THE LIBRARY OF IBERIAN RESOURCES ONLINE

AN HISTORICAL ESSAY ON MODERN SPAIN

RICHARD HERR

Chapter 12
Spain Splits in Two

1. During the two years of the Constituent Cortes, public opinion had become more and more polarized
around the issue of the relation between the state and the church. This was an old issue, as we know,
and it was basically a conflict of ideologies. However, alongside the older liberal ideology modeled on
1789 and 1812 and the monarchist Catholic ideology which looked back at "historic" Spain, since the
First World War collectivist ideologies on the left had increased their following, and new authoritarian
ideologies had appeared on the right. Primo de Rivera had mouthed some of the rightist doctrines, but
by and large under him they had not aroused much devotion. By 1934 the twentieth-century versions of
left and right found in the rest of Europe were rapidly infecting Spanish politics. Since Mussolini's
capture of Italy in 1922, the European democracies that had been created or revitalized in the wave of
Wilsonian idealism had been collapsing one by one. The most frightening developments occurred in
1933. In January Hitler became prime minister of Germany at the head of the National Socialist party,
and before the year was out he had outlawed other parties and imprisoned many of their leaders. In
Austria the Christian Socialist chancellor, Engelbert Dollfuss, suspended parliamentary government in
March and later permitted his followers to arrest leading Socialists. When the Socialists fought back in
Vienna with a general strike, they were crushed by armed force. Even such an ancient democracy as
France did not seem immune. On February 6, 1934 militant right-wing parties attacked the Chamber of
Deputies in Paris [174] and the police restrained them only with greatest difficulty and after many
casualities.
Little wonder that in Spain Republicans, Socialists, and anarchists viewed Gil Robles, who proclaimed
his admiration for Dollfuss, as a fascist and feared that his assumption of power by legitimate means
would lead to an overthrow of the parliamentary process and outlawing of the parties that supported the
Republic, on the pattern of Mussolini and Hitler. On the other side it is equally understandable that
good Catholics, who recalled the Bolshevik suppression of organized religion in Russia and heard of
leftist President Plutarco Calles' bitter conflict with the church in Mexico in 1934, should conceive the
Republic as not simply an anticlerical democracy of the nineteenth-century variety but a cloak for the
introduction of godless Marxism. World developments --Lorca's clash of "telluric forces"--combined
with long-standing domestic antagonisms to exacerbate Spanish hatreds. The story of the next two and
a half years is how these tensions grew, despite the energies of sensible leaders on both sides, until they
led to the outbreak of a civil war.
The largest group in the new Cortes was the CEDA. By the logic of parliamentary government,
President Alcal Zamora should have asked Gil Robles to form a government, but for sound reasons he
did not do so. During the campaign Gil Robles had refused to declare his loyalty to the Republic,
although he claimed--honestly, it would appear from later events--that he believed in parliamentary
government. Because much of the CEDA's following consisted of monarchists, his unwillingness to
state his allegiance to the Republic was understandable, but it led the Socialists and other left-wing
parties to argue that for Alcal Zamora to allow him to form a government would be to turn the
Republic over to its enemies.
Alcal Zamora therefore offered the head of the ministry to Le-rroux, whose Radical party was second
largest in the Cortes. Many deputies distrusted Lerroux because he had often switched colors, and his
recent opposition to social legislation made support from the Socialists impossible. To obtain a majority
he turned to the parties on his right and got the backing of the CEDA; without, however, taking
members of that party into his cabinet. Gil accepted the arrangement, knowing that the need for CEDA
support would force the Radicals to adopt a program that would satisfy it. In this way the Radicals
governed during the first session of the new Cortes, which lasted from November 1933 until the
summer of 1934.
Lerroux sought to balance his commitment to the Republic and to anticlericalism with his conservative
economic views and his need to placate the CEDA. Gil Robles wanted to amend the constitution,
ending the separation of church and state. This Lerroux would not do, but he did not enforce the recent
laws against the church. He did not [175] close Catholic schools, he allowed the Jesuits to continue
teaching, and he maintained the state subsidy of the church in defiance of the constitution. He also
acted to gain the favor of other enemies the Azana regime had made. Over the strong opposition of the
left, he put through a bill to amnesty political offenders of the previous two years, of whom the most
conspicuous were those involved in General San-jurjo's abortive pronunciamiento. Employers and
landowners felt once more the warmth of government blessings. In the mixed juries for labor disputes,
the government appointees who cast the deciding vote now leaned toward the employers.
