2G.2 KT1 - The Second Republic: creation and crisis, 1930-36

The Enquiry Frame

The Second Republic was created in April 1931 because the monarchy had lost
authority, not because Spain had already agreed on what should replace it. That
is the central tension of this lesson. The Republic promised democratic
citizenship, secular government, military reform, regional accommodation,
agrarian change and social justice. Yet each promise touched a powerful
interest or a bitter grievance: landowners feared peasant mobilisation, the
Church feared secularisation, army officers feared civilian control and
regional fragmentation, the right feared revolution, and many workers and
peasants feared that reform would be too slow to change their lives.

The key judgement is therefore not that the Republic failed simply because
Spain was "extreme". It failed because moderate republican reform had to move
fast enough to satisfy workers and peasants, but cautiously enough to keep
conservatives, Catholics, officers and property-owners inside the constitutional
system. Between 1931 and 1936 it managed neither task securely. Reform
frightened the right before it transformed the lives of much of the left. The
1933 election then brought reaction without reconciliation. Asturias in 1934
convinced the right that revolution was real and convinced much of the left
that repression was the real face of the Republic. The Popular Front victory of
February 1936 restored the left to office, but by then politics was increasingly
being decided in the streets, in barracks and in paramilitary networks as well
as in the Cortes.

Use chronology as an argument:

For Edexcel Paper 2, the topic supports both AO1 essays and AO2 source
questions. A strong essay should explain interaction: constitutional reform,
religious conflict, agrarian tension, military politics, class conflict,
electoral shifts and political violence all reinforced one another. A strong
source answer should ask what a source can reveal about fear and mobilisation:
a CEDA speech, an anarchist newspaper, a government decree, a police report, a
church statement or a Popular Front election poster may be extremely valuable,
but each will show the crisis from a particular position inside it.

Monarchy to Republic

Spain entered 1930 with a monarchy that had survived by leaning on military
dictatorship. Miguel Primo de Rivera had seized power in September 1923 with
King Alfonso XIII's acceptance. His dictatorship promised order after years of
parliamentary corruption, social conflict, regional tension and military
humiliation in Morocco. For a time it had support from many conservatives and
from parts of the middle classes. By the late 1920s, however, it was losing
authority. Economic difficulties, student protest, Catalan resentment, conflict
within the army and the failure to create a durable political system weakened
Primo. When he resigned on 28 January 1930, the king could not simply return
Spain to the old constitutional monarchy as if nothing had happened.

The king's problem was legitimacy. Alfonso had been associated with the
dictatorship. The old political parties of the Restoration system had been
damaged. General Damaso Berenguer's government, often nicknamed the
"dictablanda" because it looked like a soft dictatorship rather than a restored
constitutional order, failed to rebuild confidence. Admiral Juan Bautista Aznar
then headed another weak government. Republicans, Socialists, Catalan
nationalists and disillusioned former monarchists began to cooperate more
effectively.

The Pact of San Sebastian on 17 August 1930 was important because it gave
anti-monarchical forces a common route to action. It did not mean that all
opponents of the monarchy agreed about Spain's future. Some wanted a liberal
parliamentary republic. Some wanted Catalan autonomy. Socialists wanted labour
and social reforms. More radical workers looked to revolution rather than
parliament. But the pact mattered because it made the monarchy's opponents look
like a possible alternative government rather than scattered critics.

The Jaca rising of 12 December 1930 was a failed republican military revolt.
Captain Fermin Galan and Captain Angel Garcia Hernandez tried to proclaim a
republic from the garrison at Jaca in Aragon. The rising was badly coordinated
and quickly defeated. Its immediate military importance was small, but its
political importance was larger. The execution of Galan and Garcia Hernandez
made them republican martyrs and made the monarchy look repressive and afraid.

The municipal elections of 12 April 1931 were the decisive political event.
They were not technically a national referendum on monarchy or republic, but
they were treated as one. Monarchists performed well in much of rural Spain,
where local influence, landowner power and traditional networks remained strong.
Republicans won dramatically in many major towns and cities. That urban victory
mattered because cities were visible centres of political opinion, newspapers,
crowds, professional groups and organised labour. Faced with street
demonstrations and the possibility of conflict, Alfonso XIII left Spain. On
14 April 1931 the Second Republic was proclaimed.

The Provisional Government was broad. It was headed by Niceto Alcala-Zamora, a
Catholic former monarchist who reassured moderate opinion. Manuel Azana
represented left republicanism and became Minister of War. Alejandro Lerroux's
Radicals represented a more centrist republican current. The Socialists,
including Francisco Largo Caballero, joined the coalition. Catalan republicans
also had to be accommodated because Francesc Macia briefly proclaimed a Catalan
Republic in Barcelona before accepting a Generalitat within the new Spanish
Republic.

