Between a Hard Place and a Rock: A Carlist Spain in the 20th Century

[Kurt_Steiner]

20. The end of the Great War.

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At Compiègne, Matthias Erzberger, who had Count Alfred von Oberndorff of the Foreign Ministry by his side, was received by the French Chief of Staff, General Ferdinand Foch, Admiral Rosslyn Wemyss representing Britain and Colonel Charles Kilborne, for the United States. Having read out the terms, Foch made a number of token concessions when Erzberger begged for modifications. However, as he was under heavy pressure from Ebert to conclude an armistice with all haste, was ready to sign the document. At 7:38pm, the German delegation added their signatures to the armistice and Foch dismissed them. The terms would come into effect at 5am the next morning, March 16, 1918.

In France and Belgium, the Allied forces rejoiced at the end of hostilities. However, in contrast to the happines that ran thorugh the trenches, Haig kept true to himself and in the followig morning he met his army commanders and discussed with them the plans for an advance to the German frontier in preparation for the occupation of the Rhine bridgeheads. Meanwhile, American, French and British troops fraternised with locals, dining on food and drink offered by the grateful Belgian and French villagers. Soldiers sung and danced as bonfires were lit up and down the line. As many officers and men indulged in revelry together, the emotions were mixed. A lieutenant in the Coldstream Guards, Alex Wilkinson, wrote in his diary ‘The jolly old war has come to an end at last, and a good end too.’ Acting brigadier general Adrian Carton de Wiart simply stated "Frankly, I had enjoyed the war." Captain Edmund Blackadder recounted how he ‘went round the trenches and told the news to the NCOs and men. As an example of the calmness with which it was received, when I met Corporal S. Baldrick walking across the support trench and told him the news, he merely halted, saluted, said “very good, sir” and walked on to take care of his turnips.’

Meanwhile, in Spain, the monarchist propaganda had achieved an unexpected sucess. Suddenly, the idea of return of the Borbon family to the Spanish throne with Prince Alfonso became quite appealing for not only for the Spanish monarchists, but also to those who hoped for a deep reform of the state. This attitude was reinforced when Alfonso, from his golden exile in Britain, made public his Manifiesto de Sandhurst (Sandhurst Manifesto), where he set the ideological basis of the Bourbon Restoration and proclaimed himself the sole representative of the Spanish monarchy.

 

[Kurt_Steiner]

21. The First Spanish Republic

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Since February 2, 1918 Spain was a Republic in all but for its name. Apparently, no one thought about it in the rush of those days, and that is hardly surprising. Threatened with a Red Army that controlled most of the North, Catalonia and Andalucia, and with the officer corps and a big part of the armed forces united only by their common desdain, and even hatred, towards the new republican government and with Cambó and his allies pressuring Garcia Prieto for the return of the monarchy with prince Alfonso de Borbón, the new regime hardly had time to think about anything but of sheer survival issues.

That changed, as we have seen, on February 8th, when a new government was formed in Madrid and Garcia Prieto announced the creation of the Provisional Government of the Spanish Republic. It goes without saying that many hated at once that turn of events, even more when Alfonso's Manifiesto de Sandhurst (Sandhurst Manifesto) was known in Spain. The announcement of the reform of the Spanish constitution to give more powers to the elected parliament hardly managed to compete with the Manifiesto on the front page of the main newspapers, which were also busy informing about the formation of soldiers and workers councils in the areas controlled by the "Red" revolutionaries modeled after the Russian Soviets and the German Räte.

Even worse, the centre-left to center-right coallition government was divided at its very core as Cambó was determined to bring back the monarchy as the only way that could keep the country united and to avoid the spectre of a revolution. The fear of a rebellion caused great fear in the establishment and in the middle classes, who feared that the country looked to be on the verge of a communist revolution. This fer was reinforced when, due to the course of events and the popular support to the councils, Garcia Orieto was forced to add to the coalition government three representatives of the councils members. Even then, the radicals led by Dolores Ibarruri and Angel Sopeña were still against the Garcia Prieto cabinet.

