From Empire to Republic: Spain after Napoleon


Alfonso XIII (1868 - 1918)
King of Spain (1894 - 1918)
(VII)


As soon as Garcia Prieto proclaimed the Republic, the workers began to organize themselves in popular councils, not as a consequence of the proclamation but as a collateral effect of the descomposition of the regime. Around 200 workers from the larger factories of San Fernando occupied the Cortes and formed a revolutionary parliament. Most of them had already been leaders during the earlier strikes earlier and did not trust neither the Liberal Party's nor the PSOE's leadership. They were determined to replace Garcia Prieto's government.

Then, as this was happening, several regiments around the city began to show signs of wavering loyalty towards the goverment. Even worse, a few of them began to organize their own councils. Garcia Prieto began to play to for time and opened negotiations with the worker's council at the Cortes. He went there, thinking that he was to persuade them without too much trouble now that the king was deposed, but he was surpirsed to find there Andrés Saborit, from the PSOE. It was obvious that the Socialists were taking part in the council and aiming them against the goverment. That evening, García Prieto met the General Staff of the Spanish Armed Forces and began to prepare to strike against the revolutionaries.

For the next week Garcia Prieto's government and the workers and soldiers' council lived an uneasy truce. In their negotiations, the council representatives promised to guarantee orderly production, to end wildcat strikes and to prevent a nationalisation of means of production. For their part, the government guaranteed to introduce the eight-hour day, which the workers had demanded in vain for years, and to the lasting recognition of the unions instead of the councils. Both parties formed a "Central Committee for the Maintenance of the Economy" on April 15th.

Meanwhile, on the Western Front, the German launched "Operation Michael" on April 21st just as news of events in Spain started to become available to the Spanish soldiers . At first the news was kept secret by the officers but by April 17th, the news became official. Four days later, when the German attacked, the 2nd Division lost over 4,000 casualties killed and wounded during the initial onslaught. Following the example of their comrades at home, soldiers of the Expeditionary Force based in the camp of Etples rejected their officers and elected soldier committees. At one meeting the committee representatives made an appeal to their fellow soldiers to refuse to drill, since they would not continue fighting. The rebellious units, considered a dangerous revolutionary influence, were ordered to Britanny, but they refused, demanding to be sent to Spain. Within 24 hours English and Spanish loyal troops isolated the rebel camp, cutting off rations, lining the surrounding roads with troops and guns.

On April 27, the remaining revolutionary soldiers, numbering around 2,000 were ordered to lay down their arms or be destroyed. The majority of the soldiers surrendered and were arrested. By April 28, those remaining in the camp came under artillery fire, the rebels opened fire in response. By 09:00 on April 29 the Spanish camp was completely occupied by English forces and the mutineers were disarmed. The mutineers were at first sent to prison camps in North Africa. After some months many were sent back to Spain, while others integrated into French society

Meanwhile, Garcia Prieto kept control of the administration, that ignored the councils, which caused continuing strife with the Executive Council, which, in spite of Garcia Prieto's fear, was not under control of the PSOE. In fact, the councils were well over acting on their own, even contradicting mutually and without any clear direction, not even by the Executive Council, and a majority of councils came to arrangements with the old administrations and saw to it that law and order were quickly restored.

Finally, a spark in Barcelona began to conflict. The soldiers of the garrison had indeed refused to participate in the revolutionary events but they had deposed their commander and their officers and had organized some Soldier's Councils. It was said that they were in favor of the PSOE. Thus, Garcia Prieto send to Barcelona some regiments to replace and to dissolve the non-reliable units and restore law and order in the city. In the end, the rebels soldiers among the garrison refused to surrender and soon a fight started in the city on May 3rd. The fight came to a stalemate as both sides proved uncapable of achieving victory and a uneasy truce came over the city by May 5.

Then Largo Caballero decided to play his winning card and to release the power of the Revolution over Spain.
 

Alfonso XIII (1868 - 1918)
King of Spain (1894 - 1918)
(VIII)


In several cities in the north of Spain the Workers' and Soldiers' Councils put the city administrations under their control.. In addition to this, in Bilbao and San Sebastián all civil servants loyal to the king were arrested. In Oviedo and La Coruña "Red Guards" were formed to protect the revolution. The councils took over the distribution of food and, the police force. On May 20, Largo Caballero demanded the peaceful disarmament of the garrison units by the San Fernando workforce in the daily newspaper of the PSOE El Socialista (The Socialist). He wanted the Soldiers' Councils to be subordinated to the Revolutionary Parliament and the soldiers to become "re-educated".