The Republic therefore began with hope, but also with inherited enemies and
inherited problems. The most important conservative forces were landowners, the
Church and the army.

The Republic also inherited unrest and economic problems. Spain was affected by
the international depression, though not in exactly the same way as heavily
industrialised economies. Unemployment was serious, especially among landless
labourers in the latifundia regions of Andalusia, Extremadura and La Mancha.
Rural poverty was made worse by seasonal work, low wages and land hunger.
Industrial workers in areas such as Catalonia, Asturias and the Basque Country
had strong union traditions. The socialist UGT hoped to use the Republic for
labour reform, while the anarcho-syndicalist CNT distrusted parliamentary
politics and often favoured direct action.

This meant that the Republic's creation was both a breakthrough and a trap. It
had enough support to replace the monarchy, but not enough agreement to settle
Spain's deepest conflicts. The very act of creating a democratic republic raised
expectations among groups who had waited a long time for change. It also raised
alarm among groups who believed that republican reform would destroy property,
religion, order and Spanish unity.

Reform Programme

The years 1931-33 are often called the reformist biennium. The phrase is useful
as long as it does not make reform sound smooth or uncontested. The Republic's
leaders were trying to modernise Spain in several directions at once: a secular
state, a subordinate army, labour protection, agrarian reform, education,
regional autonomy and democratic rights. Each reform was meant to solve a real
problem. Each also created new political enemies or disappointed supporters who
thought change was too limited.

The Constitution of 9 December 1931 gave the Republic its legal shape. Spain
became a democratic republic with a unicameral Cortes, a president, a
parliamentary government and a wide declaration of rights. It recognised
universal suffrage, including women's suffrage on equal terms with men. It
accepted the possibility of regional autonomy within an "integral state" rather
than a simple unitary state or full federation. It also declared that the state
had no official religion. The Constitution was one of the most advanced of its
time, but it was also divisive because it placed several of Spain's deepest
conflicts inside constitutional law.

Army reform was one of Azana's earliest priorities. The Spanish army was
expensive, officer-heavy and politically interventionist. Many officers had
made careers in Morocco and believed that military honour and national unity
were above civilian party politics. Azana wanted a smaller, more professional
army loyal to the Republic. Officers were offered retirement on full pay if
they did not wish to serve the new regime. The aim was to reduce the bloated
officer corps without provoking mass dismissal. The government also closed the
General Military Academy at Zaragoza, associated with Franco, and sought to
bring military jurisdiction and promotion under tighter civilian authority.

The reform had a clear logic. A democratic republic could not be secure if the
army remained a semi-independent political caste. But the reform also had
limits. Paying retired officers was expensive, and reducing numbers did not
automatically modernise equipment or training. Some officers accepted the
settlement; others saw it as humiliation. Azana reduced the army's political
weight in the short term, but he did not remove the army as a political actor.
That distinction matters because the military conspiracy of 1936 grew from
officers who still believed that they had a duty to save Spain from the
Republic's enemies, or from the Republic itself.

Church reform was even more emotionally charged. The Republic's leaders did
not simply object to private Catholic belief. They objected to the Church's
public power over education, property, marriage, culture and conservative
politics. The Constitution ended Catholicism's privileged status. State support
for the Church was to be removed. Civil marriage and divorce were introduced.
Cemeteries were secularised. Religious orders were treated as associations, and
the Jesuits were dissolved in 1932. The 1933 Law of Confessions and
Congregations restricted Church activity further, especially in education.

For many republicans, this was necessary state-building. A modern democracy
needed citizens educated by public institutions rather than clerical authority.
For many Catholics, however, it looked like persecution. The early burning of
churches and convents in May 1931, and the government's hesitant response,
deepened this fear. Azana's famous argument that Spain had ceased to be a
Catholic country was meant as a sociological and political claim about the
state, but conservatives heard it as a declaration of cultural war.

Agrarian reform was the Republic's most difficult social policy. In parts of
southern and western Spain, latifundia coexisted with large numbers of landless
labourers. Work was seasonal, wages were low and unemployment could be severe.
The Provisional Government introduced labour measures before the full Agrarian
Reform Law. Largo Caballero, as Socialist Minister of Labour, supported
measures such as the eight-hour day in agriculture, mixed juries to arbitrate
labour disputes, and rules giving local workers priority in local agricultural
employment. These reforms tried to shift bargaining power towards labourers.

