As we have seen from the previous pages, the picture presented by Spain at the moment of the proclamation of the Republic was by no means a simple one. The country was split, both vertically and horizontally, into a number of mutually antagonistic sections. To begin with there were the movements for local autonomy in Catalonia and among the Basques, which were opposed by an equally intransigeant centralist block in Castile. These autonomous movements, although they had their roots deep in Spanish history, had recently taken on the character of a rebellion on the part of the industrial interests in Spain against government by landowners. Thus the revolutionary movement of 1917 had parallel aims to the English Liberal Revolution of 1832. To consider the other side, the backbone of Castilian centralism was the Army, which drew its strength from the middle-class landowners who had been the chief gainers from the abortive Liberal Revolution of the early nineteenth century. The Army naturally collected round it the other conservative forces in the country, the King and the Church, though in the latter case there was a limit to the support it would give, due to the fact that the claims of the Church were so high that no other body of opinion in the country could back them. In its own way the Army was anti-clerical. A further feature was the fronde which it carried on with the political parties, who represented exactly the same material interests and even the same families that it did itself.