2.4 – THE REPUBLIC’S INEFFECTIVE POLITICAL REFORMS
The Education, land and army reforms were pivotal for the new regime; they represented the materialistic old oligarchy mismanagement of national resources and were extremely popular with the revolutionary left strongly guided by Marxist determinism. Were these reforms as vital for the future of the republic however, as to risk the whole of the process pursuing its compliance? The land reform confronted one basic problem as Malefakis (1970) explained
“Nor did enough land in Spain belong to the nobility for significant agrarian reform to be possible on the basis of an antiaristocratic crusade alone. If land were to be distributed to the peasantry there was only one group from which it could be taken; the bourgeois owners who in most essentials were fully integrated into the political structure of the nation and could not be expropriated except at the cost of attacking some of the basic principles of that structure.”
The land reform bill was finally passed in the’ Cortes’ only after the ‘Sanjurjada’ coup attempt on the 9th September 1932. It was moderate in many respects although to the socialist insistence that it should be broadly applied, the initial process included nine hundred thousand owners. The diverse composition of Spain’s workable land meant that large to medium and larger owners or those with more than hundred hectares were between only thirty and forty thousand with the rest being medium and small owners. Payne (1993) noted that
“The chief opponents worked especially to protect most of the property of the large medium and large holders, while ignoring the interest of medium and small-medium farmers”
These latter land owners were after all the majority and consequently they were left in limbo and without representation many felt betrayed and began to turn their backs on the republican system.
The education reform was another pivotal bill for the Republic. Spain, who in the 17th Century had more higher education institutions than any other European country, had over the next centuries, totally reversed the coin. By the middle of the 19th Century she was, together with Portugal, the country with the most illiterate population of Western Europe. The problem began to be tackled by the ‘Restauracion’. Between 1900 and 1931, the state had built more than 11,000 schools at a rate of 500 per year. However at the start of the Republic, there were still nearly a million children lacking in any instruction whatsoever. The problem was going to be aggravated if the catholic schools were closed down as the Republic government desired. To tackle the shortfall, the republic would have to create more than 5000 schools and a similar amount of teachers per year for the next five years. Moreover, the salary of existing teachers was in need of a review and one of the first Republican measures in September 1931 was to upgrade teacher’s minimum salary from three to four thousand pesetas per year. The spending on education in 1934 reached 7% of the total government budget. The employment of more new teachers was not much of a problem as has been suggested, primarily because the victory in 1933 of the right halted the closure of more catholic schools and also because Spain possessed at the time, a considerable quantity of underemployment intelligentsia ready to enlist to the ranks of teachers. The main problem was deviating enough funds from the shrinking taxes to deliver the reform.
The army institution was inefficient and in need of a radical modernisation program that the Republic could not afford. The one thing the regime could afford was to tackle the structural problem of the army to save money in the long run. It has been calculated that at the beginning of the period, the actual rate was of one officer per only four privates, and some soldiers were only fictional just kept for budget reasons. Although the reforms reduced the budget of the army from 478 million pesetas in 1931 to 390 million in 1932, and achieved some democratisation and rationalisation, their true balance was rather modest. However, Azaña’s pugnacious rhetoric such as his speech to the Cortes on the 1st March 1932 when he declared that “ Now no one speaks of the army, nor does the army itself speak. Everyone in his place”, antagonised many army officers such as Franco himself who were, at the beginning, in favour or at least tolerant with the reform.
The reforms that the Republic tried during its first days in office were fundamental however, not for future sustainability of the country but rather for ideological connotations. Far too big a political effort and money which was in short supply was spent on reforms which, although necessary, were not by any means pivotal for the well being of the nation. For most of the ‘Restauracion’ period including Primo de Rivera’s dictatorship, Spain’s economy kept growing. It was a modest 2% a year average for the whole period, however it allowed for the maintenance of minimum equipment and services, though never enough to seriously close the gap with the more industrialised nations. To achieve such a goal, the economy would have to have grown by over 5% yearly. By 1931, most of the population had placed great expectations on the new democratic regime as the only available way for the definitive modernisation of Spain. Sadly, the leaders were more preoccupied with ideological make over rather than with the economy. In this, Spain was no different to most of the nations at the time as ideologies were the dominant theme in social and political lives. However, in Spain the more incipient and basic structures of the system were in desperate need of reform. The tax system was obsolete and if it was to drive forward the manufacturing and agriculture industry modernisation, it would drastically have to increase its collection of funds. Without these pillars of the economy in check it was impossible to increase productivity and consequently the supply of indispensable funds from were to attain other less crucial reforms. The education and land reforms were always going to be costly but instead of carefully planning the viability of such improvements, the Republic seemed to launch itself into the abyss. Only perhaps the reform of the army structure was viable at the time. The immense amount of money spent pursuing the education reform which rose to 7% of the annual budget, took away vital funds to stimulate employment. The building of indispensable infrastructures roads, rail, etc.., was never considered and the pivotal economic revival never happened. Without this aim, the Republic let the opportunity of securing its own future pass and the economic fragility that had tarnished many of the ‘Restauracion’ aspirations worsened with the new democratic regime.
2.5 – POLITICAL FACTIONALISM, THE LAST MORTAL BLOW TO THE SYSTEM
The political attitude of the Republican parties was also symptomatic, with the total lack of consensus even in the more basic aims of national interest degrading the credibility of the system. With every new government and there was one at least every two years, came the ritual revengeful destruction of what the prior had built in the few months they had in office. In all vital economic and political areas, the Republic was a step back to the middle of the 19th Century, a regression to the worst of Spanish history. Ultimately the factionalist intransigence of the so called democratic parties spurned the system into chaos.
