THE SECOND REPUBLIC: THE RADICAL-CEDISTA BIENNIUM. THE REVOLUTION OF 1934. THE ELECTIONS OF 1936 AND THE POPULAR FRONT

The first government of the Second Republic presided over by Manuel Azaña and that occupied the years 1931, 1932 and until the resignation of Azaña in September of 1933 did not have the necessary support.

On the one hand, the left republicans and the socialists (all of them allies in the government) did not have a unitary program and soon they marked their differences.

On the other hand, the reforms carried out by the government of Manuel Azaña during the so-called Reform Biennium were opposed by different groups and the dissatisfaction of a large part of society. The peasants did not see the promised Agrarian Reform, the communists and anarchists were not satisfied with Azaña's proposals and mobilized the working and peasant masses against the government (Casas Viejas), the Church reacted to the treatment given to it, the army he did not accept the measures taken and especially did not accept the new autonomy statutes in draft (remember the coup d'état of General Sanjurjo in August 1932 in Seville), and the right once the first moments of the Republic are over, will be reorganized. But the events that led the head of the government to resign were the social movements, especially the case of Casas Viejas that forced the resignation of Manuel Azaña in September 1933.

The President of the Republic, Niceto Alcala-Zamora was forced to dissolve the Cortes and to call general elections in November 1933 and this time, the center right will get a majority in the polls.

THE RADICAL-CEDISTA BIENNIUM.

In the elections of 1933 the PSOE sank and the republicans became marginal, the group of Azaña was left with 5 deputies. The winners were Alejandro Lerroux with the Radical Party who won 102 seats and the CEDA of Gil Robles who won 115 seats.

Alcalá Zamora will commission Alejandro Lerroux to form a government, even though it has been the Gil Robles coalition that has had the most votes. He will justify it by arguing that in this way the left was not provoked. The Radical Party will govern alone but with the support of the CEDA in Congress. This decision will result in a weak government.

This government will have two distinct periods: the first of November 1933 until May 1934, in which only members of the Lerroux party participate; the second of May of 1934 until February of 1936, in which the entry into the government of members of the CEDA takes place, among them José Ma Gil Robles.

In the first place we must point out the reformist policy carried out by the new government. It was rather a rectifying policy of the most contested measures of the Azana government. The main measures that were carried out were:

·      Paralysis of the agrarian reform, the lands that had been expropriated will be returned, but the lease regime was maintained since it was more or less working.

·      Stoppage of military reform and designation for key posts of clearly anti-republican military like Franco, Goded or Mola. This new policy was completed with an amnesty for the participants in the Sanjurjo coup in 1932.

·      In religious matters an approach to the Catholic Church was carried out. It was achieved that the educational centers linked to the Church continued open and it was possible to approve the Law on Custodial Benefits which ensured a salary for the priests.

·      Confrontation of peripheral nationalisms. I brake to the project of Statute of Basque Autonomy, and confrontations with the Catalan Generalitat, that presided over Lluis Companys, leader of ERC, from January of 1934.

Secondly, to point out the serious polarization of the right and the left that occurred in Spain following the line of what was happening in the rest of Europe with the triumph of totalitarianism. Fascist groups appear that see in European fascisms a solution to the situation in Spain. These groups are the Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional Sindicalista, JONS led by Onésimo Redondo and Ramiro Ledesma Ramos; and the Spanish Falange, founded by José Antonio Primo de Rivera and that will join the JONS in 1934.

We also find communist totalitarian groups, which will follow the Moscow guidelines. We refer to the Communist Party of Spain, PCE, of which we highlight among its leaders Dolores Ibarruri "La Pasionaria". This group, following Stalin's rules, will carry out a purge of the anarchist members of their ranks, who in 1935 will form the POUM or Marxist Unification Worker's Party in 1935 and whose most important leader will be Andreu Nin. Meanwhile the PCE will soften its positions looking for a rapprochement of the left parties of tendency close to Marxism in order to configure an electoral option called the Popular Front.

With this radicalization underway, one of the most serious events of the Second Republic will take place. Some historians have seen in him the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, other historians is an armed attempt of social revolution in the style of what was the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. In any case, the fact was on the one hand the beginning of the fall of the government, on the other hand the trigger for the unification of the left and in any way the materialization of the confrontation between the two radicalized groups: the right and the left.

We are talking about the REVOLUTIONARY REVOLUTION OF OCTOBER OF 1934. Lerroux's decision to introduce three CEDA ministers into the government provoked the reaction of the more radical left who understood this fact as a betrayal of the Republic (the left groups had identified the Republic with its own ideology).

It all started when the PSOE called a revolutionary general strike for October 5, 1934. Poorly organized and without the support of the anarchists, it barely had repercussions in most of Spain. The exception was in Catalonia and Asturias.

In Catalonia: the rebellion was more a political than a social revolution, since as a result of the unconstitutionality of the Crop Contracts Law approved by the Catalan Parliament, the President of the Generalitat, Lluis Companys proclaimed the Catalan Republic (Estat Catalá) within of the Spanish Federal Republic. The insurgents were imprisoned in the Generalitat building and were arrested for the actions of General Batet, detained and imprisoned. The Statute of Catalonia was suspended.

