From the Disaster of '98 and the personal reign of Alfonso XIII through the Tragic Week of Barcelona, the catastrophe at Annual in Morocco, Primo de Rivera's dictatorship, the Second Republic and the Falange, the military rising of July 1936 and Franco's elevation at Burgos, the defence of Madrid and the bombing of Guernica, the Battle of the Ebro, to the fall of Barcelona, the Retirada into France, and the surrender of Madrid in 1939. Slide across four decades when Spain destroyed and remade itself.
On his sixteenth birthday, 17 May, Alfonso XIII takes the oath at the Cortes and ends the regency of his mother María Cristina. He inherits a wounded country: the Disaster of '98 still raw, the army humiliated, the Restoration's turno pacífico already eroding.
From the Disaster of '98 and the personal reign of Alfonso XIII through the Tragic Week of Barcelona, the catastrophe at Annual in Morocco, Primo de Rivera's dictatorship, the Second Republic and the Falange, the military rising of July 1936 and Franco's elevation at Burgos, the defence of Madrid and the bombing of Guernica, the Battle of the Ebro, to the fall of Barcelona, the Retirada into France, and the surrender of Madrid in 1939. Slide across four decades when Spain destroyed and remade itself.
On his sixteenth birthday, 17 May, Alfonso XIII takes the oath at the Cortes and ends the regency of his mother María Cristina. He inherits a wounded country: the Disaster of '98 still raw, the army humiliated, the Restoration's turno pacífico already eroding.
On 26 July, news that reservists are being called up for the war in Morocco ignites a week of strikes, barricades, and church-burnings in Barcelona. Some seventy convents and parishes are sacked; over a hundred dead. The prime minister Antonio Maura responds with mass arrests and five executions, including that of the educator Francisco Ferrer.
Within four months, military Defence Juntas demand pay and reform; Catalan and Republican deputies hold an Assembly of Parliamentarians at Barcelona; and the UGT and CNT call a general strike. The Restoration regime survives — barely — and only by playing each of its three challenges against the others.
In the rocky country of the Rif in northern Morocco, the army of the Berber leader Abd el-Krim annihilates the Spanish column of General Manuel Fernández Silvestre. Some thirteen thousand Spanish soldiers die in a few July days; the Republic of the Rif is proclaimed.
On the night of 13 September, the captain-general of Catalonia, Miguel Primo de Rivera, issues a manifesto in Barcelona and demands full powers. King Alfonso XIII accepts; for the next six years Spain is governed by military directory.
On 12 April, municipal elections return republican–socialist majorities in every major city. On 14 April, Alfonso XIII leaves for Cartagena and exile; a Provisional Government proclaims the Second Republic in Madrid amid scenes of popular celebration.
On 29 October at the Comedy Theatre of Madrid, the elder son of the late dictator, José Antonio Primo de Rivera, founds Falange Española — a small fascist movement that within three years will become the official party of nationalist Spain.
On 16 February, a Popular Front of Republicans, Socialists, Communists, and Catalan and Galician nationalists wins the elections. Five months of escalating political violence end on 17 July with a military rising in Spanish Morocco that spreads to the peninsula the next day. The Civil War begins.
On 1 October at Burgos, the council of generals proclaims Francisco Franco — already commander-in-chief — Head of State of nationalist Spain, with the title Caudillo. The Defence Junta becomes the embryo of the new regime.
On 7 November, Franco's African columns reach the western suburbs of Madrid. The government has fled to Valencia, but a Defence Junta under General Miaja and the Communist deputy Dolores Ibárruri — La Pasionaria — rallies the city: 'They shall not pass.' For three years, Madrid will hold.
On the afternoon of 26 April — a Monday, market day — the German Condor Legion and Italian Aviazione Legionaria firebomb the Basque town of Guernica for over three hours. Hundreds are killed; the wooden town centre is destroyed. The world is shown what aerial warfare against cities will mean.
Between 3 and 8 May, a Republican attempt to take over the telephone exchange in Barcelona provokes street fighting between the Communists and the central government on one side, and the CNT anarchists and the POUM Marxists on the other. Hundreds die; the POUM is later outlawed and its leader Andreu Nin tortured to death.
On the night of 24 July, the Republican Army of the Ebro under Juan Modesto crosses the river in surprise from the north. For one hundred and fifteen days, in the worst battle of the war, two hundred thousand men fight in the mountains of southern Catalonia. By mid-November the Republic has been broken.
On 26 January Barcelona falls without resistance and the Republican government crosses into France through the snow with half a million refugees. On 28 March Madrid surrenders. On 1 April the Burgos government issues its last war communiqué: 'The Red Army is captive and disarmed.'