The authority, the panic, and the belligerency. Public order policies and political violence in Spain during the Popular Front

Abstract

This article analyses the relationship between public order policies and the increase of political violence that took place in Spain between February and July 1936. The reestablishment of a reformist and less repressive policy paradoxically stimulated the development of four causal factors of violence: government delegitimisation, politicisation of the public order administration, de-authorisation of police forces, and privatisation of the political use of force. Since May, the Casares Government tried to solve the problem by intensifying the persecution of Falangist terrorism, decelerating the republicanisation of the police, reestablishing the principle of authority, and recovering the control of public order resources. Nevertheless, although these measures significantly reduced the number of mortal victims, the political violence remained considerably high, the military went on conspiring, and the State did not recover the monopoly of lethal coercion. This period concluded with Calvo Sotelo’s murder and the military rebellion, which was supported at least by half of the police forces as a reaction not only against the dangerous situation of public order, but also against the democratising policies that had undermined their authority and the state monopoly of the use of violence.