Читать книгу A People Betrayed - Paul Preston - Страница 18

Already weakened by disorder in Barcelona, the credibility of the establishment was rocked by the overwhelming defeat of Spanish forces by Moroccan tribesmen at Annual in June 1921. Hostilities had broken out in 1919 after a lengthy period of inaction occasionally interrupted by skirmishes. Peace had been maintained largely by a culture of bribing tribal chieftains which fostered venality and complacence among the Spanish officer corps. While there was no fighting, there was gambling, recourse to prostitutes and dubious moneymaking schemes. These ranged from selling equipment to the tribesmen, via charging the government for the wages of fictitious native mercenaries, to conspiring with local tradesmen to cheat on materials used for road-building projects.1 When systematic local resistance by the indigenous population began, the Spanish occupying forces were as poorly armed and trained as they had been in 1909. The most threatening rebellion was led by El Raisuni, the charismatic bandit chief of the Beni-Aros kabila (tribe) and leader of the Berbers of the north-western area of Jibala.2

The colonial occupiers were vulnerable because they held some important towns but little of their hinterland. The towns were linked by chains of wooden blockhouses, garrisoned by platoons of twenty-one men who lived in appallingly isolated conditions and whose morale was undermined by the uncertainty of the arrival of water, food and firewood every few days. The senseless loss of life saw popular hostility in Spain intensify and Madrid ever more reluctant to sink resources into a colonial war. The government had no stomach for anything beyond action in the immediate area around the two coastal enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla. This led to a deep division between politicians opting for a defensive policy of guarding the towns and the Africanist officer corps anxious to see the full-scale occupation of the Rif. Things improved in late 1919 when a new High Commissioner, General Dámaso Berenguer, began a long-term policy of slow occupation, fanning out from Ceuta. Part of his strategy was a commitment to pacifying the colony by means of negotiation with the tribes.3

One of his policy’s greatest triumphs was the occupation, on 14 October 1920, of El Raisuni’s headquarters, the picturesque mountain town of Xauen, the ‘Sacred City’. However, the basic problem of controlling the marauding tribes between Xauen and Tetuán in the north and El Araich (Larache) to the west involved a ruinously expensive policing operation. Among those officers who thought that the answer was rapid full-scale occupation was Berenguer’s friend the hotheaded Commander-in-Chief, General Manuel Fernández Silvestre. He was a favourite of Alfonso XIII, who encouraged his foolhardy temerity.4 While Berenguer concentrated on squeezing El Raisuni’s territory in the west, the impetuous Silvestre engaged in a more ambitious, indeed reckless, campaign in early 1921, moving swiftly westward from Melilla to occupy Monte Arruit (Al Aaroui) 40 kilometres to the south. This advance into inaccessible and hostile territory brought him into conflict with Abd el-Krim, the aggressive leader of the Beni-Urriaguel kabila of the Rif, who had begun to unify the other Berber tribes of that mountain region. In the third week of July 1921, Abd el-Krim inflicted a massive defeat on Silvestre’s forces near Melilla.5

Beginning at the village of Annual, position after position fell in a domino effect over a period of three weeks, which saw the Spanish occupation rolled back as far as Melilla itself. As the Spanish troops fled, enthusiastic tribesmen joined the revolt. Garrison after garrison was slaughtered. The deficiencies of the poorly fed and equipped Spanish forces were brutally exposed.6 Those deficiencies are all the more shocking given that in 1921 the military budget absorbed more than 35 per cent of the total budget of the state. The inefficiency of national politics was matched by the military inefficiency reflected in the excessive, indeed macrocephalic, size of the officer corps in relation both to the numbers of rank-and-file troops and to Spain’s realistic military needs and capacity. There were more generals and fewer artillery pieces per 1,000 men than in the armies of Rumania, Montenegro or Portugal. There was an officer for every four rank-and-file soldiers. Accordingly, 70 per cent of the total military budget was absorbed by officers’ salaries, ensuring that equipment was not modernized.7

Spain’s long war in Morocco was of benefit only to those who had business interests in the protectorate, not least Alfonso XIII. The corollary of that was the undermining of social support for the monarchy. Hostility to the African adventure intensified popular hostility not only to the army but to all the institutions of the Restoration system.8 The local tribes had been provoked by the brutality of the occupiers and now there were horrific revenge massacres at outposts near Melilla, Dar Drius, Monte Arruit and Nador. Within a few weeks, more than 9,000 Spanish soldiers had died and huge quantities of war materiel were lost. Silvestre was thought to have committed suicide. The tribesmen were on the outskirts of a panic-stricken Melilla. However, too preoccupied with looting, they failed to capture it, unaware that the town was virtually undefended.9 Over the next two years, the territory was clawed back but the question was now starkly posed – withdrawal or occupation?

The murder of Dato had seen the return to power, on 13 March, of Manuel Allendesalazar, at the head of a hard-line coalition determined to put an end to the anarchist threat. However, within three months the disaster of Annual, blamed on the incompetence of his cabinet, particularly of the Minister of War, the Vizconde de Eza, exacerbated the crisis of the Restoration system. While near civil war raged in the streets of Barcelona, a deeply damaging national controversy began over the issue of responsibility for Annual. The Africanistas blamed the government for failing to commit enough funds for an efficient war. The left blamed the King and the army high command for its incompetence.10 In desperation, Alfonso XIII turned again to Maura. Maura had long since abandoned his grand ambition of reforming the Restoration system and was deeply reluctant to return to active politics. He did so only because he felt that the monarchy was under threat and so reconciled himself to being the fireman of the system. He faced considerable difficulty in forming a government not least because of the mutual hostility of the followers of Dato and of La Cierva. Even greater was the mutual antipathy between the fiercely anti-Catalanist La Cierva and Cambó. In consequence, Maura’s oddly assorted cabinet, including La Cierva as Minister of War and Cambó as Minister of Finance, was not settled until 14 August.11

In fact, the defeat in an already deeply unpopular colonial war had unleashed a wave of public hostility against both the King and the dynastic parties. It was popularly believed that Alfonso XIII had specifically encouraged Silvestre in his disastrous advance. The Moroccan situation saw successive governments faced with considerable economic demands.12 In addition, the defeat intensified the divisions between the Junteros and the Africanistas. The consequent instability would conclude only with the establishment of a military dictatorship in September 1923.13

Maura was confronted by a daunting range of pre-existing problems: working-class discontent and subversion, particularly in Barcelona, the Catalan question and the profound economic difficulties following the end of the world war, all exacerbated by the Moroccan disaster. The cost of the military adventure had to be met and the responsibilities for it confronted. Maura wrote to his son on 26 August 1921: ‘We shall see how long the wedding cake lasts. It will last as long as we don’t squander with our mistakes the overwhelming weight of opinion currently running in our favour and divert it towards those who would be delighted to see the government have a spectacular failure.’ Until October 1921, he governed with the Cortes closed. Nevertheless, over the following months, he achieved considerable practical success. In military terms, the territory lost in July 1921 was soon reconquered. As Minister of Finance, Cambó had reformed the banking system.14 Moreover, the wave of left-wing opposition had been calmed by one of the Vizconde de Eza’s last and most efficacious acts. Eza’s principal concern had been to prove that he was not to be blamed for the debacle and, on 4 August 1921, he had appointed the sixty-four-year-old General Juan Picasso González to head an inquiry into the responsibilities for Annual. The much decorated General was uncle to the artist Pablo Picasso.15