Lerroux had always hated Catalan regionalism, and his courting of the right now gave him additional
cause for being a centralist. When local elections in January 1934 again returned an Esquerra majority
to the Catalan parliament, a clash between Lerroux and the Generalitat became almost inevitable.
Macia had just died, in his seventies, and he was succeeded as president of the Generalitat by Lluis
Companys, who was more strongly committed to the Republic and Spain than most Catalan leaders.
The clash came over a question of social legislation. The Esquerra majority in the Catalan parliament
voted a law which gave the Catalan tenant farmers the right to buy land they had cultivated for fifteen
years. Landlords protested and took the case to the national Court of Constitutional Guarantees, which
had been elected in September 1933 during the right-wing surge. The court declared the law invalid
because it was outside the constitutional scope of the Generalitat, and the Radical ministry upheld the
court. Catalanists were furious, and the Catalan parliament challenged the court by enacting another
law similar in content.
The conservative attitude of the government also gained it the hatred of the organized proletariat.
Feelings ran especially high in the south, where the depression hurt the landless workers. Many large
landowners were introducing machinery or leaving their estates uncultivated. Lerroux continued the
redistribution of land enacted by the Constituent Cortes, but results were slow and ineffectual. In the
spring of 1934 the UGT's Federation of Land Workers formed a united front with the anarchist CNT in
southern Spain and threatened to strike just before the harvest. They demanded a decent wage and no
reprisals against workers for their political activities. The government met these demands, but
nevertheless extremists led local strikes on June 5. The government retaliated violently, deporting
peasants and arresting Socialist deputies who had visited the strikers. This vindictiveness sowed anger
and frustration among the workers, who turned more and more to the anarchists and new militants
belonging to Spain's small Communist party.
If Lerroux had the left against him, the Conservatives were not happy either. Right-wing militants
condemned Gil Robles as a [176] compromiser for his support of the Radical government. They looked
for a leader with more drive and fire, and their eyes turned to the one-time minister of finance of Primo
de Rivera, Jose Calvo Sotelo. He had been in exile in France since 1931 and had become enamored of
the anti-parliamentary doctrines of the Action franaise. In the new climate of Spain, he was elected to
the Cortes in November 1933 and returned from Paris to become the head of a monarchist party called
Renovation Espaola. He immediately began to denounce what he termed Gil's ineffectual leadership
of the CEDA.
The Radical government survived until the Cortes adjourned in the summer of 1934. During the next
months Gil Robles spoke out aggressively, trying to propitiate right-wing Spaniards. Without CEDA
votes, the Radicals would be unable to stay in power when the Cortes reopened in October. Convinced
that Gil Robles was out to destroy the Republic, leaders of the left decided that force might be needed
to prevent the enemies of the Republic from capturing it by legal means. Largo Caballero, mindful of
the frustration and anger among the workers on farms and in industries, threatened an armed rising if
the CEDA should enter the cabinet. "Better Vienna than Berlin" became the Socialist motto: Better to
die fighting like the Austrian Socialists than without a struggle. Throughout the country the proletarian
parties were drawing together against the common enemy. In the Asturias mining region such unity
made great progress at the local level, under the slogan "UHP" ("Union, hermanos proletarios"), and
workers clashed frequently with the police. Even the moderate Socialist Prieto foresaw fighting, and he
organized the smuggling of arms into Asturias.
When the Cortes reopened on October 1, the CEDA refused further support for a government in which
it did not participate. Alcal Zamora considered dissolving the Cortes, but he finally called on Le-rroux
to establish a coalition government in which the CEDA would get three ministries, including the critical
ones of labor and agriculture. Socialists and Republicans, and some Radicals under Diego Martinez
Barrio, cried that Alcal Zamora was handing the Republic over to its enemies. To prevent the seating
of the new government, the UGT on October 5 led general strikes throughout Spain. Workers
responded in the major cities: Seville and Cordoba in the South, Valencia and Barcelona in the east,
San Sebastian, Bilbao, and Santander in the north, and Madrid. By and large the revolt was a failure.
Many syndicates were not prepared, and the Andalusian workers were exhausted from the agitation of
the summer. The government proclaimed martial law and crushed the strikes in most places.
