Manuel Azaña Díaz (; 10 January 1880 – 3 November 1940) was a Spanish politician who served as Prime Minister of the Second Spanish Republic (1931–1933 and 1936), organizer of the Popular Front in 1935 and the last President of the Republic (1936–1939). He has been called the father of the Republic and was the most prominent leader of the Republican cause during the Spanish Civil War of 1936–1939.
A published author in the 1910s, he stood out in the pro-Allies camp during World War I. He was sharply critical towards the Generation of '98, the reimagination of the Spanish Middle Ages, Imperial Spain and the 20th century yearnings for a praetorian refurbishment of the country. Azaña followed instead the examples of the French Enlightenment and the Third French Republic, and took a political quest for democracy in the 1920s while defending the notion of homeland as the "democratic equality of all citizens towards the law" that made him embrace republicanism.
After the Proclamation of the Second Spanish Republic in April 1931, Azaña became Minister of War of the Provisional Government and enacted military reform, looking to develop a modern armed forces with fewer army officers. He later became Prime Minister in October 1931. In 1934 he founded the Republican Left party.
The Spanish Civil War broke out while he was President of Spain. With the defeat of the Republic in 1939, he fled to France, resigned from office, and died in exile only a year later at age 60.
Early career
Born into a wealthy family, Manuel Azaña Díaz was orphaned at a very young age. He studied in the Universidad Complutense, the Cisneros Institute and the Agustinos of El Escorial. He was awarded a Lawyer's licence by the University of Zaragoza in 1897, and a doctorate by the Universidad Complutense in 1900.
In 1909, he achieved a position at the Main Directorate of the Registries and practised the profession of civil law notary, and travelled to Paris in 1911. He became involved in politics and in 1914 joined the Reformist Republican Party led by Melquíades Álvarez. He collaborated in the production of various newspapers, such as El Imparcial and El Sol. He also joined the Freemasons.
During World War I, he covered operations on the Western Front for various newspapers. His treatment was very sympathetic to the French, and he may have been sponsored by French military intelligence. Afterwards he edited the magazines Pluma and España between 1920 and 1924, founding the former with his brother-in-law Cipriano Rivas Cherif. He was secretary of the Ateneo de Madrid (1913–1920), becoming its president in 1930. He was a candidate for the province of Toledo in 1918 and 1923, but lost on both occasions. In 1926 he founded the Acción Republicana ("Republican Action") party with José Giral.
A strong critic of the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera, Azaña published a stirring manifesto against the dictator and King Alfonso XIII in 1924. In 1930, he was a signatory of the "Pact of San Sebastián", which united all the republican and regionalist parties in Spain against Primo de Rivera and the King.
On 12 April 1931, republican candidates swept the municipal elections. This was seen as repudiation of Primo de Rivera and the monarchy. Two days later, the Second Spanish Republic was proclaimed and the King forced into exile.
In the government
Niceto Alcalá-Zamora, prime minister of the provisional government of the Republic, named Azaña Minister of War on 14 April. Alcalá-Zamora resigned in October, and Azaña replaced him as prime minister. When the new constitution was adopted on 9 December, Azaña continued as prime minister, leading a coalition of left-wing parties, including his own Acción Republicana and the Socialists (PSOE), while Alcalá-Zamora became President of the Republic.
A wide range of reforms were carried out during the course of Azaña's premiership. An Act providing for the establishment of free public employment offices was passed in November 1931.INDUSTRIAL AND LABOUR INFORMATION, VOL. XLI (JANUARY-MARCH 1932), PUBLISHED BY THE INTERNATIONAL LABOUR OFFICE, Geneva, Switzerland, P.145 Public education was expanded, with thousands of new schools built across Spain.Contemporary Spanish Politics By José M. Magone, Publisher: Taylor & Francis, 2004, P.11 New laws were passed that encouraged cooperatives and collectives, while also providing safeguards from eviction for tenants.Oxford IB Diploma Programme: Causes and Effects of 20th-Century Wars Course Companion By David Smith, Publisher: OUP Oxford, 2015, P.87 The Labor Contracts Law of November 1931 aimed to promote (as noted by one study) “collective bargaining, facilitating written labor agreements in companies with more than fifty employees,” while a specific law for professional associations was passed in April 1932.Cuesta J. (2021). El Ministerio de Trabajo en la II República española (1931-1939). Sociología del Trabajo, 99, 185-203. https://doi.org/10.5209/stra.79034 P.191 A decree of November 1931 set up a mutual insurance fund for maritime and workplace accidents.Cuesta J. (2021). El Ministerio de Trabajo en la II República española (1931-1939). Sociología del Trabajo, 99, 185-203. https://doi.org/10.5209/stra.79034 P.192 In 1932, a bill on worker’s associations was passed that (as noted by one study) “updated existing legislation and facilitated the organization and activity of trade unions.”Spain's First Democracy The Second Republic, 1931-1936 By Stanley G. Payne, Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press, 1993, P.109 That same year, work accident insurance was introduced.Social Democracy and Welfare Capitalism A Century of Income Security Politics By Alexander Hicks, Publisher: 2018, Cornell University Press, P.84 The size of the Spanish Army was also reduced, and some monarchist officers were removed. Azaña also moved to reduce the power and influence of the Roman Catholic Church, abolishing Church-operated schools and charities, and greatly expanding state-operated secular schools. Azaña defend these measures under his administration by saying "Do not tell me that this is contrary to freedom. It is a matter of public health".
