Republicanism in Spain
Republicanism in Spain is a political position and movement that believes Spain should be a republic.
There has existed in Spain a persistent trend of republican thought, especially throughout the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries, that has manifested itself in diverse political parties and movements over the entire course of the history of Spain. While these movements have shared the objective of establishing a republic, during these three centuries there have surged distinct schools of thought on the form republicans would want to give to the Spanish State: unitary or federal.
Despite the country's long-lasting schools of republican movements, the government of Spain has been organized as a republic during only two short periods in its history, which totaled 9 years and 8 months of republican government. The First Spanish Republic lasted from February 1873 to December 1874, and the Second Spanish Republic lasted from April 1931 to April 1939.
Under the monarchical system of government currently in force in Spain, there are movements and political parties throughout the entire political spectrum that advocate for a Third Spanish Republic. Despite enjoying a wider support within the left wing political camp, there are also liberal, right-wing, conservative and nationalist parties espousing republican stances.
History
Origins, the First Republic, and the Bourbon Restoration
The roots of Spanish republicanism arose out of liberal thought in the wake of the French Revolution. The first manifestations of republicanism occurred during the Peninsular War, in which Spain and nearby regions fought for independence from Napoleon, 1808–1814. During the reign of Ferdinand VII there were several liberalist military pronunciamientos, but it was not until the reign of Isabella II that the first clearly republican and anti-monarchist movements appeared.File:La République à Madrid, Scènes des rues dans la soirée du 11 Février, de Vierge.jpg|thumb|upright=0.75|Proclamation of the Republic in the streets of Madrid, by Vierge in Le Monde Illustré.
Federalist republicanism, emerged in the 1850s and 1860s, had a key figure in the person of.
The Glorious Revolution of 1868 overthrew Isabella II, but the Cortes elected in 1869 resulted in a majority of legislators belonging to the coalition between progressives, liberals and in favour of a liberal constitutional monarchy. A search for a new monarch among several European royal courts ensued and the Italian prince Amadeo I of Savoy was chosen. But Spain was in a period of profound instability: Legitimist monarchist Carlists had launched another war against the country's progressive direction; there was colonial unrest in Spanish Cuba via the Ten Years' War; and the moderate-liberal monarchy was met with stiff opposition from all sides, by republicans to its left, and from its right by a large part of the aristocracy and the Catholic Church; thus King Amadeo abdicated on 11 February 1873.
On that same day in 1873, the Cortes proclaimed the First Spanish Republic.
However, the Republic fell victim to the same instabilities provoked by the ongoing wars and the division amongst republicans. The majority of republicans were Federalists, and they therefore supported the formation of a federal democratic republic, but there was also a unitary republican current. Moreover, within the Federalists there was an intransigent pro-confederation sector that was infuriated and later quashed by the Cantonal Revolution of 1873. The complicated political situation is demonstrated by the fact that in just eleven months there were four presidents of the Republic: Estanislao Figueras, Francisco Pi y Margall, Nicolás Salmerón and Emilio Castelar.
On 3 January 1874, General Manuel Pavía led a coup d'état that established a unitary republican dictatorship presided by Marshal Francisco Serrano. The regime was followed by a pronunciamiento on 29 December 1874 in Sagunto, in which Brigadier General Arsenio Martínez Campos proclaimed the need to restore the monarchy. Following the acceptance of the coup by the Captain General of Madrid, Fernando Primo de Rivera, a new government led by Antonio Cánovas del Castillo was formed putting an end to the Republic, bringing the so-called Restoration and the ascension of Alfonso XII to the throne.
After being banished from the institutions, republicanism underwent a heap of troubles, with differences of approach becoming apparent between those followers of Pimargallian "pactist" federalism and those ready to jump into Castelar's possibilism in regard of the new conservative regime. Castelar led the Partido Demócrata—later the Partido Demócrata Posibilista and Cristino Martos the Partido Progresista Demócrata. Nonetheless, these parties, immersed in a system of unequal censitary suffrage between 1878 and 1890, were unable to compete with the large dynastic parties: the Liberal-Conservative Party of Cánovas del Castillo and Liberal–Fusionist Party of Sagasta. Later Pi y Margall formed the Partido Republicano Democrático Federal, Manuel Ruiz Zorrilla and José María Esquerdo created the Partido Republicano Progresista, and Nicolás Salmerón established the Partido Republicano Centralista. These parties contributed a diverse set of independent republican deputies to the Spanish parliament.