The rising had more success in Madrid and Barcelona. Largo Caballero personally led the workers in
Madrid, the center of UGT strength, and he kept the strike going for ten days. When it broke, he and
many others were arrested. In Barcelona the UGT's declaration of[177] a general strike did not win
over the anarchists; however, Catalan anxiety over a CEDA government brought crowds into the streets
demonstrating their loyalty to the Generalitat. Companys feared losing the initiative to Catalanist
extremists. When Lerroux's government established martial law on October 6, he addressed the crowd
from a balcony of the Generalitat palace in a speech carried over the radio and proclaimed a "Catalan
State within a Federal Republic." Without anarchist support, however, he had no force to oppose the
army when the local captain general remained loyal to central government. The army besieged
Companys and the Catalan government in the Generalitat building overnight. Companys surrendered
the next morning, and he and his government went to prison, ending Catalonia's brief and hardly
glorious bid for autonomy.
From the outset all eyes turned toward Asturias, the only place where the workers had prepared for a
conflict. Anarchists and Communists had made recent inroads on the UGT, but all were united by
common suffering and the slogan "UHP." Their general strike began on October 4. The next day the
workers took over the mining towns, forcing the civil guards and newly created assault guards to
surrender. Then they marched down to the provincial capital, Oviedo, which they captured by small-
arms fire and dynamite. In the city they set up a kind of republic of virtue, guarded by their
revolutionary militia, very anarchist in spirit, with equal rations for all and guarantee of personal safety
for enemies of the working class, both bourgeois and clerical. Undisciplined groups and individuals,
some of them acting out of personal hatred, murdered about forty employers and priests; but given the
tensions present, the workers behaved with reasonable self-discipline.
The real bloodletting began when government forces moved in to put down the revolution. The miners
held the mountain passes against the army. On the advice of General Franco, who was temporarily on
assignment in Madrid, the government shipped in by sea the Foreign Legion and Moorish troops from
Morocco, whom it could count on to be merciless. Oviedo fell on October 12, the mining towns were
captured house by house during the next week. Prisoners were often shot, but captured rebels were
turned over to the Civil Guard, which subjected them to sadistic tortures. A group of observers sent by
the British Parliament confirmed the horrors of the repression, and the news sickened European
liberals.
The aftermath of the October revolt exasperated the political tensions in Spain. The government
clamped censorship on news from Asturias, but tales of atrocities filled the press, each side accusing
the other of the most inhuman acts. The right-wing newspapers reported that miners had raped nuns,
buried priests and monks alive, and gouged out the eyes of children--atrocities that local residents later
denied had occurred, but which were eagerly believed by good Catholics who saw [178] in the left-
wing parties the sinister agents of an international masonic-Marxist conspiracy. So strong were
Catholic feelings that in March 1935, when Lerroux commuted the death sentence of several leaders of
the uprising, Gil Robles and other right-wing deputies violently attacked him and forced a dissolution
of the ministry. In the next cabinet the CEDA obtained more seats.
The left had more legitimate grievances. Besides the barbarity of Oviedo there was the imprisonment of
over ten thousand people throughout Spain for participating in the general strike, or simply for
belonging to left-wing parties. They remained in jail through 1935.(1) Nevertheless, the left also
magnified their sufferings. They believed Spain to be in the grip of fascism now that the CEDA was in
the government, and failed to consider how closely they were repeating the pattern which had given
Primo de Rivera the excuse to become dictator.
The Republican parties had had little share in the October revolt. Nevertheless the right took the
opportunity to cast discredit on them, and chose Manuel Azana as their target. The former prime
minister had been in Barcelona on the day of the uprising; and although he had refused to participate in
it, he was arrested on suspicion of involvement. Before his trial by the Supreme Court, the monarchists
in the Cortes initiated a debate on his case, accusing him of instigating the risings in Asturias and
Catalonia. The debate lasted the entire day of March 21, 1935, while crowds gathered outside. The final
vote revealed the division of the Cortes on current issues. The CEDA and right-wing parties voted to
condemn him, but the Radicals joined the parties of the left to produce a majority in favor of
exonerating him. When Azana left the Cortes, the crowd cheered. Shortly thereafter the Supreme Court
found him innocent. Azana's trial served to draw the Republicans and Socialists together again, for his
persecution made him a popular idol among the working classes. With their own leaders in prison, even
the anarchists were beginning to see the only hope for their ultimate success in a return to power of the
Republicans.
