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Background

Spain in the 19th century

Spain's history since the 16th century was characterized by its resistance to the ideals of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution that profoundly influenced many of its neighbors to the north, and as late as the Victorian era Spanish society opposed modern secularism, democracy, liberalism, and constitutionalism. Spain found itself in very different conditions from the rest of western Europe, and was falling behind the other world powers technologically, economically, and militarily — including the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and the Anglo-American countries. Moreover, Spain found itself in this condition at a time when the other powers that did embrace modernism had undergone political change and became less confident in their own status, which meant that the effort of modernizing Spain brought with it the influx of new radical and totalitarian ideologies, such as communism and derzhavism, making the country all the more volatile in the early years of the 20th century. Spain's monarchy was able to suppress the westernizing forces in Spanish society until the Napoleonic Wars in the early 1800s destabilized the country, setting it on a long course for the rest of the century that culminated with the Civil War in 1926.

The upheavals of the Napoleonic era led to the independence of South America, Central America, and Mexico, and this, combined with the defeat in the Spanish–American War of 1898, reduced the formerly great Spanish Empire to a few small bits in Africa. Significant portions of the African territory awarded to Spain by the Berlin Conference in 1884 were outside of direct Spanish control at that time. Meanwhile the Spanish Army, which had become oversized over the centuries, took up a massive portion of the national budget while being left with little to do after the loss of the empire. Much of the Army was sent to defend Spanish holdings in Morocco, where its leaders quickly decided to take on a mission of expanding further beyond the coast into the Moroccan interior. This gave the officers the opportunity to gain promotions through merit and to justify the fortune being spent on the Army as living conditions in the country declined. The growing discontent among the Spanish working class in the large cities was opposed by the ruling elite of wealthy land owners, the Catholic Church, the monarchist factions (divided between the Legitimists and the Carlists), and increasingly the officer corps. There was a disproportionately high number of officers, and money was constantly being wasted, with the Spanish Army becoming the most inefficient in western Europe.

In this situation, the Army launched its conquest of Morocco in 1909 with support from King Alfonso XIII, who had risen to the throne in 1874 as part of the military's response to revolutionary agitation. The defeat in the war of 1898 widened the disagreements between the progressive and reactionary factions of Spanish society, and the Rif War would increase this even further. A string of Spanish humiliations, leading up to the Disaster of Annual, one of the worst defeats in Spanish military history, caused a public outcry and demands for an investigation into the Army. Alfonso XIII tried to block these efforts and made himself unpopular. The scandal led to the majority of seats in the Congress of Deputies going to the Left in the 1923 Spanish general election, which resulted in Alfonso XIII abdicating under pressure – after failing to find enough support from the Army or the Civil Guard – and going into exile in Portugal. A new government was formed by a coalition of parties from the Left, with some representing the liberal bourgeois intellectuals while others stood for proletarian socialism.

The Second Republic

The Liberal Party initially led the government of the Second Spanish Republic that emerged in April 1923. Although it was dominated by the liberal bourgeois, which spent its short time in power attempting to enact constitutionalist, laissez-faire, anti-militarist, social, and parliamentary reforms, the new government was immediately put into a difficult position between the Right and the far Left. Unlike in other western countries, Spain had not by then developed a tradition of parliamentary democracy or political liberalism, had a weak middle class, and half of the population was illiterate, so the prerequisites for developing a non-totalitarian, liberal, and democratic state did not exist.

The liberal group faced increasing pressure from the proletarian Left in the middle of the 1920s, which opposed their laws defending private property, and began making an alliance with the Right, abandoning their original anti-militarist and anti-Catholic position. There was a divide among the socialists as well, with a small faction that believed Spain had to go through the process of liberalization and industrialization before it would be ready for socialism, and a more radical majority that called for immediate revolution, led by Luis Guido. These dynamics were made more complex by the tension between Castilian centralism, which was associated with the monarchy and the Army, and regional separatism in Catalonia, the Basque Country, Galicia, and elsewhere. What industry Spain had was concentrated in the cities of Catalonia and the Basque Country, so separatism also became connected with revolutionary socialism.

