Political Catholicism and the secular state: A Spanish predicament

The loss of the last colonies to the United States and what was perceived as a long national decline led a large group of Spanish intellectuals, mostly known as the Generation of ’98, to adopt a regenerationist stance towards their own country by the end of the nineteenth century. The diagnostic on the origins of what some authors then called the ‘national problem’ (Macías Picavea 1899) and years later the Spanish predicament (Brenan 1955) was diverse, but the lack of modern secular institutions was recognizably one of them (Ridao 2008). The public status of the Catholic Church, the disentail­ ment of ecclesiastical property, and religious freedom had been major issues during the early constitutional history of the country, but in the twentieth century, they developed a new and more virulent dimension. In 1931, with the accession of the Spanish Second Republic, the separation of church and state, the secularization of the educational system, and the emancipation of social customs from the religious umbrella fuelled a wide range of tensions. In a historical milieu marked by social unrest and increasing political divi­ sion, anti­clericalism functioned as a catalyst of the conflicts that eventually led to the Spanish Civil War (1936-39).