Catholicism in the Second Spanish Republic

The Catholic Church was an active element in the polarising politics of the years preceding the Spanish Civil War and the defeat of theCEDA-Traditionalist alliance in the elections of February 1936 saw this process accelerate with the 'haemorrhaging of CEDA members towards the Falange. As early as May 1931 when an outburst of mob violence had led to the burning of churches, convents and religious schools in Madrid, anticlerical sentiment and anticlerical legislation, had meant that moderate Catholicism became increasingly embattled and ultimately displaced. The political fate of the moderate Catholic Miguel Maura exemplified the predicament of the centre in periods of intense political polarization - though he demonstrated his defence of Church property in May 1931 he was still dubbed by the Catholic right as one who consented 'to Spain being lit by burning churches'.

Prime Minister Manuel Azaña believed that the Catholic Church was responsible for Spain's backwardness and advocated the elimination of special privileges for the Church on the grounds that Spain was no longer a Catholic nation but a secular one. In the election of November 1933, the right-wing CEDA emerged as the largest single party in the new Cortes. President Alcalá-Zamora however 'wary of Gil Robles demagoguery and the CEDA's ambivalent attitude to democracy' approached the Radical leader Alejandro Lerroux to become Spain's Prime MInister. A general strike and armed rising of workers in October 1934, which reached its greatest intensity in Asturias and Catalonia, was forcefully put down by the government. This in turn energized political movements across the spectrum in Spain, including a revivedanarchist movement and new reactionary and fascist groups, including the Falange and a revivedCarlist movement. In particular the JAP (CEDA's youth wing) demonstrated its increasing strength. The defeat of the rising was warmly greeted by the Catholic Gaceta Nacional and according to its editor had been followed not by repression but by justice. In Catholic Salamanca, for example, good sons and daughters of the Church were called to mark the victory in Asturias by prayer and penance and make reparation to the majestic and victorious figure of Christ the King. "The figure of Christ clothed in majesty was also used by the Catholic right as a symbol of the triumph of their cause. In Spain, as in Belgium or Mexico, Christ the King had become the symbol of militant Catholicism."

During the Spanish Civil War, the Catholic hierarchy supported Francisco Franco's rebel Nationalistforces against the Popular Front government. According to Mary Vincent, "The Church was to become the most important source of legitimation for the rebellious generals, justifying the rising as a crusade against godlessness, anarchy and communism. Although such a close identification with the Nationalist cause was not to be fully elaborated until the Spanish hierarchy's joint pastoral letter of July 1937, there was no doubt that the Church would line up with the rebels against the Republic. Nor , at local level, was there any hesitancy. The Jesuit priests of the city of Salamanca were among the first volunteers to present themselves to the military authorities. The only sizeable group of Catholics to remain loyal to the republic were the Basques. "

During the war, thousands of churches were destroyed, thirteen bishops and some 7,000 clergy and religious Spaniards were assassinated. After that, Catholics largely supported Franco and the Nationalist forces in the Spanish Civil War of 1936 – 1939.

By the end of the war 20% percent of the nation's clergy had been killed. Individual clergymen and entire religious communities were executed with a death toll of 13 bishops, 4,172 diocesan priests and seminarists, 2,364 monks and friars and 283 nuns, for a total of 6,832 victims, as part of what is referred to as Spain's Red Terror.

According to Mary Vincent, "The tragedy of the Second Spanish Republic was that it abetted its own destruction; the tragedy of the Church was that it became so closely allied with its self-styled defenders that its own sphere of action was severely compromised. The Church, grateful for the championship offered first by José María Gil-Robles y Quiñones and then by Franco, entered into a political alliance which would prevent it carrying out the pastoral task it had itself identified."

Background

Spain entered the twentieth century a predominantly agrarian nation – a nation which, moreover, had lost its colonies. It was marked by uneven social and cultural development between town and country, between regions, within classes. 'Spain was not one country but a number of countries and regions marked by their uneven historical development.' From the turn of the century, however, there had been a significant advance in industrial development. Between 1910 and 1930 the industrial working class more than doubled to over 2,500,000. Those engaged in agriculture fell from 66 per cent to 45 per cent in the same period. The coalition hoped to concentrate its major reforms on three sectors : the 'latifundist aristocracy', the church and the army – though the attempt would come at a moment of world economic crisis. In the south less than 2 per cent of all landowners had over two thirds of the land, while 750,000 labourers eked out a living on near starvation wages. The country was 'prone to centrifugal tendencies', for example there was a tension between Catalan and Basque nationalist sentiment away from an agrarian and centralist ruling class in Madrid.