Factions of the PDP and the PRP branched off and fused to form the Partido Republicano Nacional. In 1898 the Fusión Republicana was formed, and in 1903 the creation of the Republican Union attempted to represent and fuse all streams of republican thought. However, two parties split from the Republican Union: Alejandro Lerroux's Partido Republicano Radical and Vicente Blasco's Partido de Unión Republicana Autonomista. In that time the Catalan Centre Nacionalista Republicà appeared. Following the acts of "Tragic Week" in Barcelona in 1909, republican parties and the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party joined together to form the Conjunción Republicano-Socialista, at the same time as the Catalan sectors of the Republican Union, the CNR, and the PRDF formed the Republican Nationalist Federal Union. Later Melquíades Álvarez split from the Conjunción Republicano-Socialista to form the Reformist Party.
Primo de Rivera, the Second Republic, and Francoist Spain
After 1917, the Restoration regime entered a state of crisis, which finally resulted in the coup d'état of Miguel Primo de Rivera, Captain-General of Catalonia. Primo de Rivera established a dictatorship with the approval of the King Alfonso XIII. But the crisis of this dictatorship lead to the resignation of Primo de Rivera in 1930 and made the fall of the monarchy inevitable. The bulk of Republican forces convened in August 1930 and reached an agreement, the Pact of San Sebastián, delimiting a common strategy to bring the republic, also conforming a revolutionary committee. On 14 April 1931, two days after a round of municipal elections in which republicans won a landslide victory, Alfonso XIII fled the country, the Second Spanish Republic was proclaimed and a provisional government presided by Niceto Alcalá Zamora was formed.The Second Republic adopted the form of a unitary republic, allowing a group of provinces to form self-governing regions, a provision availed of to form the regions of Catalonia and the Basque Country. Its first President of the Republic was Niceto Alcalá Zamora, of the liberal-Catholic Liberal Republican Right party.
After the victory of the socialist and left-republican coalition in the June 1931 elections, Manuel Azaña, of Republican Action was elected president of the Council of Ministers. Azaña's government attempted to pass many reforms, such as the Agrarian Reform Law, and is consequently known as the Bienio Reformista. 1931 also saw the introduction of truly universal suffrage, for the first time in Spanish history: previously restricted to men, the right to vote was now extended to women.
The Republic soon had to confront the political polarization of the era, at the same time that totalitarian dictatorships were rising in power in Europe. The political instability of the time can be seen by the fact that, in 1932, there had already been a failed coup led by General José Sanjurjo.
The general elections of 1933 saw the emergence of José María Gil-Robles's Confederación Española de Derechas Autónomas, an umbrella organisation of various conservative and Catholic-nationalist parties. The CEDA emerged as the largest single parliamentary group, but lacked a majority of its own. As a result, Alcalá Zamora opted to appoint a cabinet made up of various centre-right radical and liberal parties led by Alejandro Lerroux. This cabinet too suffered from too narrow a majority, and Lerroux was eventually obliged to extend its support by including several CEDA ministers.
The inclusion of the CEDA, considered to be insincere in its support for the existing regime, was the trigger for the incidents of October 1934. Various initiatives were launched, ranging from a declaration of federal autonomy by Lluís Companys, head of the government of the Catalan region, designed to limit the CEDA's ability to intervene in the region; a general strike by the socialist movement, designed to dissuade Alcala and Lerroux from including the CEDA ministers; and a worker uprising in the northern region of Asturias that united the local branches of the socialist movement to those of the Communist Party of Spain and the syndicalist National Confederation of Labour.
The violent repression of the Rising, especially in Asturias, the suppression of Catalan home rule, and the arrest of numerous prominent political figures who had been uninvolved in the unrest, motived the formation of the Spanish Popular Front. This included the socialist movement, the communist PCE and POUM parties, and the left-republican parties Republican Left, the Republican Union and Catalan Republican Left, as well as several minor political parties.
The Popular Front emerged victorious in the legislative elections of 1936, forming a government of republican parties and elevating Manuel Azaña as head of state.
On 17 July 1936, there was a military uprising that failed to seize control of government but which, by taking control of much of Spanish Morocco, provoked the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. While the republican regime was abandoned by the other European democracies and only received military support from the Soviet Union, the nationalist rebels were supported by Nazi Germany and fascist Italy, whose support was pivotal in the final victory of the nationalist uprising. The triumphant Nationalist faction established the Spanish State that lasted until Francisco Franco's death and the subsequent Spanish transition to democracy. Emilio Mola, leader of the uprising against the Second Republic, attempted to establish a "republican dictatorship," but in 1947 Franco declared his authoritarian reign as a regency for the monarchy, naming Juan Carlos de Borbón, grandson of the ousted Alfonso XIII, as his successor and the next king in 1969. Juan Carlos ascended to the throne upon the Caudillo's death in 1975.