However many of the mentioned successes were actually more failures because Spain was divided in such an unusual way. Take the Latifundists for example - about 7 000 of them own the whole of Latifundia, but over 15 million landless and often starving labourers were used to maintain this land. Needless to say, this division between wealth stemmed great discontent and tension. Spain was also divided in many other ways - Left against Right, religious versus nonclerical and many others. All these people demanded different reforms from their government, and so it was difficult for the Republic to please all sectors of Spain.
Take the Agrarian Reform Law for example - its aim was to expropriate land from the 7000 Latifundists, but it ended up affecting 80 000 medium or small landowners instead because its terms were overly-complicated. And because it contained many loopholes, it was never fully implemented on the Latifundists. The effect of this was anger from the landowners and disappointment from the peasants. Thus the government’s flawed plan lost its support from both the wealthy and poor classes, an incredible achievement. It also led to further division between the two classes because it created more resentment towards the difference in wealth. This can be best supported by Sara Schatz in the book Social History, “The ... only partially implemented... land reform - confiscating from a very large number of small- to middle-sized farmers as well as from few large ones - caused it to run into resistance not only from the latter but also from some of the former [Malefakis, 1970; Linz, 1978]”. This extract suggests that the poorly-implemented agrarian reform only served to angry all kinds of farmers - small to large-sized. This also illustrates how the Republic managed to anger most classes in Spain.
The military reform was also a failure; although in theory it would make the army more efficient, in practice this did not happen. Moreover the Second Republic gave the retired officers full-pay, so by the end it had little money left for social reforms. This was detrimental to the Republic because its primary goal was social reform: it was voted in by the peasants because it promised the latter (a majority of the population) reforms that would bring more equality between the labourers and the landowners. But without the money to carry out its promises, the Republic lost yet more support, this time from the working class.
Another reason for the downfall of the Left Republic (1031~33) was its extreme anticlerical measures. Spain had a very religious population, and by establishing the extreme measures against the Church, the government lost support from a quarter of the Spanish people already. However Azana firmly believed that by separating Church from the government and education he could ameliorate Spain's backwardness, and thus he continued.
All these failures were accompanied by further fiascoes under the Right Republic of 1933~36. The Right Republic was voted in precisely because of the Left’s previous failures. Many - such as the monarchists and catholics, wanted the government to be more conservative, and political parties such as CEDA were regarded as fascists. However in 1934 Alaca Zamora (President) was pressured into accepting three CEDA members in a coalition government. This led to the Asturias Uprising by the Socialist workers. The result of this was that Spain became even more divided and unstable, and the Republic was placed in a precarious situation. This is supported by a French writer, Walter G. Langlors’ view, that “The insurrection in Spain was an obvious manifestation of the increasingly ideological polarization taking place”. This quote explains the “polarization” between the Left and Right - each side’s ideologies are moving further apart from each other, thus creating more tension between them. After this incident, it became even more likely that both sides would confront each other, and that a crisis like the Spanish Civil War and the collapse of the government was imminent.
The short term cause of the War then was the establishment of the Popular Front, whose leader was Azana. Azana’s aim was to eliminate the conservatives and bring back the reforms of 1931~33 again, while maintaining the Republic constitution at the same time. However because the previous events (like the Asturias Uprising and the failures of the Left Republic’s reforms) had set the extreme polarization in Spain already, virtually no one wanted the reforms to be carried out peacefully. Thus surprisingly the pressure exerted on the Popular Front did not come from the Right, who was at the time disorganised and disoriented, but from the Left. And because it previously eliminated power from the conservatives, the pressure it received came mostly from the extreme Left. More than one million went on strike, and Spain was thrown into chaos. All this destabilized the political system and greatly increased tension in the country. Had the Right been more organized and the conservatism been given more power, the Popular Front and the Revolutionary Left may have been stopped in their drastic actions. But since this was not the case, the radicals continued and caused more resentment. This led to General Mola’s conspiracy to overthrow the government in 1936.
The last and immediate trigger of the Civil War and the Republic's collapse was the Republican’s murder of the monarchist politician, Calvo Sotelo. This gave Mola and the military the perfect excuse to initiate their plan, and eventually the three years of war that followed confirmed the Second Republic’s failure.
The many mistakes that the Republic had played the role in polarizing Spain. There were numerous mistakes - whether it be the Asturia’s uprising (the government’s oppressive methods) or the Agrarian Reform Law; by the 1930s all these tension caused by the government had built up, and once the murder in 193 was done, everything escalated. The Second Republic failed largely because it approached many of Spain's problems with impractical solutions. Had it taken more care to displease only one section of the population instead of the whole (it is almost impossible to please all classes because of the angering factions in Spain), it may have been able to maintain its support and avoid failure. However one must not forget that the Second Republic was established under a difficult time; by the 1930s the working class’s resentment towards the wealthy had already been built up (especially after the Economic Depression). Spain’s conflicting history had already been built up by that time too - for example Catalan's demand for autonomy. The Second Republic did try its best at times in measures such as the labour arbitration scheme and the Catalan Statute. To say that it completely failed is probably unjust, given the conditions and some of its successes at the time. But the built-up of strain and pressure played the main part in covering up the Republic’s accomplishments and made its failure inevitable.
