Revolution of 1934 | |||||||
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Civil Guard forces with prisoners in Brañosera | |||||||
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Belligerents | |||||||
Catalan State | |||||||
Commanders and leaders | |||||||
Niceto Alcalá-Zamora Alejandro Lerroux Diego Hidalgo y Durán Francisco Franco Manuel Goded Eduardo López Ochoa Agustín Muñoz Grandes Juan Yagüe Domingo Batet Lisardo Doval Bravo Cecilio Bedia | Belarmino Tomás Ramón González Peña Teodomiro Menéndez (POW) Ramón Álvarez Palomo Lluís Companys Frederic Escofet Enric Pérez i Farràs | ||||||
Casualties and losses | |||||||
450 dead [1] | 1,500–2,000 dead 15,000–30,000 arrested |
The Revolution of 1934, also known as the Revolution of October 1934 or the Revolutionary General Strike of 1934, was a revolutionary strike movement that took place between 5 and 19 October 1934, during the black biennium of the Second Spanish Republic. The revolts were triggered by the entry of the conservative Spanish Confederation of the Autonomous Right (CEDA) into the Spanish government. Most of the events occurred in Catalonia and Asturias and were supported by many Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) and General Union of Workers (UGT) members, notably Largo Caballero, as well as members of the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT). Historians have argued that the incident sharpened antagonism between the political Right and Left in Spain and was part of the reason for the later Spanish Civil War. [2] Around 2,000 people were killed during the uprising, which was repressed by Spanish government forces.
The elections held in October 1933 resulted in a centre-right majority. The political party with the most votes was the Confederación Española de Derechas Autónomas ("CEDA"), but president Alcalá-Zamora decided not to invite the leader of the CEDA, Gil Robles, to form a government, possibly because his party had not yet adhered to the republican system. [3] Instead, the president invited the Radical Republican Party's Alejandro Lerroux to do so, in what author Hugh Thomas called a weakening of the democratic process. [3] CEDA supported the multi-party government for nearly a year without being a part of it. [4] After a year of intense pressure, CEDA was finally successful in forcing the acceptance of three ministries. This strategy by CEDA can be interpreted as a continuation of the plan outlined by Gil Robles during the previous campaign: "Democracy is not an end in itself, but a means to conquer a new state. When the moment will come, the parliament will submit or we will make it make it go away". This development was not well accepted by the left, who accused the president of handing over the Republic to its enemies [3] and viewed the CEDA as a signal of the advance of Fascism appealing to the case of Austria and the rise of Engelbert Dollfuss to justify the use of force for defensive purposes. [5] However historian Salvador de Madariaga, himself a supporter of Manuel Azaña, and an exiled vocal opponent of Francisco Franco asserted that: "The argument that [Gil Robles] tried to destroy the Constitution to establish fascism was, at once, hypocritical and false". [6] [note 1]
The Socialists triggered an insurrection that they had been preparing for nine months. [7] A general strike was called by the UGT and the PSOE in the name of the Alianza Obrera, 'Workers' Alliance'. The issue was that the Left Republicans identified the Republic not with democracy or constitutional law but with a specific set of left wing policies and politicians. Any deviation, even if democratic, was seen as treasonous. [8] The founding fathers of the system had conceived the new democracy as belonging to them, and were more concerned with the radical reforms which their view were necessary than with pluralism and freedom. [9]
1934 was a year of constant class clashes, established on the basis of small incidents and short general strikes, which allowed the movement to arrive on the eve of October in the fullness of its strength, with great confidence and extraordinarily united. [10]
The rebels had a considerable stock of rifles and pistols on them. Most of the rifles came from a shipment of arms supplied by Indalecio Prieto, a socialist party moderate. The rifles had been landed by the yacht Turquesa at Pravia, north-east of Oviedo; Prieto swiftly fled to France to avoid arrest. Other weapons came from captured arms factories in the region and the miners also had their dynamite blasting charges, which were known as "la artillería de la revolución." [11]
