The Spanish Republic (Spanish: República Española), commonly known as the Second Spanish Republic (Spanish: Segunda República Española), was the democratic government of Spain from 1931 to 1939. The Republic was proclaimed on 14 April 1931 after the deposition of King Alfonso XIII. It was dissolved on 1 April 1939 after surrendering in the Spanish Civil War to the Nationalists rebels led by General Francisco Franco.
After the proclamation of the Republic, a provisional government was established until December 1931, at which time the 1931 Constitution was approved. Over the next two years of constitutional government, known as the Reformist Biennium, Prime Minister Manuel Azaña initiated numerous reforms. In 1932, religious orders were forbidden control of schools, while the government began a large-scale school-building project. A moderate agrarian reform was carried out. Home rule was granted to Catalonia, with a parliament and a president of its own.
Soon, Azaña lost parliamentary support and President Alcalá-Zamora forced his resignation in September 1933. In the subsequent 1933 election the Spanish Confederation of the Autonomous Right (CEDA) won a plurality. However the President declined to invite its leader, Gil Robles, to form a government, fearing CEDA's monarchist sympathies. Instead, he invited the Radical Republican Party's Alejandro Lerroux to do so. The period following the CEDA's victory, called "black biennium", was marked by escalating clashes between the left and the right and state-sanctioned repression against the left. The CEDA exercised indirect influence over the government and in October 1934, was finally successful in forcing the acceptance of three ministries. A general strike was called by the Unión General de Trabajadores (UGT) and the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE). The strike developed into a 'revolutionary' uprising, allegedly aiming to overthrow the Republican government, although major action took place only in Asturias, where the rebels officially declared a proletarian revolution and abolished regular money. The rebellion was crushed by the Spanish Navy and the Spanish Republican Army, the latter using mainly Moorish colonial troops from Spanish Morocco.
In 1935, after a series of crises and corruption scandals, President Alcalá-Zamora, who had always been hostile to the government, called for new elections, instead of inviting CEDA, the party with most seats in the parliament, to form a new government. The Popular Front won the 1936 general election with a narrow victory. The Right accelerated its preparations for a coup, which had been months in the planning. Amidst the wave of political violence that broke out after the triumph of the Popular Front in the February 1936 elections, a group of Guardia de Asalto and other leftist militiamen mortally shot José Calvo Sotelo, one of the leaders of the opposition, on 13 July 1936. This assassination convinced many military officers to back the planned coup. On 17 July, the revolt began with an army uprising in Spanish Morocco, followed by military takeovers in many cities in Spain. Military rebels intended to seize power immediately, but they were met with serious resistance as most of the main cities remained loyal to the Republic. An estimated total of half a million people died in the war that followed.
During the Spanish Civil War, there were three Republican governments. The first was led by left-wing republican José Giral (from July to September 1936); a revolution inspired mostly by libertarian socialist, anarchist and communist principles broke out in its territory. The second government was led by the PSOE's Francisco Largo Caballero. The UGT, along with the National Confederation of Workers (CNT), were the main forces behind the social revolution. The third government was led by socialist Juan Negrín, who led the Republic until the military coup of Segismundo Casado, which ended republican resistance and ultimately led to the victory of the Nationalists. The Republican government survived in exile and retained an embassy in Mexico City until 1976. After the restoration of democracy in Spain, the government-in-exile formally dissolved the following year.
History
1931–1933, the Reformist Biennium
On 28 January 1930, the military dictatorship of General Miguel Primo de Rivera (who had been in power since September 1923) was overthrown. This led various republican factions from a wide variety of backgrounds (including conservatives, socialists and Catalan nationalists) to join forces. The Pact of San Sebastián was the key to the transition from monarchy to republic. Republicans of all tendencies were committed to the Pact of San Sebastian in overthrowing the monarchy and establishing a republic. The restoration of the royal Bourbons was rejected by large sectors of the populace who vehemently opposed the King. The pact, signed by representatives of the main Republican forces, allowed a joint anti-monarchy political campaign. The 12 April 1931 municipal elections led to a landslide victory for republicans. Two days later, the Second Republic was proclaimed, and King Alfonso XIII went into exile. The king's departure led to a provisional government of the young republic under Niceto Alcalá-Zamora. Catholic churches and establishments in cities like Madrid and Sevilla were set ablaze on 11 May.
