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Second Spanish Republic

The Spanish Republic (Spanish: República Española), commonly known as the Second Spanish Republic (Spanish: Segunda República Española), was the form of government in Spain from 1931 to 1939. The Republic was proclaimed on 14 April 1931 after the deposition of King Alfonso XIII. It was dissolved on 1 April 1939 after surrendering in the Spanish Civil War to the Nationalists led by General Francisco Franco.

"Spanish Republic" redirects here. For Spain from 1873 to 1874, see First Spanish Republic. For other uses, see Spanish Republic (disambiguation).

Spanish Republic
República Española

Madrid[a]

Spanish[b]

Spanish, Spaniard

Unitary semi-presidential republic[1]

 

Niceto Alcalá-Zamora

Diego Martínez Barrio

Manuel Azaña

 

Niceto Alcalá-Zamora

Juan Negrín

Cortes Republicanas

Interwar period

14 April 1931

9 December 1931

5–19 October 1934

17 July 1936

1 April 1939

Spanish peseta

After the proclamation of the Republic, a provisional government was established until December 1931, at which time the 1931 Constitution was approved. During this time and the subsequent two years of constitutional government, known as the Reformist Biennium, Manuel Azaña's executive initiated numerous reforms to what in their view would modernize the country. In 1932 religious orders were forbidden control of schools, while the government began a large-scale school-building project. A moderate agrarian reform was carried out. Home rule was granted to Catalonia, with a local parliament and a president of its own.[2]


Soon, Azaña lost parliamentary support and President Alcalá-Zamora forced his resignation in September 1933. The subsequent 1933 election was won by the Spanish Confederation of the Autonomous Right (CEDA). However the President declined to invite its leader, Gil Robles, to form a government, fearing CEDA's monarchist sympathies. Instead, he invited the Radical Republican Party's Alejandro Lerroux to do so. CEDA was denied cabinet positions for nearly a year.[3] In October 1934, CEDA was finally successful in forcing the acceptance of three ministries. The Socialists triggered an insurrection that they had been preparing for nine months.[4] A general strike was called by the Unión General de Trabajadores (UGT) and the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) in the name of the Alianza Obrera.[5] The rebellion developed into a bloody revolutionary uprising, aiming to overthrow the republican government. Armed revolutionaries managed to take the whole province of Asturias, killing policemen, clerics, and businessmen and destroying religious buildings and part of the University of Oviedo.[6] In the occupied areas, the rebels officially declared a proletarian revolution and abolished regular money.[7] The rebellion was crushed by the Spanish Navy and the Spanish Republican Army, the latter using mainly Moorish colonial troops from Spanish Morocco.[8]


In 1935, after a series of crises and corruption scandals, President Alcalá-Zamora, who had always been hostile to the government, called for new elections, instead of inviting CEDA, the party with most seats in the parliament, to form a new government. The Popular Front won the 1936 general election with a narrow victory. The Right accelerated its preparations for a coup, which had been months in the planning.[9][10]


Amidst the wave of political violence that broke out after the triumph of the Popular Front in the February 1936 elections, a group of Guardia de Asalto and other leftist militiamen mortally shot the opposition leader José Calvo Sotelo on 12 July 1936. This assassination convinced many military officers to back the planned coup. Three days later (17 July), the revolt began with an army uprising in Spanish Morocco, followed by military takeovers in many cities in Spain. Military rebels intended to seize power immediately, but they were met with serious resistance as most of the main cities remained loyal to the Republic. An estimated total of half a million people would die in the war that followed.


During the Spanish Civil War, there were three Republican governments. The first was led by left-wing republican José Giral (from July to September 1936); a revolution inspired mostly by libertarian socialist, anarchist and communist principles broke out in its territory. The second government was led by the PSOE's Francisco Largo Caballero. The UGT, along with the National Confederation of Workers (CNT), were the main forces behind the social revolution. The third government was led by socialist Juan Negrín, who led the Republic until the military coup of Segismundo Casado, which ended republican resistance and ultimately led to the victory of the Nationalists.


The Republican government survived in exile and retained an embassy in Mexico City until 1976. After the restoration of democracy in Spain, the government-in-exile formally dissolved the following year.[11]

Economy[edit]

The Second Spanish Republic's economy was mostly agrarian, and many historians call Spain during this time a "backward nation". Major industries of the Second Spanish Republic were located in the Basque region (due to it having Europe's best high-grade non-phosphoric ore) and Catalonia. This greatly contributed to Spain's economic hardships, as their center of industry was located on the opposite side of the country from their resource reserves, resulting in immense transportation costs due to the mountainous Spanish terrain. Compounding economic woes was Spain's low export rate and heavily domestic manufacturing industry. High levels of poverty left many Spaniards open to extremist political parties in search of a solution.[67]

Spanish Republican Armed Forces

Spanish Republican government in exile

Flag of the Second Spanish Republic

Coat of Arms of the Second Spanish Republic

Order of the Spanish Republic

(Líneas Aéreas Postales Españolas), the Spanish Republican Airline

LAPE

Catholicism in the Second Spanish Republic

Sanjurjada

Electoral Carlism (Second Republic)

Reign of Alfonso XIII of Spain

(2006). The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936–1939. New York: Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0143037651.