2. Beginning with the trial of Azana, 1935 was a year of increasing bitterness and tensions. The
proportion of Spaniards who took an interest in government was growing, particularly in the cities, and
they were becoming ever more sharply divided. On both sides inflamed passions were making
impossible rational consideration of each other's grievances and leading to acts that needlessly
provoked their [179] opponents. Extremist voices stirred the public, but one must ask why the public
listened to them.
For one thing, Spain was not unique. The growing tensions throughout Europe contributed to the
Spaniards' excitement. Even more, under the Second Republic the reality of free elections and universal
suffrage (including the vote for women) made people feel that the actions of ordinary persons could for
the first time truly affect their future. Self-government posed a kind of existentialist challenge to each
individual to do his duty, to decide and act for himself and for his country. Democracy was a heady
brew for a people who had not grown used to it. Jose Maria Gironella's historical novel The Cypresses
Believe in God (1953) depicts the process of polarization and politicization of ordinary people during
the years of the Republic in the Catalan provincial capital of Gerona, as individuals and gathering
places like cafes took on political identifications they had never had before.
Symptomatic of the tension was the growing activity of extremist youth movements on both the right
and the left. Just as Catholics and Republicans felt that authority over education was critical to creating
the kind of country they believed in, political parties which demanded a commitment to specific creeds
had come to believe in the need to mold the minds of young people. The origin of political youth
movements went back to the turn of the century, when European Socialist and Nationalist parties had
created them. In Spain Lerroux's Radicals had a youth movement in Barcelona before 1910. Known
popularly as the "Young Barbarians," they were more violent than their elders. After 1918 Russian
Communists developed a youth movement, a pattern which Italian Fascists and German National
Socialists followed. Young people were considered more idealistic, more forceful, less corruptible than
their elders, and more malleable. In Spain university students organized the FUE and played a vital role
in the overthrow of Primo de Rivera. Under the Republic the right and the left parties established youth
movements: Traditionalist (Carlist) Youth, closely tied to the Carlist armed units called Requetes,
Socialist Youth, Juventudes de Action Popular (JAP), which was the movement of the party headed by
Gil Robles. The JAP's statements were violent and anti-Semitic and helped give Gil the reputation for
being a fascist.
Other groups on the right, though not specifically called youth movements, directed their appeal
primarily to young people. In October 1931 Ramiro Ledesma Ramos, a one-time philosophy student
who admired Mussolini and Hitler, founded the Juntas de Ofensiva National Sindicalista (JONS),
dedicated to opposing Marxism and favoring a popular dictator. In 1933 four hundred Madrid
university students joined its syndicate. More important was the founding of the Falange Espaola
(Spanish Phalanx) in October 1933 by Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera, the dashing and boyish son of the
late dictator. Consciously [180] defending the memory of his father, he called his doctrine national
syndicalism. He was both anti-Marxist and authoritarian. He condemned political liberalism and
economic capitalism, proposing in their place some form of socialism, an abolition of political parties,
an authoritarian state, and common devotion to the welfare of the fatherland. Many of these beliefs had
origins in the late dictatorship, but they also echoed the current pattern of European fascism. Strangely,
he admired the moderate Socialist Prieto and the latter grudgingly admitted that they did have some
objectives in common. Both wished to see the government act forcefully to improve the economy by
promoting irrigation and industrialization. Young Primo de Rivera was elected to the Cortes in
November 1933, at only thirty. In February 1934 the Falange and the JONS merged into one
organization, and in January 1935 Primo de Rivera expelled Ledesma, becoming uncon-tested leader of
the Falange.
One of the most fascinating figures to emerge in these years, Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera became the
idol of young persons in their teens and early twenties who opposed the Republic. He aroused them
with passionate speeches at mass meetings, sometimes held in theaters, sometimes in romantic open-air
settings like the Sierra de Gredos northwest of Madrid. They knew him simply as "Jose Antonio."
Right-wing university students joined the Sindicato Espaol Universitario (SEU), which he organized
in 1933 to oppose the FUE. He also built up a network of cells in all provincial capitals. By 1935 the
Falange had between 10,000 and 25,000 members, tiny by comparison with mass movements but a
respectable number for an independent new group, and it made up in enthusiasm what it lacked in size.
