The political situation in Spain prior to the coup of Primo de Rivera showed a serious crisis at all levels, political, economic, social ... that will be aggravated and no government will be able to solve them.
Summarizing the situation we find a division of large political parties into small groups unable to unite their projects. Nationalisms will be increased, mainly Catalan, claiming a higher level of autonomy. The end of the First World War will lead Spain to a serious economic depression to which will be added the lack of industrial infrastructures and entrepreneurship as well as the lack of improvements in the agrarian field. This will increase unemployment and therefore social conflict. The triumph of the Bolshevik revolution of October 1917 in Russia will favor the radicalization of the workers' movement and the emergence of political parties such as the Communist Party of Spain (1921), dependent on the USSR, which will split from the PSOE. The social war between workers and employers will take a violent turn on both sides. On the other hand the increasingly violent anarchism will take force (1921 Dato murder).
And as the climax of such a deteriorated situation we find the problem of Morocco. The Annual disaster of 1921 will lead to an investigation led by General Juan Picasso who will write the well-known "Picasso report" in search of responsibilities. In this situation and shortly before the aforementioned report was discussed in Cortes, the intervention of the army again took place, the uprising of Primo de Rivera in September 1923 as an attempt to authorize the crisis.
Already in the spring of 1923 the idea of a coup d'etat floated in the atmosphere of the barracks. It was the Captain General of Catalonia, Miguel Primo de Rivera who carried out the coup. Primo de Rivera had two fundamental factors for the uprising to triumph: Support of the Catalan bourgeoisie for military action given the attitude towards the anarchists (Barcelona high school bomb) and could mean the necessary help to end the existing crisis. The silence of the King, a very significant fact since it stimulated the coup leaders and was the signal for the beginning of its action.
Thus, on September 13, 1923 Primo de Rivera led the coup d'etat. At that time the king, Alfonso XIII, vacationed in San Sebastian. He returned to Madrid and commissioned Primo de Rivera to form a new government.
It was proclaimed, initially a system of personal government, with suspension of the Constitution and absence of political parties, governing with a military Directorate and maintaining the Monarchy.
The establishment of the Military Directorate was accepted with satisfaction by the population of those who expected the restoration of order and, also, by the bourgeoisie and the workers' movement. The political parties, however, received the blow with suspicion and hesitation.
The political evolution of the dictatorship goes through different periods: the Military Directorate, the Civil Directory, the Opposition and the return to constitutional order and the end of the reign.
The Military Directorate: It is in force from 1923 to 1925. During this stage, Primo de Rivera is defined as a power that brings together in its person all the faculties, initiatives and responsibilities of the Government. Advised by a Board composed of brigadier generals and a rear admiral, he submitted all resolutions to the King's signature.
The political measures that were taken were the following:
· Publication on September 13, 1923 of a Manifesto to the Spanish where a declaration of intentions was made: fight against the caciquismo, restoration of public order and regenerationism
· The Army will control all the springs of life in the country. The state of war was declared throughout the national territory and the civil governors were replaced by military governors. (measure for the fight against the caciquismo). The corruption of the previous stage will be persecuted which caused the exile of some politicians for fear of being arrested.
· Dissolution of the Congress and the elective part of the Senate.
· Suspension of constitutional guarantees, especially "habeas corpus" (the personal and procedural guarantees for which the detainee must be brought before a judge at the time of the request), when the detainee considers that it has been illegal the detention). The right of association, meeting, ... was also suspended and a rigorous press censorship was decreed.
· Illegalization of political parties.
· In addition, a unique government party, the Patriotic Union, is created, in which it is intended to bring together "the patriots of goodwill and the enemies of disorder". It contained the populist principles of the dictator.
· The Municipality is established as a fundamental pillar of the regime. The Municipal Statute of 1924 is promulgated, as a basic weapon for the fight against caciquismo. This gave the City Council greater economic autonomy.
· Faced with the problem of nationalism, Primo de Rivera refused to recognize the Catalan differential fact. Suppressed the senyera, relegated Catalan to domestic use, closed the Barcelona Football Club and Orfeó Catalá. These events weakened the support of the Catalans for the Monarchy.
· The most important political and popular success of this stage was to end the question of Morocco, the landing of Alhucemas in September 1925 in a joint attack with France that had also been attacked by the forces of Abd el-Krim. The plan was thoroughly studied and the attack was a triumph that will put an end to the Moroccan problem.
