Clerical-fascist Spanish Confederation of the Autonomous Right gaining seats in Spain

Looking at 1933

Spanish soldiers escorted arrested Asturian miners after crushing the insurrection.

In 1933, the immobilized German proletariat by the Stalinist and social-democrats enabled the Nazis to take power without a shot being fired spelled their defeat. In Austria after a two-week government onslaught against armed militant workers, the took power.

In 1933 when the Nazis were handed power in Germany saving the bourgeoisie from a potential second German Revolution it emboldened the right throughout out Europe and the world. Spain was no exception. Their general election that year saw the clerical-fascist Spanish Confederation of the Autonomous Right (CEDA-Confederación Española de Derechas Autónomas) headed by José María Gil-Robles gain the most seats in the bourgeois government of Radical-Republican Alejandro Lerroux. But the government was not in a desperate situation to where they felt they may lose power to the working people.

“El Jefe” José María Gil-Robles

So instead of appointing Gil-Robles, Lerroux was appointed prime minister to not arouse the workers. Nevertheless, CEDA were given three ministerial seats in Lerroux’s government on 3 October 1934. The illusions of parliamentarian bourgeois democracy that brought fascists to power with capitalism in crisis was shattered.

Alerted to the dangers of fascism, the Spanish proletariat were determined not to suffer the same fate as their Italian, German, and Austrian class brothers and sisters. The menace of fascism created left-wing factions within the PSOE, among the Anarchists, and even radicalizing some Stalinists tied to the Soviet bureaucracy’s “Third Period” jargon.

Only 8 hours after the CEDA fascists took their seats in the government miners affiliated with the UGT called for a general strike throughout Asturias against the Lerroux government and in solidarity with their brothers and sisters in Madrid and Catalonia. Police and military barracks throughout the region were raided, arms distributed, and the republican state forces were routed out. Madrid’s authority had virtually collapsed in a matter of days. Unfortunately, by then the pre-revolutionary situating unfolding in Spain had been suppressed by the republican government leaving Asturias isolated.

Read more about it: Spain: 85th Anniversary of the Asturian Miners’ Insurrection