The last mortal blow to the system came with the February 1936 elections and the contested triumph of the ‘Popular Front’. Largo Caballero, sensing that this was the opportunity they had been waiting for since 1934, launched the revolutionary fundamentalists of CNT and PSOE to destroy the system, and the violence drastically increased. Only the voices of the conservative leaders Jose Maria Gil Robles and Calvo Sotelo were heard in the Cortes during the month previous to the conflict, pleading with the government to put an end to the bloodbath, proving that the left was not that affected by it. The Cortes session of the 16th June was very significant. It was the last of Calvo Sotelo’s intervention in the Cortes, where he pleaded to Casares not to turn into the new Kerensky or Karolyi, the Russian and Hungarian leaders who, with their action, had betrayed the will of their people. Before him Gil Robles had taken the stand to make one of his periodic statistical expositions on which Payne (1993) commented:
“ ‘From 15 February to 15 June 269 peoples had been killed and 1,287 injured in political violence, 160 churches totally destroyed, and 251 churches and other religious buildings damage.…’ All these indictments by the right were simply the reverse image of those by the left”
However the American professor failed to provide one leftist speech in which similar enumeration of violent incidents from the right was exposed, probably because none exist. Although this did not mean that the extremist right ‘Falange’ were totally innocent. By 1936 they were well organised and more than able to counter strike. However their violence was more pick pointed towards particular individuals and in retaliation to sectarian killings. Zugazagoitia in 1940 described how he had a personal encounter with Indalecio Prieto in the passages of the Cortes that same day. Describing how worried the socialist leader was after the Cortes session, he pointed out
“With a gesture of fatalistic despair, Prieto added: “Only one thing is clear: that we are going to deserve a catastrophe because of our stupidity”
The moderate socialist leader was never more right than then. Julio Zugazagoitia was a journalist and PSOE militant who, during the Republic years, became a personal aide to Prieto and later Government Minister with the Negrin cabinet. At the end of the war he escaped to France and in Paris wrote his book about the Civil War before being caught by the Nazis and sent back to Franco’s Spain where he was promptly executed. Zugazagoitia was the first author from the left to recognise soon after the civil war that the conflict was caused by the excess of the Second Republic regime alone. Such views have been fiercely contested and silenced by the Marxist historians who have dominated the debate until recently.
CHAPTER THREE
THE CIVIL WAR
3.1 – JULY 1936, LAWLESS REPUBLIC
During the first day after the ‘Alzamiento’, the Republican cabinet seemed locked in an impasse, falsely claiming that the push took them by surprise and up to three prime minister were called by Azaña to form government on that same fatal day. After the assassination of Calvo Sotelo four days earlier Moa (2003,) claimed that:
“Casares Quiroga (prime minister at the time) received a delegation of PSOE, UGT and PCE asking him to arm the population in order to defend the Republic”.
The newspapers and radio stations at the time were reporting the rumours of a coup d’etat from the more visceral elements of the army but even then the government did not act. Some historians blamed the paranoia of Casares for avoiding turning himself into the Spanish Kerensky as Calvo Sotelo suggested in the ‘Cortes’(Parliament) just a few weeks earlier, however this was not the real reason. Casares knew that to arm the population would mean to jump from a practically dual power in place after the February elections, to the open imposition of the revolutionary powers and the loss of any legality left in the republican system. On the Dawn of the 18th July, Casares unable to cope with the pressure, resigned. Maura declined Azaña’s proposition to form government with a laconic “it is too late” and Marinez Barrios, the moderate left Jacobin, accepted the post. Carr (1977,) describes how
“He (Martinez Barrios) spent the evening of the 18th and the night of the 19th telephoning every important garrison. This was not time wasted, nor was it treasonable; it probably saved Malaga and Valencia for the government”.
However, the ‘maximalist’ policy imposed on the socialist left by Largo Caballero since the February election was gaining momentum. This policy rejected any cooperation with bourgeois republican governments, while supporting the armament of the population. Anarchists and communists began to close ranks around Caballero and against his moderate socialist colleagues, Prieto, Besteiro and the Republican president Azaña who rightly opposed such a move. The ‘Spanish Lenin’ as Caballero was called, pressed for ‘open revolution’ and gangs of armed workers began to take over the railway stations and patrol the streets of major towns. Unable to contain the furore, Martinez Barrios resigned. His substitute Giral had no other option but to arm the workers and ‘The masters of the city’ then began their ephemeral and controversial reign. However Caballero’s policy unknowingly, had opened a can of worms that would lead a year later to his own demise.
3.2 – MASTERS OF THE CITY, REVOLUTION AND COLLECTIVISATION
Soon afterwards, the first wave of collectivisations began to take place all over what was now the republican side of divided Spain. Waving their strong belief that they were building a new and more just society under banners such as ‘From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs’, a revolution from below seemed to stem out of Spain’s society. However the actual revolution marked the tactical failure of the anarchists; the expropriations of July were in response to a fascist push and not an anarchist insurrection. Again as had happened in 1917 and more recently in 1932, the masses did not fully commit themselves with this revolutionary experiment. The collectivisations thus had to be forced upon the civilians by columns of militias and armed workers with very little or no centralised control at all. Legality ceased to exist in republican Spain and terror took to the street. Borkenau, (1937, pg. 172) who was in Spain at the time, said
“Mass execution and mass expropriation has frightened to death the small owners”.
Victor Alba, a youth leader of the POUM during those years and later a political writer, agreed with Borkenau that the failure to engage the middle classes in the process of collectivisation doomed the experiment. Abad, the Santillan anarchist ‘ideological’ leader and author cited by Bolloten, (1991, pg 53) proclaimed
“…that the nineteenth of July brought with it an overflowing of passions and abuses, a natural phenomenon of the transfer of power from the hands of privileged to the hands of the people”.
With this statement, the anarchist leader justified the use of violence whilst pursuing higher aims such as the revolution. Just weeks ago, viewers witnessed on television the devastating effects that the brutality of war can have in well educated and well paid troops like the British in Iraq today when British soldiers were seen abusing Iraqi citizens. It is not difficult to imagine what the revolution in some remote areas of Spain in 1937 could have been like where the majority of troops (militias) doing the job in the field were malnourished, illiterate or badly educated with most of them having been brainwashed by fundamentalist ideas. However the media frenzy today has hastily created a public uproar that has in practise condemned the soldiers before being brought to justice, based only on that short video-clip for evidence without taking into consideration any other vital aspects of the event. In similar fashion the Spanish anarchist experience were also too promptly tarnished and discredited by communists, republicans and Catalonian nationalists alike pursuing their own aims in the process. It can not be denied that the experimental aims of a better society were based on honest and just principals (some of which can be checked in Appendix 1 which contains the main articles that constituted a libertarian commune in Spain 1936). In many factories and collectives, the workers showed a great deal of wit and imagination, achieving surprisingly good results in extreme and difficult circumstances and the fact that during their existence the production and supply never defaulted or stalled in republic Spain seems to support this view. Furthermore production grew more in those areas where collectives were generalised as in Aragon and Castile than in Catalonia and Levante were peasant proprietors were the majority. A file from the ministry of economy cited by Hugh Thomas in his essay edited by Carr put the figure of a 17% increase in the production of wheat during the period 1936-37 in Castile. Thomas (1971, pg.246) added that
“The fact that the figures indicate a drop in production in Catalonia and Levante suggest to some extent their veracity, since they would hardly have been actually invented or twisted by a ministry of agriculture dominated by a communist minister and communist officials”.
