Nathanael Greene

The Collapse of the Spanish Republic, 1933—1936: Origins of the Civil War: Payne, Stanley G.: New Haven: Yale University Press, 420 pp., Publication Date: April 2006

The Spanish Republic and the Civil War, 1931–1939, have been the subjects of enduring interest and interpretation, especially in recent years with a proliferation of scholarly studies and popular accounts. Stanley G. Payne of the University of Wisconsin has had a most distinguished career as a historian of modern Spain. In addition to books concerned with a broad range of Spanish and European history, he has published several excellent works on this period of crisis in Spain. The first appeared in 1961 as an analysis of Spanish fascism and the most recent in 2004 as a study of Spanish Communism and the role of the Soviet Union in Spain. Payne observes that although there is a “mammoth [amount of] literature” on the Civil War, there is much less devoted to its origins, specifically to the collapse of the democratic republic. Hence this book, given to a powerful narrative account and challenging interpretation of four crucial years, 1933–36. Common understanding for many years attributed the origins of the Civil War to the machinations of Spain’s political right and its apparent unwillingness to accept democratic forms and verdicts. A heavy burden of responsibility fell on key figures and parties, the Church, and the army, as if they were nearly always united in a solid array of conspiracy against democracy. The founders of the Republic, leaders of the Left, with some major exceptions, often have been portrayed as beleaguered champions of reform and renewal. Payne, who has never shunned controversy in these matters, has not been so persuaded. In Spain’s First Democracy: The Second Republic, 1931–1936 (University of Wisconsin Press, 1993) he argued that although Spain’s stage of development, historical factors, and the crisis-laden Europe of the 1930s worked against the success of the Republic, major groups on the left, including Socialists and liberals, essentially failed to accept the rules of a democratic order. The Collapse of the Spanish Republic updates this earlier work, even as several of the chapters are closely parallel, and in some instances nearly identical, to it. Here Azaña is no hero, but instead a victim of his own miscalculations, his “petit-bourgeois” radicalism, and reckless wager on support from revolutionary socialists. President Alcalá Zamora interfered with parliamentary practices. The government of the Left in 1936 committed staggering abuses of power, so much so that the Right had but two choices: either submit or rebel. Ultimately, rebellion led to forty years of repression. This is a serious, carefully researched, and very readable account of the onset of the Spanish tragedy. It also offers conclusions that will test cherished assumptions.