Chapter 3: The Second Republic
"Spain was obviously in a weak position to make a democratic republic work. Though its modern political experience was one of the longest in the world, mobilized democracy was a novelty. The country had just gone through eight years of authoritarian rule and in 1931 had to start over again with mostly new parties and organizations and new leaders. For the first time the revolutionary left became a fully organized mass force, and to the vertical split which this created was added the horizontal cleavage of accelerated regionalism and regional nationalism. Moreover, all other parliamentary systems in southern and eastern Europe had either broken down or would be breaking down about the same time.
In 1931 Spain had a total population of about 23,500,000, of whom 30.51 percent were active, a figure that held fairly constant throughout the first half of the century. Agriculture employed approximately 49.5 percent of the labor force, service occupations 25 percent, and industry only 25.5 percent. Significant industrialization was centered in Catalonia and the two northern Basque provinces. Barcelona had just over, Madrid just under, a million inhabitants. The next largest city was Valencia, with only 320,000. Spain remained an agricultural, predominantly rural and small-town, society, though with significant urban nuclei. Nearly one-third of the population was illiterate, though the great majority of adult males could read and write.
Yet despite widespread illiteracy and a primarily agrarian and backward economy, it would be a mistake to view the Spain of the 1930s as overwhelmingly rural and stagnant. The preceding decade had been something of a boom period of rapid industrial growth and urbanization. The industrial labor force had grown by nearly a quarter in only ten years,"
"Agricultural depression, in Spain as in many other countries, commenced well before the end of the twenties, and in overall terms Spain suffered approximately as much unemployment as Italy and more than France. Industrial production declined about 6 percent in 1931-32 before largely recovering in 1935. General unemployment, however, rose steadily, fueled by agricultural depression. Inadequate statistics make it impossible to distinguish between full mandatory unemployment (paro forzoso) and rigorous under- or limited term employment, but the strict unemployment figures rose from 200,000 in 1931 to at least half a million—by some reckonings higher—in 1936. These translate into rates of only 5 to 12 percent, but this is misleading because of the very high degree of seasonal or underemployment in agriculture, which actually made economic conditions much worse. "
"The resulting new polarization first took shape elsewhere, but the steady expansion of competing radicalisms in Europe soon influenced affairs in Spain as well. Within less than two years, both left and right would draw new and much more radical inspiration from events abroad, while their fears would be intensified by the violent and authoritarian victories of opposing tendencies elsewhere. The influence of pan- European trends toward extremism and polarization thus grew apace.
Yet unlike similar experiences in other lands, Spains ultimate breakdown into fully polarized revolutionary/counterrevolutionary civil war occurred without involvement in foreign war, occupation, or defeat and without any very extensive or direct foreign intervention in its affairs. Thus the Republics traumatic history must be approached first of all in terms of domestic forces, beginning with the three key national political divisions: the Left Republicans, the Socialists, and the Catholic conservatives."
Weaknesses of the Republican coalition
"The great weakness of Azañas leftist Republicans was their intolerance and arrogance, grounded in fanatical anticlericalism. They admitted little compromise with Catholics and conservatives, insisting that the Republic function on their principles or not at all. In this they gained their end, though the result was the latter, not the former. The constitution forced through by the Left Republicans and the Socialists deprived Catholics of civic and cultural rights, in that it not only separated church and state but was designed to make Catholic education and certain aspects of normal religious functioning illegal and impossible. The Republic thus began on the basis of exclusivism rather than equal rights and participation."
"The Republican-Socialist coalition of 1931-33 faced serious obstacles and suffered from profound disagreement over both the principles and pace of socioeconomic reform. Though one of Spain's main problems was that of the rural poor, who were either proletarianized or underemployed, the Left Republicans, concerned primarily with the nineteenth- century political and cultural revolution, shrank from the expense of radical agrarian reform.” Their models were the anticlerical regimes of France, Portugal, and Mexico and not the recent changes in agrarian eastern Europe, whether populist or Communist. While the Socialists controlled the Ministry of Labor and were able to stimulate wages, they became increas- ingly dissatisfied with the resistance to structural change.
The Republic was vehemently rejected by the extreme left, which consisted of the world’s only mass anarcho-syndicalist trade union confederation, the CNT, a minuscule Spanish Communist Party (PCE), and a small independent Leninist movement in Catalonia (BOC-POUM). The CNT fell under control of revolutionaries of the Federación Anarquista Ibérica (FAI), who insisted on immediate overthrow of any form of capitalism in the name of “libertarian communism,” a decentralized anarchist form of revolutionary communalism. Manipulating a mass trade union movement of nearly a million, they engaged in three different amateurish efforts at revolutionary insurrection in 1932—33, contributing to the destabilization of the Republican-Socialist coalition.""
