The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939

The clearer minds on the left saw that the rising had been a terrible disaster. But for the militants, especially Largo Caballero, it had produced an intoxicating whiff of revolution. For the right, on the other hand, it seemed to show, as Calvo Sotelo argued, that the army–the spine of the state–was the only guarantee against revolutionary change. Yet above all, the rising had been a profound shock to the nation as a whole and a near fatal blow to democracy in Spain. There can be no doubt that such a violent insurrection alarmed the centre as well as the hard right. It certainly appeared to confirm conservatives in their belief that they must do everything possible to prevent another attempt to create the dictatorship of the proletariat, especially when Largo Caballero declared: ‘I want a Republic without class war, but for that one class has to disappear.’³⁶ They did not need to be reminded of the horrors which followed the Russian revolution and Lenin’s determination to annihilate the bourgeoisie.

With the defeat of the October revolution the suspension of the Catalan state of autonomy and the dissolution of the left-wing town councils, the Radical-CEDA coalition seemed supreme. The CEDA, however, felt that its presence in the Lerroux government did not do justice to its parliamentary strength. Gil Robles wanted to amend the Constitution to abolish the restrictions on the Church’s role in education, but he had little success. Lerroux and his Radicals had at least held on to one principal, and that was their anti-clericalism. Yet the government crisis which ensued had another cause. When President Alcalá Zamora decided to exercise his constitutional prerogative and commute the death sentence passed on González Peña, the CEDA leaders declared their opposition. Lerroux had to form another government and this time include five members of the CEDA. Gil Robles insisted on becoming minister of war. He appointed General Fanjul to be under-secretary and Franco to be the chief of the general staff.³⁷

The new government turned back the Republic’s clock in certain matters, such as returning property to the Jesuits and indemnifying the grandees for the expropriation of their land. It ignored agrarian reform and public education. Meanwhile, the republican left began to get itself together again. In December 1934 Azaña was cleared of any involvement in the events of October and freed. A few months later he made a pact between the left and the three centrist parties: Izquierda Republicana, Unión Republicana and the Partido Nacional Republicano. In March 1935 Azaña reappeared in the Cortes and began a series of mass meetings around the country. In Madrid more than 300,000 people turned up. During this speech he laid out the basis for an electoral alliance of the left which would take them to victory in the elections that took place the following February.

The socialists, on the other hand, remained profoundly divided. Prieto, still in exile in Paris after the October revolution, broke with the followers of Largo Caballero–the caballeristas–and once again tried to align himself with Azaña. Largo Caballero himself came out of prison in November, more of a bolshevik than ever, having at last read the works of Lenin in his cell and received visits from Jacques Duclos, the French Comintern representative. The leaders of the uprising received surprisingly lenient treatment.

The alliance between the CEDA and Lerroux’s radicals finally collapsed at the end of 1935 as a result of political scandals. In October there was the estraperlo gambling scandal, which allowed the president of the Republic to demand the resignation of Lerroux.³⁸ He entrusted Joaquín Chapaprieta with forming a new government, but the following month another row broke out over corruption, which provided the coup de grâce for the Radical Party as a whole.³⁹ Gil Robles thought that his time had come to take over the government and he withdrew support from Chapaprieta, but his move proved a mistake. President Alcalá Zamora, who did not like him and wanted to create a large centre party, entrusted the government to a man he trusted, the former governor of Catalonia, Manuel Portela Valladares. Blind to the fact that democracy in Spain had become so fragile, Alcalá Zamora had pushed republican democracy into its endgame. It soon became clear that the clash of attitudes throughout the country was so great that the forces of conflict could not be contained within the Cortes.

The Popular Front

When the new head of government, Manuel Portela Valladares, summoned the council of ministers on 1 January 1936 he already had in his hands the decree to dissolve the Cortes. New elections were to be announced for 16 February. They were to be the last free elections held in Spain for forty years.