1931 Constitution
In June 1931 a Constituent Cortes was elected to draft a new constitution, which came into force in December.
The new constitution established freedom of speech and freedom of association, extended suffrage to women in 1933, allowed divorce, and stripped the Spanish nobility of any special legal status. It also ended Catholicism’s status as the state religion and imposed strict limits on the activities of religious orders, including prohibiting them from teaching; these anticlerical provisions were moderated slightly during the constitutional debates later that year. Its controversial articles 26 and 27 imposed stringent controls on Church property and barred religious orders from the ranks of educators. Scholars have described the constitution as hostile to religion, with one scholar characterising it as one of the most hostile of the 20th century. José Ortega y Gasset stated, "the article in which the Constitution legislates the actions of the Church seems highly improper to me." Pope Pius XI condemned the Spanish government's deprivation of the civil liberties of Catholics in the encyclical Dilectissima Nobis.
The legislative branch was changed to a single chamber called the Congress of Deputies. The constitution established legal procedures for the nationalisation of public services and land, banks, and railways. The constitution provided generally accorded civil liberties and representation.
The Republican Constitution also changed the country's national symbols. 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), the Basque Country (1936) and Galicia (although the Galician Statute of Autonomy could not come into effect due to the war) exercised this right, with Aragon, Andalusia and Valencia, engaged in negotiations with the government before the outbreak of the Civil War. The Constitution guaranteed a wide range of civil liberties, but it opposed key beliefs of the right wing, which was very rooted in rural areas, and desires of the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church, which was stripped of schools and public subsidies.
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 largely irrelevant after the authority of the Republic was superseded in many places by revolutionary socialists and anarchists on one side, and Nationalists on the other.
Various reforms were carried out during the first two years of the Second Republic's existence. Amongst other reforms, a legal entitlement of seven days of paid annual leave was introduced, together with the freedom to strike without the fear of being dismissed, new social security benefits and an eight-hour workday.
Azaña government
With the new constitution approved in December 1931, once the constituent assembly had fulfilled its mandate of approving a new constitution, it should have arranged for regular parliamentary elections and adjourned. However, fearing the increasing popular opposition, the Radicals and Socialist majority postponed the regular elections, therefore prolonging their way in power for two more years. This way the republican government of Manuel Azaña initiated numerous reforms to what in their view would "modernize" the country.
Landowners were expropriated. Autonomy was granted to Catalonia, with a local parliament and a president of said parliament. Catholic churches in major cities were again subject to arson in 1932, and a revolutionary strike action was seen in Málaga the same year. A Catholic church in Zaragoza was burnt down in 1933.
In 1933, all remaining religious congregations were obliged to pay taxes and banned from industry, trade and educational activities. This ban was forced with strict police severity and widespread mob violence.
The first military coup against the Republic was planned by groups of monarchist generals with the support of exiled monarchist ministers. The attempted coup which became known as Sanjurjada ended in failure. Several hundreds of generals were dismissed, prominent monarchists were imprisoned or had to flee abroad, and the aristocracy was 'punished' with radicalization of the agrarian reform. The coup contributed to the radicalization of the left.
The extreme right did not abandon their plans of overthrowing the Republic, what was manifested in the foundation of the Spanish Renovation and a small fascist party Falange Española, the rise of the militant Carlist movement (Traditionalist Communion, Requeté militias), and propaganda of legitimacy of a military uprising spread by such organizations as Acción Española. Fascism proper was yet a weak ideology, but such historians as Julián Casanova describe the culture of the Spanish anti-Republican right as proto-fascist, similar to Italian "pre-Fascism" and the German Völkisch movement. The anti-Republican right were supported within the Church and the army. At the same time, the authority of the Republic was undermined by an anarchist insurrection which culminated in the Casas Viejas massacre of the anarchists and was followed by state repression.