Supported by similar accounts of collective successes, the anarchist ideology has permanently built around the event, an essence of achievement and martyrdom. For those directly involved with the collectivisations, the libertarian communes were fundamental for the survival of the New Spain and the fight against fascism. ‘Guerra y Revolucion’ (‘War and Revolution’) became their banner. Meanwhile the republican losses in the first few months of the war, would give the perfect excuse for the counter revolutionary forces to put the blame on the libertarian communities and the anarchist militias which sustained them. The republican government and the ‘Generalitat’ began a propaganda war against them with banners such as ‘The militias are unreliable, disobedient and unprofessional’ and ‘The collectives have collapsed the supply of food stuff and arms to the front’. The anarchists replied calling them ‘defenders of the bourgeois capitalism’ and ‘the betrayal of the working class’ etc. This way a new front started to develop inside republic Spain around October 1936 when the first shipment with Russian aid began to arrive.
3.3 – RUSSIAN AID TOWARDS ‘STALINIST’ COMMUNIST HEGEMONY
Caballero formed the falsely called ‘united cabinet’ in September 1936. Parties including PSOE, PCE, Esquerra, PNV, CNT and POUM, came together to try to give a much needed image of continuity and legality to the republican government. However the unity of these forces was obviously based on their democratic will which all of them named for themselves, although none sincerely believed it. The revolutionary parties’ doctrines declared “Workers without nation”. Esquerra and PNV did not hide their aspirations to disarticulate Spain whilst using the war to impose almost independent regimes in their regions. The fascist rising was answered, not by the impotent Republican government, but by a popular insurrection which involved men, women and youths and destroyed, in less than a month, the entire matrix of Spanish society. The armed proletariat of July accomplished a de facto abolition of Church and State and replaced capitalist modes of production with economic and social forms of its own. In the subsequent weeks, the councils established by the working-class were to become a third force fighting against both the fascists and the attempts of the Republican government to re-establish its authority. Despite the rapid advance of the workers' militias in Republican Spain, the social revolution which began in July 1936, failed to establish the absolute authority of the council’s power. While the Republican government had been severely weakened, it did not of course abdicate in favour of the proletariat; after July, dual power existed in 'Anti-Fascist' Spain between the forces of a new revolutionary order and the remnants of the bourgeois Republic. The communists had always been an unimportant minority in Catalonia, as well as in the rest of Spain, however by a series of clever manoeuvres and the help of Stalin Russia’s aid, their influence increased dramatically in a short period of time. In Catalonia they united with the Socialist Party of Catalonia (PSUC), which joined the 3rd International and became a de facto communist party. In Caballero’s government the post of Minister for Agriculture went to the communist Vicente Uribe. His first political move was to put forward the decree of 7th October 1936 which Bolloten (1971) explained
“exempted from confiscation farmers who had not identified themselves with the military rebellion”
and marked the beginning of the counter-revolutionary tactics lead by the communists which would inexorably flow to the dramatic May Day events in Barcelona. The ousting of Andreu Nin from his Ministry of Justice post in the Generalitat, presided by Tarradellas on 15 December of 1936 and the loss of Malaga in January 1937 dragged the balance of power even more in favour of the communists. The communists blamed General Asensio Torrado, a close assistant to Caballero, for the loss of the Malaga and demanded his sacking. A top secret report dated the 28th March 1937 (edited by Radosh, 2001) read
“…all of Caballero’s attention is occupied not with the front, not with the army not with the struggle against the enemy, but rather with the struggle against the communist party”.
It is not clear who was the author but it was sent from Barcelona and suggestions are that it was written by Andre Marti or some other Russian embassy attaché. The report was sent by Comintern Chief Dimitrov to Marshal Voroshilov and therefore reaching the highest authority, Stalin himself. The long report made a deep analysis of the situation in Spain at a time where the position of the Communist Party was becoming increasingly powerful but still without absolute power. Another passage from the same document, (Radosh, 2001) openly predicted the outcome of this struggle:
“A final victory over the enemy means for Caballero and for the whole world the political hegemony of the Communist party in Spain. This is a natural and undisputable thing. This indisputable perspective horrified Caballero. And just Caballero? No, this perspective inspires fear also in the anarcho-syndicalists.”
Finally Caballero succumbed to the communist pressure and let General Torrado go, probably realising by now that his days as prime minister were numbered. The Communists did achieve the hegemony on the republican side during the last year of the war but never won the conflict.
3.4 – THE MAY DAY EVENTS BARCELONA , 1937
The May events for the anarcho-syndicalism represent at the same time their pinnacle and their downfall, from ‘masters of the city’ to the ‘ghosts of history’. The anti-communist Spanish historian Ricardo de la Cierva described the libertarian collectives as nothing more than gangs of revengeful thugs on the rampage, through the backyard of the weakest governments ever seen on the Iberian peninsula. Preston, Jackson, Tuñon de Lara, Tussel and other Marxists of similar ink believe that the middle of a civil war was not the time or place for such a drastic social experiment, whilst the radical French ‘Stalinist’ historian Pierre Villar dismissed the whole anarchist revolution as chaotic, historically irrelevant and counterproductive for the Republican aims. Bolloten, Thomas and Payne have tried to understand the event from a more neutral position, although the only records found on the collectivisation come from anarchist militants such as the Spaniards Jose Peirats, Abad de Santillan and Victor Alba or foreigners such as Gaston Laval or Souchy Bauer all of whom were anarchist or POUM members and whose records relied heavily on news papers from the era and personal accounts. Moreover, Thomas (1971) pointed out that
“The details they give only extend to an apparently arbitrarily chosen selection of about eighty collectives out of what appear to be about 1500 in all.”
