Political Co-existence Before the Coup

The years of the Republic were a period of intense political and social mobilization. There were many more opportunities to be elected to office, which made it possible for workers and peasants to achieve positions of responsibility denied to them before. This contributed to legitimizing the mew regime and led to political disputes being fought out in democratic elections.

The right quickly understood the new context, and during 1932 it created the first conservative mass party in Galicia’s history: the Rightwing Regional Union. This led to many right-wing groups taking part in the electoral process and having success there. Galician nationalism also had its own mass organization, the Galicianist Party. Leftwing republicans and the Socialist Party took advantage of their previous electoral experience to consolidate their positions in a highly competitive context in which agrarian issues remained the principal mass movement in the region.

There were also many sites of confrontation and protest: long strikes like the Vigo fishers’ strike of 1932, and attempted insurrections like the anarchist one in December 1933.  The October 1934 general strike had little chance of success. Called by the union federations, it followed the pattern of such mobilizations, with a ritual that had been learned through decades of experience. The results were similar to those of the also failed 1917 strike, which the older militants remembered: union buildings closed, worker publications banned and recognized leaders spending many weeks behind bars. The main effect came in the realm of politics: the forceful removal of legally elected leftwing municipal governments to bring them into line with the new centre-right majority of the Radicals and the CEDA in Madrid.

In general terms, there were many spaces where people got along despite the political alignments.  As well as informal places of sociability, sports clubs or recreational associations, many organizations were openly pluralistic, with the Galician Studies Seminar being the most emblematic. There were also projects that brought together people of very different political backgrounds, such as the Galicia Autonomy Statute, the railroad protests of 1932, or the petition – shown here - to have the death sentences imposed for involvement in the events of October 1934 commuted which was signed by hundreds of intellectuals and professors at the University of Santiago. Although they supported a range of political options in the elections of February 1936, the campaign for the Autonomy Statute in June gave them another opportunity to work together.

AMM