Sure, the Republic was just a bunch of “left-of-center” guys singing “kumbaya”. IT was Disneyland until Franco came.
Note: I know Mussolini was still alive at that point. I just couldn’t resist the double entrendre.
It wasn’t perfect. But it was at least a functioning democracy. Franco did not improve anything in Spain by forming a dictatorship. There were no foreign powers in Spain until Franco asked Germany and Italy in to help him take over. And don’t whitewash Franco’s crimes - in the first five years after he took power he had over 200,000 people executed and political prisoners continued to be killed throughout his administration.
Well, it was a democracy, but hardly* functioning.* It was as stable as the current stock market. It lasted for almost 3 years,:rolleyes: with increasing violence and instability, hundreds of assassinations, armed rebellions, etc. Catalonia and the Basque people had already declared their independence from Spain, and with Andalucia, Aragón and Galicia seriously considering it before the breakout of the Civil War. In other words, the democracy was falling apart nto splinter groups and chaos.
At the time of the start of the revolution, the Socialists, Communists & aliies had gained a slight majority in the second election. Some of the more radical members of those parties then advocated a socialist revolution. There is little doubt by most political savants that they would have at least tried to make this a reality had the Civil War not erupted.