THE FACTORS WHICH INFLUENCED THE
RIGHT OF CITIZENS TO VOTE IN SPAIN

ECONOMIC
FACTORS

Spain did not really undergo a full industrial revolution in either the nineteenth or twentieth centuries.

In the first third of the nineteenth century we were stuck in an agricultural economy with a traditional government and all the limitations that came about due to the development of liberalism. It was only during the decade of the 1850s that there was a real effort made to industrialise. However, much of the technology and the capital came from outside Spain. This meant that we did not have our own technological infrastructure, nor a bourgeoisie capable of investing and generating enterprise. Money made in the countryside was reinvested in the purchase of Church lands that the state had expropriated to sell and help it meet its debts in the 1840s. In addition this investment on the land did not go into more modern technology, nor did it lead to farms being run on entrepreneurial lines. So the life for the peasantry continued to be very difficult.

During the second half of the nineteenth century a timid industrialisation began which was concentrated in two areas: Barcelona and Bilbao. In the former there was the growth of a textile industry, while in the alter there developed iron smelting and machinery. These provided the two concentrations of the liberal bourgeoisie that quickly become prominent due to their economic and political dynamism. But their growth was insufficient to modernise an entire country anchored in an economy whose basis continued to be agricultural, and of a type of agriculture that was backward and poor.

This situation continued unchanged throughout almost all of the twentieth century. In the period of the Republic (1931/39) there was an attempt to change the structure of land ownership, to encourage an agricultural revolution. That was something that the experts had been arguing for since the eighteenth century, but it ended in violent fashion with the civil war.

Once the Cold War began between the Soviet Union and the United States in 1948, the US gave its attention to the geostrategic position of Spain. The economic development of the 1960s and 1970s was encouraged by the influx of dollars into the Spanish economy thanks to the pacts agreed between the North American administration and the government of Franco. Under this, economic assistance was provided in exchange for military bases on Spanish territory. On this basis the so-called 'Francoist developmentalism' took place. It was not a true industrial revolution exactly, but rather a time of economic growth thanks to tourism and the money that emigrants who worked in European sent home across our frontiers.

SOCIAL
FACTORS

The economic structure of Spain, which was basically agrarian during the nineteenth century and a good part of the twentieth, did now allow the development and growth of a bourgeoisie. The old system of privileged nobility gave way to a new group that we will call an 'oligarchy'. This was constituted by the old landowning nobility and the limited old bourgeoisie which sought to imitate the aristocratic model - buying land and adopting a social image similar to that of the nobility, which they saw as the model to follow. It was this oligarchy which controlled power across the centuries.

Beneath this grouping the urban petty bourgeoisie had virtually no political significance.

The proletariat was in a different situation. It was concentrated in Bilbao and Madrid and supported the socialists, while in Barcelona anarchism was the greatest ideological influence. The weight of this group increased at the end of the nineteenth century and during the first third of the twentieth. Its role was decisive in political struggle, not only for the recognition of the rights of the workers, but also for the democratisation of the political system which was fairly corrupt. The peasants and agricultural workers of Spain were not organised, but in the south, in lower Andalucia, anarchist movements had become very important in the struggle against the government and put pressure for the carrying through of agricultural reform.

IDEOLOGICAL
FACTORS

Ideologies always came into Spain from France. Liberalism first appeared due to Napoleón, through the Bayona Constitution of 1808. This was in fact a charter that was granted and was the ideological precedent for the Constitution of Cadiz of 1812. In the same way, during the final third of the nineteenth century, Marxism was introduced into Spain by Paul Lafargue who came to Spain to create the first organisations, which took some time to grow. Anarchism was brought in by Giuseppe Fanelli, and spread more quickly because its message was easier to understand, and the anarchists, very quickly were able to carry out a great educational effort amongst the proletariat and and peasantry of the East and South of Spain.

One of the keys to understanding the ideological factors is to take account of the importance of religion. Ever since the eighteenth century Spaniards of the enlightenment criticised the excessive control that the Church, and in particular certain religious orders like the Jesuits, had over the scientific, cultural and moral life of the country. The secular power of the Catholic Church in Spain was decisive in the modern epoch and we can say that it divided Spaniards into two groups - pro- and anti-clerical.

During the nineteenth century the church discharged to the state part of its riches, above all its agricultural wealth. This occurred in two stages - 1837 and 1854. But it was also the case that its power actually increased immediately afterward. The appearance of social ideologies (socialism and anarchism) after 1871 (coinciding with the 'Paris Commune') was also a factor in the rejection of ecclesiastical control by the popular classes, above all the Andalucia peasantry and the proletariat of the industrial zones. The 'religious problem' has been one of the key elements in the political struggle in Spain, the key issue which explains the reasons for the civil confrontation that occurred in 1936.

POLITICAL
FACTORS

During the eighteenth and nineteenth century, in one way or another, the oligarchy was in control of power and used it to its advantage, even when universal male suffrage was granted in 1890.

During the first third of the nineteenth century this group was absolutist in belief and always relied on the old regime and the monarchy of Ferdinand VII. More by necessity than conviction it became liberal from the 1840s, but it exercised a 'doctrinaire' liberalism that only recognised the right to political participation of the richest people, in particular the oligarchy itself.

External influences, above all from France, were kept alive in the revolutionary years of 1868 and 1874, but they ended with the oligarchy in control once again. At this time the political model that lasted until the Second Republic (1931) became entrenched. In this system the vote was manipulated in a variety of ways, including destroying ballot boxes. By this means the oligarchy continued to hold power although it alternated between two parties - the liberal and the conservative.

This pattern led to a crisis that began in the 1920s and the personal dictatorship of General Primo de Rivera. By the end of this the political forces had changed:

1. The proletarian groups were ever more numerous, better organised and stronger. The Communist Party entered Spain due to the Russian revolution.
   
   
2. The growing industrial and financial bourgeoisie of Bilbao and Barcelona began to demand a certain degree of autonomous power, and new regionalist political groups emerged which broke with the oligarchic model.
   
   
3. Republicanism grew as a result of political discontent, because all the faults of the corrupt political system were laid at the door of the monarchy.

Thus it was that in the 1930s, when Europe was literally bubbling with new ideologies, that Spain saw a genuine revolution against this form of power. This led to the establishment of a modern and fully renewed Second Republic which, however, lacked a sufficiently strong capitalist basis for it to be able to stabilise itself. Political conflicts, as were also occurring elsewhere in Europe, polarised and crystallised in particular types of violence, coming both from the left and from the right. The oligarchy organised itself to seize back control of power and this led to the coup d'etat of 18 July 1936 which led to a civil war and the victory of the conservative forces. These were in power in Spain under the dictatorship of General Franco until 1975.