utbreak of the Civil War. The Basques had always considered themselves to be a separate nation. The region had its own language, culture, traditional laws and style of government, and its people looked to the Republic to reintroduce the autonomy that had previously existed. The main Basque Nationalist Party was founded in 1895 and enjoyed popular support in the Basque region. Like the Basques, the Catalans thought of themselves as separate from Spain. They too had a language and culture of their own, and expected to gain autonomy when the Republic was founded. The main Catalan political parties were the ERC, which was a Left Republican nationalist party founded in 1931, and the PSUC, which was formed in 1936 from several Socialist and Communist groups.
             The PCE was founded in 1921. Due to the strength of the Socialist, Anarcho-Syndicalist and Marxist movements in Spain, the Spanish Communist Party was small; it was also very efficient and had the support of Stalinist Russia. This ended up being significant as the Civil War progressed; as the other political parties declined in power the Communists exerted more and more influence, especially in the Armed Forces. The revolutionary anti-Stalinist Marxist Party, the POUM, was formed in 1935 as the result of the merger of the BOC, led by Joaquin Maurin, and Izquierda Comunista (Left Communist Party), led by Andres Nin. The two main republican parties were founded in 1934. They were the Izquierda Republicana (Left Republican Party), which was formed from four smaller left-wing social-democratic groups, and the Union Republicana (Republican Union Party), which had broken away from the Partido Republicano Radical (Radical Party)*1. The Socialists were the most powerful left-wing political force in Spain before the Civil War. The Spanish Socialist Workers Party, the PSOE, was founded in 1879; it was supported by the Socialist Trades Union, the UGT, and the Socialist Youth Movement...