Manuel Azaña (born January 10, 1880, Alcalá de Henares, Spain—died November 4, 1940, Montauban, France) was a Spanish minister and president of the Second Republic whose attempts to fashion a moderately liberal government were halted by the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War.
Azaña studied law in Madrid and became a civil servant, journalist, and writer, figuring prominently in Ateneo, a Madrid literary club. He 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.
In 1930 he began to organize a liberal republican party, Republican Action (Acción Republicana), in opposition to the dictatorship of General Miguel Primo de Rivera. He was one of the signatories of the Pact of San Sebastián (August 1930), an alliance of republicans, socialists, and the Catalan left that called for the abdication of King Alfonso XIII. When Alfonso left Spain after the municipal elections of April 1931, this group became the provisional government. As minister of war in the new government, Azaña drastically reduced the army establishment. During the drafting of Spain’s new constitution, he was the driving force behind 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.
Azaña held the office of prime minister until September 1933. His Republican Action was a small party, and he depended on the parliamentary support of the socialists and Catalan left for the continuation of his ministry. As prime minister, Azaña tried to enforce the progressive clauses of the new constitution, and he also pushed through a draconian Law for the Defense of the Republic (1931) and reacted harshly to opposition from the clergy, the army, monarchists, and anarchists. His severe treatment of dissent helped erode his popularity, and the slow pace of social reform alienated his socialist partners, who broke their coalition with him. He was driven from office in the autumn of 1933 by a coalition of centre and right-wing parties. In 1934 he was arrested by the centre-right government on suspicion of having abetted an uprising in Catalonia, but he was acquitted at his trial and won considerable public sympathy.
In 1935 Azaña helped form the Popular Front, a broad left-wing coalition that included liberals, socialists, and communists. In the elections of February 1936 the Azaña-led alliance was successful, and he again formed a government. When the Cortes (parliament) decided to remove President Alcalá Zamora from office, Azaña was elected to succeed him (May 1936). Azaña was meanwhile trying to prevent the left-wing parties from gaining complete control of his government, but he was able to accomplish little before a military revolt led to the outbreak of civil war in July 1936. Azaña reacted to the Nationalist uprising by appointing the moderate Diego Martínez Barrio to be prime minister. This attempt to widen support for the republican government was a failure, however, and control of policy soon passed from Azaña’s hands, though he remained in office as a figurehead. With the victory in 1939 of the Nationalist forces under General Francisco Franco, Azaña went into exile in France, where he died.