There was generalized support for the massive revenge campaign that saw the recovery of the territory lost after Annual. The sight of masses of corpses of hideously tortured Spanish soldiers triggered vengeance of untrammelled savagery. The brutalization of the officer corps would be visited on the Spanish left during the civil war.16 There was disagreement over Cambó’s ambitious economic reform plans, although the central preoccupation was the reconquest of the Moroccan colony. Cambó clashed constantly with La Cierva who, with the encouragement of the King, pursued policies of ingratiation with the army as well as supporting the Unión Monárquica Nacional. Such was the tension between La Cierva and Cambó and indeed between La Cierva and other ministers that the government fell in the second week of March 1922.17 In the hope of preventing Maura from resigning, Alfonso XIII had proposed, via Cambó, that the two should form a new government and rule by decree. Maura refused on grounds of age, saying ‘It’s already too late for me.’18

Maura was replaced by José Sánchez Guerra. Sánchez Guerra’s government lived in dread of the impending Picasso report on the responsibility for the Moroccan disaster. The Socialist Indalecio Prieto had travelled to North Africa on 24 August 1921 and toured the area indefatigably for seven weeks interviewing survivors, accompanying the troops, witnessing the most gruesome sights. His series of twenty-eight vividly written articles about conditions after Annual, published in El Liberal between 30 August and 18 October, constituted the first reliable account of the magnitude of the disaster. Written with objectivity and some sympathy for the military on the ground, the articles were widely reproduced by other newspapers. Prieto also made resounding speeches in the Cortes that, together with the articles, had a massive impact.19

When the Cortes debate began as a result of the official inquiry led by General Picasso, there were broadly three approaches. The government of Sánchez Guerra wanted to limit responsibilities to the military high command in Morocco. The first casualty within the high command was General Berenguer, who resigned as High Commissioner on 10 July 1922 and was replaced by General Ricardo Burguete.20 The Liberals wanted to widen the issue to include the Allendesalazar government in power at the time of Annual. Prieto and the Socialists, however, wanted to go further and implicate the King.21 Prieto took the lead with several powerful speeches in the Cortes, the first of which was delivered eight days after his return from Morocco. The Picasso report exposed the incompetence and corruption within the high command in relation to the disappearance of funds and the sale of food supplies to hotels and restaurants and of weaponry to the enemy. The issue went further in that the financial interests of the Spanish oligarchy in terms of mining, electricity and railways as well as shipping were protected by the army without any particular benefit to the nation. The military high command were involved in corrupt relations with the economic interests that they protected.22 This was hardly new. For years, corruption had been denounced by the left-wing press, particularly in La Lucha, the newspaper of the Partit Republicà Català, which had been founded in 1917 by Marcelino Domingo, Lluís Companys and Francesc Layret.23 Nevertheless, for the Picasso report to bring the matter to national prominence and in a way that demanded action constituted a bombshell.

In Melilla, large-scale funding for roads, for barracks and for equipment disappeared into the pockets of the colonels and generals. There were cases where money requisitioned for the bribery of non-existent Berber chieftains had been pocketed. These devices, together with large-scale selling of weaponry by senior officers, saw the accumulation of considerable fortunes. In the same way as underpaid government officials depended on bribes, lower-rank officers traded in army supplies of soap, building materials, food and arms and ammunition. It was discovered that, in just one ordnance depot, 77 million pesetas had been spent without any plausible account appearing on the books. Officers and their wives bartered guns and ammunition for fresh vegetables in the market places of the protectorate. Rank-and-file soldiers were often the victims in terms of poor-quality food and equipment. Indeed, they were often forced to go barefoot. Even more scandalous was the appalling state of military hospitals where the lack of pharmaceuticals was notorious. The military monopoly on all aspects of the colonial administration meant that contracts for garrison construction were often given to relatives of officers. Private individuals who wished to build houses were obliged to employ military engineers, who charged exorbitant fees for their work. While the corruption of the politicians could occasionally be reported in the press, the Law of Jurisdictions made it dangerous to comment on military misdeeds.24

Prieto’s devastating oratory had a huge national impact. Speaking of the ‘putrefaction’ of Melilla, he highlighted government incompetence, military corruption and the atrocities committed against the Moroccan population by officers of the African Army, especially the frequency with which women were raped. He declared: ‘Melilla is a brothel and a den of thieves.’ He accused La Cierva – who had put obstacles in the way of Prieto’s tour of Morocco – of so favouring the Juntas as to undermine military efficiency. He condemned the government for not issuing figures for the number of dead, which he put at 8,000. When seeking to allocate responsibility, he blamed the King for encouraging Silvestre and denounced ‘this wretched reign’. He ended with the damning words: ‘Those fields of colonial dominion are now fields of death; eight thousand corpses are gathered on the steps of the throne to demand justice.’25 Eventually, Picasso’s report would put the casualties at more than 13,000.

An indication of the scale of the corruption can be seen in the considerable fortune that Santiago Alba made in 1921 while he was Foreign Minister, with the help of Juan March, from the sale of weaponry to the Moroccan rebels. The arms were transported from Dutch and Portuguese ports and from Gibraltar. At the time, the Compañía Transmediterránea, of which March was one of the major shareholders, had the monopoly of troop and materiel transport for the North African coast for the duration of the war.26 Military corruption was not confined to the Moroccan colony. Niceto Alcalá-Zamora, who was Liberal Minister of War in 1923, discovered that the quartermasters’ corps (Intendencia) was involved in a massive swindle involving invented purchases of flour.27

Despite being preoccupied with establishing responsibility for Annual, Sánchez Guerra had embarked on a conciliatory social policy. To the fury of the Catalan industrialists, and even more so of Martínez Anido, he restored constitutional guarantees and opened the way to the legalization of the CNT. In fact, this coincided with a move to greater moderation within the CNT. A delegation was sent to Martínez Anido to request the reopening of workers’ centres and the legalization of trade unions. He responded violently: ‘I shit on Sánchez Guerra’s order to restore constitutional guarantees. Here in Barcelona and its province, I’m in charge, not him. Get out of my sight immediately if you don’t want a hard time.’ With so many senior figures either dead or imprisoned, the leadership was in flux and Martínez Anido’s response strengthened the more radical elements. Among the new figures there was intense enthusiasm for the Russian revolution and consequently a bitter conflict over the relationship of the CNT to the Comintern.28

