I am going to say no, but I am not qualified to give you a real answer. Instead, I am just going to point you to a number of previous discussions which I think you will find interesting, and through which you might be able to piece together an answer.

The Spanish Civil War AMA

What is Fascism? (u/depanneur)

Why Republican Spain lost so bad in the Spanish Civil War? (u/crrpit)

I've read that Anarchist forces during the Spanish Civil War were fully democratic, with promotions and even orders being decided by direct vote among each unit. Is this true? And how did this affect their performance on the field of battle?

Especially the first two I think you will find applicable and interesting.

What a fun question! The answer, as with any sufficiently fun question, is ‘it depends’.

But depends on what? Democracy versus fascism was far from an uncommon way of framing the conflict, both at the time and ever since, which lends some credence to it being a useful way to approach historical understandings of the war and its meanings. Importantly, though, this framework was used exclusively by the domestic and foreign supporters of the Republic. While certainly not necessarily a cynical formulation – for many Republicans, this was an entirely logical and straightforward way to view the conflict – it is not a coincidence that this was also a formulation that would appeal to potentially supporters in Western nations, who were broadly pro-democracy and anti-fascist. The continued use of such terminology in Spanish and other contexts reflects the enduring power of this framework to mobilise support for the cause. Their opponents tried to do much the same thing – framing the conflict as being about Christian civilisation defending itself against atheism, communism, anarchy and, weirdly, freemasonry. So, by adopting a ‘democracy against fascism’ framework, we are looking at the conflict through an implicitly pro-Republican lens.

This, of course, doesn’t mean that it’s wrong, although as historians we certainly need to be critical of the implications, and try to question the assumptions it brings. From here, then, I’ll try and give an overview of the extent that the framework holds up to scrutiny.

So, to start with, was the Spanish Republic ‘democratic’? Let’s assume we’re talking about democracy in a liberal, parliamentary sense – different political groups at the time had very different ideas about what constituted democracy, but we’ll keep it simple here. There are still two parts to this question – was the Republic a democracy prior to the civil war (ie 1931-36), and did it stay a democracy during the conflict? The first answer, I would argue, is a qualified ‘yes’. The Republic saw several widely contested, broadly fair elections based on universal suffrage held during its short existence, all of which led to a change of government. So, there was a meaningful democratic process in which most of Spanish society took part. Yet Spanish democracy, as with all democracies, was also not perfect. I don’t want to get bogged down in the origins of the Republic itself, but the process of its founding was constitutionally murky, the result of municipal elections held in early 1931 that were unofficially held to be an effective plebiscite on the Spanish monarchy. Republican parties dominated the urban centres but secured less than half the overall vote (c. 40%), which was nonetheless considered a strong mandate as rural elections were generally considered to be rigged by local landowners. The Republic was declared in the major cities. The king, Alfonso XIII, went into exile but never abdicated. The rather informal nature of the process was used by Francoists to retrospectively justify the coup in July 1936 – their actions were justified as the Republic had never actually been the legitimate government of Spain (read more here). This, I and most sensible historians would argue, was pure sophistry, a transparent and flagrant attempt to justify starting a civil war, but it was building on a longer critique of the Republican system.

Aside from its slightly unusual origins, what about the democratic basis of the Republic after 1931? Here as well, there are some important question marks. The electoral system was notably unbalanced – small victories in terms of the popular vote could translate into very large parliamentary majorities. More subjectively, there’s an argument to be made that neither the Spanish right nor left ever fully accepted a liberal democratic system. For the Spanish right, the Republic’s legitimacy was always contested, with various groups privately or even openly advocating for its overthrow (including, in 1932, an attempted military coup). For the left, not only were there sizeable revolutionary movements for whom liberal democracy was, at best, a momentary phase on the road to a workers’ state, but even more moderate Republicans saw the Republic itself as a progressive project, designed to create a secular, reformist state that would modernise Spain in line with European norms. The idea that the left might lose an election – as they did in 1933 – and the right could then dismantle many of these reforms was not seen as the natural consequence of the democratic process, but as undermining the Republic itself. The new right-wing government’s reforms met with substantial resistance, with widespread strikes eventually culminating in an attempted insurrection in the mining region of Asturias in 1934, which was eventually brutally crushed by the military using colonial troops. Wherever one’s sympathies lie, neither side was operating within what might be considered liberal democratic norms. The next two years saw ongoing political violence instigated by both left and right wing factions, costing hundreds of lives and naturally affecting the extent to which elections could be free and fair in a local sense.

The election victory of the Popular Front (a left-wing coalition encompassing parties from communists to moderate Republicans) in February 1936 did not stop this cycle. Typically for the Republican electoral system, a relatively small margin of victory in terms of votes had led to a massive parliamentary majority for the left, with the socialist party and liberal Republicans the main beneficiaries in terms of seats (you can read more about the political composition of the Popular Front government here). This, too, would be a weapon used by the Nationalists (combined with allegations of electoral fraud) to delegitimise the Republican government during the civil war. In any case, right-wing political and military leaders began plotting to overthrow the government soon after the Popular Front victory, but it was not until mid-1936 that plotters managed to make decisive headway in developing support in the armed forces, many of whom were reluctant to act against the government absent a revolutionary threat to the established order. However, the murder of José Calvo Sotelo, a prominent right-wing politician, itself in retaliation for the assassination of a socialist-aligned officer in the Assault Guards (a paramilitary police force, the urban equivalent of the Civil Guard), was the catalyst that convinced a substantial body of opinion in the military that Spain was descending into chaos, requiring the military to step in and restore order. For our purposes here, the kind of tit-for-tat, extrajudicial killings that precipitated the coup are indicative of considerable problems with Spanish democracy, though it’s important to note that the plot itself was gestating long before this particular pretext was provided.