The rising in Asturias was well prepared with headquarters in Oviedo. [3]
In several mining towns in Asturias, local unions gathered small arms and were determined to see the strike through. Fighting began on the evening of 4 October, with the miners occupying several towns, attacking and seizing local Civil and Assault Guard barracks. [12]
At dawn on 5 October, the rebels attacked the Brothers' school in Turón. The Brothers and the Passionist Fathers were captured and imprisoned in the "House of the People" while waiting for a decision from the Revolutionary Committee. Under pressure from extremists, the Committee condemned them to death. [13] 34 priests, six young seminarians aged 18 to 21, and several businessmen and civil guards were summarily executed by the revolutionaries in Mieres and Sama. 58 religious buildings including churches, convents, and part of the university at Oviedo were burned and destroyed. [14] [15]
The same day saw columns of miners advancing along the road to Oviedo, the provincial capital. With the exception of two barracks in which fighting with the garrison of 1,500 government troops continued, the city was taken by 6 October. The miners proceeded to occupy several other towns, most notably the large industrial centre of La Felguera, and set up town assemblies, or "revolutionary committees", to govern the towns that they controlled. [16]
Within three days the center of Asturias was in the hands of the rebels. The revolutionary soviets set up by the miners attempted to impose order on the areas under their control, and the moderate socialist leadership of Ramón González Peña and Belarmino Tomás took measures to restrain violence.
Taking Oviedo, the rebels were able to seize the city's arsenal gaining 24,000 rifles, carbines, and light and heavy machine guns. [17] Recruitment offices demanded the services of all workers between the ages of eighteen and forty for the 'Red Army'. Thirty thousand workers were mobilized for battle within ten days. [3]
In the occupied areas, the rebels officially declared the proletarian revolution and abolished regular money. [18]
The government was now facing a civil war. Franco, already General of Division and aide to Minister of War Diego Hidalgo, was put in command of operations to suppress the violent insurgency. Franco and General Manuel Goded Llopis advised Hidalgo to bring in the battle-tested Spanish Army of Africa, composed of the Spanish Legion and the Moroccan Regulares. [17] Historian Hugh Thomas asserts that Hidalgo said that he did not want young inexperienced recruits fighting their own people, and that he was wary of moving troops to Asturias, leaving the rest of Spain unprotected. Bringing in the Army of Africa was not a novelty; in 1932 Manuel Azaña had also called the Tercio and the Regulares from North Africa.
War Minister Hidalgo wanted Franco to lead the troops, but President Alcalá Zamora, aware of Franco's monarchist sympathies, chose General Eduardo López Ochoa to lead the troops against the miners, trusting that his reputation as a loyal Republican would minimize the bloodshed, wich turned brutal anyway. [19] After two weeks of heavy fighting done by troops from the Army of Africa with a death toll of 2000, the rebellion was suppressed. As a deterrent to further atrocities, López Ochoa summarily executed a number of Legionnaires and Regulares for torturing or murdering prisoners. [20]
Historian Javier Tusell argues that although Franco had a leading role, giving instructions from Madrid, that does not mean he took part in the illegal repressive activities. [21] According to Tusell it was the Republican General, López de Óchoa, a republican freemason who had been appointed by President Alcalá Zamora to lead the repression in the field, that was unable to prevent innumerous atrocities. [21]
According to Hugh Thomas, 2,000 persons died in the uprising: 230–260 military and police, 33 priests, 1,500 miners in combat and 200 individuals killed in the repression. [22] Stanley Payne estimates that the rebel atrocities killed between 50 and 100 people and that the government conducted up to 100 summary executions, while 15 million pesetas were stolen from banks, most which was never recovered and funded further revolutionary activity. [23]
In Catalonia the revolt was triggered by the Government of Catalonia led by its president Lluís Companys, who proclaimed the Catalan State. The Catalonian uprising began and ended the same day, it lasted only ten hours, in the so-called "Events of 6 October".
