BLACK BIENNIUM: BACKGROUND, DEVELOPMENT, MEASURES - HISTORY - 2024

The black biennium or conservative biennium was the second phase in which the Second Spanish Republic has historically been divided. This period runs from the elections held in November 1933 to those that took place in February 1936.

The results of the 1933 elections were an absolute defeat for the left-wing parties that had ruled until then. The CEDA (Spanish Confederation of Autonomous Rights) became the majority party, but without achieving an absolute majority.

Alejandro Lerroux - Source: Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe,, originally published in Ilustrowany Kurier Codzienny in public domain

At first, the CEDA decided to support Alejandro Lerroux, of the Radical Republican Party, as President, although without entering the government. In 1934, the situation changed and the Catholic right became part of the cabinet. The first consequence was the outbreak of the Revolution of Asturias.

Apart from this uprising against the right-wing government, the black biennium was characterized by high social, political and territorial conflict. Likewise, the new leaders repealed a good part of the progressive laws enacted in previous years.

In 1936, before the collapse of the radical government due to several cases of corruption, the country returned to the polls. The left, united in the Popular Front, achieved victory.

Background

The Second Spanish Republic had been proclaimed on April 14, 1931, after two days before the elections had led to the triumph of the republican parties in the big cities. Before that, King Alfonso XIII decided to leave the country and abdicate.

In June of that same year, the provisional government called elections to the Constituent Cortes. The victory went to a coalition of parties made up of Republicans and Socialists and the drafting of a new Constitution began, which was also approved that year.

The reformist biennium

The first part of the republican period was called the reformist biennium. Manuel Azaña was appointed president of the government and his cabinet was made up of the winning parties in the elections.

During this phase, the government enacted several progressive laws to modernize society. Among the approved measures, they highlighted a religious reform to limit the influence of the Church, changes in the army to professionalize it, an agrarian reform and the decentralization of the territorial administration.

Opposition to the Republican-Socialist coalition

The measures taken by the government were rejected by the traditional powers, such as the Church, the landowners and the army. In this way, in 1933 they reacted by founding the Spanish Confederation of Autonomous Rights, with José María Robles Gil as leader.

In addition to the opposition of the CEDA, there were also fascist factions, such as the Falange, which began to carry out a campaign of agitation against the government. This accused the wear and tear caused by the opposition and, in addition, had to face a failed coup led by José Sanjurjo.

Development

The government could not resist the pressure of the conservative sectors and Azaña presented his resignation. Given this, the President of the Republic, Niceto Alcalá-Zamora, called new elections for November 1933.

Elections

The government had also reformed the electoral law during its mandate. With the changes, those parties that presented themselves in coalition were favored over those that did so separately.

To take advantage of this advantage, the CEDA allied itself with the Agrarian Party, with the Spanish Renovation (monarchists) and with the Traditionalist Communion.

Although they had their differences, they prepared a program with only three points: reform of the Constitution of 1931, repeal of the reforms and the pardon of prisoners imprisoned for political crimes. The latter included the participants in Sanjurjo's attempted coup.

The CEDA's strategy to reach power was to support Lerroux, of the Radical Republican Party, and then ask to enter the cabinet so that, in a short time, he could preside over it.

For his part, Lerroux presented itself as a moderate center party and for the elections formed a coalition with other center-right organizations. In the areas where a second round had to be held, it did not hesitate to ally itself with the CEDA.

Finally, the left was unable to agree to run in coalition. To this was added that the anarchists of the CNT campaigned for abstention.

Outcome

The elections, in which women were able to vote for the first time, yielded a clear victory for the center-right and right-wing coalitions. Among these, it was the CEDA that obtained the most deputies, followed by the Radical Republican Party. The left, for its part, sank and got very little representation.

Despite this, the House was highly divided and agreements had to be reached in order to govern.

Radical-cedista government

The composition of the Parliament practically left only one option to configure a stable government: the pact between Lerroux's party and the CEDA, with the support of other minority organizations.

Alcalá-Zamora commissioned Lerroux to seek support from forces favorable to the republic to be proclaimed president. The CEDA, although it did not fall into that category, agreed to vote in favor and stay out of the cabinet. Gil Robles's tactic was to enter the government later and then go on to lead it.

The monarchists and the Carlists considered the CEDA vote in favor of Lerroux a treason and established talks with Mussolini, the fascist leader of Italy, to obtain arms and money for an uprising.

October 1934

The Lerroux government, with external support from the CEDA, made only minor reforms of the laws passed during the previous biennium. Despite the timidity of their measures, the anarchists staged several revolts and strikes in various parts of the country.

