Spanish+Civil+War+Reading+Notes-Chapter+1

Spanish Civil War Chapter 1 – The origins of Spain's civil war

Note: Spaniards often include in “causes” of the war, the “feelings that were produced by the war itself”
 * Origins:**
 * Began with a military coup between July 17 and 18, 1936
 * Goal was to stop the political democracy created by the First World War and the Russian Revolution and a number of changes in the 1920s and 1930s (equivalent to Mussolini in Italy, Hitler in Germany)
 * The uneven levels of development that “obtained inside Spain by the 1930s”
 * Military coup caused a series of culture wars
 * Urban culture v. Rural tradition
 * Influence of Catholicism
 * Emergence of a strict and intolerant political culture in Spain's army
 * 1898 - Spain's “final loss of empire”
 * Spain then lacked external markets
 * Deprived Spain's officer corps of any meaningful, defensive role, causing them to become over powerful internally
 * Within the officer corps, the blame final loss of empire was placed on civilian politicians
 * Sparked a belief that young Spaniards must be defenders of Spain's unity against other groups of Spaniards who believed in the new social and economic changes
 * New social constituencies

Problems facing the Republican reform:
 * Reforming (Republican) agenda:**
 * Groups:
 * Progressive Republicans – lawyers and teachers, a party based on universal suffrage
 * Spain's socialist movement
 * Agrarian reform – intended to create a “small holding peasantry with Republican allegiance” in southern Spain
 * Provide an interval market to “stimulate industrial development”
 * Separation of church and state to allow for the phasing out of the clergy and for non-religious education
 * Debar religious orders from teaching (this, in turn, failed)
 * Too ambitious
 * Attempt was made during world economic depression and the government already had debt from the Primo dictatorship
 * Difficulty in finding experienced leaders
 * Complexity of the proposed structural reform, along with a lack of time
 * Enormous gap between political authority and real power
 * The government could pass legislation in Madrid's parliament, but implementing these proved difficult
 * Divisions on the Left
 * Conservative government resumed power in November 1933
 * Fascist youth uprising took politics to the streets, causing a shift in the space of Spanish politics
 * Resistance:**
 * Spain's traditionalists
 * Included: elite officials, Catholic church, military elites
 * People in the center-north “conservative heartland”
 * Due to the Church
 * Republican reform interfered with the Catholic culture “that framed social identities and daily life,” because the Republican reform included a separation of church and state


 * Military Academy:**
 * 1927 – Franco took over Spain's military academy at Zaragoza, put Africanistas in most teaching positions
 * Implemented the idea of the military being the “guardian and savior of Spain”
 * Note: one of the Republican government's first goals was to close the Academy in June of 1931