User:Sayerslle/The Catholic Church and the Spanish Second Republic

14 April 1931, the Spanish Second Republic was declared in Spain. Centuries of monarchical tradition - interrupted only by the brief republican interlude of 1873-74 - were abandoned. Yet just over five years later a bitter civil war began which was fought until April 1939. A process of political polarisation characterised the Second Republic. As the gulf between right and left opened up, party divisions became increasingly embittered and religion played a crucial role in this process. "Questions of religious identity came to assume a major political significance." How did the Catholic world respond to the Republic? Following the newly restored Bourbon monarchy to Spain in 1875 and the constitution delivered by Antonio Canovas del Castillo a Catholic revival of sorts seemed to have arrived - but the revival was strong in areas of traditional religious practice and among the new bourgeois to whom it offered a potent theoretical bulwark against radicalism - it never succeeded as a missionary force beyond these areas and groups - essentially the trad devout north , northern peasant smallholders, and the conservative bourgeoisie versus the southern countryside and urban suburbs ,urban working classes.. (lannon) the catholic revival had soon become a movement of consolidation and defence rather than of confident, proselytizing expansion. 'defensive dogmatism and disapproval marked ecclesiastical attitudes to the heterodox..the church militant was drawn up in battle array against spaniards whom it considered , and who considered themselves, its enemies.' Primo de Riveras coup that ended the parliamentary regime in 1923 produced a congenial dicataorship under a king - committed to the Church's view of a national Catholic culture that turned its back to political and ideological pluralism. unfortunately for the church the dicatatorship didn't last long.. the republican constitution reduced its status to that of a cultural institution without special status or state funding. worse, it permitted civil marriage and divorce, and forbade members of religious orders to teach in spain. "The Church was to be a voluntary association for those willing to subscribe instead of Spain's identity and conscience." (Lannon, p.181 ) Notes - they were able to teach still de facto, 1933 elections brought in right wing parties to power, the constitution was more honoured in the breach in many ways, see lannon, ch 7,

Province and Parish

There were differences between parts of the country - peasant smallholders in the north were devout for example, landless peasant labourers in the far south were not. ' a rural southern society in which the church shuddered and worried about its survival.' lannon...by the 1930s 'the urban proletariat rarely entered a church and lived in ignorance of catholic doctrine and ritual.. ..Article 26 of the republican constitution of 1931 committed the spanish govt. to phasing out state funding of clergy stipends one of various measures to secularize the state and reduce ecclesiastical power..in general, generalizing - conventional catholic practice a charcateristic of the North, rather than the south a characteristic of property owners rather than manual workers, of the better educated rather than the less educated, of women, rather than men.. these general patterns recur..Most catholics could be relied upon to be anti-socialist for both religious and economic reasons.. (Lannon)..

the Messenger called for the enthronemrent of the SAcred heart in offices, schools, banks, town halls, and city streets - statues were erected in 100s of towns and villages - climax in 1919 statue in the CErro de los Angeles, alfonso XIII and the whole govt. read a consecration of the entire nation to the sacred heart..

The new Republic's legislation affected ordinary devotional life including rites of passage, and some Catholics became resentful. As many of the ordinary faithful came to feel excluded from the new republic, so those who sought to lead them insisted that Catholics had only one political choice. A confessional party, the CEDA, was established in 1933 to articulate that choice. " Voting for the CEDA was presented as a simple duty; good Catholics would go to mass on sunday and support the political right." (Mary Vincent p.1)

case study : The province of Salamanca - lined up with the forces of Franco. Yet in April 1931 the provincial capital had voted decisively for a republic, republican candidates had been returned from all over the province in the municipal and parliamentary elections of 1931. The battle lines of 1936 were not clearly drawn in 1931. There was both republican and anti-republican strength to be mobilised in Salamanca, as there was elsewhere in Castile, in Segovia, Avila, or Valladolid. Similar patterns were apparent in other parts of Spain, the region of Valencia, or the countryside of Aragon for example. In April 1931 Salamnca was merely one conservative province among several whose populations were ready to give the Republic a chance. By October 1936 that electorate and its clerical pastors were among Franco's most fervent supporters.