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Brenan, Gerald (1950). The Spanish Labyrinth: an account of the social and political background of the Spanish Civil War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.  0-521-04314-X.

ISBN

(2010). The Spanish Republic and Civil War. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511763137. ISBN 978-0-521-49388-8.

Casanova, Julián

Cueva, Julio de la Cueva (1998). "Religious Persecution, Anticlerical Tradition and Revolution: On Atrocities against the Clergy during the Spanish Civil War". Journal of Contemporary History. 33 (3). Sage Publications, Ltd.: 355–369.

(1951). The United States and Spain. An Interpretation. Sheed & Ward. ASIN B0014JCVS0.

Hayes, Carlton J.H.

(2011) [first published 1987]. The Franco regime, 1936–1975. University of Wisconsin Press. p. 90. ISBN 978-0299110741.

Payne, Stanley G.

(2012). The Spanish Civil War. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-17470-1.

Payne, Stanley G.

; Palacios, Jesús (2018) [2014]. Franco: A Personal and Political Biography (4th ed.). University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 978-0299302146.

Payne, Stanley G.

(2006). The Spanish Civil War: Reaction, Revolution and Revenge (3rd ed.). London: HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-00-723207-9.

Preston, Paul

(1977). The Spanish Civil War. Harper & Row. ISBN 978-0060142780.

Thomas, Hugh

Álvarez, José E. (2011). "The Spanish Foreign Legion during the Asturian Uprising of October 1934". War in History. 18 (2): 200–224. :10.1177/0968344510393599. ISSN 0968-3445. JSTOR 26098598. S2CID 159593285.

doi

(2006) [1982]. The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936–1939. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. ISBN 0-297-84832-1.

Beevor, Antony

Buckley, Henry (1940). The Life and Death of the Spanish Republic: a Witness to the Spanish Civil War.

Casanova, Julián (2010). . Cambridge University Press. p. 113. ISBN 978-1139490573.

The Spanish Republic and Civil War

(2003). The Spanish Republic at War, 1936–1939. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0521459327.

Graham, Helen

Hodges, Gabrielle Ashfod (2002). Franco : a concise biography (1st US ed.). St. Martin's Press.  978-0312282851.

ISBN

(1987). The Spanish Republic and the Civil War,1931–1939. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0691007571.

Jackson, Gabriel

(1987). The Franco Regime. Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 978-0299110703.

Payne, Stanley G.

(2006). The collapse of the Spanish republic, 1933–1936: Origins of the civil war. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0300110654.

Payne, Stanley G.

(1999). Fascism in Spain, 1923–1977. University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 978-0299165642.

Payne, Stanley G.

(1999). Spain's First Democracy: The Second Republic, 1931–1936. University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 978-0299136741.

Payne, Stanley G.

(2004). The Spanish Civil War, the Soviet Union, and Communism. New Haven, CT; London: Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-10068-X. OCLC 186010979.

Payne, Stanley G.

(2008). Franco and Hitler: Spain, Germany, and World War II. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-12282-4.

Payne, Stanley G.

(1994). "General Franco as Military Leader" (PDF). Transactions of the Royal Historical Society. 4. Cambridge University Press: 21–41. doi:10.2307/3679213. ISSN 1474-0648. JSTOR 3679213. S2CID 153836234.

Preston, Paul

(1995). Franco. Fontana. ISBN 978-0-00-686210-9.

Preston, Paul

(2006). The Spanish Civil War: Reaction, Revolution and Revenge (3rd ed.). London: HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-00-723207-9.

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(2012). The Spanish Holocaust: Inquisition and Extermination in Twentieth-Century Spain (1st ed.). W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-0393345919.

Preston, Paul

Ruiz, Julius (2015). The 'Red Terror' and the Spanish Civil War: Revolutionary Violence in Madrid. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.  978-1107682931.

ISBN

Raymond Carr, ed. The Republic and the Civil War in Spain (1971)

Raymond Carr, Spain 1808–1975 (2nd ed. 1982)

Constitución de la República Española (1931)

English Translation of the Constitution of the Spanish Republic (1931)

on YouTube

Second Spanish Republic National Anthem

(in Spanish)

Video La II República Española