In October 6, Lluís Companys decided to declare the Catalan Republic within the "Spanish Federal Republic", [24] and numerous heavily armed squads occupied the streets of Barcelona and other towns, supporting the initiative and capturing public offices. Lluís Companys appeared on a balcony of the Palau de la Generalitat (Government Building) and he told the crowd that "monarchists and fascists" had "assaulted the government", and went on:
In this solemn hour, in the name of the people and the Parliament, the Government over which I preside assumes all the faculties of power in Catalonia, proclaims the Catalan State of the Spanish Federal Republic, and in establishing and fortifying relations with the leaders of the general protest against Fascism, invites them to establish in Catalonia the provisional Government of the Republic, which will find in our Catalan people the most generous impulse of fraternity in the common desire to erect a liberal and magnificent federal republic. [25]
Lluís Companys asked Manuel Azaña, who happened to be in Barcelona during the events, to lead a newly proclaimed Spanish Republican government, a proposition that Azaña rejected. [26] [27] Lluís Companys also telephoned General Domènec Batet, asking him for support. Domènec Betet who was deployed in Catalonia as chief of the IV Organic Division remained loyal to the central government and gained some time demanding a written request. While Companys wrote the request, Batet prepared the Army, Guardia Civil, and Guardia de Asalto troops. At 9 pm General Batet declared martial law. He moved against trade union and militia headquarters, both of whom surrendered quickly, then brought light artillery to bear against the city hall and the Generalitat. [28] Fighting continued until 6 am, when Companys surrendered. [29]
In the failed rebellion forty-six people died: thirty-eight civilians and eight soldiers. [30] More than three thousand people were imprisoned, most of them in the "Uruguay" steamer, and placed under the jurisdiction of the councils of war.
The International Marxist Tendency movement classified Lluis Company's actions as the "worst betrayal of the movement", according to this movement Companys surrendered without resistance and his “Estat Catala” did not challenge private property nor the current social establishment he just wanted to place "the leadership of the struggle in the hands of the petty bourgeoisie represented by the ERC (Catalan Republican Left)". [31]
Although the vast majority of the events happened in Asturias and Catalonia, strikes, clashes, and shootings happened also in the Basque country, north of Castile and León, Cantabria, or Madrid.
The insurgency in Asturias sparked a new era of violent anti-Christian persecutions, initiated the practice of atrocities against the clergy [15] and sharpened the antagonism between Left and Right. Franco and López Ochoa (who, prior to the campaign in Asturias, had been seen as a left-leaning officer) [32] emerged as officers prepared to use 'troops against Spanish civilians as if they were a foreign enemy'. [33] Franco described the rebellion to a journalist in Oviedo as, 'a frontier war and its fronts are socialism, communism and whatever attacks civilisation in order to replace it with barbarism.' Though the colonial units sent to the north by the government at Franco's recommendation [14] consisted of the Spanish Foreign Legion and the Moroccan Regulares Indigenas, the right wing press portrayed the Asturian rebels as lackeys of a foreign Jewish-Bolshevik conspiracy. [34] At the start of the Civil War, López Ochoa was assassinated. Some time after these events, Franco was briefly commander-in-chief of the Army of Africa (from 15 February onwards), and from 19 May 1935, on, Chief of the General Staff.
