Analyse the reasons for the weaknesses and collapse of democracy between 1918 and 1939 in Spain.

However, it was not only southern labourers, traditional ruralists felt discontent with the Republican government. On the contrary, this was due to the Republic being too interfering with their policies. The Republic tried to enact a more secular government and to do this they aimed to remove religion from primary education. The Church had been embedded in the education system for a very long time, so such policy was bound to be a failure, it just served to pose as an attack on the daily life of the la Espana profunda (rural and provincial Spain). Another example of this would be the interruption of celebrations and ceremonies and the forbiddance of ringing church bells. For la Espana profunda this was the Republic’s “greatest offence” (Helen Graham). So the fact that this social group did not even demand for voting or change in the first place is being affected so profoundly (the Church was a crucial part of their community serving both a pastoral and practical role), meant that it was more likely to side with the opposition to such government. For these populations, democracy was never deep-rooted as the Church had always backed the monarchy thus such leadership style always being the more preferred option.

The Africanistas would not have been able to organise such widespread support for their coup if had it not been for the Church (Helen Graham). Catholicism was deep rooted in Spain and it allowed for many social groups to come together to voice their discontent with the government. For example, Cardinal Primate called upon the faithful to rearm against the government and came close to calling the Republic illegitimate. This shows the Church’s discontent with the government, which is given due to its attempts of trying to displace it, but also shows demonstrates democracy’s weak installation and assimilation within the Church as they are willing to adopt violence rather than incite change through political or democratic means. The Church’s hostile attitude towards democracy undermined and the cardinal’s outspoken views just reinforced deep-seated opinions of some social classes e.g. rural Spain.

The Republic’s internal split between progressive republicans and Spain’s socialist movement also caused democracy to be seen as incapable of solving Spain’s problems. The government became too unfocused and placed reforms that conciliated everyone but not fully please any one. Most profoundly, land reform raised expectations for the dispossessed but angered the traditional elites when the Republic became to inefficient to deal with it. Without the backing of the traditional elites, the government would face a hard time combating Franco especially since they were already known to be physically incapable to defeating the Right e.g. Asturias 1934. The Left were both physically and handicapped due to unpopular reform which meant it was more difficult for it to uphold democracy during the civil war.

The final crucial factor is the Spanish military. The military grew a great dislike for the government to the point where a powerful myth arose that civilian politicians had been responsible for the final loss of empire and thus had little moral claim on governing the country. They were most greatly affected by Spain’s final loss in empire in 1898 because this top-heavy abundantly staffed army was now to have no defensive role. The loss of empire also meant that economically, Spain would need to reform, the government contemplated to combat this with land reform. The traditional elites disliked this and many were fathers and elder brothers of Spanish officer elites. The military became a tight knit community as military schools overwhelmingly preferred sons of officers and daughters married into military families. This meant that for many young cadets the military was their lifeblood. The republic threatened this with its aims for structural reform, and those who feared loss of salaries, career prospects, professional status, or established social and political hierarchies came to be the most consistent avid supporters of the military coup. The reform the Republic attempted to impose did not conciliate the military enough despite the army’s losses in purpose, prestige, empire, and the general effects of the crash, and instead angered them e.g. closed down the Zaragoza military academy, a school which Franco was head of, and the freezing of battlefield promotions which enraged the Africanistas. The fact that the military was so abundantly staffed with meant that they had the upper hand when it came to warfare and the fact that the Africanistas were secluded in Spanish Morocco meant that they would have the most reductive views of what was wrong with metropolitan Spanish society and politics and only focused on traditionalist views. The militaristic option also appealed to many because it seemed to be the only way change was brought about e.g. Primo de rivera dictatorship, the ending of dictatorship.

Andrew Forrest said that “military hostility to the Republic reflected both public and private concerns”. This shows that through the military, different social classes were able to embody their concerns with the government in a militaristic and physical form. In conjunction with the organizational purpose the Church served which perpetuated discontent within traditional households, the uneven levels of development and culture became apparent with the eruption of the Spanish civil war. The republic was unable to satisfy the large changes in the military and their structural reform only angered them. However, the government’s lack of coordinated action can be summed up by the fact that knowing that there were secretly open plans to overthrow the government, yet they did nothing about it. Thus democracy was unable to uphold itself in Spain because the Republic imposed drastically Left policies much too fast (due to not being in power for so long) and ineffectively, without addressing deep-seated cultures and ideologies. This manifested in the military and wide support grew for traditional values and the riddance of the democratic government.