Essay

Erick Salazar
Humanities
Guerrero
April 2, 2009
The Left and Right of the Spanish Civil War
The combat of land and labor was a deadlock between property holders and the poor. People wanted more land, more money and less work, that is how the communist revolution started in Spain. Meanwhile, another type of government that wanted to take over Spain was the fascists. The types of governments that were fighting to take over Spain were the Communism and Fascism. Spain wanted to resolve this issue with bullets and of course ruthless war. To this day the Spanish civil war of 1936-1939 is still remembered the single most crucial moments in history of Spain politics. There were a number of events that led to the victory of the fascists. The main reason Fascism won control of Spain was because Communism was separating the attention of the governments away of the civil war. As shown in the book The Forging of a Rebel the fascist were forming a coup de etat to take over Spain, but before that the civil war was going on in Spain, they were trying to change the types of governments, instead of being Socialists the currents type of government they wanted to change to a communist country, this was the solution for equality.
One of the main factors on the communist revolution was land and labor disputes. There was a conflict between wealth landowners who owned a lot of land and landless peasants who worked as casual laborers and earned very low wages. On Arturo Barea’s autobiography when the uncle dies they could not be owners of the land because the uncle was using the land to grow food, but now that he was gone they were not contributing to the country. “Communist party had demanded that government accelerates the distribution of land” (Bolloten 6). This happened because people wanted equality in their country. In other words, “The big landowners should be expropriated and their lands distributed among the peasants without delay” (Bolloten 6). What they also wanted was the redistribution of a large estate lands and more recompense for labor. But the wealthy people and the high social classes were not satisfied with these arguments that the poor people were discussing. Work hour disputes affected many people, especially women because they worked on food plantations for many hours and for very few money. “The leader of the Fascist party declared: That women in a village of Seville, leave their homes at 3:00 in the morning to gather chick-peas, they end their work at noon after a nine hour day, and receive one peseta” (Bolloten 4). The peseta has a dollar value of $.25 in today’s economy, which in 1936 was not even close to enough. Women were oppressed by the work force and did not get fair treatment. Moreover, all the peasants had to work for many hours and they received very few money, which is why they could not be landowners.
While the communist revolution led by Francisco Franco was taking place in Spain, on the other hand Fascist party was conformed by Germany and Italy who wanted to take over Spain. “The failure of the attempt military coup de etat against the Spanish second republic of 17-18 July 1936 led a full-scale civil war” (Preston 26). When the group of Spanish generals attempted to make a fascist party, they failed. This was because of the divided attention they were having with the communist revolt. The Fascist party was also supported by Germany and Italy; this made the fascist party stronger than it was. Two months after the Spanish Civil War, World War II broke out. However the Fascist party was winning the power on Spain and the other communist party was weakening more and more.
After the communist civil war the Fascist attempt final victory was honored to the Fascist. In the end the fascist was supported by two big countries: Germany and Italy. “When the second World War II broke out only a few months after the end of the civil war had ended, Spain declared neutrality” (Franco’s Spain). Spain was too devastated to fight a second war and the people on the country were afraid and confused, that is why Spain was declared as a neutral country on the World War II. When the World War II was starting the Fascist party was already in power, and Spain was already reconciled with communism.
It should be remembered that in Spain the army had always been a dominant political force in the country. As the autobiography of Arturo Barea says, he did not know for whom to fight because if he fought for the Spanish army he would be on the corrupted side of the government. However he was still fighting for the corrupted side while fighting with the people because he also wanted equality on his country. But there is only one way to deal with this problem and that is for the workers of Spain themselves to fight their capitalist republican government, to reform it and show the Moroccans in deed that their cause is one and that the same fight that will free the Spanish workers will free the masses of the world, and the same fight Arturo was fighting.
In conclusion Spain was living to wars, one for the communist power and one for the Fascist power. This made things more difficult on the country because the people wanted rights and equality but they did not know that another attack was planned on their country, and when finally they reached to a peaceful end, the World War II started, but they could not fight another war after fighting two wars at the same time, one for winning control of Spain and the other one to change the type of government that ruled the country, that is why they declared as a neutral country.