ABSTRACT
The events of October 1934 and the result of the 1936 elections shattered CEDA dreams of being able to impose an authoritarian, corporative state without having to fight a civil war. Two years of aggressive rightist government had left the working masses, especially in the countryside, in a far from conciliatory mood. Having been thwarted once in its reforming ambitions, the Left was now determined to proceed rapidly with meaningful agrarian change, which would directly challenge the economic interests of the CEDA’s backers. Having predicted that left-wing electoral success would be the prelude to the most spine-chilling social disasters, the CEDA had undermined its own raison d’être, the legal defence of landed and religious interests. The small section of the CEDA leadership, around Manuel Giménez Fernández and Luis Lucia, which believed that the party should now fully accept the Republic was unable to influence policy It was rather late to attempt to reverse the cumulative effects of CEDA propaganda and already the rural and industrial oligarchies were switching their financial support to the conspiratorial Right. Gil Robles seems to have accepted that the legalist tactic had now outlived its usefulness. He was briefly involved in efforts to prevent a hand-over of power to the Left after the Popular Front elections. When this failed, he did not try to stem the flow of CEDA members to more extremist organisations. At the same time, he played an active, and indeed crucial, role, in parliament and the press, in creating the atmosphere which made a military rising appear to the middle classes as the only alternative to catastrophe.