1933–1935 period, the "Black Biennium" and miners' uprising
Events in the period after November 1933, called the "black biennium", seemed to make a civil war more likely. This period which followed the victory of the right-wing coalition in the elections, was marked by the state-sanctioned "preventive brutality" against workers' movements, state-sanctioned repression against the left which included censorship, crackdowns and deportations of peasants, and violent clashes between the left and the right. The period culminated in the failed socialist and anarchist uprising in Asturias which became known as the Asturian Revolution of 1934.
The majority vote in the 1933 elections was won by the Spanish Confederation of the Autonomous Right (CEDA). In face of CEDA's electoral victory, president Alcalá-Zamora declined to invite its leader, Gil Robles, to form a government. Instead he invited the Radical Republican Party's Alejandro Lerroux to do so. Despite receiving the most votes, CEDA was denied cabinet positions for nearly a year. However, Although CEDA, the largest party in the parliament, did not formally join the cabinet, it exerted indirect influence because the government depended on its parliamentary support. CEDA reinforced this leverage by threatening to withdraw cooperation. Later, Gil Robles claimed that the governing Radical party was "carrying out CEDA's programme". The left viewed the CEDA not only as a threat to their progressive reforms, but to the Republic in general, and more to it, as a fascist party. The CEDA and its leader Gil Robles proclaimed their goals to dissolve workers' movements and parliamentary democracy, purge "Marxists, Freemasons, Separatists and Jews", and establish an authoritarian corporate state, praising Benito Mussolini of Fascist Italy, Adolf Hitler of Nazi Germany and Engelbert Dollfuss of the Austrian Ständestaat. Following the rise of militant revolutionary sentiments within the ranks of PSOE and UGT, Francisco Largo Caballero adopted a revolutionary Marxist rhetoric which justified revolutionism as a way to combat rising fascism, uncharacteristic of European social democratic mainstream and the reformist traditions of the PSOE; the anarchists of the CNT followed a similar rhetoric.
Socialists led by Largo Caballero decided to launch a 'revolution' if the CEDA entered the government, something that, according to Paul Preston, Largo Caballero believed would never happen, hence there were no real preparations for revolutionary action in most parts of Spain. The decision to trigger an uprising if the CEDA entered the government although not publicly proclaimed was known in the government. After a year of intense pressure, CEDA was finally successful in forcing the acceptance of three ministries. The insurrection launched in response became known as the Revolution of 1934. In most of Spain, it was suppressed with little resistance, and the Socialist leadership demonstrated its lack of preparation and will to fulfill their revolutionary threats. A general strike was called by the UGT and the PSOE in the name of the Alianza Obrera. Stanley G. Payne believes that the issue was that the Left Republicans identified the Republic not with democracy or constitutional law but with a specific set of left-wing policies and politicians. Any deviation, even if democratic, was seen as treasonous.
The inclusion of three CEDA ministers in the government that took office on 1 October 1934 led to a country wide revolt. A "Catalan State" was proclaimed by Catalan nationalist leader Lluís Companys, but it lasted just ten hours. Despite an attempt at a general stoppage in Madrid, other strikes did not endure. This left Asturian strikers to fight alone. Miners in Asturias occupied the capital, Oviedo, killing officials and clergymen. Fifty eight religious buildings including churches, convents and part of the university at Oviedo were burned and destroyed. The miners proceeded to occupy several other towns, most notably the large industrial centre of La Felguera, and set up town assemblies, or "revolutionary committees", to govern the towns that they controlled. Thirty thousand workers were mobilized for battle within ten days. In the occupied areas the rebels officially declared the proletarian revolution and abolished regular money. The revolutionary soviets set up by the miners attempted to impose order on the areas under their control, and the moderate socialist leadership of Ramón González Peña and Belarmino Tomás took measures to restrain violence. However, a number of captured priests, businessmen and civil guards were summarily executed by the revolutionaries in Mieres and Sama. This rebellion lasted for two weeks until it was crushed by the army, led by General Eduardo López Ochoa. This operation earned López Ochoa the nickname "Butcher of Asturias". Another rebellion by the autonomous government of Catalonia, led by its president Lluís Companys, was also suppressed and was followed by mass arrests and trials.