Santiago Casares Quiroga trading card

Santiago Casares Quiroga was the head of the government that faced the July 1936 uprising. He had replaced Manuel Azaña in May, after Azaña was elected president of the Republic. Casares Quiroga’s appointment was an emergency solution when Socialist leader Indalecio Prieto to accept the position. The opposition of Francisco Largo Caballero and his followers to the Socialists rejoining a Republican government was so strong that Prieto feared accepting the prime ministership would split the PSOE in two.

Casares had come to Madrid as a representative of Galician republicanism at the Pact of San Sebastián. Before that, he had played a leading role in the political life of A Coruña as a republican city councillor and as a labour lawyer. His involvement in the Revolutionary Committee and his later appointment as a minister in the Republican-Socialist cabinets of the first biennium helped solidify his reputation. As a result, he was one of the featured figures in the “Great Personalities of the Republic” trading card collection issued by Eduardo Pi Chocolates and Cocoa of Barcelona amid the jubilation following the proclamation of the new political system.

But this is not the image of Casares that has endured. The harshness with which he confronted the right-wing parties during 1936 earned him a reputation as hot-tempered, and his departure from the government the day after the coup cemented the legend of a passive politician overwhelmed by circumstances. Both this reputation and legend were largely propagated by Francoist stories—such as the one that holds him responsible for the assassination of right-wing leader José Calvo Sotelo, based on the accusation that he had put a target on his back during a heated exchange the two had in a parliamentary debate shortly before.

The Casares government focused on reviving the reforms of the first biennium in order to consolidate the Republic, but its greatest challenge was maintaining public order progressive radicalization triggered a cycle of action and reaction, with each death demanding retaliation. Casares sought to curb this spiral of street violence by re-establishing the principle of authority, restoring the State’s monopoly on violence, and cracking down on anything that fell outside the bounds of legality. To ensure that his control over left-wing street protests did not undermine the trust of his electoral allies, he accompanied these measures with a fiercely anti-fascist discourse, both in the press and in parliamentary debates. It was around this discourse that his enemies began to craft their caricature of him.

As did Azaña, Casares responded to rumors of conspiracy by upholding legality. Out of respect for the law and for fear of precipitating the uprising by creating martyrs who might lead those still undecided into rebellion, they did not want to take false steps or act without evidence. This position led many of his left-wing allies to view Casares as weak or naive. After the assassination of Calvo Sotelo, Casares submitted his resignation, but Azaña did not want to accept it just yet; instead, he aimed to manage the timing to separate the president’s departure from that violent death. But the uprising came before the replacement, and Casares was forced to confront the coup attempt while still in a caretaker role.

PMC