 |
 | |||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||
Indirect presidential elections were held in Spain on 26 April and 10 May 1936. In the first stage, 473 electors were elected; in the second, the 473 electors convened in an Electoral College with the 473 members of the Congress of Deputies in order to elect the President of the Spanish Republic, as required by Article 68 of the Spanish Constitution of 1931.
The elections were called after President Niceto Alcalá Zamora was dismissed by Congress due to irregularities in the dissolution of the House in 1936, which was declared ‘unjustified’. This move was seen as personal revenge by the Popular Front against Alcalá Zamora, who had called for a general election at an unfavorable time for the left, and while the right was more cautious about carrying out the dismissal process, calling for a constitutional review by the Court of Constitutional Guarantees, it also supported the decision.
Turnout was low, failing to reach 40 percent. This was due to the main opposition party, the right-wing CEDA, boycotting the process, a decision which was widely criticized, to no avail. The Popular Front did contest the elections, nominating Manuel Azaña as its presidential candidate on April 30, as well as minor right-wing parties in different provinces. There are no official results from the elections, but accounts from contemporary newspapers give a figure of 393–394 electors affiliated with the Popular Front, with the opposition (Republican conservatives, Radicals, nationalists, Agrarians, independents, an insignificant figure of members of the CEDA and unaffiliated electors) winning 79–80 electoral votes; the left won at least in 28 provinces, whereas the opposition carried 4 of them.
The Electoral College met at the Palacio de Cristal of the Parque del Retiro in Madrid on Sunday, May 10, 1936. With 847 members out of 911 present, Azaña was elected with 754 votes (from the Popular Front, Republican Conservatives, Radicals, Centrists and nationalists), and therefore became the new president of the Spanish Republic. He took the oath of office the following day, and after tense negotiations, Galician regionalist politician Santiago Casares Quiroga became the new prime minister.
| General elections |
|
|---|---|
| Presidential elections | |
| European elections | |
| Local elections | |
| Regional elections | |
| Referendums | |
| |
Francisco Largo Caballero was a Spanish politician and trade unionist who served as the prime minister of the Second Spanish Republic during the Spanish Civil War. He was one of the historic leaders of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) and of the Workers' General Union (UGT). Although he entered politics as a moderate leftist, after the 1933 general election in which the conservative CEDA party won the majority, he took a more radical turn and began to advocate for a socialist revolution.
Manuel Azaña Díaz was a Spanish politician who served as Prime Minister of the Second Spanish Republic, organizer of the Popular Front in 1935 and the last President of the Republic (1936–1939). He was the most prominent leader of the Republican cause during the Spanish Civil War of 1936–1939.
The Popular Front was an electoral alliance and pact formed in January 1936 to contest that year's general election by various left-wing political organizations during the Second Spanish Republic. The alliance was led by Manuel Azaña. In Catalonia and the modern-day Valencian Community, the coalition was known as the Front of the Lefts.
The Republican Left was a Spanish republican party founded in 1934.
The Cortes Generales are the bicameral legislative chambers of Spain, consisting of the Congress of Deputies and the Senate.
The Confederación Española de Derechas Autónomas was a Spanish political party in the Second Spanish Republic. A Catholic conservative force, it was the political heir to Ángel Herrera Oria's Acción Popular and defined itself in terms of the 'affirmation and defence of the principles of Christian civilization,' translating this theoretical stand into a political demand for the revision of the anti-Catholic passages of the republican constitution. CEDA saw itself as a defensive organisation, formed to protect religious toleration, family, and private property rights. José María Gil-Robles declared his intention to "give Spain a true unity, a new spirit, a totalitarian polity..." and went on to say "Democracy is not an end but a mean to achieve the conquest of the new state. When the time comes, either parliament submits or we will eliminate it." The CEDA held Fascist-style rallies, called Gil-Robles "Jefe", the Castillian Spanish equivalent to Duce, and sometimes debated whether CEDA might lead a "March on Madrid" to forcefully seize power.
Straperlo was a scheme which originated in the Netherlands in the 1930s and was then introduced in Spain. In essence it was a fraudulent roulette which could be controlled electrically with the push of a button. The ensuing scandal was one of the several causes of the fall of the Republican government and the polarization of the parliament, which finally led to the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939).
Niceto Alcalá-Zamora y Torres was a Spanish lawyer and politician who served, briefly, as the first prime minister of the Second Spanish Republic, and then—from 1931 to 1936—as its president.