In April 1934, the government tried to have an amnesty approved for the participants in the coup attempt of 1932. However, Alcalá-Zamora, as President of the Republic, refused to sign the law. Larroux, increasingly isolated, resigned and was replaced by Ricardo Samper, also from the Radical Party.

Samper held the post until October of that same year. It was then that the CEDA began the second part of its strategy and asked to enter the government with three ministers. This demand was joined by the resignation of 19 radical deputies dissatisfied with the right-wing policy carried out by the president.

Entry of the CEDA into the government

The CEDA, in addition to demanding his entry into the government, reported that it stopped supporting Samper and he had no choice but to resign.

The left-wing Republican parties tried to pressure Alcalá-Zamora to call new elections, but the President decided to abide by the regulations. His solution was to re-propose Lerroux as Prime Minister.

The new executive, which was organized on October 4, had three CEDA ministers. This led the Socialists to call what they called a "revolutionary general strike" starting the following day.

In general, this uprising was quickly put down, although it provoked armed confrontations in some parts of the peninsula. The exceptions occurred in Catalonia and Asturias.

Proclamation of the Catalan State

The day after the start of the revolutionary strike, the president of the Generalitat of Catalonia, Lluís Companys, announced the breakdown of relations with Madrid. After this, he made the proclamation of the "Catalan State in the Spanish Federal Republic" as a measure against "the royalist and fascist forces that had assaulted power."

Companys proposed the creation of a provisional government of the Republic that would have its headquarters in Barcelona to oppose the policies of the CEDA.

This proclamation was very short-lived. The Catalan government was unable to mobilize the population and found that the CNT, at that time the most important labor organization in Catalonia, did not respond to their calls.

On the 7th, the Spanish army put an end to the rebellion and all members of the Generalitat, including the President, were arrested. The Statute of Autonomy, which dated from 1932, was annulled and the autonomous bodies suspended.

Revolution of Asturias

The area of ​​the country where the revolutionary strike was successful was Asturias. The cause was the alliance created between the CNT, Alianza Obrera and the General Union of Workers, organizations to which the Communist Party was later added.

The revolutionary uprising had been planned in advance and the groups had weapons and dynamite stolen from the mines.

On the night of the 5th there was the mobilization of 20,000 workers, almost all miners. In a few hours they managed to control a good part of Asturian territory, including Gijón, Avilés and part of Oviedo.

Despite attempts to coordinate and control revolutionary action, there were some episodes of violence against right-wing personalities and members of the clergy.

The government sent troops that were stationed in Africa to put down the rebellion. In front, from Madrid, was General Franco. Despite the presence of the army, the rebellion still lasted until the 18th, when the rebels surrendered.

October 1934 - September 1935

The experience of October increased the fear of the right to a workers' revolution. The CEDA began to pressure the Radical Party to accelerate the reforms it believed necessary.

As soon as the October 1934 revolution ended, the radicals rejected the harsh proposals of the CEDA to repress the rebels. This led to the threat of the right-wing on November 7 to withdraw support for Lerroux if it did not dismiss the Minister of War, labeled soft.

In April of the following year a new crisis occurred when the three CEDA ministers voted against annulling the death penalty to which two Asturian socialist leaders had been sentenced.

Lerroux, with the help of the President of the Republic, tried to reform his government to leave out the CEDA. However, in May he had to abandon that idea and admit that the CEDista presence in the cabinet increased from three to five ministers.

This new composition gave, for the first time, a majority to the harsher right, composed of the CEDA and the Agrarian Party. The result was the adoption of measures such as an agrarian counter-reform, although they could not change the legislation in education or the Constitution.

Attempted constitutional reform

The reform of the Constitution of 1931 was part of the CEDA program. When he allied with the Radical Party, he managed to get it to include the point in the pact, although for two years no one started the work.

It was in May 1935 when the parties that made up the government presented a draft reform of the Magna Carta. In this, the autonomy of various regions was limited, freedoms such as divorce were eliminated and a large part of the articles that spoke about the separation between the Church and the State were annulled.

At the beginning of September, the leader of the CEDA, Gil Robles, affirmed that his intention was to totally renew the Constitution and threatened to bring down the government if his reform did not go ahead.

The discrepancies between the government partners about the constitutional change ended up causing an internal crisis. As a result, Lerroux dissolved the cabinet and resigned as prime minister.

Alcalá-Zamora maneuvered to place one of his supporters, Joaquín Chapaprieta, in office. Although he was quite liberal, he got the votes of CED and Radicals. However, a corruption scandal that affected the Radical Party again caused another government crisis that became the prelude to the end of the Black Biennium.

Measures and reforms

Practically all legislative activity during the black biennium was focused on trying to repeal the reforms introduced during the first years of the Republic. However, the conservative parties failed to eliminate most of the measures in force.

