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- Identity: the
building blocks of
2. Literature
and philosophy
3. Art and
architecture
4. Performing
arts
5. Cinema
and fashion
6. Media and
communications
7. Food and drink 8. Living culture:
the details of
Calm before the storm: a brief dictatorship
The factions hovered in the background during a
misleading period of stability in the 1920s. General
Miguel Primo de Rivera muscled his way into a
prime ministerial role alongside the acquiescent
Alfonso XIII in 1923, and his dictatorship with perks
initiated economic growth and improved infrastructure.
However, undone by the beginnings of the Depression
in 1930, he was forced to move aside.The polarised
elements re-emerged and began manoeuvring, and
when elections in 1931 revealed a rising tide of
republicanism, Alfonso XIII fled to France - beckoning
in Spain’s Second Republic.
The Second Republic fights the tide
The Second Republic began in buoyant mood.
Intellectuals approved of the new order, women got
the vote and a lefty coalition initiated a series of reforms
to disconnect church from state, deal out land to the
peasants and upgrade education. Unfortunately, they
went too far for some and not nearly far enough for
others.The political extremes – including anarchists,
communists and the Falangists, a violent fascist
movement started by Primo de Rivera’s son – began
pulling Spain apart with riots, strikes and assassinations.
Government swung to the right in the 1933 elections
and Catalonia rebelled, briefly declaring independence.
Miners rose up to take control of Asturias and were
bluntly pushed back down by the army that included
a certain General Francisco Franco. Deeply divided,
Spain lurched violently out of control. With the anarchist
movement over a million strong and the Falange
enjoying surging support, the army was perhaps an
outside bet for making a first move against the Popular
Front government elected in February 1936.Yet it was
they who intervened and started the Civil War.
Cultural flourish
Despite the tumult of
Spanish life in the first
years of the 20thcentury,
culture entered a purple
patch, initially watered
by the Generation of 98.
Pablo Picasso and Antoni
Gaudí were both at work
in Barcelona. Valencian
Joaquín Sorolla was
capturing Spain’s unique
light in paint and Ignacio
Zuloaga its peasant folk.
The composer Manuel
de Falla was also busy
while his folksy friend,
poet Federico García
Lorca, enraptured his
readership. Esteemed
novelist Pío Baroja wrote
about social discontent
and in 1904 playwright
José Echegaray became
the first Spaniard to win
the Nobel Prize for
Literature.
