Atlas / Organisations / Spanish Second Republic

Spanish Second Republic

1931–1939 · Spain · Republican Democratic · Held state power · coding confidence medium

−04ECcollective
−06CUpluralist
−03AUpluralist
−01SClocal
−04IDuniversal
+01CHcoercive

Each axis runs from −10 to +10, with zero a genuine mixed or balanced position rather than an absence of opinion. A score describes a stated position and a governing record; it is not a judgement of merit. What each score means →

Core principles

A republic that granted women the vote, separated church and state, and legalised divorce, and was destroyed by a military rising against it.

Economic model

Agrarian reform, labour arbitration boards, an eight-hour day in agriculture, all fiercely contested.

Organisation of powers

Competitive elections in 1931, 1933 and 1936, in which power changed hands between left and right and back.

Reading note

Included because it is regularly described from its final year rather than its first five. Coded on the constitutional order, not on the civil war.

Check a claim about Spanish Second Republic. The interactive atlas measures the distance between any two organisations across all six axes and shows which ones carry the disagreement.

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The evidence for every score

All six cells are sourced. A rationale explains what the score is measuring and each artefact is something a third party can check without taking anyone's word for it.

EC · Economic organisation · scored −04

Coded −4: agrarian reform and labour arbitration boards.

  • Documented act or statuteThe 1932 agrarian law authorised expropriation of large estates with compensation.

CU · Social and cultural order · scored −06

Coded −6: women enfranchised, church and state separated, divorce legalised.

  • Documented act or statuteWomen voted in 1933, having been enfranchised by a chamber in which one of the three women deputies opposed it as premature.

AU · Organisation of power · scored −03

Coded −3: competitive elections in which power changed hands twice.

  • Documented act or statuteElections in 1931, 1933 and 1936 produced governments of left, right and left.

SC · Scale of decision · scored −01

Coded −1: autonomy statutes granted to Catalonia and the Basque Country.

  • Documented act or statuteThe Catalan statute was approved in 1932 and the Basque one in 1936.

ID · Rule of membership · scored −04

Coded −4: civic citizenship with religious disestablishment.

  • Documented act or statuteThe 1931 constitution ended the confessional state.

CH · Method and tempo · scored +01

Coded +1: constitutional, and destroyed by a military rising against it.

  • Documented act or statuteThe July 1936 rising began a war that ended the republic in 1939.

Where it came from, and what came after

Nearest organisations by measured distance

Straight-line separation across all six axes, out of a maximum of 49.0. Proximity means similarity of stated position, not endorsement and not resemblance in outcome.

Countries

Spain

Cite this page

Scores are revised on evidence, so a citation should carry the version it refers to. Version 4.3.1 is current; the revision log records every change.

McGrath, K. (2026). Spanish Second Republic. The Political Atlas, version 4.2. https://thepoliticalatlas.com/organisations/spanish2nd/ (accessed 2026-08-01).

Free to quote and reproduce with attribution. This is a synthesis rather than a peer-reviewed dataset — where an authoritative figure is needed, cite the Chapel Hill Expert Survey, the Manifesto Project or V-Dem.