The newly established republic in the years before the war was a system where a so called "old spain" lost its power to "new spain." The Civil War was an effect of the unwillingness of "old Spain" to recede from the political scene. A main cause of the Civil War, then, was not (as it usually is) an emergence of a new social and economic class but the unwillingness of the traditional aristocracy, land owners, "old" army and the church to allow such modern political ideals to run the government. Furthermore, the new republic before the war supported a wide spectrum of modern political ideals which seemed to disagree on whether the republic was a means to achieve a more extreme goal, whether the republic was a satisfactory achievement of liberal aims or whether the republic was inadequate and needed to be replaced with a more extreme, authoritarian government. Moreover, "new Spain" seemed to be divided in aims but certainly was united in the fact that they bitterly opposed what "old Spain" stood for and vice versa. In effect, we can notice a see-sawing in decision making and policy in the years before the civil war between conservative reforms/laws and liberal reforms/laws which only served to aggravate those who wanted stability, which was pretty much everyone. Finally, the element of regionalism contributed to tensions within Spain in that both Catalonia and the Basque regions seemed to have a quite separate identities from Spain and were not in line with the spanish system.
             Spain had a highly polarized political system. The constituents of old Spain were in direct opposition with those of new spain. Conservative forces included the aristocracy of spain, wealthy land owners, the prestigious army and the church. These forces stood against liberalism and democracy. Opposition included pretty much everyone who did not belong in that category and included anarchists, s...