After the "miners" had surrendered the investigations and repression were carried out by the brutal Civil Guard Major Lisardo Doval Bravo who applied torture and savage beatings. [35] Several prisoners died. The independent journalist “Luis de Sirval” was arbitrarily arrested and shot dead in prison by a Bulgarian Legionnaire named Dimitri Ivan Ivanoff. [35] Due to martial law and censorship, little or no information was officially made public, a group of Socialist deputies carried a private investigation and published an independent report that discarded most to the publicized atrocities but that confirmed the savage beatings and tortures. [35]
In Catalonia Lluís Companys and his government were arrested. So too was Manuel Azaña, despite having taken no part in the events; he was released in December. [36] The Statute of Autonomy was suspended indefinitely on 14 December, and all powers that had been transferred to Barcelona were returned to Madrid. The soldiers who had taken part of the insurrection, the commander Enric Pérez i Farràs and the captains Escofet and Ricart, were condemned to death, their sentence being commuted to life imprisonment by the President of the Republic, Alcalá Zamora, in spite of the protests of both the CEDA and the Republican Liberal Democrat Party of Melquiades Álvarez, who demanded a strong hand. [37]
Martial law was in place until January 23, 1935. The government tried to be and was reasonable in dealing with insurrects in most cases, but in Asturias justice was uneven and the police administration was allowed to continue with excesses. [35]
On February 23, 1935, the Mayor of Barcelona and the detained councilors were provisionally released. [38]
In June 1935 The President and the Government of the Generalitat were tried by the Constitutional Guarantees Tribunal and were sentenced for military rebellion to thirty years in prison, which was carried out by some in the Cartagena prison and others in the Puerto de Santa María. [39]
The government of Lerroux unleashed "a harsh repressive wave with the closure of political and trade union centers, the suppression of newspapers, the removal of municipalities and thousands of detainees, without having had a direct action on the facts", which showed "a punitive will often arbitrary and with vengeance components of class or ideological". [40]
Ramón Gonzáles Peña the prominent leader of the Oviedo Revolutionary Committee was sentenced to death. One year later, however, he was reprieved. Gonzáles later served as the president of Unión General de Trabajadores, in which he was in conflict with Largo Caballero. He was also a Member of Parliament and was the Minister of Justice 1938–1939. [41] [42] After the Spanish Civil War González Peña went to exile in Mexico, where he died on 27 July 1952. [43]
There were no mass killing after the fighting was over, completely different from the massacres that had taken place in similar uprisings in France, Hungary or Germany; all death sentences were commuted aside from two, army sergeant and deserter Diego Vásquez, who fought alongside the miners, and a worker known as "El Pichilatu" who had committed serial killings. Little effort was actually made to suppress the organisations that had carried out the insurrection, resulting in most being functional again by 1935. Support for fascism was minimal and did not increase, while civil liberties were restored in full by 1935, after which the revolutionaries had a generous opportunity to pursue power through electoral means. [44]
Following the Spanish general election of 1936, the new government of Manuel Azaña released Companys and his government from jail. [45]
At the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, López Ochoa was in a military hospital in Carabanchel and was awaiting trial, accused of responsibility for the deaths of 20 civilians at a barracks in Oviedo. Given the violence occurring throughout Madrid, the government attempted to move Ochoa from the hospital to a safer location but was twice prevented from doing so by large hostile crowds. A third attempt was made under the guise that Ochoa was already dead, but the ruse was exposed and the general was taken away. One account states that an anarchist dragged him from the coffin in which he was lying and shot him in the hospital garden. His head was hacked off, stuck on a pole and publicly paraded. His remains were then displayed with a sign reading "This is the butcher of Asturias." [46] [20]
The eight martyrs of Turon were venerated on 7 September 1989, and beatified By Pope John Paul II [47] on 29 April 1990. They were canonized on 21 November 1999. [48] [49]
Francisco Franco Bahamonde was a Spanish military general who led the Nationalist forces in overthrowing the Second Spanish Republic during the Spanish Civil War and thereafter ruled over Spain from 1939 to 1975 as a dictator, assuming the title Caudillo. This period in Spanish history, from the Nationalist victory to Franco's death, is commonly known as Francoist Spain or as the Francoist dictatorship.
Lluís Companys i Jover was a Catalan politician who served as president of Catalonia from 1934 and during the Spanish Civil War.
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 into 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 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.
Juan Negrín López was a Spanish physician and politician who served as prime minister of the Second Spanish Republic. He was a leader of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party and of the left-leaning Popular Front government during the Spanish Civil War. He also served as finance minister. He was the last Loyalist premier of Spain (1937–1939), leading the Republican forces defeated by the Nationalists under General Francisco Franco. He was President of the Council of Ministers of the Second Spanish Republic and the Spanish Republican government in exile between 1937 and 1945. He died in exile in Paris, France.
