Spain’s Second Republic: The Right in Power (1933-1935)
The Right in Power: The Black Biennium (1933-1935)
The Spanish right, a minority in the 1931 constituency, was discredited and disorganized due to political failures in solving the country’s problems and its inherent conservatism. From the summer of 1931, the first attempts to rebuild a party emerged through the newspaper “El Debate,” directed by Angel Herrera, focusing on the defense of religion, family, order, and property. The possibility of an Agrarian Reform Law, the government’s religious policy, civil marriage, and divorce were their primary targets. Simultaneously, the rise of totalitarian parties in Europe (fascists and Nazis) was reflected in the political radicalization in Spain. The failed coup of General Sanjurjo in Seville (1932) was the first attempt to violently overthrow the republican legality.
Right-wing political groups crystallized in 1932 with the formation of the Spanish Confederation of Autonomous Right (CEDA), directed by Gil Robles. With a social-Catholic orientation, CEDA soon had a strong presence in Castile. Its program aimed to review the Constitution and repeal the secular laws of the republic, with radical opposition to land reform. Only the PNV and the Catalan League, right-wing nationalists, remained outside the CEDA.
Following Hitler’s rise to power in Germany in 1933, Ramiro Ledesma had created JONS (Junta National Syndicalist Offensive) with a Nazi orientation in 1931. In 1933, José Antonio Primo de Rivera created the FE (Spanish Falange). Both parties (later merged) advocated the abolition of democracy, resorting to political violence (gangsterism). On the left, radicalism manifested in the continuous challenges to republican legality by the CNT, the increasing influence of the PCE among workers, and the division within the PSOE regarding political strategy. Two tendencies emerged: one pragmatic and moderate, led by Julián Besteiro and Indalecio Prieto, and another revolutionary, leaning towards communism, led by Francisco Largo Caballero.
The Republican-Socialist government fell as a result of the Casas Viejas events, and the elections held in 1933 altered the composition of the Cortes. CEDA secured nearly half of the seats, while Republicans and the left were in the minority. The abstention advocated by anarchists contributed to the electoral failure of the Republicans and leftist parties. From 1933-1936, Spanish politics became increasingly radicalized and polarized.
The first governments of the right, led by Lerroux and supported by the CEDA, launched a policy to dismantle the Republican reforms: the religious policy was modified, lands were returned to the landowners, and the military coup participants of Sanjurjo were pardoned, etc. The government’s policy unleashed social radicalization, and the PSOE, in opposition, organized general strikes by farmers in Andalusia and Extremadura in 1934, resulting in deaths and over ten thousand prisoners. In 1934, Lerroux gave CEDA three ministries.
This last move, with a large number of monarchists in their ranks and with language close to fascist propaganda, especially in its organization of youth, was accused by the Left and the Republicans as an instrument to end the republic or, at worst, to establish a totalitarian state of Nazi-fascist character. The result was the polarization of positions. The UGT and CNT, with other leftist organizations, established an alliance in 1934 to bring down the government and make CEDA a radical social revolution. The alliance UHP (Brothers Union of Workers) called for the insurrection.
The uprising failed in most of Spain. In Catalonia, the Catalan government abolished the autonomy and self-government imprisoned, but in Asturias, unions took control of mining areas and the capital and other cities, leading to the Revolution of Asturias in 1934. Government repression was assigned to the elite troops of the African army commanded by General Franco. The repression was brutal, foreshadowing the civil war, with the Socialist Republic of Asturias drowned in blood: 20,000 arrested and approximately 4,000 dead and shot.
In 1935, radical-cedistas governments amounted to more conservative military handed over the Ministry of Agriculture to landowners, approached the Vatican and was marred by scandals economic. In December 1935, the President of the Republic, Alcalá Zamora, appointed Portela Valladares as prime minister with the task of calling new elections and launched a more moderate (centrist) approach.