The youth movements became more militant than the regular parties, except the anarchists, who had
always been committed to violence. They formed paramilitary militias, adopted shirts of various colors
as their uniforms, had special salutes--the outstretched arm of the Fascists by the Falange, the clenched
fist of the Communists by the left--held drills, and at times clashed in street fights, complete with
shootings and deaths. After the October 1934 revolt, the youth movements rejected the moderate
members of their parent groups. The Socialist Youth called leaders like Prieto, who believed in the
parliamentary process, "social fascists," a term used earlier in Germany by the Communists to discredit
the moderate Social Democrats. Far from lamenting the violence employed by both sides in Asturias,
members of the youth groups glorified it and scorned their elders who were searching for a peaceful
solution to Spain's ills, for they were led by men who had lost faith in the parliamentary system. The
emergence of youth movements was a central factor in the increasing hatreds of 1935.
Sensing the danger of the situation, Lerroux maintained [181] throughout the year a state of martial law
and a close censorship of the press. He prevented municipal ayuntamientos and the Catalan parliament
from meeting. With the CEDA now participating in the ministry, the government turned against the
Republican legislation. It first suspended and then modified the Catalan statute of autonomy. It returned
their properties to the Jesuits. The foreign secretary went to the Vatican to negotiate a concordat, a
strange procedure for a government whose constitution gave no official recognition to religion. Gil
Robles became minister of war in May 1935 and promptly named General Franco chief of staff. Gil
favored the promotion of high officers whom Azana had sidetracked, while discriminating against
Azana's appointees. This meant raising enemies of the Republic to positions of authority in the army.
The education program of the Republic also suffered. With Catholic schools operating, the urgent need
for new buildings decreased. To save money the government cut back and then abandoned the
construction program. The pedagogical missions also had their funds cut, yet such was the enthusiasm
of those involved that they continued their activities in the summer of 1935 largely out of their own
pockets.
Alcal Zamora had never been happy about letting the CEDA into the government, but he had no clear
democratic alternative until late in 1935. A discovery of graft and corruption among members of the
Radical party who were close to Lerroux gave him the opportunity he needed. The public scandal
forced Lerroux to resign. Rather than offer the ministry to Gil Robles, Alcal Zamora dissolved the
Cortes on January 7, 1936 and called for new elections. He hoped that dissention among both right- and
left-wing parties would produce a majority of the center. He was to be bitterly disillusioned.
The left saw its opportunity for revenge. During 1935 the comradeship of 1931 revived, and the
Republican and Socialist parties were able to form an alliance. In this they were helped by the example
of France, where in 1935 the middle-class and proletarian parties were drawing together in a "Popular
Front" to defend the democratic Republic against the threat from the right. The French Communist
party had taken the lead in creating this alliance, for the advent of Hitler had shown the leaders of the
Communist International that the policy of attacking the Socialists, as the German Communists had
done, could be suicidal. The example was not lost on Spain, and in January 1936 the Republican parties
to the left of Lerroux--including some dissident Radicals under Martinez Barrio, the Socialists, and the
Spanish Communist party, which since October 1934 had been growing in size and prestige--signed an
electoral alliance for a Spanish Popular Front. Largo Caballero agreed to the alliance on the
understanding that the Socialists would not participate in the ministry. The Popular Front campaigned
on a platform of amnestying the thousands of [182] political prisoners and continuing the reforms of
the Constituent Cortes. On the right, meanwhile, the experience of two years in power had produced
the same kind of divisions that the left suffered in 1933. The Radicals were discredited and divided.
The monarchists were attacking Gil Robles for failing to take over the government by force. Although
the center right formed political alliances in many districts, the kind of unity that produced the victory
of the CEDA in 1933 was lacking.
The electoral campaign saw press censorship ended for the first time since October 1934. All the
hatreds that had built up now burst forth. On both sides the major issue was the October revolt. If one
sympathized with it, one favored the Popular Front; those whom it had frightened were on the other
side. Emotional posters decorated public places. Large portraits of Gil Robles advertised the CEDA
with the suspicious slogan, "All power to the leader." Calvo Sotelo's pro-monarchist Renovaci6n
Espaola pictured Spain in the grip of Marxism. The Popular Front countered with haggard wives and
children pleading for the release of men in prison since the October rising. The hammer and sickle
appeared chalked on walls, and in reply "!Muera Azana! !Viva Dios!"
