The Parties of the Right and the Republic

Abstract

Thepurpose of this essay is to explain and assess the role played by the parties of the right in the political history of Spain during the Second Republic (April 1931-July 1936), and to weigh the responsibility of the right for the outbreak of the Civil War. As will be seen, the essay seeks to explode the popular myth, still quite common even in historical circles outside Spain, that the burden of blame for the causation of the Civil War lies primarily with the right. The evidence demonstrates that the right was not simply, as many used to think, a monolithic bloc of more or less fascist reactionaries who were bent on destroying a progressive democratic Republic and on thwarting the desires of the vast majority of the Spanish people. On the contrary it appears that the socialist movement was primarily responsible for undermining the democratic system and leaving the right the stark choice between extinction and violent resistance. To say this does not of course imply that democracy was, is and always will be unworkable in Spain, nor that the Civil War was engineered by some sinister foreign conspiracy.