A programme of progressive social change, introducing reforms such as the eight-hour workday, the releasing of political prisoners, the abolition of press censorship, increases in sick and unemployment benefits, a weak agricultural labour reform, a new system of social welfare relief and the creation of trade unions took place during this period, the so-called revolutionary period. Then, a rift developed between the members of the government after some street clashes in several cities between members of the militias creted by the Councils and the security forces and the army. Soon the Councils claimed that the government had joined with the anti-communist military to suppress the revolution and his representatives left the cabinet after only three weeks, on March 2, 1918.

Then Garcia Prieto called for new General elections to take place on June 10.

 

[Kurt_Steiner]

22. The General Elections of 1918.

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Soon the call for the Spanish General Elections of June 1918 displeased everybody. The conservative politicians thought and feared that the mere existence of the soldiers and workers councils would grant a deluge of revolutionary propaganda that would grant the victory to the Leftish parties. Of course, this had not only to be avoided, but also crushed as soon as posible. The liberal minded politicians feared that the conservatives and the army were to panick at the perspective of the rise of the Lefitsh votes that, also, would take away many votes from the Liberal candidates. Finally, the Left forces, revolutionaries included, were afraid that they elections were too close in time and there was no room for the needed "education" of the voters. Also, Pablo Iglesias thought that the Elections were rigged by the "traditional" parties and refused to participate, in spite of the advice of his close supporters.

A strike in Barcelona seemed to confirm the fears of all of the parties involved. It all began in Barcelona, when eight workers were fired. They worked for the Barcelona Traction, Light and Power Company (BTLP), a Canadian utility company that operated light and power utilities in Spain and they were fired when they didn't accept that their wages were lowered by the company and asked the CNT trade union to represent them. This soon spiralled out of control and, by March 16, the strike had parallized the BTLP. Two weeks later, the strike had paralyzed 80% of the Catalan industries. (1)

Initially, the government had recommended the BTLP to be hard with the workers, fearing that any negotiation would be interpreted by the Revolutionaries as a sign of weakness. Then, as we have seen, the strike extended to many other industries and sectors and paralyzed Catalonia. The Garcia Prieto cabinet panicked. Was this the beginning of the feared revolution? Not really.

The strike remained within Catalonia. There were hardly any shock waves in the rest of the country and the government, feeling more secure, send the army to control the situation. It became a failure. The military governor fo Catalonia, General Joaquín Milans del Bosch, sided with the employers and ignored the orders of Madrid, until he had to be removed from the post as it was thought that his attitude would just fuel the revolution around Spain. In the end, after 44 days of strike, the strike was over after the eight workers recovered their jobs and a small rise on the wages were granted to the strikers.

This was to be the worst trouble during the electoral campaign. In comparison, the few strikes and riots that followed in Andalucia and the Basque Country paled in comparison. Then the election day came and many were surprised and relieved when the Liberal Party and García Prieto in one side, and the Conservative Party and Dato in the other, gathered together 56,7 % of the popular vote. The moderate Socialist under Melquíades Álvarez hardly reached the 8.5% of the turnout. It was then when Pablo Iglesias realized about his mistake when he refused to participate in the "sham elections of the bourgeoisie ".

(1) IOTL, this happened in 1919, but I have advanced the schedule a bit.

 

[Kurt_Steiner]

23. The Spanish bubble (1918-1922)

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From 1918 to 1922 Spain had four governments when the Liberal and the Conservative parties formed the so-called Frente Nacional (National Front), built around two main idreas: patriotism and fear of the Bolshevism. From March to July 1918 the main effort was placed in consolidating the reforms that the revolutionaries had enforced upon the previous cabinet. Its effects were out of proportion to the effort placed to make them real. The workers were appeased and their support to the Trade Unions was thus weakened, which, in turn, put the Soldier and Wokers Councils in a unfavorable position, as they were reduced to be just the "supporters" of the government and led to their final auto-dissolutoin towards the end of that year. Ironically, the workers supported the measures of the bourgeois government and turned their back to the revolutionaries. Now that the crisis seemed to be a thing of the past, the average Spaniard was mightly glad to go back to the routine of "bussines as usual", even more when, in April 1918, an enabling Act was approved for an eight-hour day and a six-day week, although farmworkers were excluded from the Act.

