Representing Catalan National Identity. Catalonia during the Spanish second Republic and the civil war

Abstract

The advent of the Spanish Second Republic is bound irrevocably to the fall of the Dictatorship of General Primo de Rivera (January 29, 1930), a result of the downfall of those who had supported him from the outset. The figure of Alfonso XIII suddenly became the target of all opposition, besides those who were bitter at the dictator and his former friends. For a time, the king attempted to govern as Primo had, with a directory of ministers presided by General Dámaso Berenguer. Even so, closing the parenthesis of the Dictatorship would not suffice to save the throne since this collapse was the consequence of a process of decomposition of the Restoration system which had begun in 1909 with the Tragic Week, gained momentum in 1917 with the Parliamentary Assembly movement and followed by the revolutionary strike of July-August 1918.By 1923, in the wake of that convulsion, Republican feeling had spread countrywide. Many army officers - including what was left of Primo's Unión Patriótica - thought that the king had acted dishonestly in accepting the dictator's resignation. The Berenguer government had to face up to a challenge from sectors of opinion that were already against the throne and, negotiating pitfalls, it tried to deploy its programme seeking to return to «constitutional normality».