Spain: A Unique History

Chapter 10: Who Was Responsible? Origins of the Civil War of 1936

10 Who Was Responsible? Origins of the Civil War of 1936 169 Historians can agree that the Spanish Civil War began on the weekend of July 17–20, 1936, when in a variety of poorly coordinated actions various garrisons and units of the Spanish army rebelled against the Republican regime. Ever since that time, supporters of the Left have held that the cause and origin of the Civil War are perfectly clear—it was the military revolt. No military revolt, no civil war. In the most immediate sense, this is an obvious and logical argument. Supporters of the military rebels, however, from the very beginning argued that this was a gross oversimplification. They contended—and their supporters still contend—that the civil breakdown had already taken place in the unprecedented decline of the rule of law in Spain during the spring and early summer of 1936. Some have even contended that the Civil War began initially in October 1934, with the revolutionary insurrection of the Socialists. The military revolt was held to have taken place not against the legal order, but to restore a legal order and to put an end to widespread civil conflict that long predated July 1936. The contention is also made that the military revolt per se did not necessarily begin a civil war, since it was intended to be more like a pronunciamiento or coup d’etat. According to this argument, the war began not on July 17–18 with the start of the military revolt but on July 19 , when the Left Republican government began to “arm the people,” that is, to give weapons en masse to the leftist worker organizations . This sought to create a second armed force with which to combat the insurgent sector of the army, opening the way to widespread civil war. According to this interpretation, the Republican government, when faced with a massive challenge like Alfonso XIII on April 14, 1931, should also have responded like Don Alfonso—who said he wanted to avoid civil war—by handing over power. That would certainly have been a means by which the Republican government could have avoided civil war, but the weakness in this argument, at least by analogy with the collapse of the monarchy, was that in 1931 there were not two potentially large and polarized forces—Left and Right—as in 1936. During the course of the Civil War, many different explanations of the causes and character of the conflict were presented at home and abroad. The Left always preferred to define it as a struggle between democracy and fascism. For the Right, it was a crusade by Christian civilization to overcome godless revolution and barbarism. For both sides, it was soon touted as a national liberation war. The Left was freeing Spain from Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, the Right was liberating the patria from the clutches of Stalin, the Soviet Union, and international Communism. These in turn became claims concerning the causes of the Civil War, which were often held to be exogenous, and located in Moscow, Rome, or Berlin. Altogether, a series of arguments and allegations have been presented concerning the causes and responsibilities for the war, which are worth examining: (1) the argument that civil war began in 1934; (2) the “breakdown thesis”: the constitutional Republic had already ceased to exist; (3) efforts to avert civil war; (4) the “provocation” thesis; (5) the initial plan of the rebels; (6) the “exogenous” thesis (role of foreign powers); and (7) the contention that the final crisis alone was decisive. The Civil War Began in 1934 Revolutionary insurrection was common in Spain between 1930 and 1934. The Republicans launched a military revolt against the monarchy in December 1930, and the CNT-FAI, or sectors thereof, launched three insurrections against the Republic during 1932–33, while a small band of military rebels did the same in August 1932. The Socialist insurrection of October 1934 was by far Who Was Responsible? 170 the most serious and extensive of these outbursts, affecting many different provinces and seizing control of much of Asturias. Revolution was proclaimed in Asturias , with the execution of political prisoners, priests, and seminary students, much destruction of property, and large-scale looting of money. Major military action was required to put down the insurrection, which in all Spain cost 1,500 lives and led to more than 15,000 arrests.1 To...