The Second biennium of the Second Spanish Republic, also called the Radical-Cedist Biennium, rectifying biennium, conservative biennium, counter-reformist biennium, and black biennium or the biennium of terror by the left, constitutes the period of the Second Spanish Republic between the general elections of November 1933 and those of February 1936 during which the centre-right republican parties led by the Radical Republican Party of Alejandro Lerroux governed, allied with the Catholic right of the CEDA and the Agrarian Party, first from Parliament and then participating in the government. Precisely, the entry of the CEDA into the Government in October 1934 triggered the most important event of the period: the Revolution of 1934, a failed socialist insurrection that only consolidated in Asturias for two weeks (the only place where the CNT also participated), although the Revolution of Asturias was finally also crushed by the intervention of the army.
Unlike the relative political stability of the first biennium (with the two governments of Manuel Azaña), the second was a period in which the cabinets presided over by the Radical Republican Party had an average life of three months (eight governments were formed in two years) and three different presidents alternated (Alejandro Lerroux, Ricardo Samper and Joaquín Chapaprieta), and the last two governments of the biennium, those presided over by the centrist Manuel Portela, lasted even less. The ultimate reason for the governmental instability of the period is found in the fact that the coalition between the republican centre-right, represented by the Radical Republican Party, and the Catholic "possibilist" right, embodied in the CEDA, "was never a genuine agreed coalition" (hence it lacked coherence and mutual loyalty), to which must be added the "deadly continuous intervention of the Head of State" Niceto Alcalá-Zamora. Radicals and Cedists "agreed on the need to revise the legislation of the first biennium in some aspects, especially in what they called "socializing" (that is, social democratic), but they did not agree on determining to what degree certain laws should be changed."
For a long time, the dominant view of the second biennium has been that of a regressive and reactionary period, hence the widespread denomination of "black biennium", in contrast to the achievements of the first, the "reformist" or "modernizing" biennium. In this sense, the second biennium would have been the negation of the first, its antithesis. Nowadays, however, this view has been questioned and some historians, such as Nigel Townson, consider it a myth, at least with regard to the period before the "Revolution of October 1934". The radical governments up to that date did not halt or destroy the reforms of the first biennium, that is, they were not "mere puppets of the right; on the contrary, they cultivated their own project, in an attempt to forge a more inclusive and conciliatory regime. In short, it was a period of rectification, not reaction," Townson has stated, although according to Eduardo González Calleja and other historians, the radicals: "failed to impose their criteria in general terms" and were not "capable of approving truly alternative new laws." In contrast, there is no such consensus in the assessment of the period after "October", with the coalition governments of the radicals and the CEDA. It is a matter of debate whether this time did constitute a "black biennium". Townson considers that despite the "crisis of credibility of the centre and the repression of the left" it was not "a period of open reaction", as would be demonstrated by the fact that "the Republican-Radicals and the Cedists were always in disagreement on two fundamental issues: the magnitude of the counter-reform and the scale of repression", although he acknowledges that "left-wing sympathisers were persecuted and demonised." The historian Fernando del Rey Reguillo does admit that the concept of "black biennium" can be applied to this second stage, after stating that it is "inappropriate" to apply it to the entire biennium. González Calleja and other historians consider it "the quintessential counter-reformist stage of the biennium."
Regarding the final balance of the biennium, the historian Luis Palacios Bañuelos considers that it constituted the failure of the "experiment of a right-wing Republic" and that "the most serious thing was that it caused an ever greater fracture among Spaniards."
Elections of November 1933
At the beginning of September 1933, the President of the Republic Niceto Alcalá-Zamora withdrew his confidence from the Prime Minister Manuel Azaña, who was forced to resign (although he had just won a vote of no confidence in the Cortes). Since October 1931, Azaña had presided over a republican-socialist cabinet that had undertaken a broad programme of reforms during the two years it had been in power, but which since the beginning of the year, after the "Casas Viejas events", had suffered enormous wear and tear that had called into question the continuity of the coalition of left republicans with the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE). Alcalá Zamora entrusted the formation of an exclusively republican government to Alejandro Lerroux, leader of the centre-right Radical Republican Party (PRR) and main opponent of the "socialist-Azañist" government, but it lasted only three weeks because he was defeated in the Cortes when a "motion of no confidence" presented by the socialists was approved (by 187 votes in favour, from the socialists and left republicans, and 91 against). After a round of consultations on 7 October, Alcalá-Zamora appointed Diego Martínez Barrio (also of the PRR) as the new prime minister, and at the same time dissolved the Cortes and called elections. The President of the Republic was convinced that the Cortes elected in June 1931 no longer represented the dominant public opinion at that time after the strong reactions and tensions experienced in Spain as a result of the reformist policy of Azaña's republican-socialist government. For this reason he sought "definitive orientation and harmony, resorting to the direct consultation of the general will", as stated in the preamble of the decree calling the elections.
