Background
The Second Spanish Republic was established on 14 April 1931, after the abdication of King Alfonso XIII. The government, led by President Niceto Alcalá-Zamora, instituted a reformist program, including agrarian reform, separation of church and state, the right to divorce, votes for women (November 1933), reform of the Spanish Army, autonomy for Catalonia and the Basque Country (October 1936). The proposed reforms were blocked by the right and rejected by the far-left National Confederation of Labour (Confederación Nacional del Trabajo) or (CNT). The Republic suffered attacks from the right (the failed coup of Sanjurjo in 1932), and the left (the uprising of Asturias in 1934), as well as the impact of the Great Depression.
Nevertheless the Republic managed to survive. In February 1936 the Popular Front, a coalition of parties from the left to the center right (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE), Republican Left (IR), Republican Union Party (UR), Communist Party (PCE), Workers' Party of Marxist Unification (POUM), Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC) among others) won the general election and the right started to plan an uprising against the Republic. Finally, on 17 July 1936, a part of the Spanish Army, led by a group of far-right officers (the generals Sanjurjo, Goded, Emilio Mola, Franco, Miguel Cabanellas, Queipo de Llano and Varela among others) attempted a coup against the government. The coup failed but the rebel troops, known as the Nationalists, held a large part of Spain. The Spanish Civil War had started.
One of the leaders of the 1936 coup against Spain's democratically elected government, Franco, with his Nationalist forces and aided by Germany and Italy, finally prevailed in 1939. He ruled the country for the next 36 years. As well as mass killing, political prisoners were sent to concentration camps and homosexuals to mental asylums.
Read more about this topic: White Terror (Spain)
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“I had many problems in my conduct of the office being contrasted with President Kennedy’s conduct in the office, with my manner of dealing with things and his manner, with my accent and his accent, with my background and his background. He was a great public hero, and anything I did that someone didn’t approve of, they would always feel that President Kennedy wouldn’t have done that.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“Pilate with his question “What is truth?” is gladly trotted out these days as an advocate of Christ, so as to arouse the suspicion that everything known and knowable is an illusion and to erect the cross upon that gruesome background of the impossibility of knowledge.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“In the true sense one’s native land, with its background of tradition, early impressions, reminiscences and other things dear to one, is not enough to make sensitive human beings feel at home.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)