Seminar paper from the year 2008 in the subject History of Europe - Newer History, European Unification, grade: 1,0, University of Flensburg (Institut für Management), course: Europäische Geschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts, language: English, abstract: The First Spanish Republic was founded in 1873. Its establishment began to launch tendencies in the Spanish concept of the state, which along with other causes, would later culminate in the Civil War of 1936. There were several reasons for the war, many of them long-term tensions that had escalated over the years. For the social and ideological arena, the years after 1931 were a continuous competition between a catholic-conservative right, a civic-liberal middle-class and an anarchic-secular left; at the international level, the Spanish fights were part of the general European contention of democracy, fascism and communism. In this paper I would like to discuss the events that led to the establishment of the fascist regime of Francisco Franco that lasted from 1939 - 1975. Section 2 of the text will briefly summarize the political and social developments in Spain from 1923 to 1939 including the dictatorship of Primo de Riviera and the Second Republic that followed and was governed by a coalition of the left and the center. In section three, I will focus on the Spanish Civil War and Francos rise to power, furthermore Francos dictatorship and resistance movements against the regime will be examined. Section four concludes.