The Grupo de Acción Republicana —initially called Grupo de Acción Política and also known simply as Acción Republicana — was a Spanish political group that emerged around 1925, during the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera. Its ideology consisted basically in the intention of replacing the monarchy of Alfonso XIII with a republican regime, while maintaining a great internal pluralism in other matters. It promoted the creation of the Republican Alliance to unite the different forces of this tendency, and supported on a secondary level the different pronunciamientos that tried to put an end to the Dictatorship. After the fall of Primo de Rivera, it participated in the attempts to form a unitary front that culminated in the Pact of San Sebastián. After the coalition thus formed failed in its attempt to end the monarchy by means of a military pronunciamiento, it participated in the Republican-Socialist Conjunction, a coalition that triumphed in the main cities in the municipal elections of April 1931, the result of which produced the proclamation of the Second Republic. It formed part of the first Provisional Government presided over by Alcalá-Zamora, in which its representative, the Minister of the Army Manuel Azaña, distinguished himself by promoting various reforms. Finally, at the end of May 1931, it became a political party under the name of Acción Republicana.

The Dictablanda of Dámaso Berenguer, or Dámaso Berenguer's dictatorship was the final period of the Spanish Restoration and of King Alfonso XIII’s reign. This period saw two different governments: Dámaso Berenguer’s government, formed in January 1930 with the goal of reestablishing “constitutional normalcy” following Primo de Rivera’s dictatorship, and President Juan Bautista Aznar’s government, formed a year later. The latter paved the way to the proclamation of the Second Spanish Republic. The term dictablanda was used by the press to refer to the ambivalence of Berenguer’s government, which neither continued the model of the former dictatorship nor did it fully reestablish the 1876 Constitution.