Red Terror (Spain) - Background

Background

The revolution of 1931 that established the Second Republic and the Spanish Constitution of 1931 brought to power an anticlerical government. The relationship between the new secular Republic and the Catholic Church, who resented it, was fraught from the start. Cardinal Pedro Segura, the primate of Spain, urged Catholics to vote in future elections against an administration which in his view wanted to destroy religion." Those who sought to lead the 'ordinary faithful' had insisted that Catholics had only one political choice — the Spanish Confederation of the Autonomous Right (CEDA): "Voting for the CEDA was presented as a simple duty; good Catholics would go to Mass on Sunday and support the political right."

The constitution was largely sound, generally according thorough civil liberties and representation, the notable exclusion being the rights of Catholics, a flaw which prevented the forming of an expansive democratic majority. The controversial articles 26 and 27 of the constitution, strictly controlled Church property and prohibited religious orders from engaging in education. Not only advocates of establishment of religion but also advocates of church/state separation saw the constitution as hostile; one such advocate of separation, Jose Ortega y Gasset, stated "the article in which the Constitution legislates the actions of the Church seems highly improper to me." In 1933, Pope Pius XI condemned the Spanish Government's deprivation of the civil liberties of Catholics in the encyclical Dilectissima Nobis (On Oppression Of The Church Of Spain )."

Historian Vicente Carcel Orti asserts that anticlerical Freemasons played a large part in the anti-Catholic acts of the government since they held key government positions, including at least 183 deputies in the Cortes (the Spanish parliament), and thus were instrumental in the making of anti-Catholic laws. As early as March 1933 Abilia Arroyo de Roman had declared at a rally in the Salamancan pueblo of Macotera that Spain was governed by Masonic lodges, intent on 'decatholicizing' Spain, while the Gaceta Regional blamed the Law of Congregations on 'an occult power' which had taken refuge in Spain 'in order to carry out its experiments'.

Since the left considered reform of the anticlerical aspects of the constitution as totally unacceptable, Historian Stanley Payne believed "the Republic as a democratic constitutional regime was doomed from the outset". and it has been posited that such a "hostile" approach to the issues of church and state were a substantial cause of the breakdown of democracy and the onset of civil war. One legal commentator has stated plainly "the gravest mistake of the Constitution of 1931—Spain's last democratic Constitution prior to 1978—was its hostile attitude towards the Catholic Church." The historian Mary Vincent, in her study of the Church in Salamanca in the 1930s, believes this Republican legislation, in affecting the devotional lives of ordinary Catholics, "greatly eased the task of its opponents."

Following the general election of February 16, 1936, political bitterness grew in Spain. Violence between the government and its supporters, the Popular Front, whose leadership was clearly moving towards the left (abandoning constitutional Republicanism for leftist revolution) and the opposition accelerated, culminating in a military revolt of right-wing generals in July of that year. As the year progressed Nationalist and Republican persecution grew, and republicans began attacking churches, occupying land for redistribution and attacking nationalist politicians in a process of tit-for-tat violence.