Church of San Miguel

Catholicism in the Second Spanish Republic was an important area of dispute, and tensions between the Catholic hierarchy and the Republic were apparent from the beginning - the establishment of the Republic began 'the most dramatic phase in the contemporary history of both Spain and the Church.' The dispute over the role of the Catholic Church and the rights of Catholics were one of the major issues which worked against the securing of a broad democratic majority and left the body politic divided almost from the start. The historian Mary Vincent has argued that the Catholic Church was an active element in the polarising politics of the years preceding the Spanish Civil War. Similarly, Frances Lannon asserts that, Catholic identity has usually been virtually synonymous with conservative politics in some form or other, ranged from extreme authoritarianism through gentler oligarchic tendencies to democratic reformism. The municipal elections of 1931 that triggered the establishment of the Second Spanish Republic and the Spanish Constitution of 1931 brought to power an anticlerical government. Prime Minister Manuel Azaña asserted that the Catholic Church was responsible in part for what many perceived as Spain's backwardness and advocated the elimination of special privileges for the Church. An admirer of the pre-1914 Third French Republic, he wanted the Second Spanish Republic to emulate it, make secular schooling free and compulsory, and construct a non-religious basis for national culture and citizenship, part of the necessary updating and Europeanising of Spain.Following elections in June 1931, the new parliament approved an amended constitutional draft on 9 December 1931. The constitution introduced, civil marriage and divorce. It also established free, secular education for all. However, anti-clerical laws nationalized Church properties and required the Church to pay rent for the use of properties which it had previously owned. In addition, the government forbade public manifestations of Catholicism such as processions on religious feast days, banished the crucifix from schools; the Jesuits were expelled. Catholic schools continued, but outside the state system, and in 1933 further legislation banned all monks and nuns from teaching.In May 1931, after monarchist provocations, an outburst of mob violence against the Republic's perceived enemies had led to the burning of churches, convents and religious schools in Madrid and other cities. Anticlerical sentiment and anticlerical legislation, particularly that of 1931, meant that moderate Catholicism quickly became embattled and it was ultimately displaced. In the election of November 1933, the right-wing CEDA emerged as the largest single party in the new Cortes. President Alcalá-Zamora however asked the Radical leader Alejandro Lerroux to become Spain's Prime Minister. A general strike and armed rising of workers in October 1934 was forcefully put down by the government. This in turn energized political movements across the spectrum in Spain, including a revived anarchist movement and new reactionary and fascist groups, including the Falange and a revived Carlist movement. Popular violence which marked the beginning of the Civil War, in the Republican zone saw churches and priests become conspicuous targets, viewed as an ideological enemy, and thirteen bishops and some 7000 - clergy, monks and nuns - were killed, nearly all in the first months, and thousands of churches were destroyed. Catholic heartland areas, with the exception of the Basque territory, largely supported Francisco Franco's rebel Nationalist forces against the Popular Front government. In parts of Spain, like Navarra for example, the religious-patriotic zeal of priests could be very marked. According to the Benedictine writer Fr Hilari Raguer; On the outbreak of Spanish Civil War the great majority, that is to say nearly the entire hierarchy of the Spanish Church, and nearly all the prominent among the laity, not only did nothing to restrain the conflict but spurred it on by joining almost en bloc one of the two sides, the side that ended by being the victor, and by demonizing whoever was working for peace. The Spanish Church [-] heated up the atmosphere before it started and added fuel to the flames afterwards.
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