The Secretary General of the CNT Evelio Boal López had been arrested in March 1921 and subsequently murdered by the police in a demonstration of the ley de fugas. Boal had been replaced by a young journalist, Andreu Nin. His sympathy for the Comintern was matched by that of Joaquín Maurín, who become leader of the CRT Federation in Lleida in April 1921. Nin was born in 1892 in El Vendrell in the province of Tarragona where he had been a pupil of the cellist Pau Casals. Maurín was born in 1896 in the tiny village of Bonansa in the province of Huesca. It had been decided in April 1921 to send a small CNT delegation to the inaugural congress of the Red International of Labour Unions (Krasnyi Internatsional Profsoyuzov, or Profintern) that took place in Moscow in July 1921. The visit confirmed Nin and Maurín in their view that the CNT should join the Comintern. Nin remained in Russia and eventually became a close collaborator of Trotsky. Maurín returned to Catalonia and replaced Nin as Secretary General of the CRT but faced a wave of hostility to the idea of adherence to the Comintern. However, he was arrested in February 1922.29 The resurgence of the more moderate elements was confirmed at the Congress of Zaragoza on 11–12 June 1922. Ángel Pestaña had visited the Soviet Union in 1920 and returned deeply disillusioned. He had been arrested immediately on arrival in Spain and was therefore unable to put his views to the organization. Now, he and Seguí argued successfully against joining the Profintern. They both felt that it was important to reunite the anarchist movement and to seek legality. They were even ready to cooperate with liberal political groups. The moderate syndicalist Joan Peiró replaced Maurín.30

Both Martínez Anido and the employers’ organizations, ‘the Patronal’, were dismayed by the re-emergence of the CNT, which they blamed for the more liberal policies of Sánchez Guerra. However, the triumph of the trade union wing of the CNT was, thanks to the Civil Governor’s intransigence, paralleled by a resurgence of pistolerismo by the action groups. Needless to say, the Libres were not slow to retaliate. From March to October 1922, the Libres carried out eight assassinations and the anarchists five. Martínez Anido was engaging in a deliberate provocation to build up opposition to Sánchez Guerra. Criticism of the Libres in the Cortes by Indalecio Prieto saw the group’s deputy leader, Juan Laguía Lliteras, travel to Madrid and, on 16 May, physically attack the Socialist deputy. On 7 August, Martínez Anido made a token offer of resignation which, under threats from Primo de Rivera and demonstrations of support from industrialists’ organizations, Sánchez Guerra was obliged to refuse.31

Some weeks later, the Civil Governor was outraged to learn that Pestaña was going to make a speech in Manresa. On 25 August, Pestaña was waylaid by a gang of gunmen including Laguía Lliteras. The operation was ordered by Martínez Anido and financed by Muntadas. Pestaña was badly wounded, with one of the bullets puncturing a lung. He was laid up for two months during which time Arlegui had the Libres send another squad to surround the hospital with a view to finishing him off. In local brothels, they boasted about their intentions. The left and liberal press reported the case and Prieto delivered protests in the Cortes. Sánchez Guerra, more to prevent a scandal than to save Pestaña’s life, instructed the Minister of the Interior, Vicente Piniés, to send Civil Guards to guard the hospital. He also ordered Martínez Anido to report daily on Pestaña’s health. Nothing was done to arrest the Libre hit squad.32

There were several unsuccessful efforts by anarchist action groups to kill Martínez Anido. The most elaborate was actually a trap set up by the police. In the hope of justifying a massacre of anarchist militants, Arlegui commissioned the agent provocateur Inocencio Feced and Pere Mártir Homs, a labour lawyer on his payroll, to mount a fake assassination attempt on Martínez Anido. According to Ricardo Sanz, it was Homs who had organized the murder of Layret. In coordination with elements in police headquarters, including Captain Lasarte, Homs was the link to the paid assassins of the Libres. Now, Feced and a police agent called Florentino Pellejero infiltrated an anarchist group from Valencia led by José Claramonte and convinced them that it would be easy to kill Martínez Anido. Feced provided dummy bombs filled with sawdust which the others believed were to be thrown at the Civil Governor’s car as he returned from the theatre.

As the group lay in ambush, Pellejero opened fire on them and shot Claramonte, who managed to shoot him in return. Another of the anarchists, Amalio Cerdeño, was captured and shot by the police, using the ley de fugas. However, he did not die immediately. He and other anarchists detained earlier in the proceedings were interrogated by a judge who quickly saw what Arlegui had planned. He informed the senior prosecutor, Diego Medina. In the early hours of the morning, Medina telephoned Sánchez Guerra, gave him details of what had happened and revealed that Arlegui and Martínez Anido had already planned to kill around 200 anarchists as a reprisal for the ‘assassination attempt’. The Prime Minister seized on the excuse for getting rid of both. He telephoned Martínez Anido and informed him that, in view of these lamentable events, he was dismissing Arlegui. Justifying the attempt on the life of Pestaña, the Civil Governor commented: ‘As long as the putrefaction that for many years has been hanging over Barcelona is not cleared away, expelling the scum that comes from all over, nothing useful can be done.’ Unused to anyone challenging him and utterly furious, Martínez Anido had already declared that, if Arlegui were dismissed, he would resign. To his consternation, Sánchez Guerra replied that he reluctantly accepted his resignation.33

The Catalan financial and industrial elites were outraged and the conservative press in Barcelona declared that Sánchez Guerra’s action had left the city defenceless. One week later, on 31 October, the Barcelona haute bourgeoisie gathered at the Ritz to give Martínez Anido a spectacular send-off.34 However, the effect of his removal was somewhat diminished by Sánchez Guerra’s appointment of Miguel Primo de Rivera as Captain General on 14 March 1922. Fiercely hostile to the CNT, Primo was furious that his close friends Martínez Anido and Arlegui had been dismissed. A delegation of employers’ organizations had visited Primo on 27 October and had been reassured by his statement that he shared their distress at the loss of two ‘most worthy officers’. The tension was increased when the government recognized the workers’ right to free association. The new Civil Governor, General Julio Ardanaz, authorized the opening of workers’ centres and the activities of Catalan trade unions.35

Feeling vulnerable, industrialists were heartened by the triumph of fascism in Italy. El Eco Patronal, the journal of the leaders of the Madrid building industry, declared that fascism was an example to be followed in Spain. Mussolini was praised as ‘a modest man’ and proudly declared to be ‘one of our own’ because he had been a building labourer. He was praised for ‘restoring normality’ to Italian political life, a euphemism for the crushing of left. The Somatén was compared with the Fascist Party and the editorial asked if it was not possible to find a Spanish Mussolini. The Duce was enviously seen as the model for the iron surgeon that Spain needed. Such enthusiasm naturally provoked fears on the left. The Confederación Patronal Española even launched an unsuccessful newspaper called La Camisa Negra (The Black Shirt) with editorial support from the extreme right-wing Maurista Manuel Delgado Barreto. The hard-line President of the Catalan federation, Félix Graupera, called for businessmen across Spain to emulate their Italian equivalents. It was hardly surprising that the patronal press approved of the violence used by the Fascists to crush the working-class movement in Italy, an operation it referred to as a ‘necessary and inevitable evil’.36