José María Gil-Robles y Quiñones de León was a Spanish politician, leader of the CEDA and a prominent figure in the period leading up to the Spanish Civil War. He served as Minister of War from May to December 1935. In the 1936 elections the CEDA was defeated, and support for Gil-Robles and his party evaporated. Gil-Robles was unwilling to struggle with Francisco Franco for power and in April 1937 he announced the dissolution of CEDA, and went into exile. Abroad, he negotiated with Spanish monarchists to try to arrive at a common strategy for taking power in Spain. In 1968 he was named a professor of the University of Oviedo and published his book No fue posible la paz . After the death of Franco and the end of his regime, Gil-Robles became one of the leaders of the "Spanish Christian Democracy" party, which however failed to win support in the Spanish general elections in 1977.
The Spanish Republic, commonly known as the Second Spanish Republic, was the form of democratic government in Spain from 1931 to 1939. The Republic was proclaimed on 14 April 1931 after the deposition of King Alfonso XIII. It was dissolved on 1 April 1939 after surrendering in the Spanish Civil War to the Nationalists led by General Francisco Franco.
The Radical Republican Party, sometimes shortened to the Radical Party, was a Spanish Radical party in existence between 1908 and 1936. Beginning as a splinter from earlier Radical parties, it initially played a minor role in Spanish parliamentary life, before it came to prominence as one of the leading political forces of the Spanish Republic.
Legislative elections were held in Spain on 16 February 1936. At stake were all 473 seats in the unicameral Cortes Generales. The winners of the 1936 elections were the Popular Front, a left-wing coalition of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE), Republican Left (Spain) (IR), Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC), Republican Union (UR), Communist Party of Spain (PCE), Acció Catalana (AC), and other parties. Their coalition commanded a narrow lead over the divided opposition in terms of the popular vote, but a significant lead over the main opposition party, Spanish Confederation of the Autonomous Right (CEDA), in terms of seats. The election had been prompted by a collapse of a government led by Alejandro Lerroux, and his Radical Republican Party. Manuel Azaña would replace Manuel Portela Valladares, caretaker, as prime minister.
Elections to Spain's legislature, the Cortes Generales, were held on 19 November 1933 for all 473 seats in the unicameral Cortes of the Second Spanish Republic. Since the previous elections of 1931, a new constitution had been ratified, and the franchise extended to more than six million women. The governing Republican-Socialist coalition had fallen apart, with the Radical Republican Party beginning to support a newly united political right.
The 1931 Spanish general election for the Constituent Cortes was the first such election held in the Second Republic. It took place in several rounds.
The background of the Spanish Civil War dates back to the end of the 19th century, when the owners of large estates, called latifundios, held most of the power in a land-based oligarchy. The landowners' power was unsuccessfully challenged by the industrial and merchant sectors. In 1868 popular uprisings led to the overthrow of Queen Isabella II of the House of Bourbon. In 1873 Isabella's replacement, King Amadeo I of the House of Savoy, abdicated due to increasing political pressure, and the short-lived First Spanish Republic was proclaimed. After the restoration of the Bourbons in December 1874, Carlists and anarchists emerged in opposition to the monarchy. Alejandro Lerroux helped bring republicanism to the fore in Catalonia, where poverty was particularly acute. Growing resentment of conscription and of the military culminated in the Tragic Week in Barcelona in 1909. After the First World War, the working class, the industrial class, and the military united in hopes of removing the corrupt central government, but were unsuccessful. Fears of communism grew. A military coup brought Miguel Primo de Rivera to power in 1923, and he ran Spain as a military dictatorship. Support for his regime gradually faded, and he resigned in January 1930. There was little support for the monarchy in the major cities, and King Alfonso XIII abdicated; the Second Spanish Republic was formed, whose power would remain until the culmination of the Spanish Civil War. Monarchists would continue to oppose the Republic.
Catholicism in the Second Spanish Republic was an important area of dispute, and tensions between the Catholic hierarchy and the Republic were apparent from the beginning, eventually leading to the Catholic Church acting against the Republic and in collaboration with the dictatorship of Francisco Franco.
Republicanism in Spain is a political position and movement that holds that Spain should be a republic.
The events of 6 October were a general strike, armed insurgency and declaration of a Catalan State by Catalonia's autonomous government on 6 October 1934, in reaction to the inclusion of conservatives in the republican regime of Spain. They took place as part of a nationwide strike and armed action known as the Revolution of 1934. Catalan President Lluís Companys declared the Catalan State at 8 p.m. Martial law was declared, and military forces attacked the Palau de la Generalitat de Catalunya and other buildings. Companys surrendered on the morning of 7 October.
The Conservative Republican Party was a Spanish political party created in January 1932 by Miguel Maura after breaking with one of the new Republic’s main conservative parties, the Liberal Republican Right. It disappeared when the Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936.
The Catalan State was a short-lived state proclaimed during the events of 6 October 1934 by Lluís Companys as the "Catalan State within the Spanish Federal Republic".