Salamanca was the home province of Jose Maria Gil-Robles. The right mobilised in Salamanca earlier than anywhere else in Spain - the local deputy José María Lamamié de Clairac was a leading figure in the Traditionalist Communion - indeed, the involvement of such a notorious anti-democrat in the supposedly loyal politics of the new parliamentary right demonstrates how its leaders were entrenched in their opposition to the Republic from the moment it came into existence. After the declaration of the Second Republic, the right mobilized both inside and outside parliament. Perhaps the most important and most skilfuly used weapon in this mobilisation was the right-wing press, particularly provincial broadsheets like Salamanca's Gaceta Nacional- not only publicising but also orchestrating the organisation of local right wing groups. Popular religiosity proved to be the rights most potent weapon - the CEDA did achieve a genuine popular following, particularly in the north of Spain.

From the pontificate of Pius IX ( 1846-78) the Church had been waging war against the twin enemies of liberalism and socialism - Clerical authority was reinforced and devotional life reshaped as the Church mobilized the faithful..when religion appeared to be threatened, as it appeared to be under the Second Republic, Catholics had both rhetoric and organisation to wield in the Church's defence.

FRom the French Revolution onwards, the universal Church had adopted an increasingly embatled world view which the Spanish church had reinforced and even exaggerated. with cultural withdrawal, it isolated itself under the banner of the ark of the covenant.. the ritualised dramas of bourgeois religious life , -the adorning of altars and the processing of images, the conferring of medals, and the wearing of insignia,- cocooned the faithful and divided them from their fellow citizens.From the pontificate of Pius IX (1846-78), the Church had been waging war against the twin enemies of liberalism and socialism - under the Spanish Second Republic, Catholics had both rhetoric and organisation to wield in the Church's defence.

1900 - ushered in a period of spectacular urban expansion. Valencia, Sevilla Malaga, Zaragoza - virtually doubled their populations 1900-1930. So the rural population shrank. " To clerical apologists and politicians," however , " the eternal values of Catholic Spain remained preserved in the Castilian countryside, protected from the decadence of modern, urban life." The province of Salamanca belongs to exactly this heartland of traditional Spain. In the cereal growing districts of Penaranda de Bracamonte, Alba de Tormes, and Salamanca itself the classic Castilian pattern of small landowners and tenant farmers predominated in the 1930s - but the area known as the tierra charra the south of Vitigudino into the central area of the province of Salamanca, , the largest area of the province, was dominated by the consolidated estates or latifundia, - the characteristic form of agrarian organisation in the southern regions of Extramadura, La Mancha and Andalucia. The evils of the latifundia syatem, which relied on a surplus of landless labourers to work the estates at the convenience of the landlords, had long been recognised, even by reformers on the right of the political spectrum. the drainaway from the land, along with the mushrooming development of major urban centres, raised particular problems for the administrative authorities, both civic and ecclesiastical. the growing numbers rasised acute problems of housing, sanitation, welfare and pastoral care. workers in the sparawling , insanitary suburbs lacked schools, hospitals and churches. The workers who lived there often had little contact with the institutional church. they associated through trade unions or the socialist casa del pueblo rather than through the parish. the bitter anti-clericalism of left wing politics in spain also served to heighten the divide between suburb and centre, proletarian and bourgeois..urban workers were not only largely indiferent to the Church, they were often hostile to it.

