T H E R E P U B L I C ’ S ‘ N EW D E A L’
After 14 April, we shall all be something other than we are.
( José Ortega y Gasset)
The sudden appearance of a Republic in Spain suggested to many that the country had finally broken with its past. At a time when much of Europe was rejecting parliamentary government, Spain embraced constitutional democ-racy. Primo was gone, his fall discrediting the king as a collaborator and so offering little prospect of a return to the status quo ante. Using what remained of his royal prerogative, Alfonso charged General Berenguer and other senior military men with the uncomfortable and ultimately impossible task of re-establishing ‘normality’ as defined by the 1876 constitution. Both monarchists and republicans admitted that the municipal elections called for 12 April 1931 would be a plebiscite on the constitutional future of Spain.
The results were shattering. The Republican alliance took forty-five of Spain’s fifty-two provincial capitals; on the mainland, they lost only Avila and Burgos in Old Castile, Lugo in Galicia, and the Andalucian port of Cádiz, the last quite possibly by fraud. The Republican councillors elected in 1931 remained in post until the Civil War, setting the tenor of local administration through various changes in national government. No one disputed the Republican victory, even though Spain was still predominantly rural and rural Spain had voted overwhelmingly for the monarchist cause.
But the strongest monarchist results were in the smallest, poorest, pueblos.
In Andalucía, for example, the Republican collation won seven out of eight provincial capitals, taking every single electoral district in each one, and had challenged hard in towns of over 6,000 inhabitants. As everyone knew, the larger the town, the weaker the caciques: set against the demonstration of popular will in the cities, the village results were meaningless. It did not matter whether they had been achieved by habit, manipulation, or outright
falsification: the rural vote was not a free one. No one bothered to publish, or even collect the final results; these were an administrative matter: the political point had been decided.
The break with the past was immediate and profound. The results from the cities made it clear that the governing authorities had completely lost their ability to ‘make’ elections. The dynastic parties were dead, their place as representatives of the right usurped by Catholics, agrarians, and other erstwhile upetistas. As Berenguer said of the king, ‘unfortunately, political control had escaped from his hands’.1Alfonso admitted as much in his final speech to the nation: the elections ‘clearly showed’ that he had lost the love of his people. Though he did not abdicate—‘I do not renounce any of my rights, for . . . they have been deposited in me by History’—the king left Spain on 14 April. The change of regime was achieved without a shot being fired.
Alfonso’s fall was not due to any shortage of monarchists: the right had mounted a robust monarchist campaign in the run-up to the elections, proclaiming hierarchy, religion, and social order as the basis of the realm. But there were few left to defend this particular king. By the evening of 12 April, a sense of unstoppable change was manifest in the streets of Madrid. Berenguer later recalled that the ‘multitude’ around the Puerta del Sol ‘made no secret of their sense of triumph’. Even the army’s role had been reduced to that of a sullen onlooker. ‘The forces of Public Order seemed dumbfounded, passive, before the avalanche of enthusiasm.’ As for the old elites, they ‘observed the fall of the monarch as they might have watched a bad film’.2
Yet, the popular fiesta Berenguer observed in the centre of Madrid was not, as he thought, the work of the ‘mob’ but rather a celebration, a performance even, of popular sovereignty. Welcoming the Republic on the streets, or participating in the 1 May celebrations which followed a fortnight later, connected politics and people, transforming acts of government carried out in the name of the people into the actions of the people themselves. This kind of ‘social magic’, to use Santos Juliá’s phrase, had a powerful legitimizing effect, particularly in a country entirely unaccustomed to the exercise of popular sovereignty.3 On 14 April, similar celebrations were taking place simultaneously in every city in Spain: in Gijón, for example, the Republic was proclaimed, to tumultuous enthusiasm, even before word had arrived from the capital. Throughout the country, a few men stood on town hall balconies to proclaim the Republic while many more men in the squares below threw their hats into the air.
The festivities of April and May 1931 were a national performance: the revellers were demonstrating the existence of the Republican nation. From Asturias to Andalucía the proclamation of the Republic was met with the
‘Marseillaise’, the Spanish Republican anthem, the ‘Himno de Riego’ and the
‘Internationale’. The second of these replaced the ‘Royal March’ as Spain’s national anthem on 10 May; the first and third demonstrated the new regime’s historical antecedents as they were understood by the people on the streets.