The new electoral law approved on 27 July 1933 introduced some changes compared to the one applied in the constituent elections of June 1931: the percentage of votes required for a candidacy to win in the first round was raised to 40%, while in the second, which would be held if no candidate reached that figure, only those who had achieved 8% of the votes could participate. It also made it possible to change the composition of the candidacies between the first and second rounds. But the essence was maintained: it was a majoritarian electoral system of open lists that rewarded the candidacies that obtained the most votes, so parties that managed to stand in coalition obtained a greater number of deputies than if they stood alone.
However, the main novelty of these elections was that for the first time women were able to exercise their right to vote recognized in the Constitution of 1931 in a general election. Nearly seven million were called to the polls. Therefore, during the electoral campaign all parties addressed themselves especially to them. A proclamation of the right-wing candidacy for Córdoba stated: "Do not forget that you are going to defend your rights as a mother, as a wife... [and that] with your vote you are going to serve your God and your country."
Parties
Unlike the constituent elections of June 1931, the non-republican right formed an electoral coalition that was formalised on 12 October 1933 under the name Union of the Right and the Agrarians, which included the CEDA, as the hegemonic party, the Agrarian Party (committed to the defence of "religion, education, the interests of the countryside" and to "avoid the cruel dismemberment of Catalonia", although it was not formally constituted until January 1934, being forced to accept the Republic to be legalised), the "Alfonsine" monarchists of Spanish Renovation and the Carlist Traditionalist Communion (which due to their anti-parliamentarianism can be placed on the far-right), as well as some independent "agrarians and Catholics". Despite their ideological and tactical differences, they managed to elaborate a minimum programme consisting of three points and embodying the three axes around which their policy of opposition to the governments of Manuel Azaña during the first biennium had revolved "in defence of order and religion": revision of the Constitution of 1931 and the reformist legislation, especially social and religious; abolition of the Agrarian Reform Law of 1932; and declare an amnesty for "political crimes", which meant releasing from prison all those convicted for the attempted coup d'état of August 1932 led by General José Sanjurjo.
During the campaign, the CEDA, which presented the elections as a plebiscite on the nature of the republican regime, made a great propaganda deployment thanks to the funding it obtained far above the rest of the parties contesting the elections. In the manifesto of the "Anti-Marxist Coalition" (the name adopted by the non-republican right-wing candidacy for the Madrid constituency), published by the Catholic daily El Debate on 1 November, the policy applied by the republican-socialist governments of the first biennium was defined as "Marxist", with its "materialistic and anti-Catholic conception of life and society" and its "anti-Spanishness", therefore
Regarding the leader of the CEDA, José María Gil Robles, the speech he gave on 15 October at the Monumental Cinema in Madrid has been highlighted, following his visit to Nazi Germany the previous month during which he witnessed the first Nuremberg Rally of the Nazi Party in power, and in which he advocated giving Spain a "totalitarian" policy:
For its part, the Radical Republican Party of Alejandro Lerroux, which had led the opposition to the governments of Manuel Azaña during the year 1933, hoped to reap the fruits of it and presented itself as a centrist option, summed up in the slogan "Republic, order, liberty, social justice, amnesty." To this end, it pacted with other centre-right republican groups (the Liberal Democratic Republican Party of Melquiades Álvarez and the Progressive Republican Party, the party of the President of the Republic, Niceto Alcalá-Zamora) and with the CEDA and the Agrarian Party in the constituencies where a second round was necessary.
In contrast, the left republicans and the socialists, who had stood in coalition in the 1931 constituent elections, now did so separately. In the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE), the position of completely breaking relations with the republicans prevailed. During the electoral campaign, Largo Caballero, who had become the leader best embodying the new orientation of the socialists, reiterated that "the Socialist Party is going to conquer power":
Thus, "the electoral landscape is just the opposite of that of the 1931 elections, for the right are now the ones who appear united against the disunity of the left and the republicans." For its part, the CNT deployed an unprecedented campaign in favour of abstention, with insults to the "electoral animal" included and with disqualifications of right and left: "Vultures, red and yellow, and tricolour vultures. All vultures. All, birds of prey. All, filthy scum that the producing people will sweep away with the broom of the revolution." Their alternative was insurrection if "fascist tendencies" won and to establish libertarian communism.
Results