce and stripped the Spanish nobility of any special legal status. Initially it also largely disestablished the Catholic Church, a trend that was somewhat reversed in 1933.
The legislative branch was changed to a single chamber called the Congreso de los Diputados.
The constitution established legal procedures for the nationalisation of public services such as land, banks and railways. The constitution provided generally accorded thorough civil liberties and representation, a major exception being the rights of Catholics.[9]
The 1931 Constitution was formally effective from 1931 until 1939. In the summer of 1936, after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, it became a dead letter, as the authority of the Republic was superseded in many places by revolutionary socialist and anarchist juntas.[10]
The Republican Constitution also changed the symbols of the country. The Himno de Riego was established as the national anthem and the Tricolor, with three horizontal red-yellow-purple fields, became the new flag of Spain. Under the new Constitution, all of Spain's regions had the right to autonomy. Catalonia (1932) and the Basque Country (1936) exercised this right, with Andalucía, Aragón and Galicia in talks before the breakout of the Civil War. Overall, in spite of a wide range of liberties, the Constitution failed to agree in key areas with the conservative right, which was very rooted in rural areas, and the Roman Catholic Church, which was stripped of schools and public subsidies under the new Constitution. (For the later constitution, see Spanish Constitution of 1978.)
| History of Spain | |
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This article is part of a series |
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| Early History | |
| Prehistoric Iberia | |
| Roman Hispania | |
| Medieval Spain | |
| Visigothic Kingdom | |
| Kingdom of Asturias | |
| Suebic Kingdom | |
| Byzantine Spania | |
| Al-Andalus | |
| Reconquista | |
| Kingdom of Spain | |
| Age of Expansion | |
| Age of Enlightenment | |
| Republic | |
| Reaction and Revolution | |
| First Spanish Republic | |
| The Restoration | |
| Second Spanish Republic | |
| Under Franco | |
| Spanish Civil War | |
| Francoist Spain | |
| Modern Spain | |
| Transition to Democracy | |
| Modern Spain | |
| Topics | |
| Economic History | |
| Military History | |
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The majority vote in the 1933 elections was won by Spanish Confederation of the Autonomous Right (CEDA), led by José María Gil Robles, a coalition of centre-right and far-right parties. CEDA set up a coalition with the Radical Republican Party led by Alejandro Lerroux, which had come second in the elections. The Socialists came third. With Lerroux as head of Government, the new coalition Executive suspended most of the reforms of the previous government.
The inclusion of three CEDA ministers in the government that took office on October 1, 1934 led to a general strike and a rebellion by socialists and anarchists in Asturias on October 6. Miners in Asturias occupied the capital, Oviedo, killing officials and clergymen and burning theatres and the University. This rebellion lasted for two weeks until it was crushed by the army, led by General Francisco Franco, who in the process destroyed large parts of the city. This operation earned Franco the nickname "Butcher of Asturias". Another rebellion by autonomists in Catalonia was also suppressed, and was followed by mass arrests and trials.
The suspension of the land reforms that had been attempted by the previous government, and the failure of the Asturias miners' uprising, led to a more radical turn by the parties of the left, especially in the PSOE (Socialist Party), where the moderate Indalecio Prieto lost ground to Francisco Largo Caballero, who advocated a socialist revolution. At the same time the involvement of the Centrist government party in the Straperlo scandal deeply weakened it, further polarising political differences between right and left. These differences became evident in the 1936 elections.
On January 7, 1936, new elections were called. Despite significant rivalries and disagreements the Socialists, Communists, and the Catalan and Madrid-based left-wing Republicans decided to work together under the name Popular Front. The Popular Front won the election on February 16 with 263 MPs against 156 right-wing MPs, grouped within a coalition of the National Front with CEDA, Carlists and Monarchists. The moderate centre parties virtually disappeared; between the elections, Lerroux's group fell from the 104 representatives it had in 1934 to just 9.
In the following months there was increasing violence between left and right. This helped development of the Fascist-inspired Falange Española, a National party led by José Antonio Primo de Rivera, the son of the former dictator, Miguel Primo de Rivera. Although it had only taken 0.7 per cent of the votes in the election, by July 1936 the Falange had 40,000 members.
