On January 8, 1933, in the village of Casas Viejas in Cádiz province, Andalusia, Spanish Civil Guard forces brutally suppressed an anarchist uprising, killing at least 24 people and burning several homes. The massacre occurred when anarchist campesinos declared libertarian communism and were met with overwhelming government force. The event became a cause célèbre for the Spanish left and a symbol of the Republic's failure to protect its most vulnerable citizens, deeply damaging the credibility of Manuel Azaña's government.

The Casas Viejas massacre became a touchstone for Spanish poets and intellectuals committed to social justice. Rafael Alberti and other Republican poets wrote denunciations of the atrocity in verse, framing it as evidence of the Republic's betrayal of its own ideals. The event sharpened the political consciousness of a generation of writers who would later take up arms in the civil war.