The Second Republic
King Alfonso XIII leaves after municipal elections and Spain becomes a republic that brings in votes for women, land reform, secular schools and Catalan autonomy, amid rising polarisation.
- The Spanish Republic and Civil War — Julián Casanova, Cambridge University Press (2010)
- The Spanish Civil War: Reaction, Revolution and Revenge — Paul Preston, HarperPerennial (2006)
- Spain: A History — Raymond Carr (ed.), Oxford University Press (2000)
- Catalan Nationalism: Past and Present — Albert Balcells, Macmillan (1996)
After the Primo de Rivera dictatorship (1923–30), anti-monarchist parties swept the cities in municipal elections on 12 April 1931; two days later the Republic was proclaimed and Alfonso XIII left the country. The 1931 Constitution separated Church and State, gave women the vote (they first voted in 1933), legalised divorce and allowed regions to seek autonomy. Catalonia’s Statute passed in 1932.
- The Spanish Republic and Civil War — Julián Casanova, Cambridge University Press (2010)
- Spain: A History — Raymond Carr (ed.), Oxford University Press (2000)
Reform frightened landowners, the army and the Church, and frustrated landless labourers and anarchists who wanted more. After the right won in 1933, a left-wing revolutionary strike in Asturias in October 1934 was crushed by the army, with General Franco directing operations from Madrid; the same month Catalonia’s president Lluís Companys briefly proclaimed a Catalan state. The left-wing Popular Front narrowly won the February 1936 election, political killings multiplied, and in July a group of generals rose in revolt.
- The Spanish Republic and Civil War — Julián Casanova, Cambridge University Press (2010)
- The Spanish Civil War: Reaction, Revolution and Revenge — Paul Preston, HarperPerennial (2006)
- Catalan Nationalism: Past and Present — Albert Balcells, Macmillan (1996)
A democratic, modernising republic that tried to give land to the poor, education to all and rights to women, and was destroyed by a military coup.
- The Spanish Civil War: Reaction, Revolution and Revenge — Paul Preston, HarperPerennial (2006)
- The Spanish Republic and Civil War — Julián Casanova, Cambridge University Press (2010)
A period of disorder, church burnings and revolutionary violence, above all the 1934 Asturias uprising, in which the left itself broke the rules of democracy.
- Spain: A History — Raymond Carr (ed.), Oxford University Press (2000)
- The Spanish Republic and Civil War — Julián Casanova, Cambridge University Press (2010)
Why it matters today
The tricolour flag of the Republic still appears at left-wing marches, and the period remains a Rorschach test: for the left a lost democratic dream, for the right a time of chaos and anticlerical violence that "explains" the coup of 1936.