They were creating the new regime, establishing its calendar, its festivities, its identity, even its place in history as defined by its relationship to other Republican states. A new iconography, elaborated by the citizens themselves, would characterize the new regime, cementing its position in the hearts of the people. The moral high ground belonged to the Republic and the change of regime sparked off a spontaneous municipal fiesta the length and breadth of the land.
Finally, Spain seemed to have a legitimate government, a regime under which ‘everything was possible, including ‘‘peace’’ ’.4In April 1931 the fate of the Second Republic was neither predetermined nor a foregone conclusion.
But, while the idea of popular sovereignty went unchallenged, it could be understood in various ways. Insurrection was as strong a tradition on the left as the pronunicamiento was on the right, as a failed attempt to impose a Republic by force in 1930 had shown. Republicans of every persuasion had a Jacobin faith in the ‘republican moment’, when ‘the people’, acting as a deus ex machina, would institute a new regime. Being voted into power may have been a bonus, but it was not a prerequisite. Republicans had to accept the will of the people but, as they were convinced they understood the popular will, how this was manifested became almost incidental.
For those further to the left, proletarian solidarity—demonstrated most clearly in the 1 May celebrations—demanded an international understanding of the Second Republic, as a stage towards the inexorable victory of the working class. Neither anarchists nor Communists had much truck with nation-states, and the exile which many had experienced during Primo’s time in office had only accentuated their revolutionary internationalism. The experience of a right-wing military dictatorship made it unthinkable for moderate Socialists and Republicans to abandon the victims of repression, no matter how uncomfortable their alliance was. So long as the Republican–Socialist alliance held, the left would stand together against the right. Already though, the Italian anarchist Enrico Malatesta was warning his Spanish co-religionists not to put their faith in a parliamentary regime where ‘the people will lose impetus and [their] revolutionary aspirations, and will adapt to the social status quo, based on reforms and class collaboration, because it is easier, and less effort’.5
This was undoubtedly the ambition of many in the Republican provisional government, notably the prime minister and future president, Manuel Aza˜na.
The architect of collaboration with the Socialists in the pact of San Sebastián, Aza˜na was political heir to the regenerationist dreams of Giner de los Ríos
and the ILE. Convinced that the people were ‘the only source of authority, which must always be exercised by the delegation of the majority’, he saw implementing the popular will as an elite task.6The Republican moment was a revolutionary one—the constitution would restore the dignity of the citizen and introduce a new order, based on social reform, which would redress the ills done to the Spanish people during decades of oligarchic rule—but it was not necessarily a proletarian one.
Republicanism had for so long in Spain been a repository for opposition to the established order, that its victory could only be understood as a confrontation with all that had gone before. And it was often combative. In August 1931 in Málaga, for example, the usual celebrations in honour of Our Lady of Victory, under whose patronage the Spanish Crown had driven out the ‘Moors’ in 1497, were replaced by a beauty pageant to find the city’s ‘Miss Republic’.7Although all proceeds went to unemployed workers, it would have been hard to devise a celebration more calculated to offend the Catholic right.
To convinced monarchists, the Republic was not merely distasteful, it was an anathema. The Carlist militias, long confined to their Navarrese heartlands, were training in the mountains as early as 1931. Armed opposition to the new regime was extremely rare but antipathy and mistrust were not. In the minds of the comfortable, conservative classes, a Republic had for many years been synonymous with chaos, the association between Republicanism and disorder engrained in common culture. The conservative Republican Angel Ossorio y Gallardo recollected how mothers would reprimand their children’s untidiness with the words, ‘This looks like a Republic!’8The right’s defeat left it temporarily rudderless but it was never a neutral mass, ripe for conversion to a Republican consensus. Some were prepared to give the new regime a chance, but many more, particularly those in the ex-upetista circles around Angel Herrera and José María Gil Robles, accepted the rules of the democratic game only as a means to destroy the 1931 Republic.