By the early days of June, as the news of the Western Front and the Balkans pointed out that the end of the war and the defeat of the Central Powers was just a matter of weeks, the left-socialists lead by Largo Caballero and Dolores Ibarruri left the PSOE and formed its own group, the Partido Comunista de los Trabajadores (Worker's Comuunist Party, PCT). Then, on June 28, 1918, Germany surrendered. The war was over. Two days later, a ng the return o the soldiers and the end of the food restrictions took place in San Fernando. Then, on July 2, hundreds of thousands of people poured into the centre of San Fernando, many of them armed. In the afternoon, the train stations and the offices of the middle-class press were occupied. Ironically, the PCT yb no means had a leading position. The demands came straight from the workforce supported by various groups to the left of the PSOE.

Alfonso XIII, who desperately wanted to go into exile ifollowing his abdication, was kept under the protection of the Garcia Prieto's goverment. Then, when San Fernando became a city in revolt, the royal family was evacuated to Tordesillas, allegedly to protect them from the rising tide of revolution. There, Alfonso followed the events with interest but not with alarm. The army was not siding with the revolutionaries, but for some hundreds of individuals soldiers and a few small unjits.

As the revolution extended to Madrid, Barcelona, Toledo, Sevilla, Albacete, Zamora, Burgos and Cuenca, the government was virtually helpless to offer significant resistance. Railways and rail stations had been controlled by workers and soldiers, making rail travel almost impossible. Then, Tordesillas also rose in revolt on July 5 and the royal family saw itself in the hands of the revolutionaries.

The government finally reacted and the army counter-attacked. If the revolutionaries hoped that the returning soldiers were to help them, they were bitterly dissapointed when they discovered that the soldiers of the first division to return home, on July 7, were not willing to go on fighting. The war was over, and most of the soldiers just wanted to go home to their families. Shortly after their arrival to Spain, they dispersed. However, the standing army was more than willing to fight and on July 10, they moved against the revolutionaries.

In three days (July 10-12), San Fernando, Barcelona and Madrid were cleared from revolutionaries after several clashes on the streets. This fighting claimed 462 lives in these cities. As the army moved to crush the remnats of the revolution, its alleged ringleaders had to go into hiding, but, on the evening of July 13, Largo Caballero and Ibarruri were arrested by the army, and executed when they were on the way to be questioned. In Tordesillas, as the government troops came closer, the revolutionaries executed the royal family. Alfonso XIII, his wife, Queen Louise, and their three children were killed in the basement of the house where they were kept.

In the ensuing chaos that followed until the final defeat of the revolutionaries, several members of the royal family were executed by the revolutionaries, among them Jaime, duke of Girona, the only surviving brother of the king.

Alfonso XIII (1868 - 1918) - Louise (1867 - 1918)

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Alfonso (1895 – 1918)
Isabel (1897 – 1918)
María (1901 – 1918)
 
Yikes, a new October Revolution with regicide included I see. But if the revolutionaries are being stamped out by the Army what government will rise from the ashes?
 
Are there people appearing who are going to claim to be one of the surviving royal family (as was the case with Anastasia in OTL in Russia)?
 
Are there people appearing who are going to claim to be one of the surviving royal family (as was the case with Anastasia in OTL in Russia)?

I hope not...

Yikes, a new October Revolution with regicide included I see. But if the revolutionaries are being stamped out by the Army what government will rise from the ashes?

You will see that in the next and last installment of this TL...
 
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Second Spanish Republic
(1918-193|)

The Spain that emerged from the Great War and the turmoil of 1918 mixed a huge demand for democracy and freedom with a fear close to paranoia to any leftish idea, even the moderate ones. The liberal establishment, fearing a Soviet-style revolution, started to endorse right policies and became silent when the army threatened to intervene in the political events of the country.

Thus, in 1923, the Coalition Government, made up by the Conservative and Liberal party, banned all the "extremist" parties (mainly those from the left) and curtailed personal liberties, thus forming a de facto dictatorship. From then on, the practice of turnismo was resumed: the deliberate rotation of the Liberal and Conservative parties in the government, so no sector of the bourgeoisie felt isolated, while all other parties were excluded from the system (Those who had not been banned, of course). This was achieved by electoral fraud.

The system, of course, was severly flawed and, in the end, led to fears of a military coup or a Soviert revolution. The laws of the system were made worsen by the crash market of 1929. Then, in 1931, Onesimo Redondo, leader of the fascist Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional Sindicalista (JONS - Committees of the National Syndicalist Offensive), marched with his followers over Madrid in an undeclared coup that, as it was repetead in Valencia, and in many Castillian cities, in the end, and due to the vacuum of power and the fear of a civil war if Redondo was not recognised as de new dictator of Spain.

Thus, thanks to combination of fear and apathy, Redondo became the dictator of Spain, that awoke Republican and went to slip as Fascist nation. That Redondo, hardly in three month, forced an international intervention in Spain by military forces of the British Empire, France and the Weimar Republic under the orders of the League of Nations, is a telling prove of the inhability to rule of the fascist leader.

Then came the long lapse of the Internation Administration, while it was decided whether to restore the monarchy (under whom?) or to keep the Republic.

However, that's another story.

The End.
 
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