In salamanca, teh province was a focus for the local community Churches and shrines provided physical centres in every village and hamlet, and parishes were increasingly developing an associational life to complement their religious existence. all families were urged to attend recreational and philanthropic activities as wellas religious services. youth groups, to show young people how to distinguish truth from error were established in all the parish churches of the provincial capital. A regular study circle was a vital feature of all Catholic Youth groups. IN January 1936 , shortly before the elections which brought the pOpular FRont to power, one city youth group found its regular homiletic discourse on a New Testament parable followed by an address on the dangers of socialism. - 'the study circles intellectual diet of apologetics and tendentious Spanish history Under the watch words 'organisation, discipline, unity' the faithful were subject to a parish priest, just as the parish priest was under the bishop. THis emphasis on clerical authority had been consistently reasserted within the church since the pontificate of Pius IX. declared infallible 1870... The professional life of all catholic clergy, began in the seminary - THeology syllabuses laid particular stress on dogma while the elevation of the teaching and methods of Thomas Aquinas led to an archaic concentration on syllogism and disputation. the SEcond REpublic ushered in a dramatic period of decline in vocations in salamanca, a pattren which was repeated throughout Spain. THe fall was particularly sharp amongst the boys entering the junioer years ; the attractions of a seminary education for non-ordinands clearly palled rapidly under a secularizing political regime. When the seminarists began their training they entered a distinct and discrete clerical environment - daily life was strictly regimented - the seminary was a moral and intellectual as well as aphysical enclosure - the sense of separation from civil society wa screated by high walls and the intellectual concerns of the syllabus. - the content of this training was both archaic and arcane. skill in syllogism or patristic teaching was poor preparation for parochial or pastoral work, particularly in a modern urban setting. - intellectual enquiry was less important than the defence of the faith..the Jesuit college novitiate of St stanoislaw in contrast to the diocesan dseminary greater emphasis on natural science , a step in the modernisation of the jesuit syllabus - however higher intellectual standards did not lead to a gretaer engagement with the outside world - the FRench preacher Lacordaire was the most contemporary writer studied, whle the integrist Juan Vazquez de Mella - leading ideologue of the ultra right wing Carlists, - was the only modern political thinker to receive attention. A CASTE APART _ clerical, masculine, closed environment was seen as the ideal they belonged not to the village but to he imagined community of their fellow priests..Missionary literature - pepretuated a picture of the outside world as corrupt and threatening with a heavy reliance on articles on the communist virus and the dangers posed by Protestant missions. Hostility to the church manifested itself during the second republic in pueblos like Babilafuente, Miranda del Castanar, and Fresno Alhandiga as working class and socialist movements gained ground. a renewed emphasis was put on the teaching of Christian dotrine to intensify in every parish of the diocese - the identification of catechesis as a parochial task prayers , matters of faith and moral instruction - laid out in simple question and answer firm then memorised and repeated, either individually or as a chorus..

Under the monarchy, religious instruction had been compulsory for all schoolchildren; under the Republic, education was secularized and religious were banned from tesaching in schools. - Frutos Valiente , in salamanca, had cause to refer to the 'thousands' who had received no reloigious instruction since the removal of catechesis from the school curriculum.Bishop Lopez Arana in Ciudad Rodrigo categorized lay education as a 'violent and pernicious' attack on the Church.- he condemned the uncompromising secularism of the republic. And further, a laicizing Republic was not prepared to continue to offer financial support to the Church, as the Spanish state had done since the 1851 Concordat. On 1 january 1932 responsibility for the upkeep of church buildings and the stipends paid to diocesan clergy devolved back upon the Church. when Bishop Enrique Pla y Deniel came to salamanca in 1935 he found the diocese in a parlous financial state. - the financial and pastoral problems facing the local Church were very great . few were to be solved during the lifetime of the REpublic.

