Spanish Civil War

A detailed Summary of Spanish Civil War

The newly established republic in the years before the war was a system where a so called "old spain" lost its power to "new spain." The Civil War was an effect of the unwillingness of "old Spain" to recede from the political scene. A main cause of the Civil War, then, was not (as it usually is) an emergence of a new social and economic class but the unwillingness of the traditional aristocracy, land owners, "old" army and the church to allow such modern political ideals to run the government. Furthermore, the new republic before the war supported a wide spectrum of modern political ideals which seemed to disagree on whether the republic was a means to achieve a more extreme goal, whether the republic was a satisfactory achievement of liberal aims or whether the republic was inadequate and needed to be replaced with a more extreme, authoritarian government. Moreover, "new Spain" seemed to be divided in aims but certainly was united in the fact that they bitterly opposed what "old Spain" stood for and vice versa. In effect, we can notice a see-sawing in decision making and policy in the years before the civil war between conservative reforms/laws and liberal reforms/laws which only served to aggravate those who wanted sta

The last element of instability in spain as a cause of the Civil War was the element of regionalism. Both the Basque and the Catalonian regions felt they had a separate identity from spain. One of the ways in which regionalism increased tensions in Spain was when the republic granted autonomy to Catalonia. Like all those other things, once power fell in conservative hands again, their autonomy was repealed. Two things the issue of autonomy did was, one, the discontentment of the right when Catalonia was granted autonomy, two, anger among the catalonian people once their autonomy was repealed. Furthermore, both the Basque Country and Catalonia were where most of Spain's industrialisation was occurring. This caused the emergence of a population of workers which were both regionalist and extreme left wingers.

Within Spain, we can notice an all or none situation where you cannot have a system who will attempt to appease both the extreme left and right while having a constitutional, middle of the spectrum system. Spain either had to belong to old spain or new spain. The Civil War was a result of varied interests who could not mix. As we can see with hindsight, this is the same issue that will become the cause of a larger european war, Spain's situation is a micro representation of a universal problem that would arise throughout the world.

bility, which was pretty much everyone. Finally, the element of regionalism contributed to tensions within Spain in that both Catalonia and the Basque regions seemed to have a quite separate identities from Spain and were not in line with the spanish system.

Spain had a highly polarized political system. The constituents of old Spain we

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Approximate Word count = 1143
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: History