Spanish Civil War

The Origins of the War 'Every Spaniard's ideal is to carry a statutory letter with a single provision, brief but imperious: "This Spaniard is entitled to do whatever he feels like doing".' -Angel Ganivet Prologue The Cortes, the parliament of Spain, stands halfway up the hill leading from the Prado to the Puerta del Sol.1 Bronze lions cast from guns captured in the Moroccan Wars guard its doors. At the summit of its Corinthian columns, Justice hopefully embraces Labour on a granite pediment. On 16 June 1936 this classical building was the centre of all Spain. Over five years had then passed since King Alfonso XIII had abandoned the Spanish throne-to avoid, as he put it (perhaps exaggerating his importance in the minds of his people), the disaster of a civil war. These had been five years of parliamentary activity. Before the King left, there had been eight years, from 1923 till 1931, when, most of the time under the amiable military dictator General Primo de Rivera, the Cortes had been deserted. Now, in June 1936, constitutional life in Spain seemed likely to be destroyed. An anxious group of middle-class liberals were gathered on the blue government bench at the front of the semi-circular debating chamber. Honest and intelligent men, they and their followers hated violence. They admired the pleasing, democratic ways of Britain, France and America. In both this hatred and this admiration, they were, however, unusual among Spaniards of their time, isolated even among the four hundred other deputies sitting or standing around and above them, as best they could, in the crowded debating chamber.1 Yet the men of this government had a fanaticism of their own hardly typical of the practical-minded countries which they desired to reproduce in Spain. Observe, for example, the Prime Minister, Santiago Casares Quiroga.2 A rich man from Galicia in the north-west of Spain, he had spent much of his life calling for home rule for his own poor province, although the only advantage the gallegos3 could have gained from this would have been a better rail service. Although Casares seemed to act according to liberal, Wilsonian principles formulated beyond the Pyrenees, no one could have been more Spanish. He was a passionate liberal when the rise of organized labour caused liberalism to seem as anachronistic as feudalism. Yet since there had not been in Spain a successful middle-class revolution on the model of that in France in 1789, one can hardly blame Casares and his friends for their attitude. In the early years of the republic, in 1931 and 1932, the eyes of Casares Quiroga (then minister of the interior) had appeared, to both friends and enemies, to burn in his small head like those of St Just. Now they were marked by a strange, ironic optimism, only explicable as a symptom of the tuberculosis from which he was already suffering. The nature of the crisis in Spain was described on 16 June 1936 by Gil Robles, the sleek, fat and almost bald, but still young, leader of the Spanish Catholic party, the CEDA.4 His party was conservative, and Catholic, and it included those who wanted to restore a monarchy, as well as those who desired a christian democratic republic. Some in the CEDA, particularly in the youth movement (JAP),1 were almost fascists; and some admired Dollfuss's corporate Austria. Gil Robles was eloquent and able, but hesitant and devious. He was as hated by monarchists and fascists as he was by socialists. Yet he had created the first middle-class Spanish mass party. Now he recalled that the government had had, since the elections in February, exceptional powers, including press censorship and the suspension of constitutional guarantees. Nevertheless, during those four months, 160 churches, he said, had been burned to the ground, there had been 269 political murders, and 1,287 assaults of varying seriousness. Sixty-nine political centres had been wreckThomas, Hugh is the author of 'Spanish Civil War', published 2001 under ISBN 9780375755156 and ISBN 0375755152.