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  • Republicanism and Anticlerical Nationalism in Spain
  • William J. Callahan
Republicanism and Anticlerical Nationalism in Spain. By Enrique A. Sanabria. (New York: Palgrave. 2009. Pp. xiii, 258. $79.95. ISBN 978-0-230-61331-7.)

Through the nineteenth century Spanish republicanism was a minor force in a political world dominated by liberal monarchist parties. The weakness of republicanism reflected the divisions always prevalent among its partisans and their failure to create a popular base of support. The creation of the First Republic (1873-74) owed more to historical accident than to the emergence of a unified and well-organized movement. By the first decade of the twentieth century, a new and aggressive populist republicanism began to emerge in which anticlericalism occupied a central place. The support of the masses for strongly anticlerical parties in Catalonia and Valencia as well as the emergence of expanding socialist and anarchist trade unions revived Spanish republicanism, although it never threatened the dominance of the liberal monarchist parties during the regime that replaced the First Republic, the Restoration (1875-1923).

This well-researched and -argued study of republican anticlericalism during this period focuses on José Nakens Pérez (1841-1926) as a key transitional figure in the transformation of republicanism from a movement dominated by a small group of intellectuals and discontented military men to one that appealed to the urban masses for the first time. Nakens never sought political office, but acquired widespread influence in republican circles as a prolific and pugnacious journalist, especially through the pages of El Motín, which he directed from 1881 until his death. Some republicans did not appreciate [End Page 840] his vivid, sensationalist attacks on the role of the Church and the clergy in Spanish society, deploring his journalistic excesses, and the Church's supporters made him an object of constant vituperation.

The author maintains that Nakens's contribution to the emergence of populist republicanism rested on more than his appreciation of the value of insistent propaganda against the Church as a means of galvanizing popular support for the cause. It also reflected Nakens's commitment to the creation of a new Spanish nationalism based on democratic, secular values that became characteristic of twentieth-century republicanism. Nakens saw the alliance of the Church with the oligarchic and sometimes corrupt political system of the Restoration State as a formidable obstacle to the formation of the republic of his dreams.

The author is judicious in assessing the anticlericalism of Nakens and later republic politicians. Anticlericalism, however widespread it became, was incapable in and by itself of uniting a republicanism afflicted still by deep social, economic, and political divisions. The author also recognizes that the strategy of arousing the masses against Church and clergy had a negative side when popular passions descended into violence as during the wave of church burnings in Barcelona in 1909 and in many cities during spring 1931 following the proclamation of the Second Republic, as well as, above all, during the widespread destruction of churches and assassinations of priests and religious following the beginning of the Civil War in 1936.

The author has written a persuasive interpretation of the transformation of Spanish republicanism at a critical moment in its history. The discussion is placed within the framework of the country's nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century history. The author considers anticlericalism in comparison with other European countries—notably France, Italy, and Germany—and takes full account of Spanish social and intellectual history for the period under study. This is an excellent monograph based on solid research and a comprehensive approach to the topic.

William J. Callahan
University of Toronto
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