Gender and Morals - Spanish Catholic Youth Culture

A large body of Catholic exhortatory writing produced in spain during the 1930s helped to create an idea of uncontaminated space where the God-fearing could associate.. the religious imagination could be a gateway to a powerful and transforming interior life but, at the same time, the depiction of Catholic space suggeats a world trammelled by formal gestures and prescribed responses. Like the prescriptive literature, religious ritual drew on and made available cultural symbols ( both visual and textual), not leats as part of a process of reinforcing what was 'acceptable'. these strictures set out and reflected religious and moral norms. The 'proper' roles of males and females were an important component of such norms, seeking to establish rules of conduct in the political and legal realm as well as in the domestic. the Catholic CHurch organised all its activities, from religious houses to youth group outings, by both age and sex, and , usually, by class as well. resonances of a specifically Spanish cultural project may be traced, from the seroius morla purpose of novels like those of Luis Coloma SJ, to the lampooning in the films of Pedro Almodovar. At its heart lay a specific claim to power and authority which was rooted in the figure of the priest and wielded, almost exclusively, by men ftaher Coloma's famous novel Pequeneces (1890) - made into a film by Cifesa, FRancoist spains major cinematic production company - opens in an elite boys school in madrid, the Jesuit college in Chamartin. the high point comes when a blond pupil recites a poem to the Virgin of REmembrance, at the end of which he stands alone 'without father or mother to take him in their arms'. His father is dead but his mother, whose loose morals are the scandal of Ctaholic csociety, has simply not bothered to turn up. This sentimenatl clerical view of childhood innocence was characteristic of the oprevailing Catholic culture, as was the juxtaposition of the innocent child witha wayward and worldly adult woman, tainted with sin of Eve - the contrast between this unworthy mother and the heavenly mother of God is acute. creating oppositions, between good and evil, truth and error, sacred and profane, unworldly and worldly was a trope which ran through all kinds of Catholic discourse, homiletic, political, theological, literary...Embedded in this discourse was a sense of apartness, a separation from and a suspicion of the secular world..These oppositionslent themselves to dramatic effect. This was seen not only in public oratory, both from the pulpit and , under the SEcond Republic, from the soap-box, but also in the world of amateur theatricals - during the 1930s in provincial cities, entertainments like that depicted in Pequeneces were poular in Catholic circles. Parishes, seinaries, schools, youth groups all regularly devised and performed veledas or evenings of musical and dramatic entertainment., songs and sketches often especially written by priests or religious. A cultural preference for ritualised theatre wa sshown, not so much in the liturgy of the mass, but in the more familiar, vernacular liturgical events such as the processions, coronations of the Virgin, and enthronings of the Sacred Heart which so occupied the Catholic middle classes under the Republic. Unlike the public liturgical street theatre of Holy week and patronal saints days - these were exclusive social ceremonies designed for an urban, literate elite. Catholic schools were crowded into affluent, urban areas, as were convents, monasteries, parish churches, catechesis, charity circles and youth groups. The Church had a formidable presence in education - and very largely maintained this in the face of secularising Republican legislation - but the contemporary Catholic preference was undoubtedly for the education of elites. The Jesuits oversaw a vast network of interrelated associations and confraternities which deliberately brought together the Catholic middle classes of Spain and encouraged contact between the future opinion-formers and leaders of society. Ideas of masculinity and femiininity were replicated and transmitted in the Jesuits language, imagery and ostentatiously pious literature as well as in their youth groups, which were always segregated by sex. Prominent among these wrere the Marian Congregations founded and run by the society of Jesus in its schools and houses among affluent, urban communities throughout Spain. In 1930s seconfd republic spain the most prominent of these sodalities were still the Congregation of Mary Immaculate and St stanislaus Kostka, which catered for schoolboys, and the Congregation of Mary Immaculate and St Aloysius Gonzaga (Luises) for young men of university age. More important, and numerous, was the sodality for girls and unmarried womaen of all ages, the Children of Mary Immaculate - no sepaarte confraternity for married women. Contemporary Catholic notions of the evils of coeducation made it unthinkable for Jesuits to be directly involved in female schooling but the Society provided spirituall advisors to many female religious communities ,particularly those elite congregations which were concerned with the education of upper and middle class girls. Members of The society were thus able to demonstrate precise notions of gender the young men and women who left the Jesuiuits tutelage would be expected to carry their correct behaviour into a wider society - overseeing the moral and spiritual well-being of their servants, tenants , and employees and teaching by example among their social inferiors. The first rule of the Marian Congreagtions spoke of making all congregants into 'true Christians who try sincerely for their own sanctification within their respective statess and [who] work with great determination to save and sanctify those around them, in ways that their social condition permits.' The struggle for 'sanctification' - first of the congregants own bodies, minds and souls, then of the world around them - it was not uncommon for entire families to belong to different sections of the congregations La estrella del Mar ran aregular photographic feature entitled 'distinguished congregants' - the photograph invariablty showed a boutrgeois gentleman in a full length studio pose - all held up for the edification of their juniors were adult men - an underlying assumption that these aspirational models would be male : only the boys could anticipate featuring as a 'distinguiished congregant'. refgardless of age or sex, all members od fthe Marian Congregations were encouraged to see themselves as set apart from the rest of society, following Gods rulas rather than those of the world. Saints of the Jesuit order were held out as models and patrons. Ignatius 'Spiritual exercises' which were extensively used in 1930s Spain as men who lived in the world but only in order to reform it, the jesuits saints were fitting symbols for an embattled culture, which saw itself struggling against the secularism and immorality of the outside world.

