Manuel Azaña: The Politician Journalist

The Scholar: Manuel Azaña

Manuel Azaña y Diaz was born on January 10, 1880, in Alcala de Henares, a small city in the middle of Spain, northeast of Madrid. He was born into a wealthy family and received his secondary education in the Colegio Complutense and Instituto Cardenal Cisneros. He received a lawyer’s license after attending the University of Zaragoza (1897) and a doctorate from Universidad Complutense de Madrid, a prestigious institution. Although he studied Law, Manuel pursued journalism and the humanities; he quickly became known as a literary man, political philosopher, scholar, and essayist.

After his higher education, Manuel worked as a journalist, civil servant, and writer. Manuel was profoundly involved in the arts, whether he was employed by the Main directorate of the Registries as a notary, working in the Ateneo as an assistant, or continuing his studies overseas. In journalism, he collaborated publishing newspapers such as Imparcial and El Sol, and in 1920 he founded La Pluma Magazine. Manuel wrote many plays and novels that dealt with philosophy, politics, and the economy, all preparing him for his essential role in the war in the following decades. Especially in his novel El Jardin de Los Frailes, which stated controversial anticlerical opinions that began to put his name on the map. Out of his many accomplishments, Manuel translated George Borrow’s The Bible in Spain and was awarded the national prize for literature in 1926 for his biography of the novelist Juan Valera. His novel El jardín de Los Frailes (1927; “The Garden of the Monks”) was a vehicle for his strongly anticlerical opinions.

Although he began joining and creating a presence in the political state of Spain in 1914, it wasn’t until ​​1930 that he officially became a politician. After criticizing the dictatorship of Miguel Primo de Rivera and the growing discomfort against his party, Manuel organized a liberal republican party: Accion Republican. In August of the same year, he was one of the signatories of the Pacto de San Sebastian, an alliance of Republicans, socialists, and the Catalan Left advocation of the abdication of King Alfonso. Correspondly, Manuel and his colleagues of the Comite Politico stood behind the seizure of power after the municipal elections of April 1931. 

Part of the new provisional government, Azaña served as the minister of war, drastically reducing the army. In this position, he encouraged and followed the “adoption of clauses restricting the rights of the clergy, establishing secular education, allowing the redistribution of land, and fully enfranchising women. When the anticlerical clauses of the new constitution caused the resignation of the prime minister, Niceto Alcalá Zamora, in October 1931, Azaña succeeded him. As Prime Minister, he tried to enforce the progressive clauses of the new constitution,  pushed through a draconian Law for the Defense of the Republic in 1931, and reacted harshly to opposition from the clergy, the army, monarchists, and anarchists". 

Unfortunately for Azaña, the small Republican Action party lost the support of the socialists and, by default, parliament after the severe suppression of an anarchist revolt at Casas Viejas. In autumn of 1933, right-wing politicians drove him out of office. For the next two years, he would unify his party with the Galician autonomist and radical socialist to create the Izquierda Republicana. Based on this work, he was arrested by the center-right government. After a relatively nonviolent trial, he was acquitted and gained considerable support and sympathy from it. 

In 1935, with a great mass behind his movement, Azaña helped form the Popular Front, a left-wing coalition of liberals, socialists, and communists. Azaña, along the Popular front, led an alliance that was successful in the elections of February 1936. After the parliament removed previous President Alcala Zamora, Azaña was elected to succeed him in May 1936. Yet his reign quickly fell with the military revolts in July 1936. For the next couple of months, Azaña was torn between controlling the aspects of the left-wing he did not support and attempting to widen support for the republican government to counterattack their gaining support. 

Manuel Azaña had arguably a brilliant career ahead of him. Socially wise, his reforms and perspective on the world were ahead of his time, and if it weren’t for the war, his holistic ideas would have been positively ground-breaking. It is of the utmost importance to comprehend his history before parliament, as the literature he religiously studied and commented on propelled his political ideologies. His doctoral thesis addressed some of the social psychology problems regarding the legal responsibility of the masses. Correspondingly, as president, his actions have a clear and distinguished worried tone towards the citizens. Based on Azañas’s educational career and brief political experience before the war, what do you think he would have done if his presidency had continued peacefully? 

Links: 

 Gregersen, G. (January 6, 2022). “Manuel Azaña president of Spain.” Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved from: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Manuel-Azana

Bandrés Y, Llavona R. (August, 2010). “Manuel Azaña and psychology”. PubMec.Gov. Retrieved from: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20667277/

Unknown Author. (October 2017). “Manuel María Nicanor Federico Carlos Azaña y Díaz”. Archontology. Retrieved from: http://www.archontology.org/nations/spain/spain_1931_39s/azana.php

Photographs from Google Images.