What were the chief causes of the Spanish Civil War?

When an initial military coup failed to win control of the entire country, a bloody, violent civil war raged within its boundaries. Stretching from the northern part of Africa to the Pyrenees Mountains, the fighting led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Spaniards, who had simply fought to protect an ideal, democracy. In this essay I shall be looking at the events that slowly led up to the outbreak of the Spanish Civil …

…the Fascist-oriented Falange and the militant left-wing anarchists. Between these extremes were other groups covering the political spectrum from monarchism and conservatism through liberalism to Socialism, including a small Communist movement divided among followers of the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and his archrival Leon Trotsky. Therefore, I do not think I can solidly identify the chief causes, but merely select some of the main events which contributed to the cause of the Spanish Civil War.