ABSTRACT
In World War II, Germany and Italy again fought the Soviet Union, just as they had in Spain, but this time, the democracies fought in league with the Communists. Many of the ideologies that swirled within Loyalist Spain were either alien to Spanish tradition or divisive to the state and society. When the time for the republic finally arrived, the great majority of Spaniards were unable to perform the difficult and self-disciplined task of making democracy work. The democracy of republican politics existed in isolation within a nondemocratic society. Ramon Tamames gives a schematic of the parties and groups in the Second Republic, whose confrontation finally paralyzed the fragile democratic political process. The Civil War in Spain was first and foremost Spanish, irrespective of the involvement of other nations that either aided the republicans or the insurgents or rebels or refused to aid either.
