The final crisis of Primo de Rivera’s dictatorship caused the fall of the monarchy, which was too closely identified with the dictatorship to be able to survive it. The Republic was declared on 14 April 1931. Esquerra Republican de Catalunya (ERC - Republican Left of Catalonia), a new political party, became dominant in Catalan politics. Its leaders included Francesc Macià, from the nationalist tendency, and Lluís Companys, whose political views were informed by left-wing republicanism. The Republic enabled the Generalitat to be re-established and it approved an Estatut d’Autonomia (Statute of Self-government) with wide powers. The radicalisation of social and political conflicts in the international context of the rise of fascism, caused wide social polarisation in Catalonia and throughout Spain, culminating in the failure of republican reformism.
