This paper looks at the causes of rural conflict in 1930s Spain. Rather than stressing bottom-up forces of mobilisation linked to poor harvests and rural unemployment or the inability of the state to enforce reformist legislation, this paper explores the role of state policy in sorting out the...

The Spanish 2nd Republic (1931-1936) witnessed one of the fastest and deepest processes of popular mobilization in interwar Europe, generating a decisive reactionary wave that brought the country to the Civil War (1936-1939). We show in the paper that both contemporary comment and part of the...

We empirically analyze the effect of land reform on rural conflicts in 1930s Spain. This reform is a classical example of property rights reform in a developing economy. Despite its prominence, the effects on rural conflict have been elusive due to lack of hard data. We fill this gap by...