The Second Republic

Main article: Second Spanish Republic

Niceto Alcalá Zamora in 1931

Cardinal Segura - his nostalgia for the old confessional State was not unusual; the only government acceptable to many Spanish Catholics was one which would confirm the Church as holding a monopoly on truth; tolerance would violate the true Catholic's conscience. Declarations of respect for a democratic government were belied by this inability to accept the political and cultural pluralism on which democracy was based.

The Second Spanish Republic was established on 14 April 1931, after the abdication of King Alfonso XIII. The government, led by President Niceto Alcalá-Zamora, instituted a reformist program, including agrarian reform, separation of the church and state, right to divorce, vote for women (November 1933), reform of the Army, autonomy for Catalonia and the Basque country (October 1936). The proposed reform was blocked by the right and rejected by the far-left (CNT). The Republic suffered attacks from the right (the failed coup of Sanjurjo in 1932), and the left (the uprising of Asturias in 1934), also it suffered the impact of the Great Depression.

While the coalition held political power, economic power escaped it. In historian Hugh Thomas's words, 'Like so many others before and since it frightened the middle class without satisfying the workers.' It adopted the measures of separation of church and state, genuine universal suffrage, a cabinet responsible to a single chamber parliament, a secular educational system. This last measure antagonised the Church. Pius XI's 1929encyclical Divini illius magistri had said that the Church 'directly and perpetually' possessed 'the whole truth' in the moral sphere. Education was, therefore, 'first and super-eminently' the function of the Church. Primo de Rivera's dictatorship had offered the Church the protection it felt was its due. Now however, the Second Republic excluded the Church from education by prohibiting teaching by religious orders, even in private schools), restricted Church property rights and investments, provided for confiscation of and prohibitions on ownership of Church property, and banned the Society of Jesus.

Since the far left considered moderation of the anticlericalist aspects of the constitution as totally unacceptable, the revisionist historian Stanley Payne has argued that "the Republic as a democratic constitutional regime was doomed from the outset". Commentators have posited that the "hostile" approach to the issues of church and state was a substantial cause of the breakdown of democracy and the onset of civil war.

Burning of the convents

The government made little effort to control the anti-Catholic sentiment and deadly mob attacks on churches and monasteries. On May 11, 1931, mobs led by anarchists and some Radical Socialists sacked monarchist headquarters in Madrid and then proceeded to set fire or otherwise wreck more than a dozen churches in the capital. Similar acts of arson and vandalism were perperated in a score of other cities in southern and eastern Spain. It was alleged that this anticlerical violence was carried, for the most part with the acquiescence and in some cases the active assistance of the official Republican authorities. These attacks came to be referred to as the "quema de conventos" (the burning of the convents). When criticized by the Catholic Church for not doing more to stop the burning of religious buildings in May 1931 Prime Minister Azaña famously retorted that the burning of "all the convents in Spain was not worth the life of a single Republican". The quema de conventos (burning of convents) set the tone for relations between the Republican left and Spanish Catholicism. In response, Catholics mustered their forces, exacerbating the conditions that led to the Spanish Civil War.

1931 Constitution

Main article: Spanish Constitution of 1931

In the fall of 1931, a new constitution was passed that prohibited public religious processions and outlawed much of the work of Catholic orders. In October 1931 José María Gil-Robles the leading spokesman of the parliamentary right declared that the constitution was 'stillborn' - a 'dictatorial Constitution in the name of democracy.' Robles wanted to use mass meetings " to give supporters of the right a sense of their own strength and, ominously, to accustom them 'to fight, when necessary, for the possession of the street.' "

Formation of CEDA

The Spanish Confederation of the Autonomous Right (Confederación Española de Derechas Autónomas or CEDA) was founded in February 1933 and was led from its inception by José María Gil-Robles. Despite dismissing the idea of a party as a 'rigid fiction', the CEDA leaders created a stable party organisation which would lead the Spanish right into the age of mass politics.

Dilectissima Nobis

On 3 June 1933, in the encyclical Dilectissima Nobis (On Oppression Of The Church Of Spain), Pope Pius XI condemned the Spanish Government's deprivation of the civil liberties on which the Republic was supposedly based, noting in particular the expropriation of Church property and schools and the persecution of religious communities and orders. He demanded restitution of the expropriated properties which were now, by law, property of the Spanish State, to which the Church had to pay rent and taxes in order to continue using these properties. "Thus the Catholic Church is compelled to pay taxes on what was violently taken from her" Religious vestments, liturgical instruments, statues, pictures, vases, gems and similar objects necessary for worship were expropriated as well. The encyclical urged Catholics in Spain to fight with all legal means against these injustices.

