In March 2017, the Espasa publishing house published a book that very soon became the center of attention of a large part of the Spanish press. Likewise, it had a strong reception among the public and was the subject of great debates. However, it was also at the center of political controversies that were promoted by a part of Spanish historiography, and that have continued to this day. This situation is not surprising if we pay attention to the title —“Fraud and violence in the Popular Front elections”—, since it is very suggestive and can offend the sensitivities of those ideologies strongly based on leftist orthodoxy.
In this sense, there were not a few reviews that cataloged the work as a mere revisionist story anchored in theses and proclamations of a very conservative ideological bias, which recovered “delegitimizing arguments from eighty years ago”, or “that underestimated the historiographical contributions of the last fifty” (González Calleja and Sánchez Pérez, 2018: 875). Next, I intend to address a commentary on this work that not only allows us to know the main contributions of the book, but also refutes this type of consideration that, from my point of view, is nothing more than speeches that would have the intention of distorting a more than legitimate interpretation of one of the most transcendental episodes of the Second Republic: the general elections of February 1936.
We have several articles about the Second Republic that you can consult here and here.
Data sheet
The authors
Before entering to assess the content of the book, I consider necessary a brief reference to the authors of the work. Manuel Alvarez Late He is a doctor in Political Science from the Complutense University of Madrid and professor of History of Thought and Social and Political Movements at the Faculty of Legal and Social Sciences of the Rey Juan Carlos University of Madrid. He is co-author and has directed or coordinated several books, among which I highlight the following: New studies on political culture in the Second Spanish Republic (1931-1936); The republican labyrinth: Spanish democracy and its enemies (1931-1936); Hate Politics: Violence and Crisis in Interwar Democracies; and, much more recently and published by Galaxia Gutenberg, Truncated lives. Stories of violence in Spain in 1936.
On the other hand, Robert Villa Garcia He is a tenured professor of Political History at the Rey Juan Carlos University in Madrid. He has published a dozen books and numerous articles on parties, elections, political violence and the crisis of democracy in contemporary Spain and Europe. The most outstanding monographs of his are the following: The Republic at the polls. The awakening of democracy in Spain; Spain at the polls. An electoral history (1810-2015); Lerroux. The Liberal Republic; and his new book 1917. The Catalan State and the Spanish Soviet, which has also been published by the Espasa publishing house.
What we think in a part of Archivos de la Historia
The first thing I have to say is that, throughout its more than 600 pages, I do not detect any type of ideological bias, what is more, I consider that, as far as possible, they are objective and use an enormous number of primary sources that they are not limited to an already overwhelming number of hemerographic references, but also resort to an enormous archival documentation from various national and international institutions. In addition, they expose an extensive list of secondary sources from different periods and trends that radically breaks with the erroneous belief that they would have ignored much of the literature produced in the last half century. In the same vein, They maintain that with their research—and I think that whoever dares to read the book will perceive it without any problem—, They wanted to get away from the «civil war» topicsand that at no time do they intend with it to encourage arduous political controversies that entail or have inserted a discourse that questions the legitimacy of the republican regime or the government of the Popular Front.
Bearing this in mind and from my most sincere criteria, in the following lines I am going to comment in the most summarized way possible the main contributions of the book, essentially those that I consider refute several of the critical statements that were made about it and that only they have influenced the uptake of the controversy as opposed to the more purely academic and informative debate.
Towards the dissolution of the Cortes
In December 1935, the corruption scandals dotted the leader of the Radical Party, Alejandro Lerroux. This is forced to resign and the President of the Republic, Niceto Alcalá-Zamora, found himself in a difficult position. He refused to grant the presidency to the party with the most representation, that is, to the Spanish Confederation of Autonomous Rights (CEDA) of José María Gil Robles because he thought that he was not a Republican and would put the system as a whole at risk. The Constitution also allowed to act in this way, so that independent governments or leaders corresponding to small minorities could even be formed. Therefore, Alcalá-Zamora ended up imposing a centrist government like Lerroux’s, but with the goal in mind that he seek support from the left instead of the CEDA. The solution came from the hand of Manuel Portela Valladares, who was elected president of the Council of Ministers on December 14. Since this decision was considered by the cedistas as an act of treason, Portela was forced to govern with the Cortes closed, since the CEDA did not attend the sessions and that blocked any attempt by the Executive to implement reforms because he could not count on the support of the Legislative. Given this scenario, Portela is forced to prepare a decree by which he dissolved the Cortes and called general elections for February 16. This measure, which he announced on January 7, was transmitted to Alcalá-Zamora, who proceeded to ratify it.