The definition of the Republic was always ambiguous. Never a single move-ment, Republicanism had historically been defined by doctrinal pluralism, encompassing liberals, radicals, federalists, and even early anarchists. By the early twentieth century the movement had become ‘a hybrid of traditions’.9 The Socialist Party was of course Republican, but only as part of a wider political programme. For socialists, the Republic was a means to an end; for some Republicans it was an end in itself. Under a democratic parliamentary regime, legislation would become the true expression of the popular will, the embodiment of the aspirations of responsible citizens. Hence, the decision to create a unicamaral legislature: the chamber of deputies would embody and represent the national will, with no fear of elite interference from a senate or second chamber.
But the attempt to elaborate a programme of social reform revealed the divisions which beset the Republican–Socialist coalition. Even the first article of the new constitution, which defined Spain as a ‘republic of all workers’
seemed a compromise between those whose Republic would be shaped around the ideas of 1789 and those who followed the torch lit in 1917. The Republic came into existence freighted with expectations, a universal panacea for an apparently endless list of competing claims. The Socialists were the only party in the new government to have a genuine mass basis. In 1930, they had finally established an agrarian section, the Federación Nactional de Trabajadores de la Tierra (National Landworkers’ Federation: FNTT ), which vastly increased the UGT’s membership but brought a large, poor, and increasingly radical constituency into the movement. All were agreed as to the imperative necessity for social reform, particularly land reform, but there was no consensus as to the precise form this should take, even among socialists.
The crux of the difficulty lay with the issue of private property. Some in the governing coalition believed it to be an absolute right; others thought this should be qualified by social function; a few were committed to collec-tive ownership and socialization. Passionate and prolonged debates in the Cortes—lengthened further by a determined if ultimately futile filibuster by the agrarian right—eventually led to a compromise agreement, enshrined in article 44 of the constitution, which allowed for land to be expropriated for reasons of social utility. A full agrarian reform law followed in 1932, together with a raft of labour legislation designed to protect workers, both urban and rural, against ill-treatment and unemployment. Other areas ripe for reform were tackled at the same time, notably the religious question. No fewer than six constitutional articles were used to define the new, subordinate, place of the Catholic Church, many of them modelled directly on the Portuguese Constitution of 1911.
The ‘children of Erasmus’, those ‘whose dissident conscience was strangled for centuries’ ensured the separation of Church and State.10 Freedom of worship became a fundamental civic right; civil marriage and divorce were introduced; schools and cemeteries were secularized. Religious rituals ceased to have any official function, and even Catholic marriages had to be sanctioned by a registrar before being blessed by a priest. Catholic schools continued, but outside the state system, and in 1933 further legislation banned all monks and nuns from teaching. In what was a compromise move, the Jesuits were expelled from Spain: the only alternative had seemed to be banning all religious communities, as had happened under the Portuguese Republic. Establishing a secular state was a fundamental tenet of Republicanism but there was less unanimity as to other anti-religious policies, as the parliamentary debates over these clauses revealed. Yet, there was no doubt that the religious question was
a burning political issue or that it would be resolved by parliament. There was also much sympathy for those on the left who argued that their politics were simply a response to the ‘clericalism’ of the Restoration establishment. For decades, they had been calling for an ‘urgent clerical disinfection’ and now, finally, the opportunity had arrived.11
The new Republican nation was, in a sense, to be legislated into existence.
But it was also to be created through a system of state education, which would be secular, obligatory, free of charge, and available to all. Catalu˜na, the Basque Country, and Galicia were allowed to seek devolution; they could preserve local institutions, foster regional culture, and teach in their own languages. After Catalu˜na attained autonomous status in 1932, the Republican nation clearly had a regional base. But some local traditions were viewed less favourably.
Under the Constitution, religious worship was confined to religious buildings and the Socialist minister of justice, Fernando de los Ríos, argued in vain that deputies had no right to deprive communities of their traditional festivities.
Can you not see, he asked, that processions—Holy Week in Seville or Corpus Christi in Toledo—do not have a purely religious significance? But his words made no impression. Religion was to be confined to the private sphere, forcibly if need be; the public world of the Republic was resolutely secular.
