During its chaotic 19th century Spain went from being an absolute monarchy that controlled one
of the largest empires on the face of the planet, to being, at most, a middle-ranking,
somewhat dysfunctional power, with a population that was tearing itself apart over the nature
of the country’s destiny. And that fight would spill over into the 20th century, and culminate
in the newly-minted 2nd Spanish Republic descending into all out civil war in 1936.
But today, Spain is a stable, fairly-prosperous, liberal democracy. So then what was it that drove
the Spanish of the 1930’s into a devastating civil war, how did Generalissimo Fransisco
Franco’s nationalists win, and then how, ultimately, did Spain become democratic?
Well, under Kings Alfonso XII and Alfonso XIII, whose reigns cover the period from 1874
until the creation of the 2nd Republic, Spain was governed under a system informally called El Turno
Pacifico. When, through corruption and election rigging, Spain’s main centre-left and centre-right
parties exchanged power, while keeping everyone else out. Like the old absolute monarchy,
it wasn’t a particularly democratic system, just a slightly larger group of people held power, but it
was fairly stable and secure in its position. That all ended though in 1923 with the creation, with
royal support, of a military dictatorship led by General Miguel Primo de Rivera. The dictatorship,
especially its disastrous war against colonial rebels in Morocco (which it did win, with French
help, though at the cost of an enormous amount of blood and treasure) tainted the monarchy in
the eyes of the Spanish people. So when Primo de Rivera was forced to resign, they made it clear
to the king, by voting for republicans in the 1931 municipal elections, that he was no longer
wanted. Alfonso XIII went into exile, and the republicans established a new state apparatus.
And, naturally, that made the military, which was no longer in charge,
as well as conservatives and fascists on the right, who would now have, at least on paper,
a much more difficult time getting into power a little bit upset.
So, the Spanish Civil War, like most civil wars, was fought over ideology with combatants
on both sides believing themselves to be fighting for the good of their nation;
to be saving it from the evils of extreme left or right-wing ideals, depending on where one stood.
Also like most civil wars, it was exceptionally bloody for both soldiers and civilians alike,
and the line between those two was often blurred.
In total upwards of 500,000 people died over the course of the three-year conflict. Many
of them didn’t actually die in combat though and instead were massacred by one side or the other.
The Second Spanish Republic had been an unstable state even before the outbreak of the war, but
broadly speaking, both then and more concretely during the fighting there were two conflicting
camps. On the left was the cause of republicanism, or the Popular Front, which included or was
supported by Communists, Socialists, and Anarchists, but also less extreme Liberals. All of
them wanted some vague form of a Spanish Republic, but they were by no means always in agreement on
how that should look or be accomplished. They even occasionally fought amongst themselves.
Republican leaders included the Spanish President, Manuel Azaña, a liberal and two socialist Prime
Ministers: Francisco Largo Caballero until May 1937 and then Juan Negrin. The Spanish Navy
largely sided with the Republicans. On the right were the Nationalists led by Franco who was made
their head of state in October 1936, three months after the war began. Unlike the Popular Front,
the Nationalists suffered relatively little from infighting. Franco brought together the Fascist
Falange party (founded by the son of Primo de Rivera), Catholic Conservatives, and both Carlist
and Alfonsoist monarchists. All of those groups officially merged into Nationalist Spain’s sole
legal political party, commonly referred to as just the Falange, about a year into the Civil War.
The 1936 Spanish elections were won, narrowly, by the left-wing Popular Front,
and they immediately began to take measures to ensure the military’s loyalty to the Republic.
Which was smart because at the same time a cabal of generals led by Jose Sanjurjo,
and including Franco, was planning a coup.
Not a civil war. That was never their intention. Instead, the Nationalists thought that they could
swiftly and relatively bloodlessly seize Spain’s governing institutions through coordinated action
by army garrisons across the country. They also had an ace up their sleeve in the form of Franco’s
Army of Africa, Spain’s most elite military force. The coup really didn’t go as planned
though and fierce fighting broke out between Nationalist soldiers and Republican partisans,
supported, mostly, by local police forces, on July 17th, 1936. Most Spanish territory remained under
the Republic’s control including the capital, Madrid, as well as Barcelona and Valencia.
The Nationalists only solidly controlled Leon and Castile in the north-west,
but they also exerted more tenuous influence in parts of Andalusia, including the city of Seville.