Broadly speaking though, despite these problems it’s hard to deny that the Spanish government, on the eve of the coup, had been democratically elected. Did the Republican Government remain ‘democratic’ during the civil war? There is little doubt that fighting the civil war placed huge pressures on Republican institutions, not just the usual compromises entailed by mobilising society to fight a war, but also from the growing strength of political groupings who did not adhere to liberal democratic principles. In regions such as Catalonia, with strong Anarchist movements, attempts were made to collectivise industry and agriculture. The Communist Party, which thanks to foreign patronage and effective domestic maneuvering grew much stronger during the conflict, did not pursue an immediate revolutionary agenda, but did act to suppress rivals (most famously the POUM in Barcelona, as chronicled by Orwell) and clamp down on perceived enemies within, both as part of the growing Republican state security apparatus, and in cooperation with Soviet intelligence, who for a time was running its own prisons in Spanish territory. That’s without touching on widespread political and anti-clerical violence in Republican territory in the first months of the war. Paranoia regarding political enemies within (the ‘fifth column’) had very real consequences, leading to the growth in internal security measures and the suppression of political dissent.

(continued below)

Though all the democrats were with the Second Spanish Republic and all the fascists with the Nacionales I'm afraid it was considerably more complicated than that. To context and backdrop!

Spain oft had a weaker national identity and more tumultuous internal politcs than most of its European neighbors (and still does to a degree, see Catalan and Basque separatism) and this was as true as ever in the troubled century preceding the civil war. The Napoleonic occupation weakened Spain to the point it lost the majority of its colonial empire in a series of wars of independence, its ruling Bourbon dynasty was replaced deposed and restored, and its many experiments in constitutionalism had always been met with severe reactionary movements, most of them violent. The spirit of the time was political chaos and social upheaval, and Spain was intractably divided along multitudinous internal lines.

This state of affairs takes us until 1923, when, in a precursor to the civil war, there was a military coup d'etat that established a military dictatorship for just under a decade. Ultimately Spain's many constitutional forces, with the tepid support of the monarchy, forced an end to the dictatorship and the establishment of The Second Spanish Republic.

Alas The Second Spanish Republic proved no more capable of establishing order than any of its democratic or royal predecessors. It came under fierce attack from reactionary conservatism for its socially liberal reforms, from the Church (which was still a very significant power in the Spanish nation in a way it no longer was in most Western European countries) after a spate of anti-Catholic violence and legislation, and finally from anarchists and communists as the Republic often brutally repressed those organizations when they engaged in civil disobedience by ordering strikes and protests and the like.

Under attack from both the left and the right the center could not hold, and it did not. Under the leadership of a cabal of army generals (which ironically did not initially include Francisco Franco) the nationalist forces, or Nacionales, instigated a nationwide rebellion in which conservative, Catholic, fascist, and royalist groups united to oppose the "red hordes" threatening Spanish civilization. The Republic fought back, with democratic forces assisted by socialist, anarchist, and communist groups. The former and still latent hostility between many of these Republican forces ensured they would never be as united as the rebels, and indeed as the war progressed there would come to be serious infighting amongst the Republican factions.

The struggle quickly became in part a proxy war, with Franco seeking and receiving direct military support from the other fascist powers of Italy and Germany, and the communist elements of the Republican forces receiving aid from the Soviet Union. The Western democracies committed themselves to non-interventionism and remained neutral throughout the struggle.

The war, of course, ended in victory for the Nacionales and the establishment of Franco's fascist dictatorship. But I hope I've illustrated three facets, that describing the struggle solely as fascism vs democracy is grossly reductive as both sides consisted of a plurality of factions, most of which were neither democratic nor fascist, and autochthonous issues like anti-clericalism were far more important to the rightist forces than any kind of international fascist ideology. Secondly that even when viewed as a proxy conflict between the great powers the struggle would more accurately be labeled as fascism vs communism than fascism vs democracy. The final hoped for takeaway that the civil divisions that erupted into those three years of violence long predated Mussolini's Fasci Italiani di Combattimento or the ideological divides of 1930s Europe.

One way in which it could, although I highly disagree with just the general statement that is was, is looking at popular perception. There is a number of accounts of people leaving Wales to volunteer their services to the International Brigades in order to fight a war that they thought was pertinent in defending democracy from fascism in Spain. You could read Francis, Hywel, Miners Against Fascism: Wales and the Spanish Civil War for the example of Harry Stratton, a Swansea taxi driver who leaves his pregnant wife in the middle of the night to catch a train with some of his old friends who suggest they go to Spain to fight during the war (Its a very sad story in the end if you do end up looking up this example). There is a caveat that the Cardiff Communist branch gave Stratton assurances that he would be paid for his volunteering and his family would be looked after during his service, but it definitely highlights the perception that for the common person in Britain, the war was very much seen as democracy vs. fascism. Moreover if you have a look at Haigh, R. H., D. S. Morris and A. R. Peters (eds.), The Guardian Book of the Spanish Civil War, this is a curated collection of newspaper articles relating to the war from the Manchester Guardian on the coverage of the Spanish Civil War, you will find that the contemporary media actively portrayed the conflict in the manner of a war for the future of democracy.

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Other books on Wales and the Spanish Civil War:

Mehta, John D., 'Forgotten Names, Remembered Faces - The Bookshop Manager', in The Spanish Civil War: Exhuming a Buried Past, ed. by Anindya Raychaudhuri

Stradling, Rob, Cardiff and the Spanish Civil War

Stradling, Rob, Wales and the Spanish Civil War: The Dragon's Dearest Cause?