When García Prieto resigned to run for the Presidency of the Republic, Joaquín Sánchez de Toca became the new prime minister. A young rising star of the Conservative party, Sánchez de Toca worked hard to implement the reforms and to improve them, so he extended the eight-hour day for seamen and farmers and saw the split of the PSOE after the death of Pablo Iglesias. The vacuum of power that followed made Julián Besteiro to rise to replace Iglesias but at a heavy price. As Besteiro moved away from the true Marxist tradition, Largo Caballero left the PSOE and with him a great number of Socialists and then joined the Communist League led by Ibarruri and Sopeña. However, Sánchez de Toca was deemed too "radical" by his conservative peers and was replaced by Antonio Maura, who became the new prime minister in January 1919. Supported by business and finance and friendly toward the army and the Church, Maura had no troubles during his five-months tenure, when he resigned to incorporate Besteiro into the Frente Nacional, who was branded by Largo Caballero and Ibarruri as a traitor to the workers.

Besteiro, in any case, workerd hard to ensure the recovery and enhacement of the economy of the Spanish Republic. He began a reform of the Spanish Navy and put into work two large scale programs, one devoted to infraestructure construction and the other one to increase the industrialization of the country. However, under him the taxation policies were to reach new heights of inefficient, with widespread evasion, that were to explode in the crisis of 1922. In the end, when Besteiro resigned in January 1920, he went to be remembered as the "Great Ambassador" of Spain as during his tenure the international standing of Spain rechead new heights and established new and strong relations with France and Italy.

Álvaro of Figueroa, earl of Romanones, who was the last prime minister before the elections of June 1922, also worked hard to improve the relations with France, even if his efforts were hardly succesful, and to strenght the national unity of the country. His vicious criticism of the "revolutionary defeatism" was another trademark of his tenure, as he blamed the Bolshevisks for any trouble that the country underwent and stating that those troubles were caused by the Communist Party in its effort trying to undermine the development of Spain.

Romanones also unleashed the dogs of war in Morocco when, under pressure of the Army to reinforce the forces there and then to advance towards Alhucemas bay to crush there the riffi irregular forces, he ordered a huge reinforcement of the Spanish forces deployed in the North of Africa, which opened theway for the advance along the coast. The campaign and the occupation costs were to prove to be a burden too heavy for the Spanish economy, and the Spanish peseta (1) collapsed in 1922, The following inflation and the economical chaos were to decide the fate of not only the General Elections of that year, but also of the governments that ruled Spain until 1924.

(1) The peseta was the currency of Spain between 1869 and 2002. Along with the French franc, it was also a de facto currency used in Andorra.

 

[Kurt_Steiner]

24. The road to the Dictatorship (1924-1928)

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The General Elections of 1922 resulted in a victory of the Frente de Izquierdas (Lefts Front), an alliance of the Left parties, including both the PSOE and the PCE, that defeated by a small margin the Frente Nacional (National Front): 38.10% of the popular vote vs 33.61%. The sudden crisis that the collapse of the peseta had revealed had turned the national mood. Melquíades Álvarez, the leader of the Partido Reformista (PR - Reformist Party) became the Spanish prime minister until his resignation on April 17, 1923, when he felt that he was not able to go on due to the rampaging economical crisis and the pressure that came from his Socialist and Communist allies, who had forced upon him to ran a intensely anti-clerical policy that came quite close to end up in a diplomatic fallout with the Pope.

Ironically, by April 1923 foreign observers reported the improvement of the Spanish financial market, the brilliance of the post-war literature and the revival of public morale. Then came the nine-months premiership of Alejandro Lerroux (April 17, 1923 - November 6, 1924), that was plagued by the war in Morocco and a turn for the worse of the ongoing economical crisis that led to the victory of the Frente Nacional in the elections of November 1924, when 45.18% of the Spanish voters trusted the Right Coalition while only 28.19% of them opted for the Lefts Front.

From November 1924 to the coup d'etat of 1928 there were seven changes in the leadership and in the composition of the cabinet. In fact, all went well for the first three years. Niceto Alcalá Zamora, the leader of the Partido Liberal (Liberal Party), who had been selected for the role by his predecessor, Romanones, formed an able cabinet centered around him and Miguel Maura, Minister of the Interior. He was quite lucky as during his tenure the war in North Africa came to a victorious end and the crisis began to abate, which also brought down the social resentment that had favoured he rise of the Left in 1922.