Among the duties spelt out for members of the , again Jesuit directed, Marian Congregation of Handmaids of Mary immaculate - established in the exclusive girls schools run by the handmaids of the sacred GHeart in Madrid and other spainsh cities - was the imitation of the Virgin Marys's 'dignity and modesty'. Prudence, discretion, modesty, cdecorum - these were the watchwords for Catholic womanhood. - particularly under the SEcond Republic, which was believed to encourage sexual and moral license. The cHildren of Mary had long run Crusades of Christian modesty but under a REpublican regime which introduced divorce and civil marriage to Spain, these campaigns against corrupt public morals assumed a real political edge. EStrella del mar was packed with pictures of the Virgin. Murillo's Immaculate Conception was a perennial favourite. mary was held up as a model of human life 'symbol of the most perfect accommodation between the two most appreciated qualities of women', virginity and maternity. Marys immaculate Conception had been defined dogmatically by Pius IX in 1854 , Ineffabilis Deus - it reiterated her distinctiveness from the rest of humanity, and held that, uniquely, mary was born free from the stain of original sin- the antithesis of Eve. in 19th and 20th century Europe, Mary Immaculate was given a peculiarly real presence through a remarkable series of apparitions. the clerical idealisation of the Virgin Mary may be seen in much of the literature prouced for female congregants. Girls joining the Children of Mary in the Jesuitinas school in Salamanca made a solemn profession 'to belong to you undreservedly, to follow in your glorious footprints, and to imitate your virtues, above all your angelic purity, your profound humility, your blind obedience, and your incomparable charity Girls were given 'unreal and impossible' models and possible courses of action to follow. The introduction of female suffrage under the second Republic The estrella del mar - idivivualism was damaging - particularly to woman ' who needs before all else to be accompanied, sustained, and protected.' schoolgirls with the Jesuitinas in salamanca were told that their frst task of sisters who left the convent for missionary work in China was to choose and educate 'Predestined Virgins' who with the perfume of their purity sweeten the corrupt atmosphere of paganism. the same schoolgirls were told of St Cyprian's teaching that a virgin was 'the most aromatic flower of the Church.'

Considerable efforts went counter-acting the pernicious influence of the cinema, particularly after Spanish film-makers had begun to take advantage of the liberalisation offered by the REpublic to experiment with what was acceptable. The congregants' mentors established an elaborate system of film censorship, publicised nationally in the Catholic press. Categories ranged from white, for films deemed suitable for children, through blue and pink, ( fundamentally moral but unsuitable for young people), to red, for " scabrous subjects or ..immoral scenes" . works categorised as pornographic were categorised as green; black was reserved for the impious or blasphemous. some congregations then disseminated this information locally via broadsheets and posters. from March 1934 for example, the salamanca Children of Mary posted these classifications on the doors of the city's churches, though the broadsheets were invariably destroyed almost as quickly as they went up. the Greta Garbo classic Grand Hotel was categorised as 'red', Laurel and Hardy filmas as pornographic, and all Boris Karloff films were black.

an elaborate system of film censorship, was publicised in the Catholic press..Laurel and Hardy films were categorised as pornographic , and all Boris Karloff - above as frankenstein's monster,- films were black - a classification reserved for the impious or blasphemous. Amongst Films deemed suitable , - those on 'the most glorious history of our Fatherland'