1933 election

The announcement of a general election in November 1933 brought about an unprecedented mobilization of the Spanish right. El Debate instructed its readers to make the coming elections into an "obsession", the " sublime culmination of citizenly duties," so that victory in the polls would bring an end to the nightmare of the republican bienio rojo. Great emphasis was placed on the techniques of electoral propaganda. Gil-Robles visited Nazi Germany to study modern methods, including the Nuremburg rally. A national electoral committee was established, comprising CEDA, Alfonsist, Traditionalist, and Agrarian representatives - but excluding Miguel Maura's Conservative Republicans. The CEDA swamped entire localities with electoral publicity. The party produced ten million leaflets, together with some two hundred thousand coloured posters and hundreds of cars were used to distribute this material through the provinces. In all of the major cities propaganda films were shown around the streets on screens mounted on large lorries.

The need for unity was the constant theme of the campaign fought by the CEDA and the election was presented as a confrontaion of ideas, not of personalities. The electors' choice was simple: they voted for redemption or revolution and they voted for Christianity or Communism. The fortunes of Republican Spain, according to one of its posters had been decided by 'immorality and anarchy'. Catholics who continued to proclaim their republicanism were moved into the revolutionary camp and many speeches argued that the Catholic republican option had become totally illegitimate. 'A good Catholic may not vote for the Conservative Republican party' declared a Gaceta Regional editorial and the impression was given that Conservative Republicans, far from being Catholics, were in fact anti-religious. In this all-round attack on the political centre, the mobilization of women also became a major electoral tactic of the Catholic right. The Asociación Feminina de Educación had been formed in October 1931. As the 1933 general election approached women were warned that unless they voted correctly communism would come " which will tear your children from your arms, your parish church will be detroyed, the husband you love will flee from your side authorized by the divorce law, anarchy will come to the countryside, hunger and misery to your home." AFEC orators and organisers urged women to vote 'For God and for Spain!' Mirroring the female qualities emphasized by AFEC the CEDA's self-styled seccíon de defensa brought young male activists to the fore. This new CEDA squad was very much in evidence on election day itself, when its members patrolled the streets and polling stations in the provincial capital, supposedly to prevent the left from tampering with the ballot boxes.

Lerroux government

In the 1933 elections, the CEDA won a plurality of seats; however, these were not enough to form a majority. Despite the CEDA's plurality of seats, President Niceto Alcalá-Zamora declined to invite its leader, José Maria Gil-Robles, to form a government, and instead assigned the task to Alejandro Lerroux of the Radical Republican Party.

CEDA supported the Lerroux government and subsequently received three ministerial positions. The Lerroux government suspended most of the reforms of the previous Manuel Azaña government, provoking an armed miners' rebellion in Asturias on October 6, and an autonomist rebellion inCatalonia—both rebellions were suppressed (Asturias rebellion by young General Francisco Franco), being followed by mass political arrests and trials.

Hostility between the left and the right increased after the 1933 formation of the Government. Spain experienced general strikes and street conflicts. Noted among the strikes was the miners' revolt in northern Spain and riots in Madrid. Nearly all rebellions were crushed by the Government and political arrests followed.

Radicals became more aggressive, and conservatives turned to paramilitary and vigilante actions. According to official sources, 330 people were assassinated and 1,511 were wounded in political violence; records show 213 failed assassination attempts, 113 general strikes, and the destruction (typically by arson) of 160 religious buildings.

Juventudes de Acción Popular

Main article: Juventudes de Acción Popular

The Juventudes de Acción Popular , the youth wing within the CEDA, soon developed its own identity differentiating itself from the main body of the CEDA. The JAP emphasized sporting and political activity. It had its own fortnightly paper, the first issue of which proclaimed : 'We want a new state.' The JAP's distaste for the principles of universal suffrage was such that internal decisions were never voted upon. As the thirteenth point of the JAP put it : 'Anti-parliamentarianism. Anti-dictatorship. The people participating in Government in an organic manner, not by degenerate democracy.' The line between Christian corporatism and fascist statism became very thin indeed. The fascist tendencies of the JAP were vividly demonstrated in the series of rallies held by the CEDA youth movement during the course of 1934. Using the title jefe, the JAP created an intense and often disturbing cult around the figure of Gil-Robles. Gil-Robles himself had returned from the 1933 Nuremberg rally and praised its " youthful enthusiasm, steeped in optimism, so different to the desolate and enervating scepticism of our defeatists and intellectuals."

