[1898 - 1936] A Kingdom in Crisis

The year is 1898, and a profound silence has fallen over Spain. It is not the silence of peace, but the stunned, hollow quiet of defeat. News, carried by crackling telegraph wires and stark newspaper headlines, confirms the unthinkable: the last jewels of a once-mighty empire—Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines—are gone, lost to the burgeoning power of the United States. In the cafes of Madrid and the ports of Cádiz, men in starched collars and women in dark mourning dress speak in hushed, bitter tones of “El Desastre,” The Disaster. It is more than a military loss; it is a spiritual wound, a brutal confrontation with irrelevance. The nation, which had once spanned the globe, now felt small, old, and adrift in a new century that was dawning without it. Into this atmosphere of national crisis stepped a young king, Alfonso XIII, who came of age in 1902. He was a modern monarch in many ways, with a love for fast cars, polo, and the novel technology of the telephone. Yet, he ruled a country caught between centuries. Outside the grand, stone-faced ministries on Madrid's Castellana boulevard, the reality for most of Spain's 18.6 million people was one of deep, almost feudal, division. Spain was not one country, but many. In the sun-baked plains of Andalusia, a small landowning aristocracy controlled vast estates, or *latifundios*, while millions of landless day-laborers, the *braceros*, lived in poverty so severe it was a national scandal. Their homes were often little more than one-room stone huts, their diet a meager ration of bread and olives, their lives governed by the rising sun and the whims of the landowner. The illiteracy rate in some southern regions topped 60%, a stark measure of state neglect. By contrast, the north was industrializing, but creating new, explosive tensions. In the bustling, smog-choked cities of Barcelona and Bilbao, a new industrial bourgeoisie was growing wealthy from textiles and steel. They built magnificent, whimsical apartment buildings in the new *Modernista* style, with flowing lines and colorful mosaics, a testament to their prosperity. But their wealth was built on the backs of a desperate urban proletariat. Thousands of families were crammed into squalid tenements in working-class *barrios*, where disease was rampant and life expectancy was short. To them, the flag, the king, and the church were symbols of an oppressive system. Their new religions were anarchism and socialism, their gospels preached in union halls and clandestine pamphlets, promising a world without masters. These two powerful forces—a deeply conservative establishment and a radicalized, impoverished mass—were on a collision course. The political system, a fragile constitutional monarchy, was designed to keep the peace through an arrangement known as the *turno pacífico*, where the two main parties, Liberals and Conservatives, politely took turns in power. But this was a gentleman's agreement that ignored the vast majority of the population. The illusion shattered in 1909. When the government called up reservists to fight another costly, unpopular colonial war in Morocco, the city of Barcelona exploded. What began as a protest became the “Semana Trágica,” the Tragic Week. Barricades went up, trams were overturned, and in a wave of anticlerical fury, over 80 churches and convents were set ablaze. The army’s response was brutal. The events sent a shockwave through the country, exposing the raw hatred simmering just beneath the surface. The Moroccan War remained a bleeding sore. It was a brutal guerilla conflict in the Rif mountains, consuming thousands of lives and a vast portion of the national budget. The ultimate humiliation came in 1921 at the Battle of Annual. A poorly led and equipped Spanish force of over 20,000 men was ambushed and annihilated by Rifian tribesmen. More than 13,000 Spanish soldiers were killed in a matter of days. The news of the massacre caused outrage back home, discrediting the politicians and the military high command. The system was broken. The king, fearing for his throne, looked for a savior. He found one in General Miguel Primo de Rivera. In 1923, with the king's quiet approval, the general staged a coup d'état, suspending the constitution and declaring a dictatorship. He promised to clean out the corrupt politicians, end the social chaos, and restore national pride. For a time, it seemed to work. Primo de Rivera was an authoritarian modernizer. He finally brought the Moroccan war to a victorious end, and he poured state money into public works. Spain was suddenly crisscrossed with new roads and railway lines. The world's first national telephone company, Telefónica, was established, erecting its landmark skyscraper on Madrid’s Gran Vía, a symbol of a new, connected Spain. But this stability was a facade. Political parties were banned, censorship was absolute, and intellectuals who dared to criticize the regime, like the philosopher Miguel de Unamuno, were exiled. When the global economic crash of 1929 hit, Primo de Rivera's support crumbled. Stripped of his authority, he resigned in 1930, leaving a political vacuum. The fall of the dictator sealed the fate of the king who had supported him. In the municipal elections of April 1931, republican parties won a landslide victory in all the major cities. The results were taken as a referendum on the monarchy itself. The message was undeniable. On April 14, 1931, without a single shot being fired, King Alfonso XIII quietly packed his bags and went into exile. As news spread, a joyous delirium seized the country. Crowds poured into the streets of Madrid, Barcelona, and Seville, not with anger, but with an almost utopian hope. They tore down royal crests and waved the new tricolor flag of red, yellow, and purple. The Second Spanish Republic was born. It was proclaimed as a “republic of workers of all classes,” and its new progressive government, led by intellectuals like Prime Minister Manuel Azaña, embarked on a breathtakingly ambitious program of reform. They drafted one of the most democratic constitutions in the world, granting women the right to vote for the first time in Spanish history. They moved to separate church and state, ending state subsidies for clergy and legalizing divorce. They launched a program to build thousands of new public schools to combat illiteracy and began a long-overdue land reform to break up the great estates of the south. For millions, it felt like the dawn of a new age of justice and modernity. But every reform created a powerful enemy. The Catholic Church, the army, and the wealthy landowners saw the Republic as an existential threat to their power and to the very soul of traditional Spain. The political right, once fragmented, unified in opposition. Society polarized at a terrifying speed. The hopeful spirit of 1931 gave way to bitter confrontation. In 1934, a miners' uprising in the northern region of Asturias, protesting the entry of a right-wing Catholic party into the government, was mercilessly crushed by the army. The general tasked with directing the operation was a quiet, unassuming officer named Francisco Franco. The “revolution of October” and its brutal suppression left thousands dead and became a dress rehearsal for a greater conflict, poisoning the political atmosphere beyond repair. By early 1936, the country was a powder keg. The February elections saw a narrow victory for the Popular Front, a coalition of left-wing parties. The right saw it as the first step towards a communist revolution. Political violence became routine. Falangist gunmen assassinated socialist leaders; leftist militants murdered conservative politicians. The government seemed powerless to stop the slide into chaos. In the countryside, peasants began seizing land on their own. In the cities, strikes paralyzed industry. Everyone, on the left and the right, began to speak not of if, but when, the final confrontation would come. They spent the spring and early summer of 1936 in a state of dreadful anticipation, knowing that the fragile peace was about to be shattered, and that the very future of Spain was about to be decided by force of arms.