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Contents List of Maps viii Preface ix Acknowledgements xvi Abbreviations xviii Maps xxi 1 The Painful Road to Modernity 1 2 The Second Republic (1931–1936): A Brief Essay in Democracy 27 3 The Distorting Mirror:The International Dimension of the Spanish Civil War 60 4 Apocalypse in 1936 Spain 92 5 Breaking the Stalemate (December 1936–March 1938) 125 6 The Republic’s Defeat (March 1938–March 1939): Chronicle of a Death Foretold? 157 7 Epilogue:The Legacy of the Spanish Civil War 184 Notes 194 Select Bibliography 235 Index 249 vii 1 The Painful Road to Modernity So far this year, more than 20 people have been killed by the Civil Guard . In fact, Spain lives in a state of perpetual civil war: on the one hand, the people who fight peacefully for their livelihood and rights, on the other, the authorities that deny them their livelihood and rights at gun-point.1 The fading charm of Spanish Liberalism The origins of the Spanish Civil War are deeply rooted in the country’s history. The religious fanaticism and fierce rhetoric surrounding the conflict were largely borrowed from the legendary Reconquista, the almost 800-year struggle to expel the Moors from the peninsula. The clash between state centralism and peripheral nationalisms also evoked the War of Succession of the early eighteenth century, when the Bourbons crushed Catalan autonomy. Equally, the cruelty and passion displayed by both sides mirrored the fierce brutality of the nineteenth- century civil wars fought between Carlists and Liberals.2 Nowhere else in Europe had the transition from feudalism to capitalism produced such a protracted and merciless conflict. Closer in time, the failure of the Restoration Monarchy (1874–1931) is of paramount importance in understanding the political radicalism and social polarisation that finally exploded in the carnage of 1936–9. The return of the Bourbons to the throne in December 1874 seem- ingly inaugurated a period of political stability based on a modern constitutional order. Yet elements of the ancien re´gime were still domi- nant in political and civil society, and their persistence, in an era of rapid cultural and economic modernisation, led to the social and political upheaval that in Spain (as elsewhere in Europe) characterised the inter-war years. In this context, the Spanish fratricidal conflict was 1 2 THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR the fiercest battle in a European civil war, which had been raging on the continent since the Bolshevik seizure of power in October 1917, and included, amongst other events, the consolidation of Soviet Russia, the rise of Fascism in Italy, the Nazi takeover in Germany and the establishment of royalist and military dictatorships throughout central and eastern Europe.3 By the end of the nineteenth century, Spain, once the largest colonial empire in the world, was a country relegated to the sidelines of Europe. Her stunning defeat by the United States in 1898 brought to an end the last glimmers of imperial splendour. In an era of Social Darwinism, when the health of nations appeared to be marked by the acquisition of colonies, Spain seemed sick and troubled. The loss in that war of most of the overseas territories (Cuba, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Guam, etc.) exposed her overall inability to remain on a par with the leading powers of the Western world. In this moment of trauma and decline, the nation seemed united by the new magical formula: Regeneracio´n, or the thorough overhauling of Spain’s social, economic and ideological foundations. With the country enjoying an artistic and literary golden age, it was the intellectuals who, by concentrating their attention on Spain’s maladies, undermined the moral legitimacy of the regime. The so-called ‘Generation of 1898’ was formed by an eclectic group of novelists, poets and philosophers who contemplated Spain’s obscurantism and backwardness with pessi- mism. Their prescribed solutions ranged from Pı´ o Baroja and Miguel de Unamuno’s progressive belief in mobilisation from below to Jose´ Ortega y Gasset’s search for a moral elite and Joaquı´ n Costa’s call for a strong figure, ‘an Iron Surgeon’, to extirpate the corruption of politics and carry out national regeneration from above.4 These approaches constituted the two roads to modernity, the democratic and the authoritarian, whose final clash would take place in 1936. In all external aspects, fin de sie`cle Spain possessed a modern parliamentarian system. Following the restoration of the Bourbons after a military coup in December 1874, the architect of the regime, the Conservative Antonio Ca´ novas del Castillo, brought to an end the strife of previous decades by conceiving a political formula through which the governing elites could enjoy power without the need to resort to praetorian intervention as the only instrument of change. He agreed to alternate in office with another political party, the Liberals, led by Pra´ xedes Mateo Sagasta. The 1876 Constitution consolidated the fundamental freedoms of expression and association; Catholicism was