The Spanish Civil War 1043

Moroccan insurgents who wanted independence. In 1921 Moroccans
inflicted a shocking defeat on Spanish forces, costing the lives of 10,000
Spanish soldiers. This increased pressure from socialists and republicans
on the monarchy.
In 1923, General Miguel Primo de Rivera (1870-1930) seized power
with the support of the army and even the king. Four years later, espousing
“nation, church and king,” Primo de Rivera set out to “modernize” Spain,
ordering the construction of dams, sewers, roads, and prisons. He became a
familiar sight in the cafes and bars of Madrid, and such evenings occasion­
ally were followed by gushing, incoherent bulletins to the Spanish people
drafted on his return home. Primo de Rivera antagonized the left by pro­
mulgating a constitution in 1927 that left ministers no longer responsible
to the Cortes and upset army officers (so numerous that they made up one­
sixth of the army) by intervening in promotions. The weak Spanish econ­
omy eroded middle-class support for his regime. Primo de Rivera resigned
in 1930.
The following year, Alfonso XIII left the country after elections returned
an anti-monarchist majority to the Cortes. The army refused to save the
monarchy, because most officers now hoped to impose authoritarian rule.
The nobles, upon whose support the kings of Spain had for centuries
depended, sat back and watched the monarchy fall.
A coalition of republicans and moderate Socialists established the Second
Spanish Republic in 1931. The government of Manuel Azana (1880-1940)
enacted anticlerical measures, including the formal separation of church
and state, imposed new taxes, passed labor reforms, and enacted land reform,
including the outright expropriation of some of the largest estates. Strikes,
land seizures by peasants, and attacks on churches and convents drove
wealthy landowners and churchmen farther toward the anti-parliamentary
right. The Spanish Republic could not count on the support of the unions,
which wanted even more far-reaching social reforms, or of anarchists, who
wanted the abolition of the state itself. Azana fell from power in September

1933.

Thus began the republic’s two “black years,” marked by increasing social

and political violence. The inclusion of the right in a more conservative

republican government angered the left. During the “October Revolution” of

1934, leftists in Madrid, Catalan autonomists, and miners in the northern

province of Asturias rose up, quickly setting up local “soviets” throughout

their region. They held out for two weeks before being brutally crushed by

Moroccan troops commanded by General Francisco Franco (1892—1975).

In 1935, Radicals, Socialists, Communists, and some anarchists formed a

“Popular Front” in defense of the republic against the right. It barely won a

majority in elections held at the beginning of the next year, and then quickly

fell apart because of ideological differences amid high unemployment and

political violence. The Falange, a small paramilitary fascist movement begun

in 1933, further destabilized the republic, emulating the Italian fascist