Ultimately the revolution was suppressed from the history books by bourgeois and Leninist historians alike and distorted into an unrecognisable myth by those anarchists who treasured it as one of their "golden moments". Thus the reasons of why the ‘May Day events’ took place should be found in an accumulation of corollaries. Firstly the revolution from below which was never supported by the middle classes, created an atmosphere of terror and insecurity cleverly exploited by the counter revolutionaries. Secondly, after the ‘Alzamiento’ of 18th July and the armament of the unions it became clear that the republican government and its Jacobin leaders were caught in their own controversy, they could not guarantee their citizens’ well being in their own territory and nor could they put all their weight behind the revolutionaries to make the libertarian experiment a success. Thirdly, this impasse from the republican government created a vacuum of power that was cleverly exploited by the communists who, thanks to the Russian aid, were able to mortgage what was left of the republican system to its own fate. After 1935, communist Russia had drastically changed its international strategy. Realising that after the ‘great depression’ (1929-30) capitalism was not going to succumb to communism but rather to fascism as in Germany, Stalin had to move from antagonistic and confrontational positions with the west (United States, Britain and France) to appeasement in order to keep in check the threat from Hitler. For this reason, Stalin and the Soviet state suffered a conflict of interest in the Spainish Civil War, on one hand Russia had to support the republic to counter balance German and Italian aid to the nationalists which directly contravened the British and French ‘hands off’ position on the Spanish civil war, while on the other she had to suppress the anarchist revolution already well on its way on the republican side of Spain. The need for legality and respect for private property was fundamental for Stalin’s communist designs and to appease Britain and France, Russia’s natural allies against Hitler. Many Historians agree that the Russian aid to the Republic was enough to resist at least up until mid 1938 but never sufficient to win the war. However in May 1937 the aim to establish a strong centralised order in Republican Spain coincided in that precise moment with the desire of an important part of Spanish society, the petit bourgeois which obviously made all the Machiavellian Russo/communist manoeuvres more palatable and ultimately successful. Finally the actual break out of the conflict of the 3rd May assault by Rodriguez Salas on ‘Telefonica’ was indeed a cunning secret action designed together by Stalinist secret agents in Spain and their communist counterparts, as has been sufficiently proven by the documents printed out in ‘Spain Betrayed’. The way Salas failed to advise in advance the ‘Generalitat’ government of his action also corroborates this view. Once the communists felt they were strong enough inside the republican government they launched a successful frontal attack against the revolutionaries.
CHAPTER FOUR
FRANCO’S REGIME AGAINST COMMUNIST SPAIN
4.1 – THE ALZAMIENTO
The law ceased to exist in the Republic long before the 18th July ‘Alzamiento’ so to blame Franco’s nationalist side for the war and all the atrocities that came with it is an historical aberration. After the war, the repression of Franco’s regime that indeed took place, killed many of the culprits who had committed terrible atrocities and revengeful acts during the civil war and the republic years, but sadly too many innocents also. However this should not distort the view that the ultimate culprits of the blood bath were the leaders of the ‘Frente Popular’ who all escaped unscathed leaving behind thousand of their followers to face an uncertain future. They were as selfish in power as they were when they were on the run and it would not take a great deal of imagination to guess how it would have looked if a Stalinist style of communist regime had triumphed in the civil war, ruled by some of those leaders. The repression would have been as fierce as that of Franco, probably lasting longer and the enemies of the state would have comprised of a wider range of the population and all of this in the improbable case that the Communist regime could have held back Hitler’s advance as Franco did. Stradling (1999) cleverly exposed that
“The English catholic writer Hilaire Belloc once asserted that Franco had saved Spain from Stalin. Though not entirely without its point, his reasoning was faulty in one obvious sense, for Stalin would never have been involved in Spain were it not for the rebellion of Franco and the intervention of his fascist allies. What seems to me less a matter for dispute is that by his victory in the Spanish Civil War, Franco saved Spain from Hitler.”
The next few years after the Civil War were decisive for the regime’s survival and Franco did everything he possibly could to keep himself in power.
4.2 – THE 1939 TO 1942 GERMAN INITIATIVE
In the spring of 1939 Franco was named the ‘Caudillo’ of Spain, a country with a crippled economy ruined by the incompetence of the republican years and further decimated by three long years of war. However the armed forces were a well oiled machine that contributed decisively in the rebuilding of a much needed infrastructure. Franco soon discharged part of the army in order to supply workers for the industry and after this restructuring the armed forces were composed of 600,000 well equipped men who undertook most of the work. During this time a lot of effort went into training the soldiers in new techniques that they could use later in their civilian lives. The garrisons enrolled for the fight against illiteracy with most of them making tuition available, in short logical measures to tackle the more crucial problems. When the Second World War began, Spain faced a grave dilemma. On one side the Allies, her customers and natural suppliers whose dominion of the sea was not only threatening the supply lines but also in an eventual conflict would mean the certain loss of the archipelagos of Mallorca and the Canary islands whilst on the other side, the axel forces who had helped Franco during the struggle and who had a strong support in many political and army offices. During the first month of the conflict with the panzer divisions far away in Poland and with the none-aggression pact between Germany and Russia in place, Franco opted for an ambiguous position. Franco’s regime declared the neutrality of Spain in a conflict between countries with the same culture and similar interests and kept as Foreign Minister, the Anglophobe Colonel Beigbeder. However, soon after this declaration, the war suffered a tremendous blow with the Nazi troops destroying the French defence and reaching the Pyrenees in an inconceivable short time. Franco reacted and set out to Hitler the conditions in which Spain would enter the war on the German side in what appeared to be a clear belligerent position. However some of the conditions were preposterous for example the control of Gibraltar, Morocco and Algeria, huge material aid and a full guarantee that the Canary Islands would be covered from allied attacks. At the same time the ambassador to Britain, the ‘Duque de Alba’ was re-affirming in London, the neutral position of Spain signing the protocol of adhesion and none-aggression with Portugal, which was very well received by the allies who conceded to Spain an important supply of petrol and rice. As the Spanish declaration was not enough for Hitler’s aims, the Nazi state began to put more pressure on Franco who had to change the clause of the declaration from ‘neutrality’ to ‘nation none belligerent.” He also took the town of Tangier in Morocco which was clearly favoured by Germany and made some changes in his government. The Anglophobe Colonel Beigbeder, the Foreign Minister was substituted by his brother-in-law and well known Germanophobe Serrano Suñer. Suñer along with other generals wanted the incorporation of Spain with the unstoppable Axel power and organised with this aim, the famous summit between Hitler and Franco in Hendaya on 29 October 1940. There, Franco maintained his demands and doubts against the will of his own closest assistants, however he also let the ‘Furher’ know that all the demands would be erased should Hitler walk his troops around Trafalgar square. The German feeling that the alliance was now only a question of time and the view that it would be counter productive to impose it right there, let the Spanish dictator off the Nazi hook. During this phase of German Superiority of the war, Franco’s regime was given deadlines three times to become belligerent with the Axis in December 1940 and January and June 1941. Payne (1968) that
“Franco as cautious as ever, did not share the absolute confidence in German victory held by some of the more extreme government and Falangist figures.”
