Everything about Manuel Aza A totally explained
Dr.
Manuel Azaña Díaz (
Alcalá de Henares, near
Madrid,
January 10 1880 –
November 3 1940,
Montauban,
France) was a
Spanish politician, the second and last
President of the
Second Spanish Republic. He had previously served as Minister of War in the first government of the Republic (April-June
1931), and as
Prime Minister between June 1931 and September
1933, prior to becoming President (May
1936 - April
1939).
Early career
Born into a rich family, he was orphaned at a very young age. He studied in the
Universidad Complutense, the
Cisneros Institute and the
Agustinos of
El Escorial. He was awarded a
Lawyer's licence by the
University of
Zaragoza in
1897, and a
doctorate by the Universidad Complutense in
1900.
In
1909 he achieved a position at the Main Directorate of the Registries and practiced the profession of
civil law notary, and traveled to
Paris in 1911. He became involved in politics and in 1914 joined the
Reformist Republican Party led by
Melquíades Álvarez. He collaborated in the production of various newspapers, such as
El Imparcial and
El Sol. During World War I he covered operations on the Western Front for various newspapers. His treatment was very sympathetic to the French, and he may have been subsidized by French military intelligence. Afterwards he directed the magazines
Pluma and
España between 1920 and 1924, founding the former with his brother-in-law
Cipriano Rivas Cherif. He was secretary of the
Ateneo de Madrid (1913-1920), becoming its president in
1930. He was a candidate for the province of
Toledo in
1918 and
1923, but lost on both occasions. In
1926 he founded
Acción Republicana with
José Giral.
A strong critic of the dictatorship of
Miguel Primo de Rivera, Azaña published an energetic
manifesto against the dictator and
King Alfonso XIII in 1924. He later participated in the
Pact of San Sebastián in
1930, which would form the nucleus of the future Republican government that arose after favorable results to the republican candidacies in the municipal elections of
April 12 1931 and the subsequent abandonment of the country by King Alfonso.
In the government
Provisional President of the Spanish Republic
Niceto Alcalá-Zamora named Azaña Minister of War in the provisional Government of the
Second Spanish Republic on April 14. Azaña then replaced Alcalá-Zamora as provisional prime minister in October of that year due to Alcalá-Zamora's resignation over the subject of the status of the
religious question, which is to say primarily the role of the Spanish Catholic Church, in the Republic. As prime minister of the Republican
coalition government with the
Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE), Azaña carried out the major reforms anticipated by the republican program: the reformation of the
Spanish Army - to determine its size in agreement with the capacity of the country, the
agrarian reform, and the
education reform - suppressing religious activities in favor of the promotion of a secular state.
Those issues, along with the existing social agitation in a major portion of the population would lead Azaña into conflict with various factions, especially the
Roman Catholic Church, elements within the military, and the anarcho-syndicalist labor unions (
C.N.T.). Confrontation with the later lead to the bloody events of
Casas Viejas,
Castilblanco and
Arnedo, which forced his resignation on
September 8 1933. The triumph of the coalition formed by
Alejandro Lerroux's
Radical Republican Party and the
Confederación Española de Derechas Autónomas (CEDA) of
José María Gil-Robles y Quiñones on
November 19 1933, caused him temporarily to withdraw from politics and return to literary activity.
Azaña's self-imposed political retreat lasted only a short while; in 1934 he founded the
Republican Left party, the fusion of
Acción Republicana with the
Radical Socialist Republican Party, led by
Marcelino Domingo, and the
Organización Republicana Gallega Autónoma (ORGA) of
Santiago Casares Quiroga. In 1934 a bloody revolutionary coup took place in
Asturias and
Barcelona, mainly lead by the Socialist Party (PSOE). Accused of instigating the riots, Azaña was jailed on board the destroyer
Sanchez Barcáiztegui anchored in the port in
Barcelona, but was later acquitted.
After his release from prison in January
1935, Azaña initiated a political campaign that gave rise to the creation of the Spanish
Popular Front (Frente Popular), a major
left-wing coalition that won the elections of
February 16,
1936. The Popular Front's victory in the February 1936 elections led to serious discontent among the traditionally conservative political groups in Spain, primarily the military, the Church, and political parties such as CEDA and the
Falange. Many historians consider the Popular Front's electoral victory as the first event in the immediate chain of events that lead to the military uprising against the Second Republic on July 17-18, 1936.
Presidency
On May 10, 1936, Manuel Azaña was elected President of the Republic after the removal of Alcalá-Zamora, just more than two months before the beginning of the
Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). Azaña repeatedly warned his fellow Republicans that the lack of unity within the government was a serious threat to the Republic's stability. In his diaries and memoirs, on which he worked meticulously, Azaña vividly describes the various personality and ideological conflicts between himself and various Republican leaders, such as socialist leaders
Francisco Largo Caballero and
Juan Negrín. The election of Azaña himself as President also represented a destabilizing factor within the government, according to some views. Due to the military reforms he'd enacted as Minister of War, many of the Spanish Generals didn't trust Azaña and suspected him of attempting to dismantle the military entirely.
Manuel Azaña's writings during the Civil War contribute much to the study of the workings of the Republican government during the conflict. Along with his extensive memoirs and diaries, Azaña also produced a number of well-known speeches. His speech on July 18, 1938 is one of the best known of these, in which he implores his fellow Spaniards to seek reconciliation after the fighting ends, emphasizing the need for "Peace, Pity, and Pardon."
Curiously, Azaña also penned a theatrical work during the Civil War titled
Vigil in Benicarló (
La velada en Benicarló). Having worked on the play during the previous weeks, Azaña dictated the final version while trapped in Barcelona during the
May Days violence. In the play, Azaña uses various characters to espouse the various ideological, political, and social perspectives present within the Republic during the war, hence portraying and attempting to explain the rivalries and conflicts that were damaging the political cohesion of the Republic.
With the fall of Barcelona on January 26 to
Francisco Franco's
Nationalist troops, Manuel Azaña fled to France on February 5
1939, the day of
Gerona's fall. He later submitted his resignation as President of the Republic.
Azaña lived in
exile in France after the war, being trapped there by the
Nazi German occupation regime. He died on November 4, 1940, in
Vichy France. The
Vichy French authorities refused to allow his coffin to be covered with the .
Azaña's diary
Along many years of his political activity Azaña kept a
diary of the maximum historical, political and literary significance.
The first complete edition of the Diary was published in 2000 (ISBN 84-8432-142-8).
Further Information
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