Shift of the CEDA to the right

Between November 1934 and March 1935, the CEDA minister for agriculture, Manuel Giménez Fernández, introduced into parliament a series of agrarian reform measures designed to better conditions in the Spanish countryside. These moderate proposals met with a hostile response from reactionary elements within the Cortes, including the conservative wing of the CEDA and the proposed reform was defeated. A change of personnel in the ministry also followed. The agrarian reform bill proved to be a catalyst for a series of increasingly bitter divisions within the Catholic right, rifts that indicated that the broad based CEDA alliance was disintegrating. Partly as a result of the impetus of the JAP, the Catholic party had been moving further to the right, forcing the resignation of moderate government figures, including Filiberto Villalobos. Gil Robles was not prepared to return the agriculture portfolio to Gimenez Fernandez. Mary Vincent writes that, despite the CEDA's rhetoric supporting Catholic social teaching, the extreme right ultimately prevailed.

1936 Popular Front victory

In the 1936 Elections a new coalition of Socialists (Spanish Worker Socialist Party, PSOE), liberals (Republican Left and the Republican Union Party), Communists, and various regional nationalist groups won the extremely tight election. The results gave 34 percent of the popular vote to the Popular Front and 33 percent to the incumbent government of the CEDA. This result, when coupled with the Socialists' refusal to participate in the new government, led to a general fear of revolution. In elections on February 16, 1936, CEDA lost power to the left-wing Popular Front. Support for Gil-Robles and his party evaporated almost overnight as the CEDA haemorrhaged members to the Falange. Mary Vincent writes that, "(the) rapid radicalization of the CEDA youth movement effectively meant that all attempts to save parliamentary Catholicism were doomed to failure.

Many CEDA supporters welcomed the military rebellion in the summer of 1936 which led to the Spanish Civil War, and many of them joined Franco's National Movement. However, General Franco was determined not to have competing right-wing parties in Spain and, in April 1937, CEDA was dissolved.

The Red Terror

Main article: Red Terror (Spain)

Further information: Martyrs of the Spanish Civil War and 498 Spanish Martyrs

"Execution" of the Sacred Heart of Jesus by Communist militiamen atCerro de los Ángeles near Madrid, on 7 August 1936, was the most infamous of the widespread desecration of religious property. The photograph in the London Daily Mail had the caption the "Spanish Reds' war on religion."

An estimated 55,000 civilians died in Republican-held territories. The Republican government was anticlerical and supporters attacked and murdered Roman Catholic clergy in reaction to news of the military revolt. In Republican held territories, Roman Catholic churches, convents, monasteries, and cemeteries were desecrated. Through the war, nearly all segments of the Republicans, Basques being a notable exception took part in semi-organized anti-Roman Catholic, anticlerical killing of 6,832 members of the Catholic clergy and religious orders.

Although to a much lesser extent, there were also incidents in which Nationalists murdered Catholic clerics. In one particular incident, following the capture of Bilbao, hundreds of people, including 16 priests who had served as chaplains for the Republican forces, were taken to the countryside or to graveyards to be murdered.}

Pope Pius XI referred to Mexico, Spain and Soviet Union as a "Terrible Triangle" and deemed the failure to protest in Europe and the United States as a Conspiracy of Silence.

13 bishops were killed from the dioceses of Sigüenza, Lleida, Cuenca, Barbastro Segorbe,Jaén, Ciudad Real, Almería, Guadix, Barcelona, Teruel and the auxiliary of Tarragona. Aware of the dangers, they all decided to remain in their cities. I cannot go, only here is my responsibility, whatever may happen, said the Bishop of Cuenca In addition 4,172 diocesan priests, 2,364 monks and friars, among them 259  Clarentians, 226 Franciscans, 204 Piarists, 176 Brothers of Mary, 165 Christian Brothers, 155 Augustinians, 132 Dominicans, and 114 Jesuits were killed. In some dioceses, a number of secular priests were killed:

• In Barbastro 123 of 140 priests were killed. about 88 percent of the secular clergy were murdered, 66 percent
• In Lleida, 270 of 410 priests were killed. about 62 percent
• In Tortosa, 44 percent of the secular priests were killed.
• In Toledo 286 of 600 priests priests were killed.
• In the dioceses of Málaga, Minorca and Segorbe, about half of the priests were killed"
• In Madrid 4,000 priests priests were murdered.

