The Great Error Of The Republic

Between saber rattling and government ineptness.

Why didn’t the Republic stop the coup d’état?

The military uprising of July 1936 and the civil war were not inevitable. The Republic was in a position to prevent the coup d’état and disarticulate the conspiracy that had been building up for years. Ángel Viñas reveals how the internal and external defense services detected the risks and threats of involution, but also how the governments of Azaña and Casares Quiroga ignored the sabre rattling against democracy. This allowed elements of the clandestine Unión Militar Española (UME) to remain at the very heart of the Republican defense mechanisms, participants in the monarchist conspiracy. Thanks to documentation from a dozen Spanish, French, English, Italian and Belgian archives, this new book reconstructs both the machinations of the future rebels and, above all, the government’s failure to decapitate a conspiracy backed by Fascist Italy.