But the most important action was developed in Asturias. His character will be eminently social and revolutionary. Its objective was to replace the bourgeois Republic with a proletarian state similar to that of the Stalinist USSR. For this, the CNT and the UGT joined forces in the Union of Proletarian Brothers, the UHP. Civil members of the society were made with arms of the army, of the forces of order and of the dynamite of the mines and provoked a true revolution (they controlled the cities of Avilés, Trubia and Gijón and besieged Oviedo) that had the country in suspense during several days.

Finally the government sent an army corps, the Legion, which quelled the rebellion. The result was more than 1300 deaths between both sides, more than double the number of wounded and around 30,000 detainees, among them Companys, Azaña, Prieto, Largo Caballero ...

After the revolution of October 1934, 5 members of the CEDA entered the government, with Gil Robles as defense minister, who appointed General Franco as Chief of Staff among others.

At this point the situation of the government of Lerroux was unsustainable began to make public a series of scandals of political corruption among which we highlight the Escandalo del Estraperlo. This scandal occurred in connection with an electric roulette game that was actually a scam. His name Estraperlo comes from the merger of two names, Strauss and his partner Perl. (It was a game of chance, similar to a roulette ball and the cylinder of the numbers were operated by a button that was controlled by a clockwork mechanism, thanks to which the banker could always win. From May to August 34, Its creators tried to introduce this game in Spain, for which they had to solve procedures that would legally authorize their use but it did not happen like that.The game, banned in the Spain of 35, could have been introduced thanks to the money that certain personalities received to facilitate their The fact jumped to the public opinion like "a scandal", since certain people who occupied public positions, as well as close to these they would have received money for their establishment.After several attempts (San Sebastián and Palma de Mallorca) in which closed, Strauss would have tried blackmail, asking for compensation to compensate him (for the investment made), and not getting it, I denounced to your political protectors. The affair would cause the resignation in chain and the cessation of several front-line politicians, after a debate that transcended the courts about the political responsibilities of some of its supporters. Thus, there were consequences regarding the personal image of Lerroux and its close circle.)

It was about influence peddling by members of the government. In view of this situation, Lerroux resigned (October 25, 1935). This forced President Alcalá Zamora to name Chapaprieta a new head of government who was exploited by the scandals of political corruption of members of the Lerroux government. His government lasted two months. In this situation, Alcalá-Zamora appointed Manuel Portela Valladares as head of the government, which contradicted Gil Robles, who believed that having a majority in the Cortes would be the ideal candidate for the position. This meant the end of support in the Cortes. In January 1936, Alcalá Zamora dissolved the Cortes and called General Elections for February 1936, which gave the Popular Front the new left coalition the triumph.

THE POPULAR FRONT: February 1936 to July 1936.

In the general elections of February 1936 the political parties will attend in an atmosphere of strong radicalization, presenting the following candidacies:

The Popular Front: it was a coalition created in January 1936 by the Republican Left, PSOE, PCE, POUM, ERC, Catalan and Galician nationalists and was supported by the CNT.

On the right, the CEDA, the party of José Calvo Sotelo, Renovación Española, was presented. Separately, the Spanish Falange was presented.

The elections of February 16, 1936 gave the victory to the Popular Front, (it would win in the south of the Peninsula and in the cities and the right won in the north and the interior). The number of seats did not have a big difference: the PSOE won 99 seats; the PCE 17; Republican Left (Azaña) 87; CEDA 88; National Block (Calvo Sotelo) 12 seats.

After the elections there will be a change in the State Presidency. D. Niceto Alcalá Zamora will be dismissed from his post and appointed Manuel Azaña instead. As head of the government Casares Quiroga was appointed.

The new government carried out a reformist policy: amnesty for the prisoners of October 1934; restoration of the Catalan Statute; distance from Madrid of soldiers who could be considered dangerous for the government of the Popular Front (Franco to the Canary Islands, Goded to the Balearic Islands and Mola to Navarre); the agrarian reform is resumed, producing an occupation of illegal farms by day laborers; new statutes of autonomy (of the Basque Country and Galicia) are processed.

The polarization of left and right is increasingly radicalized taking the confrontations to the street where every day there are many clashes with deaths.

Meanwhile, some soldiers (Sanjurjo, Mola, Goded, Fanjul, Franco, Varela ...) have met and are planning an intervention if the Popular Front does not end its extreme acts. They will be supported by politicians like Gil Robles, Calvo Sotelo, Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera ...

The situation in the spring of 36 was one of great political instability and radicalization. The causes were first the dismissal of Alcalá Zamora that will be replaced by Azaña leaving him out of the political game due to the scarce competitions. The appointment of Casares Quiroga as head of the government will show a weak political very unrepresentative. On the other hand, agrarian reform will radicalize the situation in the countryside. Third, the growing deterioration of public order and the ineffectiveness of the government to maintain order will lead to continuous confrontations in which the Church will be the most affected sector (between February and June of 36 churches were burned). But the confrontation also occurred in Congress.

On July 12, 1936, an officer of the Assault Guard, Lieutenant Castillo, was assassinated by rightist groups. Before this, members of the state security forces decide to put an end to the two leaders of the right, Gil Robles and Calvo Sotelo. Gil Robles can not be found at home but Calvo Sotelo is taken from his home and murdered at dawn on July 13, 1936.

This event will be the trigger for the uprising of July 18, 1936 and the beginning of the Civil War.