Author: Stanley G. Payne

Publisher: Liverpool University Press

Published: 2017-02-23

Total Pages: 276

ISBN-13: 1782843973

The Second Spanish Republic (1931-36) was the only new liberal democratic regime to emerge in Europe during the 1930s. Historians, however, have focused primarily on the Civil War of 1936-39 that followed, devoting much less attention to the parliamentary regime that preceded it. This book deals with the history and failure of the democratic polity in Spain through a detailed examination of the initiatives of its president, Niceto Alcala Zamora. As civil servant, lawyer, politician and writer, by 1931 he had become one of the most successful men of Spain. He played the leading role in the downfall of the monarchy and the inauguration of the Republic, which he served for eight months as initial prime minister and then as the first president. Stanley Payne's study argues that the failure of the Republic was not inevitable but depended on the policy choices of its president and the key party leaders. Alcala Zamora's professed goal was to center the Republic, stabilizing the new regime while avoiding extremes, but he failed altogether in this project. The Constitution of 1931 stipulated the double responsibility of parliamentary government both to the president and to a voting majority. Though Alcala Zamora resisted strong efforts from the left to cancel the results of the first fully democratic elections in 1933, he subsequently used his powers recklessly, making and unmaking governments at will, refusing to permit normal functioning of parliament. This first critical scholarly account of the presidency of Alcala Zamora casts new light on the failure of democracy in interwar Europe and on the origins of the Spanish Civil War.

Author: Miguel Angel Ruiz Carnicer

Publisher: Liverpool University Press

Published: 2018-11-01

Total Pages: 263

ISBN-13: 1782845429

This book brings together recent research by a group of specialists in history and sociology to provide a new reading of the late Franco dictatorship, especially in relation to its political culture. The authors focus on the election of local, trade union and national representatives, the work of the first Spanish sociologists, the struggle over administrative reform, the role of the media and the intellectuals, as well as the evolution of the dictatorships political class and its response to the regimes decline. Not only are the politics of the late dictatorship scrutinised, but also the mechanisms that were deployed to control the fast-changing society of the 1960s and 1970s. In examining the late Franco period, the contributors do not believe that it contained the seeds of Spains later democratisation, but maintain that certain sectorial regime initiatives -- electoral and political changes, an evolving discourse and an interest in political processes outside Spain -- made many Spaniards aware of the dictatorships contradictions and limitations, thereby encouraging its subsequent political and social evolution. This transformation is compared with the latter stages of the parallel dictatorship in Portugal. The great majority of Spaniards felt that the embrace of democratic freedoms and integration into the European Community was the only way forward during the Transition. But the shift from dictatorship to democracy from the 1960s onwards in Spain needs to be understood in relation to the multitude of political and social changes that took place -- despite the opposition of Franco and the bunker mentality of the regime. These changes manifested in a complex interaction between internal and external factors, which eventually resulted in the transformation of Spanish society itself.