Meanwhile, in Catalonia and Aragón, the people saw the chance of recovering their foral rights, which were lost after the Spanish Succession War when Philip V defeated the armies that fought for Archduke Karl of Austria, the other candidate to the throne after the death of Charles II of Spain.
As Paul Johnson has written, "both royalists and liberals began to develop strong local followings, which were to perpetuate and transmute themselves, through many open commotions and deceptively tranquil intervals, until they exploded in the merciless civil war of 1936-39."[REF] .