In the autumn of 1931, however, before the waves of anarchist agitation were fully under way, the Cortes was occupied with the elaboration of the new Constitution. After an earlier draft by the conservative politician Angel Ossorio y Gallardo had been rejected, a new constitutional committee, under the Socialist law professor, Luis Jiménez de Asúa, met on 28 July. It had barely three weeks to draw up its draft. In consequence, some of its unsubtle wording was to give rise to three months of acrimonious debate. Presenting the project on 27 August, Jiménez de Asúa described it as a democratic, liberal document with great social content. An important Socialist victory was chalked up by Luis Araquistain, later to be one of Largo Cabal-lero’s radical advisers, when he prevailed on the chamber to accept Article I, which read ‘Spain is a republic of workers of all classes’. Article 44 stated that all the wealth of the country must be subordinate to the economic interests of the nation and that all property could be expropriated, with compensation, for reasons of social utility. Indeed, the Constitution, finally approved on 9 December 1931, was as democratic, laic, reforming and liberal on matters of regional autonomy as the Repubicans and Socialists could have wished. It appalled the most powerful interests in Spain, landowners, industrialists, Churchmen and Army officers.
The opposition of the conservative classes to the Constitution crystallised around Articles 44 and 26. The latter concerned the cutting off of state financial support for the clergy and religious orders; the dissolution of orders, such as the Jesuits, that swore foreign oaths of allegiance; and the limitation of the Church’s right to wealth. The Republican-Socialist coalition’s attitude to the Church was based on the belief that, if a new Spain was to be built, the stranglehold of the Church on many aspects of society must be broken. That was a reasonable perception, but it failed to take into account the sensibilities of Spain’s millions of Catholics. Religion was not attacked as such, but the Constitution was to put an end to the government’s endorsement of the Church’s privileged position. To the right, the religious settlement of the constitution was a vicious onslaught on traditional values. The debate on Article 26, the crucial religious clause, coming in the wake of the bitterness provoked by Azaña’s military reforms, intensified the polarization which was to end in civil war. At a meeting in Ledesma (Salamanca), José María Gil Robles, leader of Acción Popular declared ‘while anarchic forces, gun in hand, spread panic in government circles, the government tramples on defenceless beings like poor nuns’.
Indeed, the passing of the Constitution marked a major change in the nature of the Republic. By identifying the Republic with the Jacobinism of the Cortes majority, the ruling coalition alienated many members of the Catholic middle classes. The perceived ferocity of the Constitution’s anti-clericalism provoked the right into organising its forces at the same time as the union made at San Sebastian in 1930 began to break up. Alcalá Zamora and Miguel Maura resigned in October 1931 and Azaña, who had risen to prominence during the debate, became Prime Minister. This upset Lerroux, who had been grooming himself for the job, and was excluded because of widespread fear in political circles that he would be unable to keep his hands out of the till. He went into opposition with his Radicals. Thus Azaña was forced to rely more heavily upon the Socialists. This in turn made it more difficult for him to avoid provoking the enmity of the Right.
In fact, Azaña was caught between two fires – that of the Left which wanted reform and that of the Right which rejected it. This was made apparent when he came to deal with the agrarian problem. Agrarian violence was a constant feature of the Republic. Based on the crippling poverty of rural labourers, it was kept at boiling point by the CNT. The anarchists, together with the Socialist Landworkers’ Federation (FNTT: Federación Nacional de Trabajadores de la Tierra, founded in April 1930), were calling for expropriation of estates and the creation of collectives. The Republicans, as middle class intellectuals, respected property and were not prepared to do this. Largo Caballero, as Minister of Labour, had improved the situation somewhat with the four decrees that he had introduced in the spring. However, the limits of such piecemeal reform were starkly exposed in December 1931 when the Badajoz section of the FNTT called a general strike. It was in the main a peaceful strike, in accordance with the instructions of its organisers. In an isolated village called Castilblanco, however, there was bloodshed. When the strike was called, the FNTT members in Castilblanco had already spent the winter without work. On 31 December, while they were holding a peaceful and disciplined demonstration, the Civil Guard started to break up the crowd. After a scuffle, a Civil Guard opened fire, killing one man and wounding two others. The hungry villagers, in a frenzy of fear, anger and panic, fell upon the four guards and beat them to death with stones and knives.
Almost before the cabinet had had time to come to terms with Castilblanco, there occurred an equally disturbing tragedy, this time in the north. At Arnedo, in Logroño, several workers were sacked from the local shoe factory at the end of 1931 for belonging to the UGT. At a public protest, the Civil Guard opened fire, killing four women, a child, and a worker, besides wounding at least thirty more. The incident had all the appearance of an act of revenge for Castilblanco. Then, in early 1932 an anarchist strike was put down with considerable severity, especially in Alto Llobregat in Catalonia. There were arrests and deportations. Anarchist and Socialist workers were simply being exasperated at the same time as the right was left with its belief that the Republic meant only chaos and violence. Nevertheless, the need for reform was self-evident, particularly in the rural south. There, despite promises of agrarian reform, conditions remained brutal. All over the south, many owners had declared war on the Republican-Socialist coalition by refusing to plant crops.
The response of the big landowners to reform measures had been rapid, both nationally and locally. Their press networks spouted prophecies of the doom that would ensue from government reforms while in reality they themselves simply went on as if the decrees had never been passed. What the vituperative outbursts of the landowners’ organisations failed to stress was the extent to which Socialist measures remained little more than hopes on paper. There was virtually no machinery with which to enforce the new decrees in the isolated villages of the south. The social power consequent on being the exclusive providers of work remained with the owners. The Civil Guard was skilfully cultivated by, and remained loyal to, the rural upper classes. Socialist deputies from the south regularly complained in the Cortes about the inability of the provincial civil governors to apply government legislation and to oblige the Civil Guard to side with the braceros rather than with landowners.
Throughout 1932, the FNTT worked hard to contain the growing desperation of its southern rank-and-file. With agrarian reform in the air, the landowners did not feel disposed to invest in their land. The law of obligatory cultivation was effectively ignored and labour was not hired to do the tasks essential for the spring planting. Braceros were refused work because they belonged to the landworkers’ union. Nonetheless, the FNTT continued to adhere to a moderate line, and appealed to grassroots militants to refrain from extremism and not to expect too much from the forthcoming agrarian reform. Unfortunately, the statute did little largely because its cautious provisions had been drawn up for Marcelino Domingo, the new Minister of Agriculture, by conservative agronomists and property lawyers. After a painfully slow progress through the Cortes between July and September, it provided for the setting up of an Institute of Agrarian Reform to supervise the break-up of estates over 56 acres (22.5 hectares). Therefore it did absolutely nothing for the small-holders of the north. Moreover, the devices used by landowners to avoid declaring their holdings, together with the fact that the reform law’s provisions were riddled with loop-holes and exceptions, ensured that it did little for the labourers of the south either. Largo described it as ‘an aspirin to cure an