In contrast those films deemed suitable for castilian Kostkas were devotional, geographical, or those on ' the most glorious history of our fatherland'. While all devout and affluent Catholics were expected to succour the poor, men were involved on this task on a financial level, charitable activity was made visible by , and personified in, the actions of affluent bourgeois women. such actions were imitated by the Childrenof Mary - these formal dsisplays of beneficence were public events, explicitly directed at social inferiors. Schoolgirl congregants 'of the elevated class' with the Handmaids of the Sacred Heart served an annual meal to 'the working or poor girls who belong to the Congregation'; their counterparts at the Daughters of Jesus ran sewing circles. those who worked to alleviate poverty for the love of God did, of course, look to convert as well as cure. However this task was too trammelled by the hermetic nature of Spanish catholicism's self-constructed world- the politics of gesture ( 292) Theatricalised philanthropy took the acute and socially threatening problems of urban poverty and addresses them in a familiar, reassuring way. Symbolic religious solutions were commonly offered by Catholics in 1930s spaina a palliative against real and immediate socila problems. women dominated charitable giving as symbols of succouring, social order, and maternal concern. In turn , men came to the fore in demonstrations of authority and public presence, Catholicism in the 1930s consistently offered religious solutions to socila problems, and in spain this confusion of the natural and the supernatural led to the surprisingly literal but curiously limited understanding of contemporary millennial campaigns such as that for 'the social reign of Jesus Christ'. Such campaigns quickly became reduced to successions of ritualised liturgical events, dramatised philanthropy, and endless vows, medals and insignia. In this, the campaign for 'the social reign of Christ', the 'Crusades of Christian Modesty' and the local dramas organised by the Marian Congregations all prefigured the 'Crusade' FRanco claimed to be waging in defence of Christian civilisation during the Spanish Civil War

Devotional life

w:fr:Bernardo de Hoyos

revelations made to bernardo de Hoyos society of Jesus in Valladolid in 1733 - the seer claimed that Jesus, heart exposed had promised to 'reign in spain and with more veneration than in other countries'. This Great Promise was commonly understood as a call to repentance - and lead to the millenial 'social reign ' of Christ. The conflation of earthly nd heavenly kingship in contemporary spain was quite overt.

THe jesuits campaigned consistently for many years to spread the cult of the SAcred heart; and many of the practices associated with this cult of the heart in Jesus in spain were inextricably linked in the late 19th and early 20 th cwnturies with the integrist values of the extreme Right of the Catholic political spectrum. lannon. devotion to the SAcred Heart was ropagated through the apostleship of Prayer and its publication, the Messenger of the SAcred Heart - anti-liberal, anti-SEmitic, and enthusiastic to see ' the social reeign of jesus christ' in Spain. images of the SAcred Heart were ebncouraged to be 'enthroned ' in catholic homes. when the campaign shifted from private homes to public places , iet was eveident the aim was also to claim catholic conservative influence over civic and political life. lannon. p.30.

The Coming of the Republic

On 28 January 1930 Primo de Rivera resigned. Seven years of dictatorial rule in Spain ended. the dictadura replaced by the dictablanda - soft dicatorship of Damaso Berenguer. supporters of the discredited king were left beleaguered by the rapid rise of republicanism. those identified with the dynastic forces of the old regime - the Church amongst these which had long seen its champion in the Spanish monarchy, heir to the mantle of the Catholic kings. Contemporary Catholic thought held that there were some areas in which the State held only a secondary jurisdiction. In paticular, the Church continued to assert its primacy over matters affectin gthe morality of Christian people, a principle awhich inspired the entire Catholic Action project, both in spain and in Europe. Pius XI's encyclical on the christian education of youth, for instance said that the Church 'directly and perpetually' possessed 'the whole truth' in the moral sphere. Education was therefore 'first and super-eminently' the function of the Church.The point was illustrated with a quotation from Leo XIII 'in faith and moral instruction, god Himself has given to the Church a share in the divine teaching office and endowed her with the gift of infallibility'. But the Church knew that its moral rights and duties could not be implemented without theprotection of the State - Primo de rivera's dictatorship had offered the Church this - under the dictablanda the position was less sure. despite leo XIII's assurance of the compatibility of Catholicism with various forms of gobeernment, the preference for authoritarian rule remained deep seated within the Spanish church. republican revival against the Berenguer government provoked a considerable monarchist counteroffensive in which Catholic activists predominated. Ángel Herrera Oria's El Debate, the Catholic daily and his ubiquitous Propagandists were involved in the Campaign of Social Orientation established in 1930 in order to protect the 'four basidc principles of society' religion, family , order and monarchy. and José María Lamamié de Clairac introduced his new agrarian grouping Accion Castellana - to promote agricultural interests and conservative social values. His grouping was dominated by Castilian landlords who clearly displayed the authoritarian preferences so common among the contemporary Catholic right.Its manifesto began with a declaration that there was no society without authority and that authority not of divine origin was not worthy of respect. the idea of a republic was nothing more than an 'exotic implant' Similarly, the possibility of a conservative republic was rejected out of hand : such a regime would simply act as a bridge towards radicalism and atheism. The only true morals were Catholic ones and absolute submission to the doctrines of the CHurch was essential in both private and public life.