Cambó, however, stressing its anti-democratic character, saw Italian fascism as merely chronologically parallel to events in Spain but not suitable for emulation.37 The Conde de Romanones was aware of efforts to create a fascist party out of the Sindicatos Libres. The commander of the Barcelona garrison, Bartolomé de Roselló, held a meeting of officers in the Casino Militar in the spring of 1923 ‘to discuss the creation of a fascist party whose basis would be the Sindicato Libre, to which end the secretary is already in Italy’. The Secretary of the Libres, the notorious Juan Laguía Lliteras, had indeed gone to Rome. He held talks with the Fascists which came to naught. Discussions with the Partito Popolare were more fruitful. Important right-wing civilians were present at the meeting in the Casino Militar. The pro-fascist officers from the Barcelona garrison formed a group known as La Traza (the Project) with links to other garrisons. Emulating Mussolini’s Black Shirts, they wore a blue shirt as their uniform. Their aim to become a nationwide organization failed totally. That there was never to be a full-scale Spanish equivalent of Italian fascism until the civil war was largely the consequence of Spanish neutrality in the Great War and the lack of thousands of post-war ex-combatants.38

The concerns of the Catalan elite about the departure of Martínez Anido were exacerbated by the continuing instability of the political system, over which hung the issue of responsibility for the disaster of Annual. The two principal parties were divided internally and the cabinet of Sánchez Guerra could not muster a parliamentary majority to get approval for the budget. Prieto had kept the issue at boiling point in the Cortes on 4 May 1922 with his stark analysis of the army’s failure.39 However, his most devastating intervention came after Sánchez Guerra, who had also assumed the portfolio of Minister of War, had responded to the widespread demand for action by agreeing, on 19 July, that General Picasso’s findings could be discussed in the Cortes after a special parliamentary commission had analysed it. Prieto thanked him for this act of respect for the Cortes. Romanones, in contrast, was appalled. He was planning his own comeback with a grand coalition of the four main Liberal factions – his own more conservative grouping, the moderate centrist ‘liberal-democrats’ under García Prieto, the followers of the progressive, albeit personally corrupt, Santiago Alba and the Reformists under Melquíades Álvarez. Accordingly, he was aghast that Sánchez Guerra should have made this concession and thereby exposed García Prieto and other ministers to accusations of complicity in the disaster.40

The final Picasso report was presented to the Cortes on 15 November but not fully discussed until one week later.41 Prieto, who was a member of the special commission, made a passionate speech to the Cortes over two days, on 21 and 22 November. He found reason to blame every government since 1909 but reserved his most pungent criticisms for that of Allendesalazar. He also criticized the three most senior generals at the time of Annual, Berenguer, Navarro, who was the captive of Abd el-Krim, and Fernández Silvestre, who was dead. The President of the Cortes was scandalized when Prieto quoted Silvestre as saying that he was going to Morocco to capture Alhucemas (the key to the Rif) ‘because the King had authorized it and urged him to do so’. He ended with a sarcastic reference to the King’s pleasure-seeking in Paris and on fashionable French beaches.42

Romanones was not alone in questioning the political wisdom of the Prime Minister. The King told Romanones that it was reckless folly to allow the Picasso report to be discussed by the Cortes.43 Desperate for more stable government, he revealed further doubts about Sánchez Guerra when he implicitly compared him to Maura. He remarked to Maura’s friend César Silio: ‘We used to be in the Ritz Hotel and now we’ve ended up in the Posada del Peine.’ (The Posada del Peine was a traditional and very modest inn in old Madrid.)44 The King’s solution was to turn to Cambó. Cambó was one of the few prominent politicians who seemed to be exempt from corruption, electoral or otherwise. On 30 November, Alfonso XIII offered him the post of Prime Minister, suggesting that he could rule with or without parliament. The King cited the exhaustion of Maura, the scale of government problems and Cambó’s brilliant performances in the Ministries of Public Works and Finance. However, his offer of total power was conditional on Cambó’s renunciation of Catalanism and taking up residence in Madrid. It was not much of an offer. Even if Cambó did give up his aspirations for Catalonia, the opposition of the dynastic parties was guaranteed and, if he renounced Catalanism, the Lliga would be finished.

Deeply offended by Alfonso’s assumption that he would betray his principles in return for power, something that he perceived as a repetition of the King’s duplicitous attempt to seduce him in November 1918, he took his revenge.45 The opportunity arose later that evening. Cambó went as usual to the Cortes where a debate was taking place on the Picasso report. He heard Maura declare that, once responsibility had been established, the Cortes should take the case to the Senate which would act as a court of justice. At that moment, Cambó saw, as he wrote later, ‘the opportunity to return the blow given me by the King that morning’. He knew that the King was desperate to avoid investigation into the question of responsibility for the disaster of Annual. Accordingly, later that evening and on the next day, 1 December, Cambó delivered measured speeches in which he accepted that there should be an examination of the possible responsibility of the Allendesalazar government which had been in power at the time, but hinted darkly that the blame lay elsewhere: ‘As long as the Senate does not exonerate that Government under whose mandate the catastrophe took place or does not establish that the responsibility lies very specifically elsewhere, I believe that the Senate, if it wishes to do its duty, has to make a judgement in some direction and that it would be a disaster for the country and its prestige if it did not do so.’ In the corridor afterwards, Romanones asked him what had happened between him and the King. Cambó, already wondering if he had gone too far, declined to respond.46

While his indignation was perfectly understandable, it is arguable that, in rejecting the King’s offer, Cambó sealed the fate of the Restoration system.47 Three of Sánchez Guerra’s ministers, and the President of the Cortes, all of whom had served in the Allendesalazar government, felt obliged to resign. In part because of this and Cambó’s intervention, the debate on the Picasso report grew more heated when it was renewed on 5 December. Having also been a member of Allendesalazar’s cabinet, Juan de la Cierva furiously attacked Cambó, accusing him of corruptly using his position as Minister of Finance to support the Banco de Barcelona. There were physical confrontations as deputies jostled one another. Sánchez Guerra’s cabinet resigned on 7 December.48 It was the tenth government to fall since Antonio Maura’s third, in November 1918. It was replaced by García Prieto’s fifth cabinet, the bloc on which he had been working with Romanones and Alba. The strong man of the coalition was Santiago Alba, who was again Foreign Minister. It consisted of representatives of the various Liberal factions and the Reformist, José Manuel Pedregal, as Minister of Finance. Romanones became Minister of Justice and President of the Senate. Melquíades Álvarez was to be President of the Cortes. The cabinet was well received, the presence of the Reformists seen as likely to promote a tentative step towards democratization and a serious effort to pursue responsibility for Annual. However, most of the participants were far more interested in the spoils of office than in actually resolving the great problems of the day. As Romanones put it: ‘We parcelled out the ministries like children divvying up treats at a picnic.’ Accordingly, such was the scale of those problems – Morocco and the army, anarchism and social ferment, unemployment and soaring living costs and Catalan separatism – that the grand coalition was doomed to last only nine months.49

Morocco was probably the single most difficult issue. In an effort to limit the drain on resources and the simmering public discontent about casualties, Burguete had been ordered to attempt to pacify the rebels by bribery rather than by military action. On 22 September 1922, he had a deal with the now obese and burned-out El Raisuni whereby, in return for keeping the Berber tribes of the Jibala under control, he was given autonomy and a large sum of money. Since he was already under siege in his new headquarters at Tazarut, his power might have been squashed definitively had the Spaniards concentrated their forces against him. The policy of withdrawing troops from the territory of a man on the verge of defeat merely ensured his enrichment and the inflation of his reputation and power.