Franco nevertheless was forced to explain his neutrality to Mussolini and Petain and compensated his position by sending the ‘Division Azul’ to fight against communist Russia. More than 50,000 volunteers passed through the division during its days in service with a terrible balance of 1 in 10 deaths and 1 in 4 injured.
4.3 – THE ALLIES COUNTER ATTACK
The division could have cost Franco dearly with the Allies, however Churchill was more preoccupied with Germany’s intention on Gibraltar and after assurance from Franco that he would not allow the crossing of German troops through the Iberian Peninsula, immediately deploying some special army units around the border, Spain saw her American petrol coupon increased. However the most delicate moment for Franco’s regime came during the first months of 1943, right after the German defeat in Stalingrad. Fussi (1985) said that
“Franco tried to promote….an initiative of peace from the neutral countries. It was based in one of his favourite’s arguments; that the Soviet union of Stalin was the real danger for the Western world thus a strong Germany was needed to content the threat of communism”
Although this type of argument would become very popular within the west a few years later, at the time it was little more than a sacrilege for the allies. The Soviet Union was bearing the highest human and material cost of the allies in their fight against the Nazis. This made the allies very wary of Franco’s position and immediately the petrol supply was cut off. Under pressure from Britain and the United States, Franco soon surrendered his position, first rectifying his neutrality, then calling back the ‘Division Azul’. The German embassy in Tangier was closed and a compromise with Britain and Unites States to cut back the sending of wolfram to Germany was reached. With the supply of petrol re-established, the regime pursued a make-over to appease the Allies that had somehow already begun. In the summer of 1942 Serrano Suñer was ousted, not for his mismanagement of the foreign policy which has always been the recurrent historical cause, but by the events of 15th August 1942, in Bilbao. That day two young Falangists launched two grenades against a ‘traditionalist’ congregation outside Begoña Cathedral in Bilbao. The rivalry between the two fundamentalist groups was a growing concern. General Varela a ‘Carlist’ and minister of the army, denounced the attack as an affront to the army, advocating for the capital punishment for the perpetrators and one of the young Falangists was executed. With both camps in fierce stalemate, Franco acted by ousting General Varela, General Galarza (Home Secretary) who did not impede this criminal act, and finally his own brother-in-law Suñer, in order to calm the Army. However this embarrassing episode between two of the main factions that supported the nationalist movement, gave the ‘Caudillo’ a head start in his government reshuffle. Declared Falangists had to be diligently ousted to appease the Allies. During the last year of the war, Franco tried to clean his image sending letters of adhesion to Churchill and Roosevelt, however Franco’s regime was left isolated and was never invited to participate in the open session of the United Nations in San Franciso on the 25th April 1945.
4.4 – COUNTER FACTUAL COMMUNIST SPAIN
Such an action of a Communist regime in Spain, opens up a whole range of possibilities for example, whether Hitler would have crushed communist Spain as easy as he did France and if so what would have been the fate of Gibraltar? For the sake of the argument let us assume that Hitler conquered Spain without going into deep analysis, because what would have happened afterwards is more intriguing. Russia could not have liberated Spain if only due to the geographical and logistic impossibility, so the task of liberating the Iberian Peninsula would have fallen on the western allies’ shoulders. The huge resources and logistics problem that this action required are impossible to quantify in this study and would have been nothing compared with the explosive political situation of a country that by 1945 had been under nearly ten years of non-stop conflict. Once liberated, what type of government would they have supported? A democracy, a monarchy, a republic or any mix of the three? A victory of the Communists in the Spanish Civil War would have resulted in a difficult puzzle to solve for the western allies. For all his sins, Franco was far less of a problem and at the end of the conflict they allowed him to stay in power, saving the Americans much needed resources for others more lucky parts of the continent, whilst leaving Spain politically isolated and with an economic embargo that hit the population harder but made the regime stronger. Many Spaniards with a strong democratic will were hoping for the war to end and the allies to oust Franco. When they realised the fallacy of their hopes, many of them turned towards the hated regime for assurance. Consequently Franco’s figure became to gain a hero status inside the country and his regime began to rely on masses of Spaniards, thanks to the hypocrisy of the international community represented in the United Nations. The next ten years after the war were known as the hunger years which antagonised the people of Spain against the democratic west as much as against the communist east. Only the help of Salazar in Portugal and Peron in Argentina smoothed this long, terrible and undeserved ordeal of the Spanish people.
4.5 – FRANCO’S STATEMANSHIP
During the next decade Franco kept his distance from the Falange and tried to play down the National Socialism movement which was not difficult as he was not a convinced fascist. Franco was an army man and never a demagogue as was Hitler and Mussolini. He used the fascist ideology but only however, when the failure of the 18th July, 1936 push was evident and the Civil War was at stalemate. Franco needed something to counter balance the communist, socialist and anarchist ideologies of the republican side. During the Civil War years and the first phase of the Second World War when Germany had the initiative, the fascist experiment gave him sound political returns. When the world conflict turned around, Franco did not have second thoughts and ousted the Falange leaders as fast as he had promoted them and relegated the party to a mere decorative ornament of the regime. After the Allies’ landing at Normandy, Franco believed for a short period, that the west would accept his regime, convinced as he was that sooner or later the devils of communism would break the alliance. However Franco miscalculated the benevolence of the western democracies and whilst the United Nations opened their arms to communist dictatorship they rejected Franco’s capitalist autarchy. On the 14th December 1946, the UN approved a condemnatory resolution against Franco’s regime and two days later the Dictator began to publish in the ‘Arriba’ diary, under the pseudonym ‘Jakim Boor’ a series of articles defending the new Spanish crusade against the Masonic and communist conspirators. This was to give purpose and direction to Franco’s regime for the next decade or so and help him to forge a strong national unity. It seems that during this crucial period (1939-46) Franco played cleverly with the options available to him and ended up in power with the majority of the Spanish citizens supporting at least morally his political stand. However for some authors,
“Franco ultimately avoided war not because of immense skill or vision but rather by a fortuitous combination of circumstance to which he was largely a passive bystander.” (Preston, 1993)
Preston’s books are full of comments against the dictator’s persona but are lacking somewhat of any historical value, instead they only give an insight on the biased position of the author. On the other hand Payne (1967) has a more levelled judgement and is of the opinion that
“Changes in the international situation entirely beyond Franco’s power to influence, but which have been made use of skilfully”
One can love or hate the character but what is in no doubt is that Franco proved to be a statesman of high standard with his own vision and that saved him and saved Spain. Franco never compromised his future to Falange, Carlist or even Hitler’s designs and all of them tried hard to influence his decision, however the PCE and with it the Republican governments during the Civil War did what Stalin ordered. There can be very little doubt after the May events in Barcelona 1937 or the way the international brigades were disbanded of who was calling the shots in republic Spain. If that republic had won the war, the workers’ dictatorship would have been the puppet government of Stalin. In this particular scene the Second World War for Spain would have surely meant the continuity of the suffering and drama, as at the end of the Civil War, a terrible Nazi occupation would have followed.