Women’s rights also received a lot of attention. The Labor Contract Law of 1931, as noted by one study, “established the validity of payments made to a married woman as long as the husband did not object.” A decree of December 1931, as one study has noted, “declared null and void any clauses in employment contracts, agreements, or regulations that terminated the employment contract upon marriage.” A decree of May 1932 (as noted by one study) “authorized the admission of women to the aptitude test to obtain the title of secretary of municipal courts.” In addition, a decree of May 1933 recognized the right of women to hold in the courts the position of solicitor.Republican labor regulations (1931-1936) via the University of Barcelona
The Spanish legislature, the Cortes, also enacted an agrarian reform program under which large private landholdings (latifundia) were to be confiscated and distributed among the rural poor. Agrarian reform was demanded by the Socialists, and was supported by Azaña and the left-wing Republicans.An Economic History of the Spanish Welfare State The Political Economy of Social Policy from the Mid-19th Century to the Present By Sergio Espuelas, Publisher: Taylor & Francis, 2025, P.136 However, the agrarian law did not include state-funded collective farms, as the Socialists wanted, and was not enacted until late 1932. It was also clumsily written, and threatened many relatively small landholders more than the latifundists. The Azaña government also did very little to carry it out: only 12,000 families received land in the first two years.
In addition, Azaña did little to reform the taxation system to shift the burden of government onto the wealthy. Also, the government continued to support the owners of industry against wildcat strikes or attempted takeovers by militant workers, especially the anarcho-syndicalists of the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (National Confederation of Labour or CNT). Confrontation with the CNT erupted in bloody violence at Casas Viejas (now Benalup) and Alt Llobregat. Violence against protesters also occurred against non CNT-affiliated workers during Castilblanco and Arnedo events.
Meanwhile, Azaña's extreme anti-clerical program alienated many moderates. In local elections held in early 1933, most of the seats went to conservative and centrist parties. Elections to the "Tribunal of Constitutional Guarantees" (the Republic's "Supreme Court") followed this pattern.
Thus Azaña came into conflict with both the right and far left. He called a vote of confidence, but two-thirds of the Cortes abstained, and Alcalá-Zamora ordered Azaña's resignation on 8 September 1933.
The resulting general election on 19 November 1933 was won by the right-wing Confederación Española de Derechas Autónomas (CEDA) and the centrist Radical Republican Party. Radical leader Alejandro Lerroux became prime minister. Azaña temporarily withdrew from politics and returned to literary activity.
Azaña's self-imposed political retreat lasted only a short while; in 1934 he founded the Republican Left party, the fusion of Acción Republicana with the Radical Socialist Republican Party, led by Marcelino Domingo, and the Organización Republicana Gallega Autónoma (ORGA) of Santiago Casares Quiroga.
On 5 October 1934, the PSOE and Communists attempted a general left-wing rebellion. The rebellion had a temporary success in Asturias and Barcelona, but was over in two weeks. Azaña was in Barcelona that day, and the Lerroux-CEDA government tried to implicate him. He was arrested and charged with complicity in the rebellion.
In fact, Azaña had no connection with the rebellion, and the attempt to convict him on spurious charges soon collapsed, giving him the prestige of a martyr. He was released from prison in January 1935. Azaña then helped organize the Frente Popular ("Popular Front"), a coalition of all the major left-wing parties for the elections of 16 February 1936.
The Front won the election, and Azaña became prime minister again on 19 February. His parliamentary coalition included the PSOE and Communists. This alarmed conservatives, who remembered their attempt to seize power only 17 months earlier. The Azaña government proclaimed an immediate amnesty for all prisoners from the rebellion, which increased conservative concerns. Socialists and Communists were appointed to important positions in the Assault Guard and Civil Guard.
Also, with the Popular Front victory, radicalized peasants led by the Socialists began seizing land on 25 March. Azaña chose to legitimize these actions rather than challenge them. Radical Socialists vied with Communists in calling for violent revolution and forcible suppression of the Right. Political assassinations by Communists, Socialists, and anarchosyndicalists were frequent, as were retaliations by increasingly radicalized conservatives.
Azaña insisted that the danger to the Republic was from the Right and on 11 March, the government suppressed the Falange.
Azaña was a man of very strong convictions. Historian Stanley G. Payne tentatively described him as "the last great figure of traditional Castilian arrogance in the history of Spain." As a "middle class republican", he was implacably hostile to the monarchy and the Church. The CEDA, which was pro-Catholic, he therefore regarded as illegitimate, and also any and all monarchists, even those who supported parliamentary democracy.
In the view of Paul Preston, nothing indicates more directly the value of the services provided by Azaña to the Republic than the hatred felt towards him by the ideologues and propagandists of the Francoist cause.
Presidency