The elections were held on February 16, 1936. They were a victory for the Popular Front, less in total
votes than in seats in the Cortes. It received about 4.7 million votes to 4.5 million for the right and
center. There had been little switching of votes; what made the difference was the unity of the left,
division on the right, and active voting by anarchists who hoped to obtain the release of their friends in
prison. The Popular Front parties won 278 seats--99 Socialists, 87 Republican Left headed by Azana,
39 in Martinez Barrio's Republican Union, 36 Esquerra, and 17 Communists. The right had only 138
seats; nevertheless the CEDA was the second largest party, with 88 seats. The right had by no means
been wiped out, in fact its popular vote was larger than in 1933. What had been destroyed was Alcal
Zamora's dream of a strong center. The parties that fitted between the Popular Front and the right got
only 40 seats, with only 4 for the Radicals. The working of the electoral law was bringing Spain into a
two-party or two-coalition system, more or less as its organizers had intended.(2)
Geographically the strength of the right was in the two Castiles and Navarre. The Popular Front carried
the major cities and those [183] regions which feared centralization or had rebelled in October 1934,
Catalonia, the Basque Provinces, Asturias, and Galicia. It also carried Andalusia, showing that five
years of active labor organization by the Socialists and anarchists had at last broken caciquismo and
taken over the cities in this area. Except for Andalusia, however, the elections revealed the old conflict
between center and periphery. Spain might be breaking along class and ideological lines, but the break
coincided with well-known geographic divisions.
3. Six months after the election, civil war began. The story of this half year can be summed up as the
failure of responsible and moderate men on both sides to keep extremists from coming to open conflict.
Spirits already tense grew more and more excited as people at each extreme spoke of the danger from
the other and the need to resort to force.
Spain was in a state of near anarchy immediately after the election, for the existing ministry and local
governments were frightened and discredited. Victory marches in many cities led to violence, attacks
on churches, and refusal to obey police orders. Several leaders of the right, convinced of the danger of
an immediate social revolution, approached General Francisco Franco, the chief of staff, and urged that
the army take over the country, as it had done in 1923. But no plans existed and Franco rejected a futile
gesture. In Madrid the old ministry refused to continue in power until final election results were in, as
provided by the constitution. Alcal Zamora had no choice but to call on Azana to take over the
government on February 19. Three days later Azana amnestied all political prisoners. He also
suspended the payment of rents on farm land in southern Spain.
Azana was the most prestigious person in Spain, enjoying wide popularity on the left and the grudging
respect of his opponents. Yet his assumption of power did not bring calm. The militias of the various
youth movements kept up street violence after the election, shooting members of opposing groups in
what was degenerating into gang warfare. After Falangists attempted to assassinate a socialist
professor, Azana outlawed the Falange and arrested Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera, but the Falangists
simply went underground. Azana's difficulties were compounded by the attitude of Largo Caballero. He
had been responsible for the Socialist decision to leave the cabinet in 1933 and now kept the Socialists
from entering the ministry, thus forcing Azana to include only Republicans in a government that
theoretically represented the entire Popular Front. As a result of his imprisonment after October 1934,
Largo Caballero was a martyr for many working-class people and the idol of the Socialist Youth. His
followers referred to [184] him as the Spanish Lenin (to Azana's Kerensky), and believed the revolution
was at hand. More and more his counsels guided the Socialists rather than those of the moderate Prieto.
Largo Caballero began to speak publicly in favor of a proletarian uprising. Although he did not
seriously plan one, his demagoguery presented a more serious threat to Azana's efforts to restore order
than the violence of the youth groups.
The new Cortes opened in March. Before Azana could introduce any legislation, they faced a major
constitutional crisis. According to the constitution, after a president dissolved the Cortes for a second
time, the first act of the new Cortes was to examine and decide upon the necessity of the decree of
dissolution. An unfavorable vote of the Cortes would remove the president. Alcal Zamora had few
friends in the new Cortes. He was known to favor a strong center party and therefore was disliked by
both right and left. The Popular Front proposed to condemn him, not for dismissing the previous
Cortes, but for not dismissing them in October 1934 instead of allowing CEDA deputies into the
ministry. They thus attributed to him the blame for bringing on the revolt in October. The argument was
strained but the vote was decisive, since the right abstained. On April 7 Spain was without a president.