Stoppage of agrarian reform

The governments of the conservative biennium revoked some of the measures previously implemented. Thus, many lands previously expropriated from the nobility were returned to their former owners.

At that time, a cry among the bosses became famous: "Eat Republic!". Under the new legislation that paralyzed the agrarian reform, work shifts were eliminated, as well as the requirements that had been created so that owners could not hire at will, which caused the decrease in wages per day.

Similarly, in early 1934, the government did not approve the extension of the Crop Intensification Decree, which led to the eviction of 28,000 families from the land they were working on.

Religious politics

Attempts to reduce the power of the Catholic Church in Spain were paralyzed. To begin with, the government tried to agree on a Concordat with the Vatican, although it did not have enough time to sign it.

Instead, he did approve dedicating a specific budget for clergy and ecclesiastical activities. On the other hand, it eliminated the prohibition of religious teaching classes.

Territorial policy

The decentralization policy promoted during the reformist biennium was overruled by the new government.

The 1931 Constitution established the legality of the autonomy statutes, which according to the CEDA was a threat to the unity of the country. For this reason, they launched an initiative to reform the constitutional articles related to this area.

In addition to this attempt to reform the Constitution, the radical-cedista governments placed multiple impediments for the Generalitat of Catalonia to develop its prerogatives. In addition, they rejected the autonomy statute of the Basque Country.

Amnesty and military policy

Other measures taken in this period of the Second Republic were the amnesty for the participants in the attempted coup of 1932, including its promoter, Sanjurjo. The pardon was also granted to those who had collaborated with the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera.

However, other matters that had been reformed at the beginning of the Republic remained unchanged. This is the case of the military and educational reform, although the funds allocated to both aspects were cut.

End

Two scandals, that of the black market and the Nombela, ended up sinking the Radical Party. Given this, Gil Robles decided that the time had come to assault power and proceeded to withdraw his support for President Chapaprieta.

In addition to the scandals, Gil Robles took advantage of the fact that then, December 1935, the 1931 Constitution was four years old. According to the legislation, that meant that future reforms could be approved by an absolute majority and not with two-thirds of the deputies as before.

In this context, the leader of the CEDA asked to be appointed to preside over the new cabinet. The decision was in the hands of Alcalá-Zamora, who was not in favor of giving him that opportunity.

Call for elections

Alcalá-Zamora denied Gil Robles his request, claiming that neither he nor his party had sworn allegiance to the Republic.

Legally, the President of the Republic had the power to propose the candidate for the head of government, and Alcalá-Zamora was promoting the formation of independent cabinets that only lasted a few weeks and with the parliament closed. Once it held a session, the government fell and a new one was elected.

On December 11, 1935, with the tension between Gil Robles and Alcalá-Zamora on the verge of exploding, the President of the Republic warned that he was willing to call elections if the CEDA did not admit the election of a leader from another party.

Gil Robles refused and some soldiers suggested that he carry out a coup. However, the Cedista leader rejected the offer.

Finally, faced with the dead end situation in which the formation of the government was, Alcalá-Zamora dissolved the Cortes on January 7, 1936 and called new elections.

General election of 1936

The elections were held on February 16 and 23, since the system established two rounds.

On this occasion, the left-wing parties managed to come together in a coalition, the Popular Front. This was made up of the Spanish Socialist Workers Party, the Republican Left, the Communist Party, the Esquerra Republicana de Cataluña and other organizations.

For their part, this time it was the right-wing parties that failed to reach an agreement. The CEDA developed a highly variable system of alliances, with agreements with the anti-republicans in some constituencies and with the center-right in others. This caused that they were not able to present themselves with a unique program.

The results were favorable to the Popular Front, which won 60% of the deputies. The electoral system makes it very difficult to indicate the percentage of votes for each party, but it is estimated that the difference between the two blocks was much smaller. The right, as it happened to the left in 1933, was harmed by not reaching stable alliances.

References

1. Brenan, Gerald. The Black Biennium. Recovered from nubeluz.es
2. Fernández López, Justo. Right-wing restorer biennium. Obtained from hispanoteca.eu
3. Ocaña, Juan Carlos. The radical-cedista biennium. The revolution of 1934. The elections of 1936 and the Popular Front. Obtained from historiesiglo20.org
4. Raymond Carr, Adrian Shubert and Others. Spain. Retrieved from britannica.com
5. Kiss, Csilla. The Second Spanish Republic remembered. Retrieved from opendemocracy.net
6. Swift, Dean. The second Spanish Republic. Retrieved from general-history.com
7. The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. Niceto Alcalá Zamora. Retrieved from britannica.com