One source records that 283 nuns were killed, some of whom were badly tortured. There are accounts of Catholic faithful being forced to swallow rosary beads, thrown down mine shafts and priests being forced to dig their own graves before being buried alive. The Catholic Church has canonized several martyrs of the Spanish Civil War and beatified hundreds more.

Foreign involvement

Main article: Foreign involvement in the Spanish Civil War

The Catholic Church portrayed the war in Spain as a holy one against "godless communists" and called for Catholics in other countries to support the Nationalists against the Republicans. Approximately 183,000 foreign troops fought for Franco's Nationalists. Not all of them were volunteers and not all who volunteered did so for religious reasons. Hitler sent the Condor Legion - 15,000 German pilots, gunners and tank crews. Mussolini sent 80,000 Italian troops, a move which improved his popularity with Italian Catholics. Portugal's Salazar sent 20,000 troops. Approximately 3000 volunteers from around the world joined the Nationalists from countries such as the United Kingdom, Australiz, France, Ireland, Poland, Argentina, Belgium and Norway.

Legacy

Within Spain, the Civil War still raises high emotions.

Beatifications

Pope John Paul II beatified a total of about 500 martyrs in the years 1987, 1989, 1990, 1992, 1993, 1995, 1997 and March 11, 2001. Some 233 executed clergy were beatified by Pope John Paul II on the 11th of March 2001. Regarding the selection of Candidates, Archbishop Edward Novack from theCongregation of Saints explained in an interview with L'Osservatore Romano : "Ideologies such as Nazism or Communism serve as a context of martyrdom, but in the foreground the person stands out with his conduct, and, case by case, it is important that the people among whom the person lived should affirm and recognize his fame as a martyr and then pray to him, obtaining graces. It is not so much ideologies that concern us, as the sense of faith of the People of God, who judge the person's behaviour

Benedict XVI beatified 498 more Spanish martyrs in October 2007, in what has become the largest beatification ceremony in the history of the Catholic Church. In this group of people, the Vatican has not included all Spanish martyrs, nor any of the 16 priests who were executed by the nationalist side in the first years of the war. This decision has caused numerous criticisms from surviving family members and several political organisations in Spain.

In a speech to 30,000 pilgrims in St Peter’s Square, Pope Benedict XVI paid tribute to the martyrs of the Civil War and put them on the path to sainthood. “Their forgiveness towards their persecutors should enable us to work towards reconciliation and peaceful coexistence,” he said. The Pope's mass beatification of clergy allied with Franco’s side during the Civil War caused outrage on the Left in Spain. Some have criticized the beatifications as dishonoring non-clergy who were also killed in the war, and as being an attempt to draw attention away from the church's support of Franco (some quarters of the Church called the Nationalist cause a "crusade"). Critics have pointed out that only priests aligned with Franco’s troops were honoured. “Priests killed in Catalonia or the Basque Country loyal to the republic are not being beatified,” Alejandro Quiroga, Professor of Spanish History at the University of Newcastle, said. “It is a very selective, political reading of the whole thing.”

The act of beatification has also coincided in time with the debate on the Law of Historical Memory (about the treatment of the victims of the war and its aftermath) promoted by the Spanish Government.

Responding to the criticism, the Vatican has described the October 2007 beatifications as relating to personal virtues and holiness, not ideology. They are not about "resentment but... reconciliation". The Vatican said it was not taking sides, but merely wished to honour those who had died for their religious beliefs.The Spanish government has supported the beatifications, sending Foreign Minister Miguel Ángel Moratinos to attend the ceremony.

The October 2007 beatifications have brought the number of martyred persons beatified by the Church to 977, eleven of whom have already been canonized as Saints. Because of the extent of the persecution, many more cases could be proposed; as many as 10,000 according to Catholic Church sources. The process for beatification has already been initiated for about 2,000 people.

Apology

For the most part, the Catholic Church has always highlighted its role as a victim in the 1936-39 war. However, in November 2007, Bishop Ricardo Blázquez, head of Spain’s Episcopal Conference, said that the Church must also seek forgiveness for “concrete acts” during the strife-torn period. “On many occasions we have reasons to thank God for what was done and for the people who acted, [but] probably in other moments. . . we should ask for forgiveness and change direction,”

See also

• White Terror (Spain)
• Spanish Civil War
• Red Terror
• Terrible Triangle