The electoral system of the Second Republic
The electoral law of the Second Republiclargely heir to that of 1907, established universal male and female suffrage from the age of 23. Likewise, the Constitution established a unicameral legislative system (Congress of Deputies) made up of 473 seats (from 237 seats an absolute majority was achieved) that were distributed in each province at the rate of one seat for every 50,000 inhabitants. Each province functioned as a district, but specifically there were 52 provincial and 8 urban (those provincial capitals with a population of over 150,000 inhabitants formed a district independent of their province). In short, a majority system with a limited vote was established in which the voter chose in each constituency a smaller number of candidates than there were seats at stake (for example, if in a constituency it was up to him to distribute 20 seats, the voter could only choose 16 candidates). Closed party lists were not voted on, but each citizen could choose the candidates of his or her preference, whose full name had to appear on the ballot (as is the case today with our Senate elections).
On the other hand, there were several electoral regulations that established that in order to be a deputy, at least 20% of the votes cast in the constituency was needed; that at least one of the candidates exceeded 40% of the votes cast (otherwise, the election was not valid and a second round had to be held, so stimulated the formation of electoral coalitions, since if a candidate won but did not reach 40%, the parties that were losing could agree, unite and reach that threshold to snatch victory); on the other hand, if the 40% threshold was met, but not all the remaining seats were filled by candidates exceeding 20% of the votes cast, those seats had to be decided in a second round; Finally, the second electoral round was held two weeks after the first round had been held, and only candidates who had managed to exceed 8% of the votes cast in the first round could present themselves. In any case, if none met that requirement, whoever wanted could participate in the second round.
The main problem with the electoral law is that configured a great disproportion between the so-called quotas of the majority and the minority, that is, between a candidacy that won and another that came second. The problem was that the winning candidacy (majority quota) always carried between 67 and 80% of the seats in a given constituency, while the rest of the seats went to the second most voted force (minority quota). ); and the rest, regardless of their strength, were left without representation. Following this criterion, for example, in constituencies such as Barcelona capital, the winner was entitled to 16 seats, but only 4 to the minority. This lack of balance in the distribution of seats and between the constituencies themselves meant that the mobilization capacity of the main electoral coalitions will be fundamental to gain the quota of the majorities in those that distributed the most seats.
A tense election campaign
The electoral campaign that took place mainly in January and part of February was surrounded by an alarming climate of hostility. It was carried out mainly by sympathizers, candidates and leaders of the main parties of the Popular Front who did not hesitate to classify political opponents as enemies that had to be eliminated. Specifically, the instrumentalization and temporary strategy adopted by socialists and communists had made it possible to formalize an electoral coalition with the left-wing republicans. However, this did not prevent the proliferation of independent speeches in which the former openly manifested the need to take revenge on those —the leaders of the second biennium—, who had carried out a strong repression against the worker insurgents —considered «heroes» by the socialists and the communists—who rose up in arms against the radical-cedista government during the famous October Revolution of 1934. It is for this reason that the sympathizers of the Popular Front will continually demand the release of the prisoners related to the acts of the insurgency and, ultimately, the amnesty, which was, on the other hand, an element of vital importance in the constitution of the electoral coalition. Faced with this situation, the Antirevolutionary Bloc —much more divided than the Popular Front as a result of the disagreements between the main conservative leaders— and the Church expressed their concern about what they considered a fight for their own survival. In short, and as indicated…