Then came the Great Depression, on February 6, 1927 (1), that brought another disaster for the Spanish economy. The change peseta-dollar went from 5,85 in March 1927 to 7,29 in December that year and to 12,32 in 1928. Because of the crisis, the Spanish economy reported an slowdown of 20%, less severe than what occurred in the US, France and Germany, but very similar to the Italian and British experiences. Industrial production fell a 20% and foreign trade and foreign investment came to a stop. Thankfully, the outdated Spanish banking system helped to reduce the damage caused by the international situation (2).

Unable to find a solution and blamed by all, Alcalá Zamora resigned on November 2, 1927. In the following three months, six governments rose and fell and, in the resulting chaos, the ghost of a crushing victory of the Left parties loomed over the country as Dolores Ibarruri preached for revolution, power to the people and a dictatorship. In the end, she got it, but no the one she wanted when, on July 23, 1928, Joaquín Milans del Bosch came back from his retirement to lead a coup d'etat as the armed forced moved forward to avoid the feared Bolshevik revolution.

(1) So many butterflies that Wall Street went mind a bit ahead of schedule.
(2) Ironically, being such a backward country was a good thin in OTL and in TTL.

 

[Kurt_Steiner]

24. The Dictatorship (1928-1929)

Joaquín Milans del Bosch
(1854 - 1936)
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The Dictatorship (July 23, 1928 - November 2, 1929) is one of the most puzzling moments of the last one hundred years of Spanish history. Milans del Bosch came to be known as the "reluctant dictator" that kept the Parliament running. No party was banned, not even the PCE. However, courts treated PCE membership as an act of treason since most judges held that its ideas as a threat against the state, and thus dozens of Communists were arrested during the first weeks after the coup d'etat, and, from time to time, the PCE would be targeted by the security forces and scores of its members were jailed for weeks and evens a few months without a trial for unnamed crimes and then freed. Milans del Bosch wanted to put an end to the economical, political and moral crisis of Spain and, in spite of his best efforts, the Dictatorship fell quite short of its marked goals.

Milans del Bosch ruled the countred while a government picked up by him made it run. The Dictator used to tell to the cabinet what he wanted and what he expected of them and then let them choose the means and the ways to achieve the goal. Failure was punished with military expediency and at once. However, Milans del Bosch was able to get his ways going.

During the 15 months that he remained in power, a reform of the educational system gave rise to an increase in the number of schools and teachers in Spain. If in 1928 there were 26,000 schools in Spain, by 1931 the number had risen to 35,000 and the number of teachers was increased in a 25% between 1928 and 1932. University education was also affected by this, with more funds and more students (from 23,000 in 1923 to 42,000 in 1930) Even if the nature of the reform was a conservative, almost archaic one, it set the structure that would led to the fast development of the Spain educatinal system in the 1930s.

Under Milans del Bosch the economical stage did not change too much. The decline of the Spanish agriculture as one of the main factors of its economy was held at bay during the Dictatorship as its goods dominated the Spanish market due to the protectionism applied by the government, a measure also extended to the industry, as it was still unable to compete abroad. Even worse, all the attempts to fix a number of deficiencies (backward technology, lack of large irrigation projects, inadequate rural credit facilities, outmoded landtenure practices) were met with failure or too little result. The Miners strike of 1928, which took place when the owners of the mines locked out the miners because they rejected the owners' demands for longer hours and reduced pay in the face of falling prices, was one of the grim moments of the Dictatorship. From then on, the coal industry would become the "sick man" of the Spanish economy. Thus, education, a few welfare activities and some road building were the only public services that had any appreciable impact on the economy during the Dictatorship.

The worldwide crisis would had also its effects upon the Spain economy, as unemployment soared during this period; from just over 10% in 1926 to more than 20% by early 1930 (it would not fall under 15% until after 1939). And just as heavy industry reached new lows, the consumer industry increased 32% between 1929 and 1941.

Electricity, gas, plumbing and telephone services became common as well during the late 1920s and the 1930s, even in some working class households. However, those living in the most remote and poorest parts of Spain were hardly affected by those changes, with many Spaniards unable to enjoy them as late as the early 1970s.

