Peter Anderson

The early 20th century is a period of rapid change in Spain.

It's moving from being a predominantly agricultural economy to one that has a bigger role for industry and a bigger role for middle-class groups.

And that means that politics is changing too as the middle class expands.

A lot of the groups in the middle class became attracted to republicanism.

They were attracted to secular ideas around science and democratic reform.

They wanted to improve the education system.

There are lots of people who are industrial workers who become attracted, some to the anarchist group called the CNT, which becomes one of the largest anarchist groups in the world.

Militarism is really important to understanding the origins of the Spanish Civil War.

So militarism is the idea that army officers live somewhat separately from society and consider themselves superior to society and that they have a noble mission to protect the nation against both external and internal enemies.

The Army of Africa develops a very particular military culture.

It's involved in a counterinsurgency war where they use very brutal methods, chasing down locals, attacking civilians and so on.

It becomes very brutalized.

And they develop a culture that celebrates death.

And they saw that in fighting this kind of colonial war in Africa,

They were making Spain great again.

They were redeeming Spain.

This is very much a kind of pre-fascist outlook, thinking that you can save Spain through the blood sacrifice against this external enemy.

known as the restoration system that had come about in the 1870s the problem was that despite being formally a democracy it was based on corruption and exclusion so a lot of people in spain really couldn't influence the political situation particularly people who maybe worked in the countryside as landless laborers or people who worked in cities and factory jobs and so on

It's against the monarchy, but it's also an attempt to overcome some of the problems that Spain had faced through political exclusion.

And they were really about the army.