declared the state religion but private practice of other faiths was THE PAINFUL ROAD TO MODERNITY 3 allowed; political parties and trade unions were permitted to exist and to voice their views in a large number of local and national newspapers. With the introduction in 1890 of universal male suffrage and trial by jury, Spain appeared to be in the vanguard of Europe’s modern political orders. In reality, two dynastic or monarchist formations, Conservatives and Liberals, enjoyed a monopoly of power, alternating in office so systematically that the practice was known as turno pacı´fico (peaceful rotation).5 However, they were hardly parties in the modern sense of the word. Apart from timid anticlericalism and a greater emphasis on civil values on the part of the Liberals, there was little difference between them. Both were groups of notables linked by clientelism and endogamy. Stunning levels of nepotism resulted in parliaments resembling committees of friends exchanging verbose speeches and avoiding clashes over real issues.6 This governing elite was linked with the ruling economic classes, the landed and financial elites, while the commercial and industrial bourgeoisie was the junior partner.7 At the apex of the Liberal order was the Crown. In Restoration Spain, the principle of national sovereignty shared by monarch and parliament concealed the potential for autocracy.8 The king was the commander-in-chief of the armed forces and, as head of state, could dissolve parliament, appoint or dismiss governments, veto legislation and sign international treaties. He also possessed vast powers of patron- age with the conferment of titles and rewards. During the Restoration, the alliance of altar and throne was re-created. As religious congrega- tions expanded, the clergy experienced a revival in power and wealth, obtaining almost total control of primary and secondary education, as well as a leading role in social functions such as the operating of charitable trusts and the running of orphanages and hospitals. If the Church was the ideological guardian of the monarchy, the armed forces were its praetorian guard. The second clause of the Law of the Constitution of the Army, of 29 November 1878, stated that the military had as its primary function the defence of the nation from its internal enemies. Thus, any social unrest was followed automatically by the suspension of the constitution and the declaration of martial law, granting the army final control over the maintenance of public order.9 Jose´ Berruezo, a leading Anarcho-syndicalist in 1920s Santa Coloma de Gramenet (Barcelona), experienced the clerical intolerance and police abuse of those who pursued social or political alternatives to the established canon. Aged 14, he was grabbed by a civil guard and branded ‘a son of a whore’ when trying to convince miners to attend classes in the local workers’ institute. In his small town, the most 4 THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR prominent opponent of proletarian cultural centres was none other than the local priest, Don Celeste.10 The functioning of Liberal Spain hinged on electoral falsification, widespread political apathy and, when necessary, physical violence. Elections in Spain did not produce governments: rather each adminis- tration rigged the results in advance and ensured a working majority in the next Cortes or parliament. Fundamental in underpinning the electoral results were the so-called caciques (local political bigwigs). Varying in composition from province to province, the caciques could be made up of moneylenders, landowners or their agents, civil servants and even priests. They were the link between the distant and alien state and the estranged localities.11 They delivered the votes of their con- stituency and, in return, were allowed to run their areas as private fiefdoms and to bend legislation to benefit their clientele and punish the recalcitrant. Caciquismo in the country and the governing oligarchy in Madrid relied upon a background of slow economic development, low political awareness and widespread cultural backwardness. The endurance of that situation was a deterrent to national modernisation and resulted in the unchallenged domination of the vested interests, as well as in a socially and economically fragmented Spain. By leaving education largely in the hands of the Church, the Liberal state did not forge a national mechanism to give a common sense of belonging to the citizenry.12 Nor could the army fulfil this function. It lacked the pres- tige of its Prussian counterpart or the revolutionary tradition of the French army. Social imperialism – successfully used in other European states to divert domestic tension – could not be used in Spain.13 The unfair recruitment system (quintas), by which the wealthy could buy themselves out of the military service, the frequent use of the armed forces to quell social unrest and the slaughter of some 60,000 soldiers from humble origins in the disastrous colonial wars of the 1890s quashed any patriotic sentiment within the working classes.

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