The Dictatorship came to a planned end when General Elections were held on November 2, 1929. They were also a kind of popular pleibiscite, as the Frente Nacional (National Front) included among their proposals the return of the monarchy to Spain. Also, they were dominated by the crisis, and, as the Dictatorship had failed to fight its effects, the economic problems led to the rise of radical movements who promised solutions as the traditional political parties seemed to be unable to face the situation. So, just as the PCE rose again against all the expectations of the ruling class and in spite the repression suffered, a Fascist movement rose in Spain, just mirroing what had happened in Italy, France and Germany.

 

[Kurt_Steiner]

25. Meanwhile, elsewhere (1918-1929)

Bela Kun seen here during a meeting in Budapest​

The end of the Great War did not mean the end of hostilities, as the Russian Civil War was in its beginnings and Germany saw herself on the verge of another one just as the Austro-Hungarian empire came to an end as its members departed in more or less friendly ways. By the end of 1918, Hungary was acting practically as an independent nation, embarrasing somehow the occupation forces led by General Franchet d’Esperey, who had to act as a general and a diplomat at the same time and was pressed by all sides to act decisevely in their favour. The Polish majority regions of Galicia and Lodomeria also declared their independence and demanded their ethnic brethren in Russia and Germany to join their effort to create a Polish state. In Budapest Hungarian aristocrats still believed they could subdue other nationalities and maintain the "Holy Kingdom of St. Stephen" and pressed the provisional government to use the army to quell the rebellion.

Four days later, when Washington declared that the Allies were now committed to the causes of the Czechs, Slovaks and South Slavs, Budapest had to fold its wings, even more when, by late November 1918, Croatian nationalists declared the independence of the Republic of Croatia, much to the shock of Serbia and, a few days later, the same process repeated itself when the Republic of Bosnia was declared in Sarajevo, much, again, to the shock of Serbia and Croatia (And, of course, to Franchet d'Esperey, who feared that his troops may end themselves trapped in the mor ethan probable fights that would follow those declarations).

However, when Theodore Roosevelt stated in no uncertain terms the determined decision of the Allied Powers to defend the causs of the Czechs, Slovaks and South Slavs, as it had been warned a few days back, the US president knew that he was playing a dangerous game, as he was aware without a shred of doubt that neither Paris nor London were too willing to fight another war just a fedw months after ending the worldwide nightmare. However, neither Croatians nor Serbs nor Hungarian considered this possibility. Sis months later, after endless negotiations, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Croatia, Bosnia and Austria came out fom the ashes of the fallen empire.

This was not, of course, the end of troubles for the Balkans. Betwen 1920 and 1925 Croatia, Bosnia and Serbia found themselves close to declaring war on each other due to the endless srtream of border disputes as the Treaty of Laussanne that had "settled" them proved to be an useless sheet of paper. In 1921 a failed attempt to restore Karl in the Austrian throne would spring into a months of disturbances when a coup d'etat followed another one when the Republic of Austria was replaced during 48 hours by the Soviet Republic of Austria which was drowned in bloodby the counterrevolutarionary forces, which had fresh in their mind the chaos caused by Bela Kun in Hungary during the bloody chaos that lasted for six weeks after his failed attempt to proclaim a Soviet in Budapest. Just as French and Romanian forces had helped to crush the rebellion. The ensuing tension that followed when Budapest demanded the withdrawal of its troops from Transylvania to Bucharest and led to the quasi-war of 1921 was also fresh on the minds of many Austrian politicians just as German troops entered Austria to help to supress the Communist putsch.

Germany herself had its own share of unrest betwen 1919 and 1922, just as the Spartakist League rose in arms in Berlin and the Ruhr at the beginning of 1919, which opened the way for a civil war that saw French troops helped to supress and crush the Soviets in the Ruhr area and joining the following repression that was applied there and Polish troops that invaded Silesia in 1920 to supress the Communist threat there and protecting the Polish minority in the area, causing a terrible blow to the German-Polish relations that, eventually, would lead to the terrible war of 1926, when the restored German Reich of Wilhelm III invaded Poland after the May coup in Warsaw.

As a dissapointed Theodore Roosevelt stated a few days before he died, "all this bloodshed has only led to more madness". However, there was a small hope as the League of Nations had finally come to become a reality in the world politics as the guns remained silent after 1923, but for the German-Polish war, whuch proved to be the baptism by fire of the League, as we shall see.