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.
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.
Red Terror is the name given by historians to various acts of violence committed from 1936 until the end of the Spanish Civil War by sections of nearly all the leftist groups involved. The May 1931 arson attacks against Church property throughout Spain and the determination of the Republican Government to never compromise upon and strictly enforce its ban against classical Catholic education were the beginning of a politicidal campaign of religious persecution against the Catholic Church in Spain. No Republican-controlled region escaped systematic and anticlerical violence, although it was minimal in the Basque Country. The violence consisted of the killing of tens of thousands of people, including 6,832 Roman Catholic priests, the vast majority in the wake of the rightist military coup in July 1936, the Spanish nobility, small business owners, industrialists, conservative politicians, and known or suspected supporters of the right-leaning parties or the anti-Stalinist Left, and the desecration and arson attacks against monasteries, convents, Catholic schools, and churches.
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 Spanish Civil War was a military conflict fought from 1936 to 1939 between the Republicans and the Nationalists. Republicans were loyal to the left-leaning Popular Front government of the Second Spanish Republic, and consisted of various socialist, communist, separatist, anarchist, and republican parties, some of which had opposed the government in the pre-war period. The opposing Nationalists were an alliance of Falangists, monarchists, conservatives, and traditionalists led by a military junta among whom General Francisco Franco quickly achieved a preponderant role. Due to the international political climate at the time, the war had many facets and was variously viewed as class struggle, a religious struggle, a struggle between dictatorship and republican democracy, between revolution and counterrevolution, and between fascism and communism. According to Claude Bowers, U.S. ambassador to Spain during the war, it was the "dress rehearsal" for World War II. The Nationalists won the war, which ended in early 1939, and ruled Spain until Franco's death in November 1975.
The Asturian miners' strike of 1934 was a major strike action undertaken by miners in Asturias against the new government which involved the CEDA, from October 4-19. The strike and subsequent demonstrations eventually developed into a violent revolutionary uprising in an attempt to overthrow the conservative regime. The revolutionaries took over Asturias by force, killing many of the province's police and religious leaders. Armed with dynamite, rifles, and machine guns, they destroyed religious buildings, such as churches and convents. The rebels officially declared a Proletarian Revolution and instituted a local government in the territory. The rebellion was crushed by the Spanish Navy and the Spanish Republican Army, the latter using mainly colonial troops from Spanish Morocco.
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.
The martyrs of Turon is the name given by the Catholic church to a group of eight members of the Catholic, religious-teaching congregation Institute of the Brothers of the Christian Schools, also known as De La Salle Brothers, and one Passionist priest who were executed by insurrectionists in Spain, during the Asturias uprising of October 1934. They were canonized in 1999 by Pope John Paul II.
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.
The Spanish coup of July 1936 was a military uprising that was intended to overthrow the Spanish Second Republic but precipitated the Spanish Civil War; Nationalists fought against Republicans for control of Spain. The coup was organized for 18 July 1936, although it started the previous day in Spanish Morocco. Instead of resulting in a prompt transfer of power, the coup split control of the Spanish military and territory roughly in half. The resulting civil war ultimately led to the establishment of a nationalist regime under Francisco Franco, who became ruler of Spain as caudillo.
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 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".
The Unification Decree was a political measure adopted by Francisco Franco in his capacity of Head of State of Nationalist Spain on April 19, 1937. The decree merged two existing political groupings, the Falangists and the Carlists, into a new party - the Falange Española Tradicionalista y de las Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional Sindicalista. As all other parties were declared dissolved at the same time, the FET became the only legal party in Nationalist Spain. It was defined in the decree as a link between state and society and was intended to form the basis for an eventual totalitarian regime. The head of state – Franco himself – was proclaimed party leader, to be assisted by the Junta Política and Consejo Nacional. A set of decrees which followed shortly after appointed members to the new executive.