The republicanising drive in the Navarre government in the early nineteen thirties.

Abstract

This article delves into the reasons underlying the republicanising strategies of the first Comisión Gestora of the Navarre Government between 1931 and 1933. Navarra was the epicentre of counter-revolutionary forces throughout the Second Republic. For the first two years (1931-32) it was governed by a management committee known as the Comisión Gestora, designated by the central government. It comprised seven members, with a core of three people (the socialist, Constantino Salinas and the Republicans, Rugino García Larrache and David Jaime Deán) that worked together for the republican cause in the province, which had unique administrative and fiscal autonomy. Encouraged by the 36% of the votes that the Socialists and Republicans together had amassed, they thought that the republic could be established in Navarre by applying initiatives regarding the communal distribution that would benefit the poorest peasants, whilst the provincial government administration could back this up with agrarian reforms driven through from Madrid. They thought that a single institutional and political system joining Navarre with the Basque provinces would be politically profitable, foreseeing a statute for this in keeping with the republican constitution.