4.6 – THE HUNGER YEARS
With the country in dire straits since the end of the Civil War and with the international blockade now in place choking Spain, her economy plummeted. Many observers have blamed this on Franco’s lack of economic knowledge or his dubious ability to understand financial reports properly. However, as early as 1941 the regime created the National Institute of Industry (INI) with the idea of promoting industrial projects from governmental initiatives, an idea that would soon be used all over Europe. Sometimes by direct ownership or by the acquisition of shares in vital areas of the economy which were in need of stimulation. Some projects were wasteful but others such as the metallurgic giant Ensidesa, the petrol company Campsa today known as REPSOL, the railway company RENFE and the building company ‘Dragados y Construciones’ were huge successes that are still in operation today. The lack of foreign investment and the closure of international markets for Spanish products during the 1940s and early 1950s meant that for most of the period, Spain was forced to run the economy in constant deficit. The tax system was not reformed and was kept poorly structured. In 1948 for example, only 14% of the total income taken by the Spanish government was collected as taxes and even then most of it by indirect taxes. Unable to collect more funds or reduce the budget or the expenses, the government during these years was forced to print large amounts of money with the resulting increase in prices. At the beginning of the period, inflation did not have a negative impact on the economy, on the contrary it stimulated it, but by 1957 the galloping prices and the unstoppable deficit was dangerously running out of control. However something that Franco had been waiting for since 1943 was going to change the international pariah status to which Western democracies’ attitudes had advocated Franco’s regime. During the early 1950s with the radicalisation of the Cold War, the United States was a nation in turmoil, Truman’s doctrine, the Berlin Wall and the senator McCarty’s ‘Witch Hunt’ were expressions of the new terror that was coming from Russia. The most powerful nation in the world could not ignore for much longer Spain and Franco, the only western leader to have defeated communism.
4.7 – AMERICA BEFRIENDS FRANCO
The formation of NATO needed to include somehow the Iberian Peninsula in order to work and with this in mind the United States began to have talks with Franco in 1951. Two years later, Eisenhower visited Spain and the first treaty between the two countries was signed. Economic assistance and military co-operation began and Spain’s economic pressure slowly declined. The United States and the International Monetary Fund were now ready to assist but advised Spain that they needed to make some adjustments. Franco promptly followed suit and this time was helped by the fundamentalist catholic institution Opus Dei, a group of technocrats who from its ranks filled key positions in the new government reshuffle. The Stabilisation Plan of 1959 could be considered as a breaking point with the old autarchy of the previous two decades. Many structural reforms were confronted with the aim of liberating much of the economy from the constraints of the autarchy period. In 1960 the national budget was balanced for the first time in years, inflation was reduced to practically nothing although it would make a comeback by the end of the 1960s but never again with the virulent strength seen before.
4.8 – 1960s, SPAIN TAKES OFF
With the economy in check the tourist industry was to give the last impetus to Spain and in less than twenty years the coast of the country became the preferred holiday destination for north Europeans. The Tourism trade would help Spain to reach an average 8% growth per year during the 1960s decade and although there were still some problems such as the on-going agriculture low production, the unstoppable increase of the middle class ranks through the decade changed the Spanish landscape forever. To speculate in this dissertation with what a communist government would or would not have done during this period 1950-60s could sound preposterous without undertaking a further in-depth study in order to demonstrate the findings. A basic outline therefore is used at this stage to give the reader an insight of future studies that the author wishes undertake. It would have been unthinkable for any communist dictatorship to liberate the economy the way Franco did and without that basic step no significant economic growth could have been achieved. The economic repercussion of the tourist industry in a country without rich natural resources such as petrol, gas or any other specific capital goods on which to base an economic growth was and still is fundamental for Spain. The impossibility of a communist Spain to open her doors to the world would have condemned the nation to an ever growing dependency on the trade with Russia and the countries behind the ‘Iron Curtain’. If, during the 1950s and 1960s, the trade with them had supported an adequate level of growth, by the mid 1970s it would have begun to decline, a trend that would not have stopped until 1989 with the end of communist Russia. Then Spain would have come out of fifty years of a rigorous communist system with an obsolete industry, a shrunken economy and an enormous bureaucratic system corroded by corruption and inoperativeness well behind Spain’s actual status at the time. The last consideration should be with the effects of a rigid centralised communist system and the nationalistic aspirations of Vasque and Catalonia regions. With the nation’s crippled economy and more than probably weak government after the sudden demise of communist Russia, the 1990s could have turned out to be as dramatic and volatile in the Iberian Peninsula as in the Balkans.