The only person on whom the Popular Front could agree for president was Azana. After some
hesitation on his part, he was elected on May 8. He at once asked Prieto to form a ministry. Largo
Caballero still opposed Socialist participation in the ministry, however, and the party vetoed such a
move. Azana had to choose another Republican, the Gallegan leader Santiago Casares Quiroga, who
accepted out of loyalty although suffering from tuberculosis. The Popular Front, by impeaching Alcal
Zamora and raising Azana to the presidency, had deprived itself of its most respected leader. From his
new position, Azana could do little to influence policy, and the times were getting increasingly critical.
Cases of public violence multiplied during the spring. A bomb was thrown at the president's stand
during a parade in Madrid on April 14 to celebrate the anniversary of the Republic, and in the
excitement an assault guard killed a civil guard. Members of the Falange participated in an elaborate
funeral for the civil guard, and socialist youths shot at the cortege. A melee developed during which
fourteen people were killed. During the next months, the CNT, which was trying to make inroads into
traditional UGT territory, fomented strikes in the capital, and rival unions fought openly in the streets.
Meanwhile in Andalusia, the FNTT, the socialist peasant union, echoing Largo Caballero, now urged its
followers to initiate a revolution on their own. On March 25 the FNTT led 60,000 men in taking over
three thousand farms in Extre-madura. More land was redistributed on this day than in the past five
[185] years. Before summer almost 200,000 peasants, a third of all men in Ex-tremadura, had seized
land without meeting official opposition. A profound social revolt was spreading out of control,
threatening to consume the latifundistas of southern Spain.
The violence was limited enough not to make ordinary citizens fear for their safety, but it endangered
landowners and employers and exasperated hatreds on both sides. The press magnified each event, and
rightist deputies denounced the situation in speeches aimed at discrediting the government. The most
vociferous were Gil Robles and Calvo Sotelo. On June 16, both of them spoke in the Cortes. Gil
claimed that since the election there had been 351 general strikes, 269 persons had been assassinated,
and 170 churches burned (figures which could only be exaggerated guesses), while Calvo questioned
the patriotism of Spanish leftists and accused the government of weakness which was playing into
anarchist hands. The prime minister replied that Calvo was exaggerating and his speeches were
themselves calls for violence. He could have added that enemies of the Popular Front had hired
provocateurs to incite terrorist acts that would convince the moderate classes of the need to end the
Republic.(3)
The fact was that whatever effect violence was having on the daily lives of Spaniards, it was preventing
the government from proceeding energetically with its reform program. Sane and moderate minds were
deeply concerned. Prieto was doing his best to calm the Socialists. On the right Gil Robles accused
employers of driving the workers to the extremists by wage cutting and other deliberately hostile acts.
Within the church and the government and in the daily press, responsible men sought to end the
tensions. The government permitted church schools to remain open, and the Pope received the new
ambassador of the Republic. But sane minds were powerless to halt the raging passions, for Gil Robles
and Prieto could not be heard over the din made by Calvo Sotelo and Largo Caballero. After five years
of the Second Republic, Spain was more bitterly divided than ever. The vision of 1931 of parliamentary
democracy legitimized in the hearts of the people had evaporated.
4. In the end, however, not the warring political factions but a calculated military conspiracy destroyed
the peace. Within the army, the apparent impotence of the government convinced various generals, as it
had so often before in the last century, that it was their duty to save Spain from the evils of
parliamentary government. The Popular Front victory had alienated many army officers, not only
because they [186] recalled Azana's military reforms but because the government now planned to
subordinate local captains general to civilian authorities in a way never done before. The local
influence of the military would decline. In 1933 a conservative, monarchist organization called the
Union Militar Espaola was founded within the officer corps. It was not secret, but it provided a
convenient channel for discovering the political sympathies of the officers. During the spring of 1936,
high officers who hated the Republic began to plan an uprising against the government. They turned for
leadership to General Sanjurjo, who had been living in exile in Portugal since Lerroux had granted him
amnesty.
Azana was aware that Gil Robles as minister of war in 1935 had placed generals of doubtful loyalty to
the Republic in high commands, and he now acted to remove them. He transferred two generals
responsible for the repression in Asturias from the war ministry to distant posts, General Manuel Goded
to the Balearic Islands and General Franco to the Canary Islands. He brought from Morocco to Navarre
General Emilio Mola, known to have kept out of Sanjurjo's uprising in 1932 and therefore believed
loyal to the Republic. Mola, however, soon became the plot's leading figure within Spain, acting under
the authority of Sanjurjo. Descendants of the Carlists were still strong in Navarre, and he could count
on their support. The Carlist armed units known as the Requetes had smuggled in machine guns and
had gotten in touch with Mussolini, who had promised them arms to use against the Republic. Mola
also approached Calvo Sotelo and Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera, who was in prison. The latter
somewhat hesitantly promised the support of the Falange. Finally Sanjurjo visited Germany and
sounded out its government, which proved friendly to the conspirators' aims.
