The Spanish Civil War

A Modern Tragedy

George R. Esenwein

• Éditeur: Routledge
• Année: 2005
• ISBN:
  9781134629688
• Édition: 1
• Sujet: History
• Sous-sujet: World History

This exciting collection of primary sources on the Spanish Civil War uses military and political documents, media accounts, and contemporary propaganda to create a representative and illuminating survey of this enormously complicated event more than sixty-five years after it ended.

Structured chronologically from a full introduction which delineates the field, this book ranges from the origins of the uprising against Franco through to its turbulent aftermath. It clearly outlines key points in the conflict and highlights the little-known roles of race and gender in determining the war's outcome.

The book also unearths many rare sources for the first time and reveals the variety of perspectives held by those immediately involved in the war. This is an ideal resource for all students of history and military history.

From Republic to Civil War 1

To understand Spain’s two-and-a-half year Civil War it is necessary to bear in mind that it was not a single, self-contained event. Rather, it was composed of several overlapping and interrelated conflicts that operated on various levels. First and foremost, the Civil War represented the culmination of decades of political instability and domestic unrest. The war itself pitted the Spanish left – as represented by the greater part of the organized workers’ movement, regionalists in Catalonia and the Basque country, and progressive segments of the bourgeoisie – against the forces of the right, who were led by the conservative elements of the military, the Catholic Church, and Spain’s traditional social and economic elites. The grouping together of such disparate elements on both sides inevitably produced further arenas of conflict. For example, in Republican Spain all parties were unified in their opposition to the Nationalists but were irreconcilably divided among themselves over a number of fundamental issues. Chief among these was the question of whether the massive working-class revolution that was unleashed by the July military rebellion helped or hindered the Republicans’ war effort. Political differences also existed in the Nationalist camp, though, in contrast to the Republican side, tensions aroused by factional disputes were kept under control by the military dictatorship that grew up around Francisco Franco.

Not long after it had begun, Spain’s internal war transcended its national boundaries. From a diplomatic standpoint this was true because the Civil War was widely perceived as a potential threat to the fragile peace and stability of Europe as a whole. It was largely for this reason that most countries decided to adopt a hands-off policy towards Spain’s domestic troubles. However, three of the signatories to a non-intervention pact concluded in August 1936 – Germany, Italy, and the Soviet Union – refused to abide by the terms of the agreement and instead chose to use the Civil War as a means of furthering their respective foreign policy agendas. In this way Spain became a proxy battleground for the leading fascist and communist powers of the day.

In addition to the diplomatic concerns it raised, the Civil War aroused the passions and pricked the public conscience of the international community, particularly among those who came to believe that they too had a stake in the outcome of the Civil War. Politically engaged citizens, intellectuals, writers, and artists saw the Civil War as a reflection of the wider ideological struggles that were increasingly dividing the world into mutually hostile blocs. While some interpreted it as a contest between Christianity and godless Bolshevism, others insisted that it was a life-and-death confrontation between democracy and fascism. In an attempt to place the Civil War in its proper historical context, many historians have tended to emphasize the international aspects of the conflict, insisting that the Spanish conflict is best understood as a dress rehearsal for the Second World War. But even though there are direct parallels between the two wars, it would be wrong to conclude – as some have done – that the causes and consequences of the Spanish Civil War were connected to those of the Second World War. A brief review of the historical period that formed the backdrop to Spain’s war will help to explain why this is the case.

Second Republic, 1931–36

Ever since Queen Isabella II was deposed in 1868, Spain rarely enjoyed long periods of good government. From 1876 until 1923 a liberal monarchy ruled, though this was deeply flawed both by its anti-democratic character and by its inability to rise above the corruption that characterized politics at the local and national levels. Above all, however, it was the liberal system’s failure to respond swiftly and effectively to the demands of rapid economic and social change at the turn of the century which undermined its ability to govern.

By the early 1920s, the dynastic ruling parties who monopolized political power under the Restoration were so thoroughly discredited that they were easily swept to the side by a military-led coup d’état. But unlike the military pronunciamientos of the nineteenth century, which were usually followed by popular unrest in the towns and countryside, this revolt brought about a period of relative stability under the dictatorship of Miguel Primo de Rivera (1923–30). In fact, Primo’s intervention came at a time when many believed that the only way Spain could overcome its growing social, colonial, and economic problems was to establish an authoritarian government. In the event, from the beginning the dictatorship won the support not just of the middle classes but of the army, the monarchy and Spain’s ruling social and economic elites. No less important to the early success of his rule was the fact that Primo managed to avert full-scale warfare with the country’s revolutionary organizations by adopting a pragmatic approach to resolving the labour question. On the one hand, he used the machinery of the state to repress groups on the far ends of the political spectrum – the anarchosyndicalist CNT, for example. At the same time, he was solicitous towards right-wing (Sindicatos Libres) and moderate organizations such as the socialist PSOE and UGT, both of which saw collaboration with the one-party state system as a means of defending the interests of their own working-class constituents.