CHAPTER FIVE
CONCLUSION
The question of by whom and why the civil war began has been dominated by the Marxist versions which explained the outbreak of the war with their usual economic determinism. The communist versions with small differences depending on the author’s level of fundamentalist creed, reads as follows: The outbreak of the Civil War was caused by the huge social difference that had antagonised the nation for the last hundred and fifty years. The social tension came to a head when a democratic and lawful system, i.e. The Second Republic, was stopped in its tracks by a group of die hard reactionaries defending the interests of the old oligarchy who could not stomach the modernisation process and the loss of prerogatives. This has been with small difference in tone, the discourse used by Tuñon de Lara, Paul Preston, Pierre Vilar, Ronald Radosh and many others of similar ink and was until recently widely accepted not only by the left but for many right circles as well. The theory looks convincing because the materialist discourse has perfectly suited the Spanish struggle inside a universal Marxist history. However for the theory to work the principal corollary on which it is based has to be true which in this case does not stand any comparative test. Why, in countries with similar or worse social difference at the time such as Portugal, Greece, Poland, Bulgaria or even France in some of its regions, did a civil war never take place? To this question the Marxist theory does not have an answer. Moreover it is false to believe that Spain in the 1930s was the backward country that the Marxists so desperately needed for their theory to work. Spain, in the previous decades before the Civil War, was closing the gap with her more advanced northern European neighbours and by the 1920s, had ceased to be the bi-dimensional society which has been blamed as the long term cause for the war. Without this premise the theory can hardly be sustained, but if this was not enough, the theory’s boring identification of Franco as the unique short term cause has been insidious and a historic travesty of the truth. Prieto, Zugazagoitia and other honest socialists have always revised the republican period with a sincere feeling of guilt that sadly most of the main culprits never attempted. The Marxist historian tends to portray the Second Republic as an oasis of democracy, respect and progress that was violently cut short by the intransigent conservative forces, who, rather than lose their privileges, aided the reactionary elements of the army to organise the ‘Alzamiento’. It is not difficult to observe why the theory has worked so well for so long. For 150 years Marxism has so simply explained the development of capitalist societies without the need of going through the painstaking process of finding the truth, that its seems that this has been the chosen method used by many scholars to research some areas of study such as the Spanish Civil War. The reality however soon overcomes any biased (ideological or otherwise) predisposition. For the independent and honest researcher the facts more than prove that the Republic was a catastrophe. Despite the fact that in 1931 the republic birth awoke great expectations with bona fide support from most of Spanish society, five years later the system had managed to alienate against itself, great portions of that same society. Their leaders had very little respect for the opposition or the system with some parties such as PSOE, CNT or Esquerra openly abusing the system in pursuit for their own revolutionary agenda. The violent reaction of the more intransigent elements of the left, was a constant malaise that soon stirred the more extremist individuals of the conservative ranks and later ignited the Civil War. In fact when reading the Spanish history of the last 150 years it is easy to note that at least since the ‘Restauracion’ in 1875, it has only been the bourgeois class who have tried to take the nation forward by peaceful means. The economy at last began to move in the right direction after many decades of decadent stagnation. This democratic experience was still unknown by most of the western world. Germany, a more technologically advanced society than Spain, would not achieve something similar until 1920 with the Weimar Republic which openly contravenes Marxist theorists. Although the project was by no means perfect, it allowed, through better education and more freedom, the spread of revolutionary ideas in Spain. Sadly these progressive forces which should have had a vital contribution to the positive pursuit of democracy and modernisation, were in some cases drawn towards impossible extremist positions. Rather than drive the peaceful democratic debate towards achieving better conditions for the working classes they began to speak with their guns. The radicalisation of their position exacerbated the political map. In 1917 they tried for open revolution and failed, between 1921 and 1923 their violent stand brought about the Primo de Rivera dictatorship and in 1934, they tried to oust the Republic system that they themselves had restored three years earlier. Spain’s history has been a very unique affair and impossible to read from a pre-ordained script, however if a balance of the previous decades to the war has to be made, it is the conservative forces who are the ones who showed more restraint, imagination and character in promoting democratic projects. Meanwhile the extremist revolutionaries from the beginning, were only able to force ministerial changes through assassination or insurrection. They never had the support or the political stature needed to design a lasting project that could accelerate the modernisation of the nation. When, during the first month of the Civil War they became for a brief period ‘Masters of the City’, they turned unbearable even for many of those in the socialist and communist camps who had continuously used their violence for their own aims. It was all the revolutionary forces and not Franco who were the ultimate culprits of the Spanish tragedy. Somebody had to put an end to the bloodshed and lawless incongruence that Spain had turned into and Franco was that man. The prospect of a mixture of those forces winning the war is a terrifying one. Without question it would have been a dictatorship modelled on Stalin’s communism which would have stagnated the economy during the late 1970 and 1980s. With the demise of communist Russia, Spain would have come out economically impoverished in comparison with the actual Spain of 1989, facing an uncertain political future which would have been a step back to the earlier 20th Century.
REFERENCES
Anderson, P. (2004) “ Why Did the Spanish Civil War Start in July 1936?” History Review, 09629610, Mar 2004, Issue 48
Alvarez Junco, J. & Shubert, A. (2000) “Spanish History since 1808” pg. 3 Oxford University press
Alba, V. & Schwartz, S. (1988) “Spanish Marxism versus Soviet Communism; A History of the POUM” Oxford transaction books
Bolloten, B. (1991) “The Spanish Civil War: Revolution and Counterrevolution”, pg 131, Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.
Bolloten, B. (1971) “The Parties of the Left and the Civil War” Essay included in the book “The Republic And The Civil War In Spain” edited by Raymond Carr
Borkernau, F. (1937) “The Spanish Cockpit” Phoenix press
Bowen, W. H. (2000) “Spaniards and Nazi Germany: Collaboration in the New Order” Columbia: University of Missouri Press
Brenan, G. (1943) “Spanish labyrinth: An Account of the Social and political background of the Spanish Civil war” Cambridge university
Carr, R. (1966) “Spain 1808-1939 (Oxford History of Modern Europe)” Oxford University Press.
Carr, R. (1977) “The Spanish Tragedy; The Civil War in Perspective” pg.72, Phoenix Press
Collectives in the Spanish Revolution [on line] available at;
http://www.anarchosyndicalism.net/history/collectives.htm (Last Accessed 20/03/06)
De La Cierva, R. (2000) “Franco: La Historia” by Editorial Fenix
Fisher, H. (1998) “Comrades Tales of a Brigadista in the Spanish Civil War” University of Nebraska Press Lincoln and London
Fraser, R. (1979) “Blood of Spain; The experience of the Spanish civil war, 1936-1939” London: Allen Lane (Penguin), 1979
Fussi, J.P. (1985) “Franco” pg.92, El Pais SA
Garcia-Delgado J.L. (2001) “Lecciones de Economia Espanola” Civitas Ediciones, S.L.
Graham, H. (2004) “The aftermath of Franco” History Today, May 2004, Vol. 54 Issue 5, p29, 3p
Guerra Civil y Revolucion [on line] available at;
http://www.enlucha.org/folletos/guerra.html (Last Accessed 20/05/05 )
Harrison, J. (1993) “The Spanish economy from the Civil war to the European Community” Macmillan Press Ltd.