Between 1923 and 1926, the Spanish Liberal government was opposed from both the Left and the Right, with the latter being the more powerful as it held the economic, military, and ideological power in the form of the land owners, the Army, and the Church. This meant that the Liberal reform program was not implemented to a large degree, which would have included educational and military reforms, separation of Church and state, agrarian reform, and social welfare assistance for the farmers and workers. The only field in which there was a lot of success was education – tens of thousands of new teachers were hired, thousands of new schools and libraries were opened, and the minimum salary of teachers was increased, while education for adults were promoted. There was also a strong push to create a smaller, more efficient, and leaner Army, a measure with popular support that was driven by the recent defeats in Morocco. The number of officers was reduced from over 20,000 to less than 10,000, with those who retired being given full pensions. The number of enlisted men was reduced to around 100,000 and their pay, which before had been next to nothing, was increased significantly. The result of this was that the country saved several million pesos in surplus the first year after the reform because of the reduced military spending. The only problem was that many of the officers that chose retirement were republicans, meaning that the Army that remained became even more monarchist than the pre-1923 army. The officers were also disappointed by the lower pay and less opportunities for promotion, and so they openly despised the republic.

The other reforms were enacted partially or not at all. The plans to end the annual grant to the Catholic Church in Spain, to put Church property under state ownership, forbid teaching in the school system by Catholic clergy, require Church organizations and orders to publish financial statements like corporations, establish religious liberty, provide credit to farmers so they could buy land or supplies on favorable terms, confiscate aristocratic estates to sell them to farmers, and create a new class of farmer-landowners made little progress. The economic and logistical requirements to implement these schemes were not met, and they ran into fierce opposition from the conservative parts of Spanish society as soon as they were proposed. In the meantime, a monarchist and nationalist conspiracy was being orchestrated from abroad by the former King Alfonso, living in Portugal. He initially faced difficulties because the conservatives criticized him for leaving the country without a struggle, and the Holy See's ambassador was discredited for taking a neutral position on the republic. Alfonso's alliance of army officers, the Carlists, and his own supporters began funneling money to conspirators inside of Spain. In particular, José Sanjurjo and Miguel Primo de Rivera, emerged as the leaders of the monarchists in the Spanish Army, and through him funding and arms was sent by Alfonso and the government of Portugal to the rebels.

Meanwhile on the Left, the Spanish Landonist Workers' Party (Partido Landonista Obrero Español, PLOE) grew from being a fringe element of the republican coalition to increasing its support while the popular backing of the Liberals cratered. The failure of the social and economic reforms was criticized as weakness, and in October 1924 Catalonia, Asturias, and the Basque Country experienced uprisings by workers, organized by PLOE agitators. The workers, supported by socialists and anarchists, were able to take over parts of cities and forced the government to respond. Troops of the Spanish Legion, including Moroccan irregulars, were deployed by the state to put down the revolt, which alienated the working class further. The crackdown in the fall of 1924 led to thousands of arrests among the PLOE and many socialist newspapers were forced to shut down. The usage of Muslim soldiers by the government in some of the most Catholic parts of Spain, that historically had never been conquered by the Arabs, upset the monarchists and conservatives in the Army. In the months leading up to the 1926 Spanish general election, which had been called early to build support for the government's reform program, saw increasing terrorism by both the PLOE and the Falangists, a rising new movement on the Right.

Outbreak of war

As conspiracies against the republic emerged from both the Left and the Right were growing, its government proved to be inept and unable to counter them. The June 1926 election saw the victory of the Left and the creation of a coalition government between the PLOE, the Liberal Party, and various smaller parties. Luis Guido of the PLOE was to become Prime Minister and lead the cabinet. The Right refused to accept this outcome, and began planning a military revolt, organized by Sanjurjo and Rivera. Assassinations and street fighting continued intensifying, and the governments of Portugal, France, and Germany made contact with the rebel leaders, offering weapons and funding in support. Planes flown by Portuguese and German crews were sent to Spain for this purpose in early July. After numerous private meetings between Spain's top military officials, a cabal of prominent generals and admirals signed a pronunciamiento, or Declaration of Opposition, to Luis Guido and his leftist government. The official reason for military opposition to the government was that Guido and his leftist coalition was attempting to establish a Landonist dictatorship and would "strip the rights of patriotic and loyal Spaniards". After a government-commissioned historical review of the Spanish Civil War initiated in 2006, it was revealed that the real motive behind the opposition was Guido's attempt to curb the major influence the military had in the Spanish government.

The initial military revolt that began on July 17, 1926, was a failure: only the Army and the police had risen up, but the Spanish Navy was controlled by revolutionaries and the Spanish Air Force also stayed loyal. The rebellions were put down except in a few isolated pockets. In response, the PLOE began arming militias of workers and labor unions.