FRANCO, MEMORIA VIVA DE ESPAÑA II: Hacia el 18 de Julio

In February 1936, general elections were held in Spain after two years of center-right rule. The right-wing government had made a childish mistake: it hadn't dared to outlaw left-wing parties and organizations and the Catalan separatists who had risen up against the Republic in October 1934. So the campaign revolved around the amnesty the left was demanding for its imprisoned militants: the Popular Front parties threatened Civil War if they were defeated. In the elections, which took place on February 16, the left won through massive electoral fraud. Those responsible for ensuring fairness and transparency in the electoral process fled in terror, and the left declared itself the winner before the vote count was completed: the election results were never officially published. From that moment on, a storm of violence was unleashed on Spain. This is the beginning of the second episode of "Franco, Living Memory of Spain," produced by Periodista Digital and directed by Eduardo García Serrano and Fernando Paz, with Carlos Pecker in the lead role. In this second episode, we delve into the beginning of the Civil War. Viewing the program is absolutely essential. This is how our opening story continues: Hundreds of political assassinations took place, mostly by leftists; hundreds of churches were burned; political centers of right-wing parties and unions were attacked; the Falange was outlawed in violation of the law; newspapers opposed to the government were closed; José Antonio Primo de Rivera was illegally imprisoned; properties were occupied in a completely illegal manner; militarized parades of the revolutionary youth took place, trained with firearms by army officers… While the government remained impassive, held prisoner by the support of socialists and communists in the Cortes, who enjoyed carte blanche to act with absolute impunity. By May 1936, strikes had spread throughout Spain, illegal occupations of properties were taking place, and in the large cities, militiamen were flaunting their weapons, taking over the streets and public establishments. The leftist organizations, especially the socialists and anarchists, lacked a concrete plan of action, simply because they lacked political capacity, so their objectives were vague and they only sowed social chaos. But the Communist Party of Spain did know what it wanted. Its press outlet, Mundo Obrero, had published the plan they had conceived in February. Basically, it was a program of progressive co-optation of power, first gaining hegemony over the revolutionary forces, and then supplanting the bourgeois republic until it culminated in the establishment of its dictatorship. Faced with this state of affairs, a group of military officers conceived a coup to halt the dangerous political drift of the Republic. The ideological orientation of the conspirators was not, as has been claimed, in the least fascist: among those who rebelled were military men such as Queipo de Llano, who had previously conspired against the monarchy; Miguel Cabanellas, who belonged to the Freemasonry and one of whose sons had run for election as a PSOE candidate; Muñoz Grandes, whom Azaña had entrusted with organizing the Assault Guard, the Republican police force; and Antonio Aranda, whom he suspected of also belonging to the Freemasonry. They enjoyed the support of the most militant civilian forces, such as the Falange and the traditionalists, but they were always subordinate to the military. The conspirators' objective was to overthrow the government, but not to end the Republic: they needed to correct the course that political and social life in Spain had taken and establish a republican dictatorship to rectify the situation. Some military officials were hesitant, because the undertaking was undoubtedly dangerous, and the organizations that would oppose him were undoubtedly powerful. But the assassination of Calvo Sotelo on July 13, 1936, finally decided many doubters: the leader of the opposition had been killed by a commando composed of police officers, Civil Guards, and bodyguards of high-ranking PSOE officials. That crime was the reason many Spaniards joined the uprising that would take place four days later, as was the case with Franco himself, who only finally decided after seeing Calvo Sotelo's assassination. A time had come when, for half of Spain, it was more dangerous not to rebel than to do so. -----------------------------