ABSTRACT
THE 1931 ESTABLISHMENT OF the Second Republic, a demo-I cratic regime, represented a significant change in Spain's political trajectory. That process of democratization soon made the Spanish forget the experience of the dictatorship of Miguel Primo de Rivera (1923–30). The long political course based on corruption and weakening of the constitutional system, which had begun with the Bourbon Restoration in 1875, had consolidated a cultural mistrust of the parliamentary system of representation and had created a political climate that was not conducive to the development of democracy. In fact, until the 1930s, with the political reforms implemented under the Second Republic, the social legitimization of individual political rights had not played an extensive role in the liberal and democratic tradition in Spain.
