Year: 2023
Type: dissertation
Abstract: Coohill 5 dictators backed by the military and monarchy.In 1931, the nation returned to republican government under anti-monarchist and pro-democracy forces.This transformation failed to prevent economic crisis, persistent strikes, and political violence.In July 1936, following elections that brought left-wing parties into power, much of the Spanish military turned on the fragile Second Republic.The resulting coup d'état drew on the traditionalist elements of Spanish society; Carlists, Catholic hardliners, traditionalists, landowners, and the nobility, collectively known as Nationalists.These factions were not new bedfellows.In the 19th century, they had led Spain into three civil wars, the Carlist wars, to halt liberal reforms and install a legitimist line of the royal family to power.12 In the following three-year civil war, the Nationalist forces would successfully defeat Republican resistance in a conflict that would sweep every mainland province.Even from its early stages, the war was marred with extreme partisan violence and butchery.3 In the opening days of the war, Republican forces committed killings in what would become known as the "Red Terror," a sporadic targeting of perceived enemies of the state that would claim some 70,000 lives.Chief among these enemies was the Catholic church and clergy, the lynchpin of conservative power.4 Under advancing Nationalist forces, political violence reached a further extreme in the "White Terror"'.Deemed limpieza social, social cleansing, Nationalist death squads perpetrated the mass killings of Republicans, Romani, Freemasons, intellectuals, atheists, and regionalists.Massacres at Monte de Estépar, Badajoz, and, most 4 de la Cueva, J. (1998).Religious Persecution, Anticlerical Tradition and Revolution: On Atrocities against the Clergy during the Spanish Civil War.Journal of Contemporary History, 33(3), 355-369.3 Howson, G. (1999).Arms for Spain: The Untold Story of the Spanish Civil War.St. Martin's Press. 2 Though nominally fought over questions of dynastic succession, the Carlist wars unified the traditionalist and clerical elements of Spain to fight against the perceived liberal reforms of the monarchy.Centralization, minor land redistribution, the end of the inquisition, and decreasing social influence of the Catholic Church horrified Carlists, and went on to inspire future generations of Spanish conservatives.1 Jackson, G. (1966).The Spanish Republic and the Civil War 1931-1939.(1965).Princeton, N.J.Coohill 6 famously, Guernica, became part of a politicide that claimed the lives of some 200,000.Aiding the Nationalist cause and resulting atrocities were Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, eager to install a fellow fascist government in Southern Europe. 5 By its end in 1939, the civil war claimed the lives of some 600,000 Spaniards.6 Another 470,000 were forced into exile, primarily in neighboring France.7 That March, Generalissimo Francisco Franco, commander of the Nationalist forces, entered Madrid, the final bastion of Republican resistance.His path to power cleared by the convenient deaths of rival Nationalist generals Mola, Goded, and Sanjurjo, Franco began a 39-year rule.Victorious in war, Franco ruled in a definitive age for Spain, one which saw ultra-traditionalist government as massive demographic, economic, and social changes swept the nation.To govern Spain, Franco bundled all Nationalist organizations into the Traditionalist Spanish Phalanx of the Councils of the National Syndicalist Offensive, more simply known as FET, the sole legal political party.It came to dominate all government institutions, serving as a rubber stamp for the whims of Franco and the army.8 Francoist ideology was best summed up in the tripartite motto the dictator ordered printed on all newspapers: "one fatherland, one state, one leader."The slogan, blatantly taken from a similar Nazi saying, emphasized the ideology of the new state, a unified government under the personal control of Franco, ruling a homogeneous Castilian nation.9 Initially diplomatically isolated as one of Europe's last fascist states, Spain embraced an 9 Preston, P. (1998).Las Tres Españas del 36.
Author: Coohill, Aidan
Institution: University of Colorado Boulder
Language: English
Topic: Spanish History and Politics
Subfield: History
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W6982165795