The Right under the second Spanish Republic, 1931-1936, with special reference to the CEDA

The thesis which follows is, as the title suggests, a general study of the Right in Spain from the beginning of the Second Republic in April 1931 until the outbreak of the Civil War in July 1936. Pride of place has been given to the CEDA (and its antecedents Acción Nacional and Acción Popular) because this was the biggest and most important of the parties of the Right during the Republic. The terra 'Right' has been taken to signify those parties which did not proclaim themselves Republican, i.e. principally the Catholic CEDA, the Monarchist groups and the 'Fascist' Falonge. Consideration has also been given to two important institutions usually believed to be 'on the Right': the Church and the Army.
Although some information on the Right has appeared in various books, no attempt at a comprehensive study has hitherto been made. Galindo Herrero's Los partidos monárquicos bajo la aegunda República (1936) deals inadequately with the Monarchist parties. Professor Payne'a study of the Falange does not satisfactorily place the movement in the context of the other Rightist movements with which it quarrelled or was from time to time connected. The same author's work on the Army (Politics and the Military in Modern Spain), was published just before this thesis went to the typist, as were the biographies of Franco by Crosier and Hills. Professor Sánchez's book on the Church and the Republic, Reform and Reaction, appeared in 1964, two years after work on this thesis began.
Concentration on the CEDA in this thesis is felt by the writer to be fUlly justified, not only because of that party's size and importance for the history of the Republic, but also because it has hitherto been so neglected by historians. Only one book in any language deals with it - Monge Bernal's Acción Popular - and it is an 'authorized' history written by a party member at the end of 1935. Neglect of the party's history is perhaps attributable to the fact that its leaders were personae non gratae both to the Left and to the victors in the Civil War.
The purpose of this thesis is therefore to try and provide a comprehensive study of the Right during the Republic. The thesis endeavours to explain why the various parties existed, to trace the development of each of them and to give an account of relations between them. The attitude of each to the Church and to the Army (and vice versa) is also discussed. An attempt is also made to examine and explain the policies, ideology and strength of each and, so far as is possible, to indicate socially and geographically whence came their supporters. The absence of adequate biographical information has however hindered a proper study of the economic interests represented by them.
This thesis also constitutes an attempt to set the Right's activities firmly within the broader context of the history of the Republic and the events leading up to the Civil War. For this reason the chronological approach adopted would seem to be justified: the events of the years 1931-1936 in Spain are comparable in their complexity to those of, for example, the years 1789-1799 in France. Furthermore, the activities and development of the Right were to a considerable extent dictated by this kaleidoscopic sequence of events in which, by and large, the Left held the initiative.
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