What did they vote for in your town in 1936? The electoral map of the Second Republic
A study by Catalan researchers makes electoral results from the Second Republic accessible for the first time
BarcelonaThey did not know it yet, but the 1936 elections would be the last before the outbreak of the Civil War, five months after the elections. The left-wing parties, united through the Popular Front, which included, among many other parties, the PSOE, the Communist Party, and ERC, obtained victory. But the government of the Second Republic never published those results in full, and until now they were not accessible. This is changing thanks to the project that three Catalan researchers published yesterday after six years of research. Now, anyone interested will be able to know how their town voted in those elections, which even today some historians question to justify General Franco's coup d'état.
"The idea arises because many states offer data from nascent democracies at the press of a button. In the United Kingdom you have data from the 19th century; in Germany, from the Weimar Republic, and in Italy too there is data that goes back in time," explains UPF political science professor and ARA collaborator, Toni Rodon. He, along with UB professor Pau Vall-Prat and research assistant Diego Martin-Álvarez, have been responsible for making this possible in the Spanish state as well. For the first time, data from the 1936 elections can be consulted throughout Spain thanks to the map they have created. All the documentation is not only consultable but can be downloaded for free through the Research Data Repository. Those referring to Catalonia, in fact, had already been compiled by Vall-Prat in a previous investigation, although an interactive map had not yet been published to consult them. "Before us, historians in the 70s and 80s had done a great job. Mercedes Vilanova collected almost everything in a very complete atlas of Catalonia," recalls Vall-Prat.
Catalonia, Andalusia, Extremadura, Aragon, Madrid, and a large part of the Valencian Country and the Mediterranean coast were decisive for the victory of the left-wing parties, which were the majority in a large part of the most populated cities. In contrast, the two Castiles, Asturias, and Navarre voted predominantly for the right-wing parties. In the city of Barcelona, the left-wing parties obtained 63% of the votes; in Madrid 54%; in Seville 64%; and in Valencia 53%. Of the four Catalan capitals, the only one with a close result was Girona, with a slight majority (51%) for the left-wing parties. On the other hand, in Palma the right-wing parties won with 56%; in Pamplona they reached 67%, but they made a niche for themselves above all in small towns and villages.
Until now, the difficulty in obtaining the data was that there were only some studies by historians that collected some data partially, but no document that encompassed all of them. The three researchers had to dive into provincial archives throughout the State to find the missing ones: often provincial bulletins that included handwritten or typed references – which they had to digitize – with the added difficulty that, during the Second Republic, the current electoral system was not used.
Some provinces, however, have not even kept a record of the electoral records, which have been lost over time. "In Zamora, for example, there are no results because they were destroyed," explains Rodon, who also refers to Melilla or parts of Galicia. "It is a period that, in many places, they do not want to stir up," he adds to describe some of the obstacles encountered during the investigation. For now, the results of the 1936 legislative elections are available, but in a few weeks those of 1933 and those of 1931 (which were held two months after the municipal elections that gave rise to the Second Republic) will also be available.
"These data allow us to better understand the functioning of the political competition dynamics of that time, but also to understand the political dynamics of the following years and decades," highlights Vall-Prat, who explains that many studies have seen similar patterns in the votes of Catalan cities and towns from 1936 with those of the 1980s and even today: "Where the Lliga was voted for more, more conservative parties have been voted for more habitually since then." The researcher also points out that the results of that year were studied extensively by the Francoist authorities, "who used the information to identify those areas that required more attention and control of the population."
A majoritarian electoral system
During the Second Republic, the electoral system was very different from the one used today in elections to the Congress of Deputies (it was more similar to that of the Senate). It was a system of partially open lists in which voters could vote for a number of candidates lower than the number of seats to be filled, as the authors of the study recall. This fact benefited electoral coalitions, such as those of 1936 (both the right and the left united to try to maximize results).
Spain was divided into 60-63 plurinominal constituencies that broadly coincided with the fifty provinces, although the largest cities (Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Seville, Zaragoza, Bilbao, Malaga, and Murcia) formed separate urban constituencies. In each constituency, the researchers recall, "the seats were divided in advance into a block of majorities (approximately 80%) and a block of minorities (approximately 20%)". What does this mean? In a province with ten deputies, for example, each voter could vote for a number of candidates equal to the block of majorities – that is, eight votes out of ten possible seats–. As voters could not cover all the seats, the leading coalition was guaranteed the large block; the second-placed received the small one, regardless of how close the result was. Large parties or coalitions ran for the block of majorities – essential for accumulating enough seats to govern – and small parties for the block of minorities, although there were also alliances between large coalitions and some small parties to run separately in the two polls (it was forbidden for the same party to be part of both processes).
In 1936, the Popular Front or Left Front obtained 286 seats and, although the difference in votes was not very large, the National Counter-Revolutionary Front (right) garnered 141 deputies, due to the effect of the electoral system. With the 46 deputies obtained by other centrist or nationalist parties such as the PNV, the 473 seats of the Congress of Deputies were completed. The elections were held, in the first round, on February 16, and in the second round, on March 1, 1936.