According to writer Frances Lannon , following the proclamation of the Second Spanish Republic on 14 April 1931 'foreboding was a more usual spontaneous response among catholics' - Catholic students, religious, bishops, catholic industrial and rural syndicates, Catholic newspapers and periodicals had backed primo de Rivera's version of spanish regeneration - they mourned only ' inadequate clergy stipends and over zealous plans for a new deal forr ural labourers.' A sample of bishop response - Bishop Isidro Goma y Tomas of Tarazona - 'we have now entered into the vortex of the storm...iam absolutely pessimistic' 15 April 1931. Pedro Segura y Sáenz 17 April 1931 - 'Undoubtedly our country has suffered a severe blow with the events of these days..' and his 'notorious pastoral letter of 1 May ' an 'inopportune and provocative act of royalsit homage' which earned him rapid government orders to leave the country.. the Jesuit Razon y Fe noted the greast reception of Don Alfonso in Paris, but not the exuberant reception of the republic in Madrid - El Debate hda rumn a monarchist campaign - it began almost immediately to rally the supporters of religion and fatherland against 'the revolution' - Count Rodríguez Sampedro , president of Catholic Action left the country the day after the republic was inaugurated.

1936, the Coming of war

February 1936 - Spain goes to the polls in what will be the last general election held under the Second Republic. The radical-CEDA government , riven with factions and internal dissent has collapsed in the wake of the straperlo scandal. Gil Robles , having failed to win his confidence , Alcala-Zamora had chosen to dissolve the Cortes. The CEDA began to rally its forces though disagreements existed on what the nature and composition of a right wing electoral coalition should be. CEDA was flexible according to Gil robles, it could ally with moderate republicans where the left was strong Asturias, Badajoz, Jaén - it could ally with the extreme right where conservative strength was located Navarre, many parts of Castile, Salamanca. José María Lamamié de Clairac declared that the anti-revolutionary coalition had to be compose solely of " substantive Catholic and pure Spanish forces", vtoing any collaboration with conservative republican groups - harping back to the Pact of San Sebastian.The JAP was given control of the national propaganda campaign - the Catholic rights vigorous and often violent campaign simply demanded - All power for the jefe (Robles), The CEDA wasplaying for high stakes, If they won the republic would be dismantled and anew state constructed one free of the 'debased politics' of parliamentary democracy. Catholic voters everywhere were exhorted to vote for the salvation of spain (CEDA). the popular FRonts programme was self consciously moderate - didnt stop the rights alarmist rhetoric. But Ceda lsot the national election support for Robles evaporated almost overnight. the Traditionalists took the popular fronts victory as the CEDAS death knell;

muslim soldiers and nazi airmen were agents of the catholic crusade, just as devout basque toops modified the anti-clerical character oft ehr epublican defenders.....vigon - an insurgent gebneral, a sceptic, freemason..

francesc vidal i barraquer - catholic critical of rigth wing / catholic alliance..