Spain spent much of the 1920s under the dictatorship of Miguel Primo de Rivera, and the economic hardships caused by the Great Depression intensified polarization within the Spanish public. Labor unrest was widespread in the early 1930s, and the election of February 16, 1936, brought to power a leftist Popular Front government. Fascist and extreme-right forces responded in July 1936 with an army mutiny and coup attempt that expanded into a civil war.