By the end of June the conspirators had worked out their plans, but they still hesitated. The memory of
Sanjurjo's failure in 1932 haunted them. They knew many officers were unenthusiastic, and they were
not confident of their civilian allies. The key figure was General Franco, for he could count on the
loyalty of the Moorish troops and Foreign Legion in Morocco, which he had once commanded. These
were the best-trained units in the army, unaffected by Republican and Socialist propaganda. In his new
post in the Canary Islands Franco responded amicably to the plotters' feelers but refused to commit
himself, evidently willing to count on an eventual legitimate defeat of the Popular Front at the polls. In
early July, when it became clear that a rising would occur, he finally pledged himself provided he were
given command of the forces in Morocco. He would fly there from the Canary Islands in a plane hired
by an agent in England, and the garrisons in Spain would declare their support within twenty-four
hours. The date was set for between July 10 and 20. [187] Despite precautions, such a widely known
conspiracy could hardly remain hidden from the government, and it did not. But the long, tense spring
had sapped the will of Azana and Casares Quiroga, and they believed their precautions had been
sufficient. The Republic had survived one rising in 1932, the army had not moved in February 1936,
and they did not credit the seriousness of the reports they now heard. Prieto was worried, but Largo
Caballero dismissed his warnings as a scheme to win back support of the Socialists. To the latter's
mind, only the proletariat had the spirit to make a revolution, a conviction probably shared by Azana,
who feared Largo Caballero more than the army. Middle-class Spaniards went off to their summer
vacations as usual, looking forward to a rest from political turmoil.
By pure chance, events in Madrid provided the plotters with a perfect occasion. On Sunday, July 12, a
Republican lieutenant of the Assault Guard, Jose Castillo, who had fired on the funeral procession for
the civil guard killed on April 14, was himself shot dead by Falangists while taking a stroll in Madrid.
Castillo was a leader of the Socialist Youth militia and had devoted friends. Several of these within the
Assault Guard determined to exact exemplary vengeance. That same night in their uniforms and with a
police car, they sought to assassinate Gil Robles, but he was out of town. They then went to the home
of Calvo Sotelo, and announced that he was under arrest. Although suspicious, Calvo was forced to
accompany them. The officers shot him and left his body in the morgue.
Next day, the news of the assassination of the most prominent anti-Republican deputy by officers of the
Republican police sent a shudder through Spain. Despite the ministry's immediate disclaimer and arrest
of the guilty assault guards, many good conservative citizens believed the prime minister personally
responsible for the act. For them the Republicans had proved their unfitness to rule. To such an extent
had distrust and hatred grown. Spirits were prepared for a desperate act of reprisal.
The murder of Calvo Sotelo incited the generals to act. On Friday afternoon, July 17, the garrison of
Melilla in Morocco revolted, caught the local governor and loyal officers by surprise, and rapidly
crushed resistance. On July 18 General Franco broadcast from the Canary Islands the reason for the
uprising--to reestablish public order and save Spain from anarchy and revolution. On the same day
commanding officers of garrisons on the mainland proclaimed their support of the revolt.

Notes for Chapter 12

1. There is no agreement on the number arrested. Jackson, who is judicious, says 30,000 to 40,000 (p.
161). E16na de la Souchere, Explanation of Spain (New York: Random House, Inc., 1965), a work
unfavorable to the Franco regime, says a maximum of 12,500 (p. 248).
2. No two historians agree on the number of votes or the number of seats won by each party. My
figures on popular vote come from Jackson, p. 193 and pp. 521-- 24; on seats from Juan J. Linz, "The
Party System of Spain: Past and Future," Party Systems and Voter Alignments, ed. S. M. Lipset and S.
Rokkan (New York: The Free Press, 1967), pp. 260-61, both of whom have analyzed the official returns
carefully.
3. Stanley G. Payne, Politics and the Military in Modern Spain (Stanford: Stanford University Press,
1967), p. 331.