The Frente Popular coalition’s victory in the February 1936 elections was wildly celebrated in many cities, while at the same time various generals were planning a military coup. Manuel Azaña and the leftist republicans returned to power, in what appeared to be the second act of a work begun in April 1931 and interrupted in the summer of 1933. There were urgent jobs to do and many promises to be met. Azaña asked for union under the same banner that would include ‘republicans and non-republicans, and all those who love the fatherland, discipline and respect for established authority’.

The leading players may have returned, and expectations may have been high, but the atmosphere after the left’s victory bore little relation to the one that reigned in that spring of 1931 which had seen the birth of the Republic five years earlier. The Partido Radical, the oldest of the republican parties, the founder of the Republic, and the governing party between September 1933 and December 1935, sank without trace in the elections. People of order felt threatened by the advance of the left in Parliament and local authorities and by the new upsurge in trade union organisations and the protests they generated. Now the defeated non-republican right thought only of force as a resource against the government and the Republic. A significant sector of the army plotted against them and did not stop until they were defeated. February 1936 saw free democratic elections; July 1936, a coup d’état. This Republic had experienced more than five years of peace, until a military uprising and a war destroyed it by force of arms.