"The Republican-Socialist coalition broke down in 1933, not because of opposition on the right or extreme left but because of internal division."
"Disillusion with the sectarian consequences of Republican government and resentment stemming from social and economic conditions were com- pounded by the somewhat heavy-handed tactics of Republican police administration. The new leadership was determined not to fail through timidity or weakness, and full civil rights rarely obtained under the Re- publican regime, which regularly placed varying limits on free speech and the right of assembly. Though the abuse of military powers by the monarchy had been much criticized, the new regime imposed conditions of martial law on May 12, 1931, less than a month after it had assumed power. Not only was the paramilitary rural police force of the Civil Guard not abolished, but it was flanked by a special new paramilitary Republican urban police, the Assault Guards, and under Republican government a variety of special military jurisdictions over aspects of civilian activity were perpetuated. A strong Law for the Defense of the Republic was en- acted in October 1931, followed by a relatively restrictive new Law of Public Order in June 1933. The latter provided for three different levels of suspension of constitutional rights: a state of exception, a state of alarm, and a state of war (providing for prosecution by court-martial). During the last three years of the Republic, one or the other of these three constitu- tional states of exception was in effect either on a national or regional basis almost continuously.’"
CEDA
"The new Confederación Española de Derechas Autónomas (CEDA; Spanish Confederation of Autonomous Rightist Groups), soon became the largest single political force in Spain. The CEDA was Catholic and rightist but not extremist. It held to strictly legal means of opposition as a parliamentary electoral party but did aim at drastic constitutional reform and seemed, albeit vaguely, to espouse some form of new Catholic corporate state.** It was quickly labeled “Spanish fascism’ by the left.
...The Republican president, however, was the moderate Catholic liberal Niceto Alcalá Zamora, who was determined to pre- serve the basic institutions of the Republic and feared that the CEDA and its leader, the eloquent young parliamentary spellbinder José María Gil Robles,” would push the Republic into a Catholic corporative system. For the next year, he therefore appointed a series of short-lived minoritarian Radical party governments under Lerroux."
Increasing radicalism
"During the preceding year much of the Socialist Party had undergone a process of “Bolshevization’—a term used by its own proponents. “Bolshevized” Socialists sought, somewhat confusedly, direct revolutionary confrontation. Meanwhile, during 1933, the Leninist BOC had taken the lead in attempting to form a new Alianza Obrera (Worker Al- liance) with all other revolutionary worker groups. The Socialists tried to patch over their own internal differences between moderates and revolutionaries and took the lead in the Alianza Obrera, joining forces with the POUM and the minuscule Spanish Communist Party. Leaders of the Alianza Obrera agreed that the entrance of cedistas into the cabinet marked the beginning of a “fascist takeover’ like those of Italy, Germany, and Austria.”
The horizontal cleavage of regional radicalism further intensified Republican political conflict. Catalanism presented the main challenge, fueled by the persistent strength of the Catalan language and its culture, the rise of modern Catalan industry as the largest single focus of economic development in Spain, and finally the emergence of a radical lower- middle-class “left Catalanism.”* In 1932 Catalonia gained a generous though not absolute system of regional autonomy under the Republican reforms, yet extreme Catalanists chafed under the limitations that still existed. After a series of disappointments in relations with Madrid, their leaders agreed to engage in revolt parallel to the revolutionary left.
Basque nationalists, by comparison, tended to be more conservative,"
"The October insurrection was formally directed against “fascism” at a time when fascism scarcely existed in Spain.
El Sol, Madrid’s leading moderate newspaper, warned specifically against such an outcome. In an editorial on Septmeber 9, 1934, criticizing ever more frequent outbursts of radical strike activity less than a month before the insurrection, it pointed out that
an arm which is too often employed in inappropriate situations ends up injuring itself to the point where it can no longer be used when the propitious moment arrives not only because it tires and the edge is dulled, but also because the appropriate reaction grows, perfecting contrary arms, to counteract it."
Paralysis
"The following year, 1935, was a time of reaction and relative immobility. The CEDAS influence increased, and several of the Republic's earlier reforms were temporarily shelved, but the prime ministers position remained in the hands of the Radicals or moderate independents.”"
"Had the Popular Front produced a stable governing coalition, this would have provided the basis for firm and effective rule. Though the Popular Front remained, it had no governmental dimension, for the So- cialists refused to participate in a “bourgeois” regime. Thus a minority Left Republican government under Azaña took power, only to see that power disintegrate, along with law and order, in many parts of Spain."