By the early 20th century, the once-proud royal house of Spain had plummeted far from the glories of conquest and exploration. With the onset of economic hard times and the election of a republican government in 1931, King Alfonso XIII abdicated.
Spanish Democracy Fails
As with many idealistic movements dedicated to radical change for the betterment of the masses, the leaders of the Second Republic proved more skillful at attacking enemies than at effecting visible and lasting improvements. While their redistribution of portions of large estates to landless peasants and the curtailment of the influence of both the Catholic Church and the Army united powerful opponents, they failed to bring prosperity to their supporters. The slow pace of reforms and the absence of tangible resuts had workers regularly striking and demonstrating against the very government that had been the object of their hopes.
An election in February 1936 was won by a Popular Front of socialists and communists. This further stirred the opposition of the Falange Party, a Spanish version of the fascist movements that had taken hold in Italy and Germany and which embodied the sentiments of the defeated classes which had dominated the monarchy. The banning of the Falange was followed by riots and near-anarchy as military units in several regions revolted.
The Sides of Spanish Civil War
When a group of generals in Spanish Morocco headed by Francisco Franco declared their intention to overthrow the government, a full-scale civil war began. The reigning fascist dictators in Europe, Hitler and Mussolini, quickly grasped the value of an ideological ally determined to eliminate a left-wing government and immediately supplied logistical and military support. They airlifted Franco's troops to continental Spain and supplied arms and eventually manpower. The most lethal and memorable example of their assistance was the bombing of the town of Guernica by German planes in 1937, immortalized in a Picasso painting.
Meanwhile, Soviet dictator Stalin rushed military assistance to the Republicans, and an International Brigade of volunteers from many countries was organized to reinforce them as well. While the isolationist-minded United States Congress banned arms shipments to Spain, American leftists and idealists fought in their own Abraham Lincoln Brigade.
From the start, Franco's Nationalist forces proved stronger, but stubborn Republican resistance continued until early 1939. By February, western democracies Britain and France reluctantly recognized the Franco government. Madrid fell in March and the Republicans surrendered in April. The war cost an estimated 200,000 combat-related deaths, but there were perhaps 100,000 or more political executions on both sides during the war and the execution of an equal number by the victors after the war.
Franco ruled as a dictator until his death in 1975, when the monarchy was restored by his arrangement.
Reference:
historylearning site.co.uk