The religious clauses of the Constitution suggest that this new Republican public sphere was expected to spring into existence simply as a result of the legislation. Such naive regenerationism beset many Republican projects, but it did not mean that there was no attempt to construct a Republican nation. The new regime’s education policy was valiant and its results impressive. Though some, such as the Socialist Rodolfo Llopis, who felt that the real Republican project lay with labour reform, believed the regime ‘took refuge in pedagogy’, under Marcelino Domingo the ministry of public instruction adopted its most active role ever.12Teacher training was reformed and all teachers, including those in private schools, were required to be qualified, to degree standard in the case of secondary-school teachers. More spectacularly, budget allocations were changed to favour elementary schooling. By 1935, public spending per head of population was running at 5.41 pesetas per person, as opposed to 3.26 in 1931 and 2.51 in 1923 and 80 per cent of the education budget now went on elementary schooling. The number of teachers also rose—from 36,680 in 1931 to 51,593 in 1935—and in its first year of existence, the Republic built 7,000 schools. By the time the Republican–Socialist coalition lost the general elections of November 1933, Spain had 13,570 new schools, all modelled on the escuela única, in which education was secular, co-educational, egalitarian, and free.13
The Republican vision of education did not end in the schoolroom, however.
Cultural ‘missionaries’ were created in the Misiones Pedagógicas—modelled
on revolutionary Mexico’s Misiones Culturales—who took literary and visual culture to outlying pueblos.14 Between 1931 and 1934, the missions visited 495 villages, mainly in inaccessible mountain areas. The decree establishing the project spoke of bringing progress to the people and allowing the remotest villages to share in ‘the advantages and noble pleasures’ of the city centres.
Federico García Lorca’s theatre company, La Barraca, was the most famous example of this cultural endeavour but the cinema was probably the most popular, a living embodiment of scientific progress. Convinced of the educative power of film, the missions made great use of documentary films, particularly geographic ones. Films such as Spanish Airmail Lines, shot from a plane, showed remote communities the size and variety of the land to which they belonged, as well as the advantages brought by both technology and modern government. Wind-up gramophones were taken to pueblos with no electricity so that villagers could hear classical music, contemporary Spanish composers such as Manuel de Falla, as well as Beethoven and Schubert.
Regional folk-tunes—incorporated into the classical repertoire by Albéniz and de Falla—were consistently the most popular. At the end of the visit, the missions established a library, again with Spanish and European works, for both adults and children, and left behind some reproductions of great paintings from Madrid museums.
As the missions consciously chose to visit isolated communities, their visits provided a striking contrast between urban and rural life, creating an epiphany of Republican values in traditional Spain, which was then captured by the photographers travelling with them. In Pombiego (León), the villagers initially hid from the visitors, were astounded by the gramophone, and cried out in fright when a train appeared on the cinema screen, apparently careering towards them. But fright gave way to wonder: pictures of gap-toothed peasants in headscarves and battered hats, eyes shining, captivated by the silver screen became as emblematic of the Republic as its three-coloured flag. Republicanism was an urban creed, politics an urban activity. But the Republic was now bringing enlightenment to Black Spain, dispelling the fog of superstition and ignorance. Such a project was, of course, in the best traditions of the ILE. The cultural vision peddled by the missions was unashamedly improving, driven by a sense both of Spanish culture and of Republican citizenship. Urban commercial culture was excluded from this vision: the missions had no desire to promote cuplé or cabaret. But they did show Hollywood films and, in the long run, the universal appeal of Charlie Chaplin
As the missions consciously chose to visit isolated communities, their visits provided a striking contrast between urban and rural life, creating an epiphany of Republican values in traditional Spain, which was then captured by the photographers travelling with them. In Pombiego (León), the villagers initially hid from the visitors, were astounded by the gramophone, and cried out in fright when a train appeared on the cinema screen, apparently careering towards them. But fright gave way to wonder: pictures of gap-toothed peasants in headscarves and battered hats, eyes shining, captivated by the silver screen became as emblematic of the Republic as its three-coloured flag. Republicanism was an urban creed, politics an urban activity. But the Republic was now bringing enlightenment to Black Spain, dispelling the fog of superstition and ignorance. Such a project was, of course, in the best traditions of the ILE. The cultural vision peddled by the missions was unashamedly improving, driven by a sense both of Spanish culture and of Republican citizenship. Urban commercial culture was excluded from this vision: the missions had no desire to promote cuplé or cabaret. But they did show Hollywood films and, in the long run, the universal appeal of Charlie Chaplin