Nationalist Spain
Those who rose against the Republic did not have so much difficulty finding a single military and political leader. As of 1 October 1936, Francisco Franco was 'Head of Government of the Spanish State'. His military colleagues who put him there thought that this post would be temporary, that the war would soon be over with the conquest of Madrid and that then would be the time to think of the political framework of the new State. However, after various frustrated attempts to take the capital,...
From Madrid to the Ebro
By the middle of October 1936, the rebel troops, now well equipped with Italian artillery pieces and armoured vehicles, had occupied 1 Quoted in Jos Andr s Rojo, Vicente Rojo. Retrato de un general republicano, Tusquets, Barcelona, 2006, p. 270. most of the towns and villages around Madrid. The militiamen, cowed by the advance of the Africa army, withdrew to the capital, and they were joined there by hundreds of refugees fleeing from the occupied localities. Franco announced that he would take...
Nonintervention
Barely two weeks after the military rising, the governments of the principal European powers had already shaped their policies with regard to this fledgling conflict in Spain. The British Foreign Office declared 'strict neutrality' and asked the French to do the same. In Paris, L on Blum went back on his original decision to help the government of the Republic and opted for non-intervention. Germany and Italy were 2 Enrique Moradiellos, El re idero de Europa. Las dimensiones internacionales de...
Cntfai
the situation to escalate from anti-militarist protests to desertions was something that caused concern to those in favour of discipline and was hard for them to accept. Their methods of persuasion failed, and there were no other ways, except armed confrontation, to halt this trend. Many of these deserters and dissidents brandished their arms in the streets of Barcelona in May 1937. And it was there that they finally realised that they were now on their own. The reconstruction of central power...
The road to authoritarianism
The brunt of the blame for the rebellion was placed, at the instigation of the CEDA and one sector of the Partido Radical, on Manuel Aza a, the socialists and the Statute of Catalonia as a symbol of the 'disunion of the Fatherland'. Aza a had gone to Barcelona on 28 September to attend the funeral of Jaume Carner, his ex-Finance Minister. There he met Indalecio Prieto, and he tried to 'caution him against' the proposed revolution, as he 'considered that it lacked any chance of success'. In his...
Spanish Republic And Civil War
The Spanish Civil War has gone down in history for the horrific violence that it generated. The climate of euphoria and hope that greeted the overthrow of the Spanish monarchy was utterly transformed just five years later by a cruel and destructive civil war. Here, Juli n Casanova, one of Spain's leading historians, offers a magisterial new account of this critical period in Spanish history. He exposes the ways in which the Republic brought into the open simmering tensions between Catholics and...
Reforms
The reform and reorganisation of the army was implemented by Manuel Azana barely a week after he had been sworn in as the Minister for War in the provisional government. The army that the Republic inherited in 1931 had a history that abounded with interventions in politics, occupied a privileged position within the State and society, lacked modern armaments and was top-heavy with officers, many more than were necessary. Excluding the security forces, which were also militarised, the armed...
Insurrection
The revolution, according to the socialist revolutionary committee, should have started with a general strike in the main cities and industrial centres, followed by sympathetic sectors of the armed forces. There were major strikes in Madrid, Seville, C rdoba, Valencia, Barcelona and Zaragoza, with brief outbreaks of armed uprising in certain locations in the latter province. In the mining area to the west of Bilbao, the army and the Civil Guard fought the insurgents for a few hours, and in...
The antirepublican offensive
There had already been some sabre-rattling in the summer of 1931, when the first measures of Manuel Azana's military reform became known. In June of that year, two monarchist generals, Emilio Barrera and Luis Orgaz, were arrested due to rumours of a conspiracy against 10 Bruce Lincoln, 'Revolutionary exhumations in Spain, July 1936', Comparative Studies in Society and History, 27, 2 1985 , pp. 241-60. the republican regime, and a few days later, a group of generals who had been appointed by...
The Republic between two pincers
Lerroux and the radicals had left the government in December 1931, after the passing of the Constitution, when they had asked Aza a to form a government without the socialists. As Aza a ignored their request and kept the socialists, the radicals withdrew and broke the coalition that had governed the Republic since 14 April. Lerroux was to wait for the moment to present himself as an alternative to the government made up of leftist republicans and socialists. As Aza a noted in his diary on 14...
Spain split in two
The coup d' tat and the subsequent civil war had disastrous effects for the Republic. Its administration went to pieces, as did its army and police forces. Jos Giral's government, which lasted barely a month and a half, took some very important decisions, in spite of appearing to be a makeshift government with no support it authorised the civil governors to distribute arms to the political and trade union organisations, asked for aid from abroad aware that this was the only way of defeating the...
Opposing worlds
In some of the cities where the uprising had been defeated, the war seemed far away for months. Away from the front, their inhabitants made the most of the revolutionary celebrations, the enthusiasm for the destruction of order and its symbols, and they knew nothing of the harshness of the trenches or the bombings. This enthusiastic atmosphere, with armed people in the streets, the requisitioning of luxury cars and houses belonging to aristocrats and the middle classes, the abundance of food,...
The gold of Moscow and the financing of the war
The Republic and its government had to defend themselves after 18 July 1936 in a war that they had not started. And they had the resources to do so. They had the gold and silver reserves of the Bank of Spain, which, as Indalecio Prieto said shortly after the start of the conflict, belonged to the legitimate Spanish government, the only entity that could touch them. This money was vital for waging a war lasting nearly three years against the military rebels and the backing of their German and...
The Frente Popular and the return of Azaa
In February 1936, 72 per cent of the Spanish population, men and women, voted - the highest turnout of the three general elections held during the Second Republic. As Javier Tusell showed years ago, it was also a clean election, in a country with democratic institutions and with many sectors of the population believing that this election was decisive for the country's future.1 This is why the election campaign 1 Javier Tusell, Las elecciones del Frente Popular en Espa a, Edicusa, Madrid, 1971....
Republican dawn
The Republic was welcomed by celebrations in the streets, a great deal of rhetoric and a holiday atmosphere that combined revolutionary hopes with a desire for reform. Crowds thronged the streets, singing the 'Himno de Riego' the republican anthem and 'La Marseillaise'. Workers, students and professional people all joined in. The middle class 'opted for the Republic' because of the 'disorientation of conservative elements', wrote Jos Mar a Gil Robles a few years later. And the scene was...
The breakdown of order
The coup did not overthrow the Republic, but by opening a wide breach in the army and the security forces, it did destroy its cohesion and caused unrest. The Prime Minister, the republican Santiago Casares Quiroga, fearful of revolution and the popular unrest that might break out, ordered the civil governors not to distribute arms to the workers' organisations. There was little else he could do, because events very soon overtook him. He resigned on the night of 18 July. The person who might...
Why did the Republic not survive
Up to the beginning of the Second Republic, Spanish society seemed to have managed to avoid the problems and troubles that had beset most European countries since 1914. Spain had not taken part in the First World War, and therefore had not undergone the upheaval that this war had caused, with the fall of empires and their subjects, the demobbing of millions of ex-combatants and massive debt caused by the vast spending on the war effort. But it did share the division and tension that accompanied...
The winds of change
'The elections held last Sunday clearly show me that I do not have the love of my people today', wrote King Alfonso XIII in a farewell note to the Spanish people, before leaving the Royal Palace on the night of Tuesday 14 April 1931. According to Miguel Maura, 'the Monarchy had committed suicide', so he, the son of Antonio Maura, former leader of the monarchist conservatives, had decided 'to join' the Republic almost a year before it was proclaimed, as he stated in an address in the Ateneo...