On July 12, 1936, Lieutenant José Castillo, an important member of the anti-fascist military organisation Unión Militar Republicana Antifascista (UMRA), was shot by Falangist gunmen. In retaliation the following day, July 13, UMRA members assassinated José Calvo Sotelo, leader of the right-wing opposition and the most prominent Spanish monarchist who, describing the government's actions as Bolshevist and Anarchist, had been exhorting the army to violence, declaring that Spanish soldiers would save the country from Communism if "there are no politicians capable of doing so"[11]
The Right blamed the government for Calvo Sotelo's assassination. Although it is sometimes considered the catalyst for the further political polarisation that ensued, the Falange and other right-wing conspirators, including Juan de la Cierva, had already been conspiring to launch a military coup d'état against the government, to be led by senior army officers.[12] When the antifascist Castillo and the pro-Fascist Calvo Sotelo were buried on the same day July 14 in the same Madrid cemetery, fighting between the Police Assault Guard and Fascist militias broke out in the surrounding streets, resulting in four more deaths.
Three days later (July 17), the coup d'état began more or less as it had been planned, with an army uprising in Spanish Morocco which then spread to several regions of the country. Franco's move was intended to seize power immediately, but his army uprising met with serious resistance and great swathes of Spain, including most of the main cities, remained loyal to the legally established Republic of Spain. General Franco then, instead of declaring his coup a failure, initiated a slow and determined war of attrition against the elected government in Madrid.[13] As a result, an estimated total of approximately 500,000 people would lose their lives in the war that followed.[14]
On July 17, 1936, General Franco led the Spanish Army of Africa from Morocco to attack the mainland, while another force from the north under General Emilio Mola moved south from Navarre. Military units were also mobilised elsewhere to take over government institutions. Before long the professional Army of Africa took much of the south and west under the control of the rebels. Bloody purges followed in each piece of captured "Nationalist" territory in order to consolidate Franco's future regime.[13] Although both sides received foreign military aid, the help which Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany as part of German involvement in the Spanish Civil War, and neighbouring Portugal gave the rebels, was much greater than the assistance that the Republicans received from the USSR, Mexico, and the volunteers of the International Brigades. While the Axis powers wholeheartedly assisted General Franco's military campaign, the governments of France, Britain and other democratic European powers looked the other way and let the young Spanish Republic die, as the actions of the Non-Intervention Committee would show.[15]
The Siege of the Alcázar at Toledo early in the war was a turning point, with the rebels winning after a long siege. The Republicans managed to hold out in Madrid, despite a National assault in November 1936, and frustrated subsequent offensives against the capital at Jarama and Guadalajara in 1937. Soon, though, the rebels began to erode their territory, starving Madrid and making inroads into the east. The north, including the Basque country, fell in late 1937, and the Aragon front collapsed shortly afterwards. The bombing of Guernica was probably the most infamous event of the war and inspired Picasso's painting. It was used as a testing ground for the German Luftwaffe's Condor Legion. The Battle of the Ebro in July–November 1938 was the final desperate attempt by the Republicans to turn the tide. When this failed and Barcelona fell to the rebels in early 1939, it was clear the war was over. The remaining Republican fronts collapsed and Madrid fell in March 1939.
The Second Republic was proclaimed during a period of worldwide economic depression. In spite of the high hopes, the Republican authorities had to struggle with rising unemployment and poverty. In the ensuing civil unrest, violence in the form of assassination, revolutionary general strikes, and mob actions increased dangerous levels in the eyes of the traditional centers of power, such as the landowners, the Church and the nobility. Thus it was easy for them to whip up dissatisfaction with the republican government
Nazism in Germany, fascism in Italy and other forms of totalitarian government were on the rise in Europe. Right-wing political discourse became increasingly polarized, often as a form to check the threat of communism, that was perceived to be expanding from the Soviet Union. Rather than working towards consensus between political forces, politicians on the right and the left leaned towards polarization and called openly for violence.
The murders of the leftist military leader José Castillo and the rightist politician José Calvo Sotelo opened the way to a rapidly increasing flood of violence between the political left and right.
Rightist elements in Spain still justify the military coup against the established Republic claiming that it was ungovernable and failed to respond adequately to the threats of communism, anarchism, anti-clericalism, and acts of random violence.[16] At any rate there was great devastation caused by the three years of civil strife and the destructive war of attrition imposed by General Franco on the impoverished country.