Burguete’s objective in the accommodation in the west was to secure more freedom in his efforts to crush the altogether more dangerous Abd el-Krim in the east. After first pursuing negotiations with him for the ransom of the 375 prisoners of war held since Annual, Burguete moved on to the offensive in August.50 He intended to dig in along a line to the south of Annual, using as his forward base Tizzi Azza, a fortified position extremely difficult to supply with food, water and ammunition. However, a pre-emptive attack by Abd el-Krim on a supply column at nearby Tifaruin was driven off only at the cost of numerous casualties. The Rif tribes then struck on a major scale at the beginning of November 1922. Safely ensconced in the slopes above the town, they fired down on the garrison causing 2,000 casualties and obliging the Spaniards to dig in for the winter.51

In the meantime, Cambó’s break with Alfonso XIII ensured the continuation of unstable government and it also drew a line under his own political career. In June 1923, disgusted both with Alfonso XIII and with the sterility and intrigues of political life, Cambó would finally resign his seat in the Cortes, announcing that he was retiring from active politics. Perceptive observers predicted correctly that his departure would open the way to a radicalization of Catalanism. Indeed, the moderate regionalism of the Lliga was already being pushed aside by the more radical nationalists of Acció Catalana, the group that had broken away a year before and was starting to enjoy success in provincial elections. Acció Catalana was a belated reaction to what was seen as Cambó’s betrayal of the Assembly movement in 1917.52 Ironically, the man who had championed efforts to clean up Spanish politics would henceforth concentrate on augmenting his already substantial wealth as President of CHADE-CADE, the principal electrical company of Latin America.53

A somewhat more liberal line was adopted by the government of García Prieto, but it hardly constituted the daring step towards democratization suggested by Raymond Carr when he wrote of its eventual overthrow by the military coup of Primo de Rivera: ‘Not for the first nor for the last time, a general claimed that he was killing off a diseased body when he was, in fact, strangling a new birth.’ If anything, the riposte of Javier Tusell seems more plausible: ‘The Captain General of Catalonia did not strangle a new-born but simply buried a corpse; the political system died of terminal cancer not of a heart attack.’54 In fact, the limits of García Prieto’s reforming ambition were revealed when he announced that his government would not undertake any constitutional revisions. The timidity of the cabinet was exposed further when clerical onslaught, backed by the King, obliged Romanones to withdraw a decree preventing the sale abroad of art treasures, most of which belonged to the Church.

Worse was to follow when the hierarchy made it clear that it would not tolerate any attempt to amend Article 11 of the Constitution, which denied freedom of public worship to other religions. When Romanones gave way, the Minister of Finance, José Manuel Pedregal, resigned in protest, but his party chief, Melquíades Álvarez, did not, thereby underlining that for him, as for his Liberal colleagues, power meant more than principle.55 The clearest evidence of that came when the government finally got around to holding elections in April 1923. All the arts of electoral manipulation were put into practice in one of the most undemocratic elections of the entire Restoration period which recorded the highest ever number of deputies returned unopposed under Article 29. The various Liberal factions within the government engaged in the most unseemly rivalries over the encasillado. Among many corrupt arrangements, Santiago Alba managed to secure a seat for his benefactor, Juan March, who dispensed enormous sums of money. As so often before, the winner was the old fox Romanones. In fact, he and García Prieto each managed to secure seats in the Cortes for nine of their close relatives. In ironic contrast, the Socialists managed to win seven seats.56 Cipriano de Rivas Cherif gives a vivid account of the scale of corruption in Puente del Arzobisbo in Toledo, the town where he was campaigning on behalf of his friend Manuel Azaña. In his contest against the local cacique, Azaña was financed by a Bilbao shipbuilder. Votes were bought on both sides but, when it came down to election day, the local officials, in the pocket of the cacique, simply falsified the votes. The cacique set out thereafter to ruin the local republicans who had supported Azaña.57 The government was effectively following the unofficial law adumbrated in a diary entry by Natalio Rivas: ‘a clean ballot means the straight road to political oblivion’.58

The coalition made vain efforts to deal with the great problems of the day. Santiago Alba hoped to resolve the Moroccan issue by replacing military rule over the protectorate with a civilian administration. This required a prior resolution of the colonial conflict, which in turn involved a choice between withdrawal and a massive campaign of conquest. Since neither was feasible, Alba became the object of virulent right-wing and military hostility. In late January and throughout February 1923, there had been intensifying discontent that Alba had managed, with the help of the Basque financier Horacio Echevarrieta, to secure the release of the prisoners held by Abd el-Krim. The idea that huge sums had been handed over was seen as an affront to military dignity because it implied that the army was incapable of rescuing its own men. The King did not bother to greet the prisoners when they reached Malaga, choosing instead to go hunting on the estate of the Duke of Tarifa in Huelva. This was unsurprising since he missed few opportunities for pleasure, particularly in the casino at Deauville. It was rumoured that, when he had heard of the scale of the ransom, he commented contemptuously: ‘poultry is getting very dear’. Nevertheless, he did nothing to diminish the desire of many officers for revenge attacks on the Moroccan population.59 In contrast, on 1 February, General Miguel Primo de Rivera wrote a letter of congratulation to Santiago Alba: ‘Although, as you rightly say, it is neither a triumph nor an occasion for rejoicing, it is certainly worthy of congratulations for having relieved us of the nightmare of there being Spanish prisoners and the fear of them dying. There was no hope of freeing them by any better means than the one used. God willing, this will be the last episode of this reckless African adventure to hurt and humiliate us.’60

Alba and the Spanish High Commissioner, Luis Silvela, were trying to negotiate peace through the mediation of Dris-ben-Saíd, a pro-Spanish friend of Abd el-Krim. To the outrage of most of the high command, Dris-ben-Saíd had been authorized to offer substantial public works in the Rif. Alba’s determination to bring about the peaceful resolution of the Moroccan problem brought him into conflict with the Minister of War, Alcalá-Zamora, who resigned on 25 May. On that day, there were fierce attacks by Abd el-Krim on Spanish positions. The new Minister of War, General Luis Aizpuru, responded by appointing Martínez Anido as commander of Melilla on 7 June. A few days later, Dris-ben-Saíd was shot in mysterious circumstances. Given Martínez Anido’s track record in Barcelona, it was widely believed that he was behind the murder in order to put an end to the peace negotiations. He produced wildly ambitious plans for an amphibious expedition to seize Alhucemas which appalled Alba and provoked protests on the left. An influential article by Pablo Iglesias denounced this ‘mad adventure’ and referred to the entire Moroccan project as ‘a huge tomb for Spanish youth’. After a detailed study by the General Staff which calculated that the operation would involve unacceptably high casualties, the cabinet turned down Martínez Anido’s plans. Furious, he resigned on 10 August. He was regarded as a hero by the bulk of an officer corps that deeply resented what they saw as unwarranted civilian control over military policy. Right-wing disgust generated by Martínez Anido’s departure soon deepened. Casualties were mounting as fighting intensified. Outraged supporters of the Africanistas spread alarmist rumours that another Annual could happen because of Alba’s cost-cutting pacifist policies.61