During the first phase of his rule, Primo’s government patterned itself after fascist and authoritarian regimes elsewhere in Europe who were using the state as a vehicle for solving economic and social problems. Yet, despite the early successes of his state interventionist policies, Primo failed to develop the institutional basis that could sustain his rule. For example, the single party he created in 1926, the Patriotic Union (Unión Patriótica), never succeeded in mobilizing a popular base of support for the regime. By 1926 his paternalistic dictatorship was generating a ground-swell of opposition among various sectors of society, including the middle classes, regionalists (particularly in Catalonia), and elements of the army. For many, republicanism became a political rallying point, and over the course of the next three years the movement attracted a sizeable following. After 1929 the mounting pressures of an ailing economy further undercut much of Primo’s support not just among the aforementioned groups but also among ruling elites who refused to subsidize the state’s efforts to ward off Spain’s rapidly developing economic crisis. Abandoned by his former supporters, which by now included King Alfonso XIII and key sections of the army, Primo was forced to step down in January 1930. The collapse of his dictatorship led directly to the downfall of the Bourbon monarchy. In national elections held on 12 April 1931 the monarchist parties were defeated at the polls by their Republican and socialist opponents. To the cheers of millions of pro-democratic citizens, Spain’s Second Republic was declared two days later.

For the first two years of its existence, the Second Republic was ruled by a coalition of socialist and middle-class Republican politicians who wanted to modernize Spain by transforming the social, political, and economic structures associated with the old regime. Government reformers took special aim at the military and the Catholic Church, two major institutions which had for many years enjoyed a privileged position in Spanish society. In addition, the government introduced progressive economic reforms and social legislation which directly threatened Spain’s dominant economic classes: the land-owning and industrial elites.

In a country as steeped in traditions as Spain was, such a bold and sweeping agenda was bound to create problems. Not surprisingly, the efforts of civilian politicians to reform the army – particularly their plans to reduce the size of the over-bloated officer corps – stirred up resentment among the traditional ruling military castes, causing some to begin plotting against the Republic. No less hostile to liberal change was the Catholic Church, which greatly resented the government’s attempts to secularize Spain. When the anti-clerical Republican prime minister Manuel Azaña triumphantly proclaimed in 1932 that ‘Spain was no longer Catholic!’ his words offended many Spaniards, but especially those who identified themselves and their country with the policies and practices of the Catholic Church.

In a two-year period the left-wing governments of the Second Republic had achieved an impressive reform record. In addition to expanding public education, greatly reducing the role of the Church in social affairs and restructuring the military, the government promulgated wide-ranging labour and political legislation, such as the Agrarian Reform Law (1932) and the statute of regional autonomy for Catalonia (1932). But at the same time the government was striving to revamp Spain’s outdated social, military, and economic structures, its popular support was being eroded. On the socialist left, one of the principal players in the government’s ruling coalition, this was due to the fact that the rate of legislative reform failed to keep pace with the workers’ rising expectations for change. In some cases, such as the government’s failure to bring about a meaningful redistribution of land in the countryside, the growing frustration of the rural labourers had a radicalizing effect. The result was that, by mid-1933, the socialist–Republican political alliance began to crumble.

Both the credibility and stability of the government was further shaken by the persistent agitation of the far left. Between 1931 and late 1933 the anti-Republican stance of Spain’s classic anti-statist revolutionaries, the anarchosyndicalists of the CNT-FAI, was summed up in their slogan: ‘Our Revolution is made not in Parliament but in the streets’. To this end, they spearheaded a series of wildcat strikes and staged insurrections which they referred to as ‘revolutionary gymnastics’ that sought to overturn the ‘bourgeois’ Republic. While most of these never seriously threatened to bring down the capitalist system, they none the less greatly contributed to the destabilization of the regime. The revolutionary acts of the far left also rebounded negatively on the workers themselves as these often provoked swift and often brutal responses from both national (Asaltos and Guardia Civil) and local authorities. On the other hand, state ‘repression’ of this sort – such as during the infamous Casas Viejas rising in January 1933 when nearly a dozen peasants were summarily executed by state policemen – tended to reinforce the libertarians’ revolutionary message by calling into question the government’s commitment to the working classes.

