ABSTRACT
The Spanish Civil War began in July 1936 as a military uprising led by General Francisco Franco against the newly elected Popular Front government. Since the abdication of Alfonso XIII in 1931, Spain’s new democratic republican regime (known as the Second Republic) had undertaken policies directed at ameliorating endemic social, economic, and political problems. The Republic implemented a program of land reform, restructured the army, mandated the separation of church and state, and granted a measure of autonomy to the industrialized region of Catalonia. These policies alienated the right without moving quickly enough to satisfy the leftist political and labor parties burgeoning in Catalonia and in conflict-ridden Andalusia.