On 23 August, in an echo of the Semana Trágica, in the port of Malaga a detachment of conscripts embarking for Melilla mutinied. Women chanted, ‘Don’t go to Morocco. They are taking you to the slaughterhouse,’ civilians were jostled and army officers assaulted. Some of the recruits were merely drunk, others were Catalan and Basque nationalists making political protests. Discipline was finally restored by the Civil Guard. This incident was planned to coincide with the outbreak of a Communist-organized general strike in Bilbao. An NCO in the Engineering Corps, José Ardoz, was killed and the crime was attributed to a Galician, Corporal José Sánchez Barroso. He was quickly tried by summary court martial and sentenced to death. In a context of widespread public revulsion against the Moroccan enterprise, there was an outcry against the death sentence. On 28 August, Sánchez Barroso was given a royal pardon, at the request of the cabinet. The officer corps was outraged by the Malaga incidents, by the subsequent public rejection of its cause in Morocco and by what it saw as the slight involved in the pardon. For the top brass, it was further evidence of the weakness of the Liberal government.62

As tensions festered in Morocco, the situation had grown more poisonous in Barcelona. Before the elections, in an effort to deal with the social problem, García Prieto had replaced General Ardanaz as Civil Governor of Barcelona with Salvador Raventós Clivilles, a Catalan deputy of his own Liberal Party. This, together with the introduction of arbitration committees in labour disputes, had permitted the more moderate elements of the CNT to continue rebuilding the trade unions under Salvador Seguí. After a clandestine meeting with Juan Laguía Lliteras, Seguí presided over a tacit truce with the Sindicatos Libres, who were inclined to be more conciliatory now that they no longer had Martínez Anido to protect them. The revival of the CNT infuriated the employers who, in the absence of Martínez Anido, could turn to the Captain General, his friend, Miguel Primo de Rivera. Moreover, they were further consoled by appointment of the hard-line Colonel Heraclio Hernández Malillos as chief of the Barcelona police and his choice of Captain Julio de Lasarte to be his deputy.63 The hostility to the CNT of Primo and the bulk of the military high command was clinched when Seguí announced his readiness to collaborate with the Socialists in a campaign to push for Spanish withdrawal from Morocco. In any case, the brief truce between the CNT and the Libres ended in March 1923. The revival of the CNT under Pestaña, Peiró and Seguí had seen the return to the fold of many workers who had taken refuge in the Libres during the Martínez Anido persecution. Hard-liners among the Libres were ready to go to war again to undermine the growth of the CNT as a legitimate union.64 Accordingly, their targets were the moderate anarcho-syndicalists. The renewal of violence began with the shooting on 24 February of Amadeu Campí, a leader of the Libres’ textile finishing union. Although the CNT was accused, it is more likely that Campí was shot by Ramon Sales, with whom he had fallen out. Two other renegade members of the Libres were also shot.65

On 10 March, Seguí and his friend Francesc Comes were gunned down by a group of Libres, among whom was Inocencio Feced. The assassins’ escape was covered by policemen led by Captain Lasarte. The action was organized by Pere Mártir Homs, who had previously set up the murder of Layret and the fake assault on Martínez Anido. Again, the operation was financed by the industrialist Maties Muntadas. Martínez Anido commented: ‘I’m not really surprised. Those who play with fire sooner or later get burned.’ It was later revealed by Feced that the Employer’s Federation had financed the shooting. Certainly, Muntadas and other important members of the Patronal hoped for a military coup and believed that the murder of Seguí would provoke CNT retaliation that, in turn, would consolidate support for an army takeover. The death of Seguí was just one, albeit the most important, of a cycle of assassinations of both CNT and Libres militants. Over the following ten weeks, sixteen CNT militants and ten members of the Sindicatos Libres were shot dead and there were others wounded.66 To avoid mass demonstrations, Salvador Raventós, the Civil Governor, arranged for Seguí’s body to taken from the hospital and buried clandestinely. This provoked strikes in Barcelona, Gijón and Zaragoza with fighting between the police and action groups. When Comes was buried on 18 March, nearly 200,000 people followed the coffin.67

The murder of Seguí was a devastating blow to the CNT, which was left rudderless without the one man capable of bridging the gap between the trade unionists and the action groups.68 In the aftermath of his death, a vain effort was made by Pestaña and the CNT Secretary General Joan Peiró to stop bloodshed. Significantly, the anarchists targeted by the Libres were those who had tried to put an end to the violence. Then Peiró himself was the target of two attacks. Others wanted revenge for the deaths of Seguí and Comes. Pestaña and Peiró reluctantly acquiesced, as much as anything in the desperate hope of counter-terrorism putting a stop to the Libres’ onslaught. An action committee was set up to choose important targets, one of whom would be Martínez Anido. The actual dirty work was entrusted to a specialist unit. Its origins went back to 1920 when Manuel Buenacasa and Buenaventura Durruti were involved in a group called Los Justicieros which had unsuccessfully tried to kill the King in the Basque Country. They fled in early 1921 to Zaragoza, where they were joined by Francisco Ascaso. In September 1922, the group had moved to Barcelona and linked up with Juan García Oliver. With Ricardo Sanz and Aurelio Fernández, they formed Los Solidarios in late 1922. They were all young. Durruti and Fernández were mechanics by trade, Ascaso a waiter and Sanz a textile worker. In May 1923, they tried in vain to catch Martínez Anido, first in San Sebastián and later in A Coruña.69

On 17 May 1923, in León, they killed Faustino González Regueral, one-time Civil Governor of Bilbao. On 4 June, Francisco Ascaso and Rafael Torres Escartín shot dead the Traditionalist Cardinal of Zaragoza, José Soldevila Romero. Deeply unpopular, Archbishop Soldevila was fiercely reactionary. He was believed in anarchist circles to finance gunmen from the Sindicatos Libres and to have plotted, with Martínez Anido and Arlegui, the murder of Seguí. He was alleged to have acquired a fortune from the ownership of brothels, gambling dens and a construction business. His corruption was said to permit him to live in spectacular luxury while being ministered to by a number of young nuns. He was shot while making his daily visit to a convent where it was rumoured that he had a sexual relationship with a nun to whom he left a fortune.70 The assassination sent waves of horror across middle- and upper-class Spain.