The death of General Sanjurjo in a plane crash only three days into the war left Franco
as the face of the Nationalist rebellion, though he had a problem right off the bat;
when the coup began his Army of Africa was, well, in Africa, specifically Spanish Morocco which it
took over easily, but with the navy supporting the Republic and effectively no air force to speak of,
Franco had no way of getting it to Peninsular Spain. Luckily for him,
Germany and Italy had a vested interest in the rise of another European anti-left-wing dictator,
and they, especially the Germans, had plenty of airpower to spare.
With it now in Spain, Franco marched his army north from Andalusia before winning
the battle of Merida in August, and uniting the Nationalist territories. A few months later,
he placed Madrid under a siege that would last all the way until the end of the war, 2 ½ years later.
The Republican government fled almost immediately to Valencia, but Madrid’s
citizens fought tooth and nail to prevent their city from falling to the Nationalist cause.
They weren’t the only ones though as thousands of leftist volunteers from all across the
world, including many from neutral countries, flocked to Republican Spain.
Governments though tended to be much more cautious than their citizens, and the only country to
really support the Republicans was the Soviet Union. Other European powers, notably Britain,
and to a lesser extent, France, had no incentive to get involved in the war. So they,
along with the Soviets, Germany, and Italy, as well as a variety of other lesser powers,
signed a treaty of non-intervention, pledging not to support either side, directly or indirectly,
during the war. The United States also pursued neutrality, but it didn’t officially join.
Though the treaty of non-intervention was not really adhered to, well,
Britain and France mostly did, but the Soviet Union,
and the Italians and Germans, who continued to support the Nationalists after their airlift,
disregarded it to the point that non-intervention was really just intervention. All three sent
weapons and ammunition to the side they supported and Italy, in particular, sent thousands of
its own troops to aid Franco. The Portuguese dictatorship also assisted the Nationalists.
With his territories connected Franco began to launch offensives against the rest of the country;
the Republic remained on the backfoot for essentially all of the rest of the war.
Madrid remained defiant in the face of his siege so Franco endeavoured to take
basically everything else and cut off the city completely. In Spring and Summer of 1937,
he took the Basque Country and Asturias. In contrast to Madrid, the largest Basque city,
Bilbao, held out for only two months. It was during the campaign in the Basque country that
planes of Germany’s Condor Legion, an arm of the military sent to aid the Nationalists,
bombed the city of Guernica, killing somewhere between 150 and 1600 civilians.
In 1938 Franco pushed to Spain’s northern Mediterranean coast and cut off Catalonia
from the rest of the Republic’s territories. The Republicans fought what was essentially
a last stand at the battle of Ebro between July and November, but while they suffered
thousands of casualties they hardly made a dent in the Nationalist advance.
By this point, it was all over, the Republic just hadn’t realized it yet. Barcelona fell on
January 26th, and the Popular Front, which despite their differences had managed to stay together
for the duration of the war, broke. Colonel Segismundo Casado, supported by Anarchists and
some Socialists tossed out the Prime Minister, claiming that he wanted a Communist takeover,
as if with the Republican army collapsing there was anything left to take over at that point.
Casado attempted to negotiate with Franco, but the Generalissimo refused to accept anything
short of unconditional surrender. Which Casado promptly did. The siege of Madrid was won by
the Nationalists on March 28th, and Franco declared his victory complete on April 1st.
So then how did Franco’s new one-party, arguably Fascistic state, transition, largely peacefully,
into democracy? Well, from the 1950’s to the mid 70’s Spain experienced an economic boom
as hardline, falangist autarkists were sidelined, and a new generation of technocrats took the helm.
They opened up Spain to the world, though Franco remained a staunch anti-communist,
but despite embracing western economics, he didn’t bring about democratic reform.
What he did do was keep monarchists in line by officially declaring Spain to
be a Kingdom again in 1947, though of course, he would be el Caudillo, or regent, for life.
In 1969 Franco appointed Juan Carlos de Borbon, a grandson of Alfonso XIII,
as his successor. Since he was 10 years old the Prince of Spain, as Juan Carlos was then known,
had been raised within Francoist circles and was widely expected to at least attempt
to continue the dictator’s policies upon his accession in 1975.
Instead, as King Juan Carlos I, he dismissed Franco’s last Prime Minister, and appointed a
new government which facilitated the approval of a new constitution. It was put to the test
in 1981 when Francoist army officers attacked the Spanish Parliament in the name of the King,
but Juan Carlos publicly condemned their actions, calling for the continuation of democracy,
and the Parliament building was retaken without bloodshed. His actions made
Spain into the decentralized democractic, constitutional monarchy, that it is today.
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see how it lost Gibraltar to the United Kingdom, in the video to the left.
And as always, I’ve been James, and thank you for watching Look Back History.