Malefakis, E. (1970) “Agrarian reform and peasant revolution in Spain: origins of the civil war” pg.91, Yale U.P
Moa, P. (2004) “Los Mitos de la Guerra Civil” pg.199, La Esfare de los Libros. S.L.
Payne, S.G. (1961) “Falange, a History of Spanish Fascism” pg.27, Stanford University Press, California
Payne, S. (1967) “Franco’s Spain” pg. 29, Thomas Y. Crowell
Payne, S.G.(1993) “Spain’s First Democracy; The Second Republic, 1931-1936” pg.118, 34, The University of Wisconsin Press
Preston, P. (1978) “The Coming of the Spanish Civil War: Reform, Reaction and Revolution in the Second Republic, 1931-1936” Macmillan
Preston, P. (1993) “Franco” pg.531, HarperCollins
Preston, P. & Mackenzie, A. (1996) “The Republic Besieged Civil War in Spain 1936-1939” Edinburgh Press
Radosh, R., Habeck, M.R. & Sevostianov, G. (2001) “Spain Betrayed, The Soviet Union in the Spanish Civil War” (Annals of Communisms)” pg.193,192 , Yale University Press
Ribeiro de Meneses, F. (2001) “Franco and the Spanish Civil War” By Routledge
Robinson, R.A.H. (1970) “The origins of Franco’s Spain, The Right, The Republic and Revolution, 1931-1936” pg. 60 David&Charles
Romero Salvado, F.J. (1999) “Twentieth-Century Spain: Politics and Society in Spain, 1898-1998” Palgrave
Schatz, S. (2001) “Democracy’s breakdown and the rise of Fascism: The case of the Spanish Second Republic, 1931-36” Social History Vol. 26 No. 2,May 2001
Shubert, A. & Alvarez Junco, J. (2000) “Spanish History since 1808” by Oxford University
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Stradling, R. (1999) “If the Republic had won” pg.46, History Review,
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BIBLIOGRAPHY:
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Victor, A. & Schwartz, S. (1988) “Spanish Marxism versus Soviet Communism” New Brundwick, Oxford; Transaction Books
APPENDIX ONE
THE MOST CHARACTERISTIC ARTICLES OF A COLLECTIVE COMMUNE IN SPAIN 1937
ART. 1. Collectivisation will be the work of the peasants, medieros and smallholders, who join voluntarily and will be accepted by the General Assembly.
ART. 3. When a smallholder's land is located in the middle of collectivised land, constituting thereby an obstacle for the Collective, it will be exchanged for another holding, of better land and with more advantages for the owner who has been displaced.
ART. 5. Widows without other means of life than land can, if they wish, join the Collective.
ART. 10. The defence of our production and the administration, of the cultivations will be assured by the following Commissions: (a) Statistics; (b) Irrigation; (c) Fertilisers, seeds and new cultivations; (d) Plant diseases, spraying and fumigations; (e) Steward's office, purchases and selling prices; (f) Livestock, poultry keeping, beekeeping; (g) Tools and machinery; (i) Tests; (j) Animal feed; (k) Means of transport available for the Collective; (1) Production and appropriate technical management; (m) Land workers.
ART. 15. In the event of illness, members of the Collective or their families will receive treatment on behalf of the Collective which will be responsible for all expenses incurred.
ART. 16. Rent for private dwellings occupied by members of the Collective will be paid by the latter, independently of the wage.
ART. 17. Furniture for new households will be paid for by the Collective if the beneficiaries have been members for at least six months and if they act as real collectivists.
ART. 21. Children under the age of 14 will not be accepted for work; they will be obliged to attend school from the age of six. Their parents or guardians will be responsible for their attendance at school; the penalty for a child's unjustifiable absence from school will be a deduction of six pesetas from the family's wage.
ART. 22. The Collective will, for the good of Mankind, help the most gifted children to take courses in higher education. The Collective will be financially responsible.
ART. 28. Should the Collective have cause to complain of the behaviour of one of its members, it will call him to order up to two occasions. On the third occasion he will be expelled from the Collective without any right to danmification. The general assembly will deal with such cases."
(Source: Collectives in the Spanish Revolution)
APPENDIX TWO
EXAMPLE OF QUESTIONNAIRE
Por favor rellena este questionario si te interesa la historia de tu pais, es para un estudio que esta haciendo Juan Cumia para la Universidad John Moores de Liverpoll Inglaterra. Manda tu questionario a
http://by101fd.bay101.hotmail.msn.com/cgi-bin/compose?mailto=1&msg=A82684E8-48AA-4DA9-A1F1-A530FDA7A891&start=0&len=292005&src=&type=x&to=juancumia@hotmail.com&cc=&bcc=&subject=&body=&curmbox=00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000001&a=1b229395e7c61d735319492089b5e1975f0f204221d828b62ce5f9d6a7d85f71¿Conoces la Historia Reciente de tu Pais?
Por favor indica tu sexo y edad antes de empezar el questionatio muchas gracias.
Responde SI o NO al siguiente questionario;
1. La II Republica comenzo como projecto de consenso entre toda la sociedad Española
no
2. La II Republica fue destruida por las derechas inmovilistas
si
3. La II Republica fue destruida por las izquierdas revolucionarias.
no
4. Los movimientos Nacionalistas perifericos (Vasco, Catalan) son progresistas.
no
5. Los movimientos Nacionalistas perifericos (Vasco, Catalan) son
retrogrados.
si
6. Los asesinatos sectarios durante la II Republica fueron cometidos en su inmesa mayoria por las izquierdas revolucionarias.
si
7. Los asesinatos sectarios durante la II Republica fueron cometidos en su inmesa mayoria por las derechas reacionarias.
no
8.Las elecciones de 1936 fueron fraudulentas y crearon un doble poder, por un lado un debil gobierno central y por otro el de los incontrolados revolucionarios de izquierda que tomaron las calles.
si
9. Las elecciones de 1936 fueron limpias y justas y el gobierno que salio de ellas legitimo y poderoso.
no
10. Franco salvo a España del callejon sin salida que la habian conducido la inoperancia, falta de rigor y estatura politica de los dirigentes republicanos.
si
11. Franco hundio a España cuando ataco despiadadamente al sistema democratico legalmente constituido.
no
12. Te preocupa la historia de tu pais
si
13. Importa la historia del pasado
si
14. Hemos aprendido algo de la historia.
si
15. Por favor incluye algun comentario personal si asi lo deseas.
ARRIBA ESPAÑA
