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Spain, a traditional stronghold of the Catholic Church, feudal empire, and conservatism, faced a crossroads in the Second Republic, inaugurated in 1931, between the forces of conservatism and liberalism, revolution and reaction, nationalism and internationalism, socialism and capitalism. The debate was a polarized one, with a tendency towards extremes among all ideological groups, eventually leading to the outbreak of civil war in July 1936. Communists, Socialists and Liberal Republicans all fought against the rise of reactionary dictatorship in Spain, but it was the Anarchists alone who looked to carry out a grassroots social revolution. While the other major players in the Popular Front fought for control of the government in order to impose their ideology upon society, the Anarchists openly waged a peasant and working-class revolution, intending to establish a revolutionary anarchist society, a mission they actually accomplished for a time in places such as the countryside of Valencia and Aragón, after the outbreak of the civil war.