Conscious of how this played into the hands of the industrialists and army officers who wanted a coup, Pestaña and Peiró disbanded the committee and vainly ordered the Solidarios to follow suit. However, the Solidarios were looking to create a revolutionary group – the Federación Anarquista Ibérica (FAI) – and embarked on a series of daring robberies to finance it. To make matters worse for the moderates, there was a major escalation of strikes as workers tried to recoup their living standards after years of the CNT being illegal.71 After disputes in the construction industry, the biggest strike since La Canadiense, in this case of port workers, broke out in early May. Precisely to provoke a major confrontation, the employers responded with a lock-out of the dock workers. The Sindicato Único took the bait by calling a general strike of transport workers including rubbish collectors. As rubbish piled up in the streets and food distribution ground to a halt, middle-class opinion inclined towards authoritarian solutions. Primo de Rivera was seen by the upper and middle classes as the saviour lacking since the departure of Martínez Anido. He wanted to declare martial law and authorize the use of the Somatén. The efforts of the Civil Governor, Salvador Raventós, to resolve the strike were mocked as intolerable weakness. He resigned and was replaced by a Liberal deputy in the Cortes, Francisco Barber.72

The new Civil Governor quickly outraged the employers by continuing his predecessor’s efforts to settle the strike by negotiation. They went over his head and appealed for help to Primo de Rivera. It was a reprise of what had happened during the Canadiense strike. As Milans del Bosch had done then, Primo expressed his sympathy with their views. On 8 June, the funeral of Josep Franquesa, a murdered member of both the Sindicatos Libres and the Somatén, was attended by 5,000 members of the two organizations. Barber was threatened and jostled and had to be rescued by Primo. Alarmed by Primo’s support for the more extreme ambitions of the Catalan industrialists, and hoping to dismiss him, García Prieto summoned both him and Barber to Madrid. The King refused to sign the relevant decree replacing Primo. Already a broken man, Barber resigned after only three weeks in the post and, traumatized by his experience, died two months later. Primo used the time that he spent in Madrid to muster support for a military coup. He met a group of four generals, known as the Cuadrilátero (Quadrilateral), José Cavalcanti, Antonio Dabán, Leopoldo Saro and Federico Berenguer, brother of Dámaso, together with the Military Governor of Madrid, the Duque de Tetuán. Their concerns were that Morocco should not be abandoned and that the disorder in Barcelona should be resolved. All five were convinced royalists. Indeed, the King once told Alcalá-Zamora that neither Dabán nor Saro would move a muscle unless he ordered them to do so. Since the Cuadrilátero group was in regular contact with the King, he was fully apprised of Primo’s machinations and hesitated to give his approval because of doubts about Primo’s competence. Primo confessed his plans to Romanones, although he claimed that he would do nothing in the short term.73

Indeed, throughout 1923, Alfonso XIII received considerable encouragement for his inclination to lead a military coup. Indeed, at some unspecified point that year, he told Joaquim Salvatella, the Minister of Education and Fine Arts in the García Prieto government, that the only solution that he could see to the problems of the country was a government of colonels. There were deafening rumours that the man to lead a coup would be the 66-year-old General Francisco Aguilera y Egea, who had briefly been Minister of War under García Prieto in the spring of 1917. He enjoyed considerable support right across the army. As President of the Supreme War Council, Aguilera had accepted that the colonial high command should take responsibility for the disaster, but he was not prepared to see the civilian politicians get away scot free. In early July 1923, he had written an insulting letter to the Conservative ex-Prime Minister Joaquín Sánchez de Toca, accusing him of trying to ensure that the political establishment would not face equal censure. He refused to apologize and challenged Sánchez de Toca to a duel. At this point, Sánchez Guerra and Romanones tried to mediate. As tempers rose, Aguilera and Sánchez Guerra jostled and the General came off worse. The ensuing scandal put an end to his possible candidacy as the future dictator.74 In any case, Aguilera had already made it clear to Primo de Rivera that he thought the idea of a coup was madness.75

In August, Alfonso XIII discussed the idea of a coup with various people, including Gabriel Maura, who informed his father. Antonio Maura knew that the King, obsessed with Bolshevism and worried about the Picasso report, continued to toy with the idea of a dictatorship. He sent a note to the King with a devastating analysis: ‘All my conclusions derive from my long-standing and ever firmer conviction that the current parties, without exception, have shown themselves incapable of governing, although this collective ineptitude is not the result of the personal failings of their leaders.’ Maura stated that nothing was to be expected of yet another coalition government since the problem was to be found in the nature of the corrupt Restoration system. However, he believed that it would be suicide for the monarchy if the King took over the functions of government and assumed its day-to-day responsibilities. Accordingly, he believed that the answer lay in the army: ‘It would be less harmful for those that have imposed their will in critical situations to assume the full responsibility of government themselves.’76 This missive was interpreted by the King as Maura’s permission for him to let the army take over. He did not, however, respond to Maura’s prediction of disaster for the monarchy if he interfered in the subsequent dictatorship.

In the wake of his resignation, Barber was replaced by the immensely wealthy, trombone-playing, fifty-six-year-old Liberal from Galicia, Manuel Portela Valladares, a one-time member of the Foment de Treball Nacional. He immediately carried out a major crackdown on the CNT. He put troops on the streets by day and authorized the Somatén to patrol at night. The consequence was that Peiró lost control to García Oliver and the action groups, a development which worsened the sense that the social war was out of control and intensified middle-class desire for military intervention.77

Primo left Madrid convinced that his plotting had been discovered. He confided to a friend that he was amazed not to have been arrested during the journey back nor to have found news of his dismissal awaiting him.78 When Primo reached Barcelona on 23 June, there was a huge demonstration at the railway station to greet him. It had a considerable impact on his vanity. In private meetings, Primo was being urged by the major industrialists to become the longed-for iron surgeon. Even before he had gone to Madrid, the employers had sent an open letter to him setting out their demands for the defeat of the strike and the subsequent return to draconian work conditions. His response, on 28 June, was to have CNT headquarters searched and eighteen leaders arrested. This exceeded his jurisdiction but he argued that it was a military necessity since the CNT was about to launch a revolutionary uprising. Portela Valladares did not object. In the face of such action, on 12 July the CNT called off a strike that had involved around 140,000 workers and left twenty-two dead.79

The success of Primo’s tough action in ending the strike convinced the Catalan elite that more of the same was necessary to crush the CNT. Meanwhile, the action groups continued the social war with a series of bank robberies, the most spectacular of which was an assault on the Bank of Spain in Gijón on 1 September.80 A cabinet reshuffle two days later was widely regarded as evidence of the weakness of the government.81 Then, tension was ratcheted up by the events on 11 September, the Catalan national day, when groups of Catalan, Basque and Galician nationalists gathered in Barcelona and demonstrated in favour of home rule in all three regions. Anti-Spanish slogans were shouted, including some in favour of the Rif rebels, and there were clashes with the police. As was to be expected, the officers of the Barcelona garrison were outraged. As Captain General of the Catalan military region, Primo de Rivera overreacted and responded with a declaration of martial law.82

