Spain's October Revolution and the Rightist Grasp for Power

Abstract

In October 1934 a general strike broke out in Madrid, the bourgeois left-liberal government in Barcelona declared the independence of Spain's four Catalan provinces and, for two weeks, revolutionary miners in Asturias fought a desperate battle against the Spanish army. These events were the response of various left-wing elements to the proposed entry into the cabinet of three ministers from the authoritarian Catholic party, the CEDA.1 Since, in the last elections in November 1933, the CEDA had emerged as the largest single grouping in the Cortes, these actions have been widely interpreted as a deliberate rejection by the left of the rules of democratic co-existence. In this view, the left's egoistic extremism in attempting to take by violence what had been denied them by the vote made the right despair of the possibilities of legality.2 Accordingly, they were driven to defend their interests by other means.