THE SALUTARY FASCIST INTERLUDE:

Spain provides the only example of a full-scale, mass, violent collectivist revolution developing out of a modern Western liberal democratic polity. The Second Spanish ­Republic of 1931-39 had created the first liberal democratic system in the country's history, with, at first, impartial elections based on universal suffrage and broad constitutional guarantees of civil rights. This achievement did not prevent revolution and civil war.

Spain was unique as well in the absence of the ­variable that had enabled revolution elsewhere in Europe during the first half of the twentieth century: defeat in a major war, which sometimes ended in foreign occupation. Defeat in war, more than the strength of revolutionaries, was what had destabilized or destroyed the established order in other European countries. Spain, by contrast, had been Europe's leading neutral during World War I and had suffered no direct international pressures during the war or after. Even the Great Depression was proportionately less severe for Spain, given its modest export economy. There was no overwhelming military or economic cause of radicalization. The Spanish brought the revolutionary process on themselves: No country was less a victim of external circumstances.

Spain's revolutionary process began in April 1931, with the almost bloodless overthrow of the monarchy of Alfonso XIII. Alfonso's fall was partly a consequence of the dynamic 1920s, which had produced the most rapid social and economic transformation in the country's long history. For those in the burgeoning socialist and anarcho-syndicalist movements, regime change promised not so much democratization as further rapid transformation, which soon would verge on the millenarian. Meeting no organized opposition, a self-constituted "Revolutionary Committee" formed the first government of Spain's Second Republic as a multi-party coalition. But the various factions making up this coalition--moderate centrist democrats, leftist republicans, and the rapidly growing socialist movement--had conflicting agendas.

Javier Tusell memorably described the Republic as a "not very democratic democracy." There was disagreement about respecting the rules of the game, which were fully accepted only by the center and a reorganized moderate right. All the leftist groups insisted on a regime that was either exclusively leftist or (in the case of socialists) evolving rapidly toward revolution, while a tiny extreme right had its own goals. The early republican government ruled repressively in 1931-32, refusing to allow monarchists to participate on an equal ­footing in the first parliamentary elections and for some time prohibiting most public meetings by forces to the right of center. Though the new constitution was a genuinely democratic document, it rarely was fully respected, and complete civil liberties were upheld on fewer than half the days of the brief life of the Republic.

No policy was more controversial than the left's determination to restrict the role of the Church. The Constitution of 1931 curtailed religious freedom, outraging many Catholics. The Republic's new president, Niceto Alcalá Zamora, warned that it was "a constitution made for a civil war." Spanish society soon became so divided and so politically mobilized that the possibility of peaceful coexistence slipped from view.

Disagreements between the socialists and the moderate left led to the breakup of the original governing coalition and new elections in 1933. These elections, in which women voted for the first time, were the first fully free and democratic contest in Spanish history. Popular reaction against heavy-handed leftist policies resulted in victory for the democratic center and moderate right.

A new Catholic coalition, the Spanish Confederation of Autonomous Rights (CEDA), emerged suddenly as the largest single force. This development astounded the left, which sought four times to convince Alcalá Zamora to cancel the election results, but he held firm. Though the moderate right scrupulously adhered to legalities, from that time forward the left labeled all right-of-center elements "fascist." Despite its own divisions, the Spanish left remained convinced that the Republic must be an exclusively progressivist regime, no matter the outcome of elections. Votes for the right were regarded as illegitimate.

In the 1930s, the dominant leftist model of revolution was still the Leninist tactic of direct insurrection. That was the goal of Spain's most extreme movement, the mass anarcho-syndicalist Iberian Anarchist Federation-National Confederation of Labour (FAI-CNT), and Europe's prime example of the seeming oxymoron "organized anarchism." The FAI-CNT never pretended to respect elections and launched three different poorly coordinated revolutionary insurrections between January 1932 and December 1933. But anarchist violence was not a true threat to the system. It constituted what some of its adepts called "revolutionary gymnastics," trial runs against a lenient liberalism. Even less significant was a prominent general's forlorn attempt to moderate the regime through an abortive military ­pronunciamiento in August 1932. That cost ten lives, the anarchist mini-insurrections several hundred.

A threshold was crossed at the beginning of October 1934, when the centrist minority government broadened to include four moderate ministers from the Catholic CEDA, establishing rule by a parliamentary majority and respecting civil guarantees. The socialists responded by launching a revolutionary insurrection in fifteen of the fifty provinces of Spain.

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