The Spanish Civil WarEssay Preview: The Spanish Civil WarReport this essayThe Spanish Civil War (July 1936Ă-April 1939) was a conflict in which the incumbent Second Spanish Republic and political left-wing groups fought against a right-wing nationalist insurrection led by General Francisco Franco, who eventually succeeded in ousting the Republican government and establishing a personal dictatorship. It was the result of the complex political, economic and even cultural divisions between what Spanish writer Antonio Machado characterized as the two Spains. The Republicans ranged from centrists who supported capitalist liberal democracy to communists or anarchist revolutionaries; their power base was primarily urban (though it also included landless peasants) and secular and was particularly strong in industrial regions like Asturias and Catalonia. The conservative Basque Country also sided with the Republic, largely because it, along with nearby CataluÔ±a sought autonomy from the central government which would later be suppressed by the centralizing nationalists. The ultimately successful Nationalist rebels had a primarily rural, wealthier, and more conservative base of support, were mostly Roman Catholic, and favoured the centralization of power. Some of the military tactics of the war foreshadowed World War II, although both the nationalists and the republicans relied overwhelmingly on infantry rather than modern use of blitzkrieg tactics with tanks and airplanes.
While the war lasted only about three years, the political situation had already been violent for several years before. The number of casualties is disputed; estimates generally suggest that between 300,000 and 1,000,000 people were killed. Many of these deaths, however, were results not of military operations but the outcome of brutal mass killings perpetrated on both sides. The war started with military uprisings throughout Spain and its Colonies, which were followed by Republican reprisals against the Church. There were massacres of Catholic clergy and churches, monasteries and convents were burned with severe impact to the rich Spanish historical and artistic heritage. Twelve bishops, 283 nuns 2,365 monks and 4,184 priests were murdered. In the wake of the war, both sides initiated a mass killing of opponents where house searches were carried out, and unwanted individuals were often jailed or killed.
The massacre of the bishops and the Pope, on the eve of the 1788 rebellion, resulted in widespread destruction of church and political institutions in a number of locations around the country. This was followed by violent attacks, bombings, looting and the destruction of houses of worship.
During another mass shooting that took place just before the 1789 general election, the killing of six Catholic priests by a mob led three local Catholic organisations to be arrested and questioned. One official told a local newspaper that she and six others were threatened with criminal charges for allegedly plotting the assassination of her husband and a Protestant and two Catholic bishops.
The campaign for an uprising against the French government began in earnest with the campaign of the Knights of Malta, founded by Pope John II a few years earlier, as a protest of the British government. In the ensuing years of resistance, they were eventually used as a vehicle against the government in Argentina. The Knights of Malta, an established church of some 600 parishioners, soon became a political instrument as a social force. By March 1, 1919, the first campaign had won over 3,000 signatures on a petition calling for the return of Pope John XXIV.
On the following day, more than 100 Catholic bishops and priests from all over central Chile participated in a gathering in La Palma where the Knights of Malta condemned the French government and called for the dissolution of a political movement which was to have opposed the monarchy. The mass shooting and subsequent military arrests drew international attention to Catholicism and encouraged a new form of resistance.
Following this general election, the government of Chile was to impose a new constitution in January 1920 with a new general election for 1826 soon to follow for general elections. The new constitution was adopted in October 1928 by the country’s parliament, but the legislature also passed several amendments in October of that year to further narrow the electoral gap between democrats and republicans. These included the creation of two elections to the state of Paraguay in March 1929 and the abolition of the monarchy of all the elected officials of Paraguay on June 1, 1929. They also included new election provisions which would permit local municipalities for three consecutive parliamentary elections to form a state parliament and the election of the president in August of that year (the president of Paraguay, Albert HernĂĄndez HernĂĄndez, would receive a majority of his fellow statesmen at elections in other electoral districts). The government’s subsequent attempts to increase the election to a higher office saw the new constitution of February 1928 also being endorsed by the Chilean government.
During that same year â with the signing of the first Spanish colonial and national constitution in 1928. Chile was to remain a colony from 1917 through 1956 and was formally ruled by the colonial government for more than two decades following the civil war began in June of 1936. During the intervening period, Chile experienced an economic crisis. The government had imposed more than 30,000 layoffs for the agricultural sector and many more unemployment benefits were lost to illegal workers in the fields. The economic crisis was not without its political fallout which affected public goods such as land, buildings and agriculture. Some 70 percent of the public sector employees employed in Chile remained illiterate. In a study published in the journal “Caste and the Humanities” by Eduardo Fares, author of “Porco Unia in Chile,” Santiago’s urban areas, Chile was ranked as ranked #28 in literacy, with 3.3 percent lower for the poor than they were for other regions. The government also had limited access to a wide range of local industries and services. The government’s budget went from $4.3 billion in 1929 to between $20 million