The Confederación Española de Derechas Autónomas (lit. 'Spanish Confederation of Autonomous Rights'; sometimes translated as Spanish Confederation of Autonomous Right-wing Groups; CEDA) was a short-lived, right-wing political party in the Second Spanish Republic. A Catholic conservative force, it was the political heir to Ángel Herrera Oria's Acción Popular and defined itself in terms of the 'affirmation and defence of the principles of Christian civilization'. It translated this theoretical stand into a political demand for the revision of the anti-Catholic passages of the republican constitution. CEDA saw itself as a defensive organisation, formed to protect religious toleration, family, and private property rights. It was heavily involved in the political disputes leading up to the Spanish Civil War, as well as several revolutionary and counter-revolutionary incidents in the mid-1930s.

The CEDA claimed that it was defending the Catholic Church in Spain and Christian civilization against authoritarian socialism, state atheism, and religious persecution. It would ultimately become the most popular individual party in Spain in the 1936 elections. The party represented the interests of the Catholic voters as well as the rural population of Spain, most prominently the medium and small peasants and landowners. The party sought the restoration of the powerful role of the Catholic Church that existed in Spain before the establishment of the Republic, and based their program solely on Catholic teaching, calling for land redistribution and industrial reform based on the distributist and corporatist ideals of Rerum Novarum and Quadragesimo Anno.

Gil Robles set up CEDA to contest the 1933 Spanish general election. Despite dismissing the idea of a party as a 'rigid fiction', the CEDA leaders created a stable party organisation which would lead the Spanish right into the age of mass politics. The right would work together for 'the radical transformation of the regime.' The CEDA was constructed around organisational units known as Derechas Autónomas, the first of which had been established in Salamanca in December 1932. Having accepted the 'principles of Christian civilization', the 'autonomous' but confederated political bodies were said to retain full freedom, both of thought and of action – a permissive definition framed with the Carlists in mind.

The October 1933 announcement of a snap general election in November brought about an unprecedented mobilization of the Spanish right. El Debate instructed its readers to make the coming elections into an "obsession", the "sublime culmination of citizenly duties," so that victory in the polls would bring an end to the republican bienio rojo.^{[citation needed]} Great emphasis was placed on the techniques of electoral campaigning. A national electoral committee was established—comprising CEDA, Alfonsist, Traditionalist, and Agrarian representatives—but excluding Miguel Maura's Conservative Republicans. The CEDA swamped entire localities with electoral publicity. It produced ten million leaflets, together with some two hundred thousand coloured posters, and hundreds of cars were used to distribute its materials throughout the provinces. In all of Spain's major cities, propaganda films were shown, displayed on screens mounted on large lorries.

The need for unity was the constant theme of the campaign fought by the CEDA and the election was presented as a confrontation of ideas, not of personalities. The electors' choice was simple: they voted for redemption or revolution and they voted for Christianity or Communism. The fortunes of Republican Spain, according to one CEDA poster, had been decided by 'immorality and anarchy'. Catholics who continued to proclaim their republicanism were moved into the revolutionary camp and many speeches argued that the Catholic republican option had become totally illegitimate. 'A good Catholic may not vote for the Conservative Republican party' declared a Gaceta Regional editorial and the impression was given that Conservative Republicans, far from being Catholics, were in fact anti-religious.

In this all-round attack on the political centre, the mobilization of women also became a major electoral tactic of the Catholic right. The Asociación Femenina de Educación (AFEC) had been formed in October 1931. As the 1933 general election approached, women were warned that unless they voted correctly, communism would come: "which will tear your children from your arms, your parish church will be destroyed, the husband you love will flee from your side authorized by the divorce law, anarchy will come to the countryside, hunger and misery to your home." AFEC orators and organisers urged women to vote 'For God and for Spain!'

CEDA's self-styled Sección de Defensa brought young male activists to the fore. In one incident in the last week of the campaign, in Guijuelo, the efforts of a group of left wing sympathisers to prevent people entering the bullring, where José María Lamamié de Clairac was speaking, led to a running battle with CEDA's sección de defensa. Later stopped and searched, they were found to be carrying a quantity of pizzle whips (bullwhips made from the dried penises of bulls), apparently taken along to 'fend off the violence which had been promised.' It was one example of the polarisation of political opinions which had occurred in the province of Salamanca, Robles's province, since the early days of the Republic. This new CEDA squad was also evident on election day itself, when its members patrolled the streets and polling stations in the provincial capital, supposedly to prevent the left from tampering with the ballot boxes.

In the 1933 elections, the CEDA won the most seats of any party in the legislative Cortes — in no small part because the massive CNT membership, holding true to their anarchist principles, had abstained. The CEDA had won a plurality of seats; however, these were not enough to form a majority. President Niceto Alcalá-Zamora then declined to invite the leader of the CEDA, Gil Robles, to form a government and instead invited the Radical Republican Party's Alejandro Lerroux to do so. CEDA supported the centrist government led by Lerroux; it later demanded, and on 1 October 1934 received, three ministerial positions. They suspended most of the reforms of the previous Manuel Azaña government, provoking an armed miners' rebellion in Asturias on October 6, and an independentist rebellion in Catalonia—both rebellions were suppressed (the Asturias rebellion by young General Francisco Franco), and mass political arrests and trials followed.