The Iberian Knot - A History of the Spanish Civil War

The Nationalists advance, the Republicans fracture and are beaten back while democracies around the world fail to come to the aid of their Republican counterparts in Spain for fear of angering Italy and Germany. Large losses by the Republicans lead to major changes, not all for the better.

This week we return our focus to Spain and the immediate aftermath of the Nationalist uprising. In addition to extreme violence, we will see radical social and economic changes take place as a result. Spain became a cauldron of political experimentation, for better or for worse.

The great powers who had been at war less than a generation ago will react to the news of the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in many different ways according to their respective political situations and experiences during The Great Depression. Democracies will be found wanting while the new fascist powers will be eager to help a new member gain membership in their small group. Franco gains a decisive advantage both against his republican enemies and his co-conspirators.

This week we actually begin the Spanish Civil War and see how what was originally planned as a right wing military coup transforms into a interminable civil war.
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We go over the reaction of left to the right wing CEDA party entering into government after the 1933 election and how the government’s clamping down on dissent only adds more fuel to the fire.

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In this episode we’ll see the fall of the monarchy, the beginning of the Second Republic, its constituent political parties, unions and ideologies, and the events afterwards that would expose the political fault lines just below the surface in Spain at the beginning of the 1930s.

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We start with King Charles III’s reign of enlightened absolutism in the last decades of the 1800s through Spain losing all of their American colonies and finding themselves torn apart by internal wars and poor leadership all around in the latter part of that century. All of this leads to Primo de Rivera’s dictatorship in the first decades of the 1900s which will end with the beginning of the Second Spanish Republic in 1931.

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The 1st episode of The Iberian Knot takes us from pre-Roman civilization through the Visigoths, the Muslim Conquest of Spain, the Reconquista up through the Enlightenment and the cusp of the French Revolution. Given the condensed nature of this history, it’s definitely not recommended as a study guide for your AP History class.

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