Primo de Rivera had made little secret of his wider plans. Apparently, he had visited the King’s summer residence in San Sebastián to discuss the prospect with him. Afterwards, at a dinner in Cordoba, Alfonso XIII had confided in his hosts that Primo was preparing a movement that would resolve the problems of the day.83 Primo returned to Madrid on 7 September and met the generals of the Cuadrilátero to make the final arrangements for a coup one week later. This secured the support of senior Africanistas. He had a vague commitment from General José Sanjurjo, the Military Governor of Zaragoza. Immediately on his return from Madrid on 23 June, he had courted the support of the Junteros. Primo admitted to General Eduardo López Ochoa, a freemason and republican, that he used different arguments with different interlocutors. He told López Ochoa that, in order to resolve the problems of Morocco, pistolerismo and Catalan nationalism, the coup would impose a competent civilian government with military backing, and that the army would remain in power only briefly. López Ochoa claimed later to have learned that Primo had made a deal with senior Catalanists, offering autonomy and a favourable customs regime in return for their support. He told another senior officer of the Barcelona garrison, General Mercader, a friend of the King, that the plan was to save the monarchy, while assuring López Ochoa that ‘afterwards things would go very differently’.84 This seems to be confirmed by a claim by Portela Valladares that, shortly after his arrival in Barcelona, Primo de Rivera confided in him his plans for a coup. Allegedly, Portela responded that his scheme would meet an insuperable obstacle in the King to which Primo replied: ‘the day he gets in my way is the day I put him over the border’.85 During this second sojourn in Madrid, he wrote letters to the generals in command of Ceuta (Enrique Marzo y Balaguer) and Melilla (Manuel Montero Navarro) to secure their support. These letters expressed his commitment to continued operations against Abd el-Krim.86

In the early hours of the morning of 13 September 1923, Primo’s coup d’état was launched. He had long since ingratiated himself with the Catalan elite. It was alleged at the time that he had held secret meetings with Junoy, the architect Josep Puig i Cadafalch, President of the Catalan assembly of local councillors, the Mancomunitat, and other Catalan business leaders at the Font-Romeu health spa on the French side of the border. There, apparently, he agreed, in return for their support, to promote their ambitions in terms of greater autonomy, protectionist policies and public order.87 In what must be presumed to be a cynical pantomime, he had made efforts to speak Catalan at public events and gave every sign of admiring Catalan culture, especially the national dance, the sardana. When he coincided with Cambó, he would always ask, ‘How are you, my dear Chief?’ He regularly dined with the leading industrial barons of the most conservative elements of the Lliga, such as Félix Graupera of the Federació Patronal, Domingo Sert of the Foment de Treball Nacional, the Marqués de Comillas and Ferran Fabra y Puig (Marqués de Alella).88 In that sense, Primo’s coup was more about meeting Catalan determination to see the CNT crushed than silencing the Picasso report on the responsibility for Annual, although that certainly clinched the support of both the Africanista generals and Alfonso XIII. The role of the King was crucial, not because he played an active role but rather because he irresponsibly stood and watched. When the crunch came, the response of the government was feeble largely because of a conviction that the overall political situation required desperate measures. Thus, despite knowing what Primo and the Cuadrilátero were up to, nothing was done to stop him returning to Barcelona. In fact, far from sure of success, he was fearful, as he had been in June, that he would be arrested on the way back. According to López Ochoa, Catalanist supporters had a car ready to spirit him across the French border if things went badly.89

Meanwhile, the carefree monarch was trying out a new sports car on the road between San Sebastián and Biarritz. On 12 September, Santiago Alba, the minister deputed to accompany Alfonso on his summer holiday learned of the imminence of the coup. Knowing how much military hatred was directed at his person, Alba resigned. Moreover, Martínez Anido, a key collaborator in the plot, was in San Sebastián with orders to arrest Alba as soon as the coup had succeeded, subject him to a summary court martial and shoot him. Warned of this and fearing for his life, Alba crossed the international bridge into France.90 In Madrid, the government dithered. García Prieto was in favour of arresting Primo, but the Minister of War, General Luis Aizpuru, was reluctant to believe that he was involved in a plot. By the time of their inconsequential conversation, Primo de Rivera had already issued orders for the establishment of martial law in Barcelona, for the occupation of all major public buildings and for street patrols by the Somatén. At the same time, he published a manifesto to the nation in which he described himself as the long-awaited iron surgeon who would clear away the incompetence and corruption of the venal professional politicians as the first step to national regeneration. To do so, he would perform radical surgery on the sick body politic. Among the problems to be solved, he listed subversion, social violence, public disorder and separatism but was non-committal about his plans for Morocco, declaring only that he aimed to find a ‘prompt, worthy and honourable’ resolution.91

Without popular support, the government could do little to stand in the way of the army. Even less was it likely to stand against Alfonso XIII, who may not have been actively involved in the coup but certainly knew about it and was not displeased to see it prosper. He had long been indiscreet about his impatience with the inefficiency of various governments and their weakness in the face of revolutionary threats. He believed that he represented the national will better than any corruptly elected government. There had been his rash speech in May 1921 in Cordoba. In February and March 1923, rumours that he was thinking in terms of a dictatorship were fed by the right-wing daily La Acción, whose director, Manuel Delgado Barreto, was a prominent figure on the extreme right. Now there was the immediate advantage of preventing parliamentary discussion of the Picasso report.92 It was therefore no surprise that, on 14 September, a beaming Alfonso XIII, wearing army uniform, arrived in Madrid and announced his support for the military rebels. He refused to dismiss the rebellious generals and thereby obliged his civilian government to resign. He then summoned Primo de Rivera to Madrid and named him head of a Military Directory with executive and legislative powers. García Prieto seemed more relieved than anything, commenting to journalists, ‘I have a new saint to whom I can pray: St Miguel Primo de Rivera, because he has freed me from the nightmare of government.’93 Around 4,000 well-dressed Catalans headed by the Mayor of Barcelona, the Marqués de Alella, the President of the Mancomunitat, Puig i Cadafalch, and the most prominent industrialists, were at the station on the evening of 14 September to bid farewell to Primo on his journey to Madrid to take power.94 The significance of what had just happened has been frequently expressed in medical metaphors for the obvious reason that Primo himself adopted the classic regenerationist image of the iron surgeon. For Raymond Carr and Shlomo Ben-Ami, Primo butchered the mewling democracy of García Prieto’s cabinet, while for Javier Tusell and José Luis García Navarro, he simply buried a corpse. Both views rather let Alfonso XIII off the hook. After all, without his intervention, the coup could easily have been stopped. By indulging his penchant for military government, the King left himself with no alternative when the military too ran out of ideas. More subtle altogether is the brilliant conclusion of Francisco Romero: ‘In fact, the “iron surgeon” had just switched off the life support system of the comatose patient. Having thought to do so himself, the chief consultant, King Alfonso XIII, was not troubled to sign the death certificate.’95