Right-wing opposition to the Republic

Given its left-wing orientation, it is hardly surprising that the liberal Republic faced its greatest challenge from the Spanish right. As noted above, the government’s anti-clerical orientation – enshrined in Article 26 of the Constitution – provoked a hostile reaction from Spain’s large Catholic community, many of whom deeply resented the passing of secularizing legislation that, among other things, legalized divorce and greatly diminished the Church’s role in education (Law on Religious Confessions and Congregations, 1933).¹ Opposition to the liberal government from defenders of religion and traditional social values crystallized in the formation of political parties such as the CEDA, a broad coalition of right-wing Catholic groups that came into being in February 1933. The CEDA’s relationship to the Republic was highly ambiguous, as evidenced in its commitment to an opportunistic policy known as ‘accidentalism’, which placed loyalty to the Catholic Church above allegiance to any particular form of government. But while the CEDA demonstrated a willingness to work within the bounds of a legal framework, this was not true of groups on the far right known as ‘catastrofistas’. The parties of the hard-line Carlists (Comunión Tradicionalista) and Alfonsine Monarchists (Renovación Española) sought to overthrow the liberal Republic and replace it with an authoritarian form of government. The fanatical supporters of the Carlist pretender to the Bourbon throne were true reactionaries in that they strove to establish a clerical monarchy organized along corporatist lines. Their commitment to the use of force was underscored by their ever-expanding para military organization, requetés, whose numbers had grown to over six thousand by 1935. Unlike the Carlists, whose influence was geographically centred in the Navarre region, the Alfonsine monarchists appealed to conservative Spaniards throughout the peninsula. Their goal was to set up a military-style monarchy (much like the one that developed under Primo de Rivera) headed by the deposed Alfonso XIII. Another fiercely anti-Republican party that came into being around this time was the Spanish Falangist Party. Between 1933 and 1934 an assortment of pro-fascist groups began coalescing around the charismatic José Antonio Primo de Rivera, the eldest son of the former dictator, Miguel. This new party sought to finish the authoritarian state-building process begun by Miguel Primo de Rivera by creating a modernizing totalitarian state modelled on Mussolini’s fascist Italy and Hitler’s Nazi Germany. Though none of the aforementioned parties attracted a mass following before 1936, their activities had a corrosive effect on the authority of the legitimate government and collectively they contributed to the polarization of political life in Republican Spain.

In the general elections held in November 1933, the Spanish political pendulum swung to the right. At first the right-leaning government moved cautiously in its attempts to block the reforms and undo the progressive social measures begun under their predecessors. But, against the background of the rising tide of fascism in Europe, these actions were interpreted by the left as direct assaults on the institutional foundations of the Republic. The fact that some right-wing leaders adopted the rhetoric of fascism – the bombastic José María Gil Robles of the CEDA, for example – gave greater credence to the suspicion held by many on the left that the right-wing forces in parliament were following in the footsteps of the Nazis: they were using the legal channels of the Republic to destroy its democratic framework.

The left in opposition

Historically the Spanish working-class left had been divided into several mutually antagonist movements. One major current was represented by the anarchists, who traced their roots in Spain back to 1869. By the early decades of the twentieth century, anarchist associations, such as the nationally based National Confederation of Labor (CNT) and Iberian Anarchist Federation (FAI, created in 1927), had become important, not just because of their massive size but also because of their deeply entrenched presence within infrastructures of working-class society. During the Second Republic anarchist strength and influence in the labour movement was challenged by Marxist organizations such as the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE), its trade union affiliate, the General Union of Workers (UGT). This rivalry – which was reflected in both ideological and organizational differences – persisted throughout the Second Republic and Civil War period, 1936–39.

The unity of the Spanish left was further undermined by the creation of several new socialist organizations. For example, the Spanish Communist Party or PCE (formed in 1921) and the Unified Marxist Workers’ Party or POUM (created in 1935 as a result of the fusion of two independent Marxist groupings, BOC and ICE) were two significant Marxist parties that competed not only with the socialists and anarchists but also with each other. During the years of the Second Republic inter-union tensions and intra-party divisions shaped the course of left-wing politics in a number of ways. Above all, however, they prevented the left from presenting a united front against their common enemies on the right.

Despite the doctrinal and organizational differences that separated the various parties on the left, it was apparent to all after the November elections that the right was now in the ascendant. In an effort to prevent them from firmly establishing their political hegemony, activists such as the Marxist theorist Joaquín Maurín began searching for ways of bridging the divisions on the left. His idea of linking the ideologically disparate left-wing parties through an ecumenical workers’ alliance (Alianza Obrera) gained popularity throughout...