The Agrarian Reform Law of September 1932 aimed to resettle peasants on
underused or large estates through an Institute of Agrarian Reform. In theory,
this attacked the structural problem of land inequality. In practice, it was
slow, bureaucratic, underfunded and politically vulnerable. Landowners resisted,
challenged decisions and reduced cooperation. Peasants were often impatient
because hunger and unemployment could not wait for administrative machinery.
The result was politically damaging: the reform was radical enough to terrify
property-owners but too slow to satisfy many landless labourers.

Azana's wider reform programme also included Catalonia and education. The
Catalan Statute of Autonomy, passed in September 1932 after long debate, gave
Catalonia a Generalitat with powers inside the Republic. This helped prevent
the Catalan question from destroying the Republic immediately, but it alarmed
centralists, many army officers and right-wing nationalists. Educational reform
was designed to reduce illiteracy and create secular, republican citizenship.
The government invested in schools, teachers and cultural missions. This was
constructive reform, but it also intensified conflict with the Church because
education was one of the central battlegrounds between secular republicanism
and Catholic social power.

The reformist biennium therefore needs a balanced judgement. Its reforms were
not imaginary. They changed the Constitution, the army, Church-state relations,
labour law, agrarian policy, Catalan autonomy and education. Yet reform also
made the Republic more vulnerable because each programme created a different
coalition of opponents. The Republic was trying to use law to transform a
society in which many groups still trusted pressure, patronage, direct action
or military intervention more than parliamentary compromise.

Reform Under Fire

The reformist biennium did not collapse only because the right opposed it. It
also came under pressure from the left, from anarchist direct action, from
disappointed Socialists and from the government's own use of repression. This
matters because a shallow answer often treats the Republic as a simple contest
between reformers and reactionaries. In reality, reformers were squeezed from
both sides.

The right's response was diverse. Some conservative Catholics entered legal
politics and tried to reverse secular reforms through elections. Others were
monarchists who wanted the Republic overthrown. Carlists, especially strong in
Navarre, defended traditional Catholic monarchy. Landowners organised against
agrarian reform and resisted labour legislation. Right-wing newspapers helped
turn Azana into a symbol of anti-Spanish secular radicalism. Many officers
resented military reform and regional autonomy.

The most visible military challenge from the right came on 10 August 1932,
when General Jose Sanjurjo led an attempted coup. The "Sanjurjada" failed
quickly. Its failure briefly strengthened the government because it exposed the
danger of reaction and allowed Azana to claim that the Republic had defeated
military conspiracy. The timing mattered: after the failed coup, the Cortes
passed the Catalan Statute and the Agrarian Reform Law in September 1932. Yet
the attempted coup also revealed a deeper point. Parts of the officer corps
were willing to treat elected republican government as illegitimate if it
threatened their idea of Spain.

On the left, the problem was impatience and mistrust. The Socialists had joined
the Republic because they believed it could improve workers' lives and open the
road to deeper social change. Largo Caballero's labour measures strengthened
workers' bargaining position, especially through UGT-linked institutions. But
unemployment remained high, agrarian reform was slow and employers resisted.
Some Socialists concluded that cooperation with "bourgeois" republicans was
delivering too little.

The CNT and the more radical FAI posed a different challenge. Many anarchists
rejected parliamentary politics altogether. They saw the Republic as another
state that protected property and police power. Anarchist-led or anarchist-
influenced risings and strikes therefore tested whether the Republic would act
like a liberal reforming state or a coercive state. The answer was often both.
The government defended reform, but it also used the Civil Guard, Assault
Guards and emergency powers to restore order.

Casas Viejas in January 1933 became the most damaging example. In this
Andalusian village, an anarchist rising was suppressed with brutal force.
Security forces killed villagers during and after the operation. The details
became a national scandal because they contradicted the Republic's claim to be
a humane democratic alternative to the old order. For conservatives, unrest
proved that reform had unleashed disorder. For many on the left, repression
proved that the Republic was willing to shoot workers and peasants. Azana's
authority was badly damaged.

The pattern of unrest was not confined to one region or one class. Rural
strikes rose sharply during the early Republic and were especially intense in
parts of Andalusia, where land hunger, unemployment, strong unions and
landowner resistance interacted. Industrial unrest also mattered in Catalonia
and Asturias. The Republic's labour reforms gave workers new legal tools, but
also gave employers incentives to resist or wait for a different government.
When reform changes expectations faster than it changes material conditions,
politics can become more volatile rather than less.