Today, Friday 11 November at 11 o’clock, it is 104 years since the First World War ended. Spain had declared itself neutral in this first global war; a war which claimed at least 16 million human lives. Nevertheless, there were strong sympathies in Spanish society – for and against the parties that clashed on the battlefield. The First World War was to leave a deep mark on Spain. It was a time characterized by intensified disputes and political chaos. Conflict lines that a few years later would lead to civil war. Spain at the beginning of the 20th century was a divided nation with great inequalities – a country where a significant part of the population could neither read nor write and where average life expectancy was a mere 35 years.
The First World War was sparked by the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary and his wife on 28 June 1914. The politically motivated murders were used as a pretext to initiate one of history’s bloodiest conflicts – alliance building and global competition for territories and resources formed the backdrop for the conflict.
Europe’s great powers had grouped themselves into two alliances. On one side stood the Triple Entente, also called the Entente or Allied Powers, which at the outbreak of the war consisted of France, Russia and Great Britain. On the opposite side were the Central Powers or the Triple Alliance consisting (to start with) of Germany and Austria-Hungary. During the war, Japan, Italy and the United States joined the Allied Powers, and the then powerful Ottoman Empire sided with the Central Powers.
A month after the shootings in Sarajevo, on 28 July 1914, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia and invaded the country. Two days later, Germany declared war on Russia, and the great conflict was a fact. Spain was quick to declare its neutrality: already on 7 August Prime Minister Eduardo Dato proclaimed that Spain would stay neutral in the conflict. There were nevertheless divided opinions within Spain about whether neutrality was the right choice. King Alfonso XIII was among those who wanted a more active role for Spain in the conflict – and then on the French/British/Russian side.
What Spanish participation in the war could have meant, one can only speculate on. Spain was undoubtedly an interesting country for both warring alliances. A strategic location at the entrance to the Mediterranean was alluring. So were Spain’s rich deposits of iron and copper, important raw materials in an armed conflict. Both warring parties made advances towards Spain to win the country over to their side, but in 1914 Spain was far from the great power it had been in the years since Columbus set out to find the sea route to India at the end of the 15th century.
A weakened Spain
In 1898, the United States and Spain had fought a war that significantly weakened Spain and ended with the United States taking over the Spanish colonies of the Philippines, Guam and Puerto Rico. In addition, Cuba became independent. In other words, Spain had lost all its colonies in Asia and the Caribbean.
The former superpower was not doing very well at home either. From the time King Alfonso XIII took the Spanish throne until Primo de Rivera’s coup d’état in 1923, i.e. over a period of 22 years, Spain had a total of 33 governments. That says something about the level of conflict in Spanish society. And the First World War fueled discord at home.
In the first part of the 20th century, Spain was a poor country. Life expectancy was 35 years – however, there was a big difference between various social strata in the population. Illiteracy was widespread. Most Spaniards made a living from agriculture. Only around 18 per cent were employed in industry and mining – in other words, Spain had only undergone industrialization to a modest extent.
Spaniards who had migrated from the countryside to the city to work in factories tended to be attracted to left-wing political ideologies. The resentment among the working class in the cities was considerable. There was great friction between socialists and communists on the one hand and conservative forces consisting primarily of large landowners, industrialists, the Catholic Church and the army on the other.
The Spanish armed forces were, by the way, in rather poor shape. In 1910 it consisted of only 80,000 soldiers commanded by about 24,000 officers. And Spanish officers were not of the modest variety. Around 40 percent of the state budget was spent on the military. A startling 70 per cent of this sum is said to have gone to officer salaries.
Refugees and volunteers
War is expensive, as is well known, both in terms of human suffering and money. Spain had spent enormous resources trying to hold on to its colonies, without success. In addition, the country fought a war in Morocco from 1909 to 1927. At the start of the First World War, the Spanish national debt was consequently large and many Spaniards had little desire for more warfare.
Despite its neutrality, it did not take long before Spain felt the effects of the World War. During the first weeks, Spanish foreign workers in Germany, Belgium and France were forced to return home by the advancing German troops. The Basque Country and important Spanish port cities such as Barcelona and Palma de Mallorca experienced a significant flow of migrants. Historians have estimated that more than 10,000 Spaniards who had worked in other European countries were forced to return home in the first months of the war. Somewhat later, French, British, German and Italian citizens crossed the Spanish border in the opposite direction, mainly because they were called up to serve in their home country’s military forces.
Although Spain officially remained neutral, the population was divided over which of the belligerents to support, if only morally. The upper class, the large landowners, the conservative party, the officer corps and the church mainly supported the German-Austrian side. The Liberal Party, the Socialists and others on the left, on the other hand, supported Britain, France and Russia/the Soviet Union. These are sympathies and connections that will also be felt later in Spanish history, not least in the Spanish Civil War.
The First World War also caused regional conflicts to re-appear in Spain. For example, around 2,000 Spanish citizens volunteered in the French Foreign Legion, most of them claiming to be Catalan. Historians believe many of them saw their efforts on the French side of the war as part of a fight for Catalonian independence. As you know, the fight for independence seems still to be going on.
Good for one, bad for the other
Spain’s location and resources combined with the country’s neutral status offered business opportunities. In particular, Spanish heavy manufacturing industries, textiles and agriculture made good money selling to both sides during the First World War. The country’s burdensome national debt was paid off and Spain experienced a large surplus on its foreign trade balance. The state’s holdings of gold tripled during the four years the war lasted.
It should be added that Spain also suffered painful losses due to the war. German submarines sank a total of 66 Spanish ships, resulting in the loss of a total of 100 lives.
The standard of living in the cities gradually began to rise as people found new work. But the benefits were by no means evenly distributed – a wealthy bourgeoisie grew up in the cities, while working families tended to remain poor. The lack of basic foodstuffs became so great that poor people took to the streets, rioting in 1915. The trade unions threatened a general strike if the benefits were not more evenly distributed and the country’s liberal government had to go.
Anger over social inequality was also fueled from the outside. The Russian Revolution of 1917 also influenced the situation. Many Spaniards living in poor conditions hoped for revolution in Spain as well, and the social and political unrest in the country continued to increase in strength throughout the years of war.
Demands for regional self-government in the Basque Country and Catalonia became louder, especially after a number of new nation-states were formed in Europe at the end of the First World War. It gave hope for changes in the national borders of Spain as well.
On the road to civil war
When the First World War finally ended in 1918, Spain stood at a crossroads. Many had made a lot of money from the war. The country had a large trade balance surplus, the national debt was gone and industry was doing very well. Perhaps the social and political unrest could have been mitigated significantly if politicians and businesses had made wiser choices.
But Spain’s industrial owners largely failed to reinvest the war profits in the modernization of machinery and invested little in research and development. After the war, Spanish industry again had to compete on an equal footing with goods from the world’s most industrialized countries. In that competition, the Spaniards simply could not keep up. Exports quickly fell to pre-1914 levels, and instead of helping the manufacturing industry become more efficient, Spanish authorities imposed high tariffs to protect their domestic market from imports.
The poor economy caused a further sharpening of the social and political divisions in the country which erupted in Civil War during the late 1930s, where conflict lines and alliances were strikingly similar to those observed during the First World War.
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