In this fact, it influenced the Government's decision to end the stage of the military Directorate and gave way to the Civil Directory.
In December of 1925 the Civil Directory was constituted. It was formed by civilians and some military. These civilians were mostly technocrats who knew their work perfectly. But the passage to the civil directory did nothing but institutionalize Primo's dictatorship. Therefore, the basis for the creation of a new (single) political party, creation of an Assembly to replace the Cortes and a Constitution of the regime will be considered.
· In 1924 a new party had been created by the Patriotic Union (UP), which according to its founder, Primo de Rivera, was neither left nor right. It lacked a specific ideological program and was based on the unity of Spain, religion and corporatism. It had a large number of affiliates. The Somatén was created as support for the party, it was a civic militia (its origin was in medieval Catalonia as a civilian body supporting the military and which it supported in case of necessity) The term somatén comes from the Catalan "som atents" " we are attentive").
· In 1926 a National Consultative Assembly was created after holding a plebiscite. His task was to elaborate a new constitution of the dictatorship. Formed by people of both sexes elected by the municipalities, provinces and the Patriotic Union. The project did not prosper. The draft Constitution established an authoritarian regime whose legislative power would be in Parliament with the king, 50% of the deputies would be elected by direct universal suffrage including the female vote, and the other 50% by the monarch. The state would be confessional and interventionist in economic and labor matters. It never got approved.
During this second period the social and economic policy of the civil directory coincided with a period of prosperity. They were the "happy twenties" that helped the development of the Spanish economy and helped the Primo government to enjoy a phase of economic boom that will be reflected in the social.
Among the most important measures are:
In agrarian policy:
· A modest operation of redistribution of land ownership was carried out.
· Forest reforestation program.
· Creation of the National Agrarian Credit Service to help medium and small farmers.
· Tariffs were imposed on foreign agricultural products.
· But the star measure of the period was carried out by the Count of Guadalhorce: it was a modern and effective hydraulic policy: construction of marshes, creation of Hydrographic Confederations with the objective of expanding the irrigated areas and favoring hydroelectric production.
In industrial policy: always with a protectionist sense.
· Encouraged the automobile industry.
· Made mandatory the use of Spanish coal in ships and railways.
· In 1927, CAMPSA (Lessor Company of the Petróleos Monopoly Sociedad Anónima) was created with public and private capital and that will have a monopoly on oil in Spain.
In transport and communications policy:
· The roads were improved and the number of kilometers increased.
· The railroad was controlled, still in the hands of foreign capital, controlling tariffs and networks always in a process of nationalization.
· The National Telephone Company is founded.
· Broadcasting takes off.
In finance policy:
· A tax reform was prepared and the public debt was liquidated.
· The banking sector was ordered to fight against fraud.
· Healthy accounts were obtained from the Spanish Treasury.
In social policy: there was on behalf of this government interest to end social conflict.
· The Minister of Labor, Eduardo Aunós, in order to resolve tensions through conciliation, created the National Corporate Organization. They were joint committees of workers and employers who had to agree to set working conditions. If the government was not achieved, it acted as arbitrator. The UGT participated in this system.
· In 1926 the Labor Code was approved, grouping all existing legislation and legislating on accidents, contracts, breaks, working hours, child labor, etc.
· The Statute of Professional Education for the training of workers was drafted.
· Illiteracy decreased and the number of university students increased. 5,000 schools were built.
However, many of the problems that are addressed are not solved. The Catalan question is exacerbated by the government's intervention in the election of the Board of the Bar Association of Catalonia and the persecution of the language.
Neither was able to stop the workers movement that had taken positions to the extreme of proposing that the only way out should be the Republic.
But the causes that most directly contributed to the fall of Primo de Rivera were:
· Intellectuals and politicians wanted a constitutional system and showed their opposition from the beginning of the regime. The Republicans who had created a Republican Alliance formed by old politicians like Lerroux, and new ones like Manuel Azaña. Intellectuals like Unamuno, Marañón, Machado, Blasco Ibáñez. But also monarchists disenchanted with Alfonso XIII who will go to the Republican ranks as Niceto Alcalá Zamora or Miguel Maura.
· The Army, divided between the Peninsulares and the Africanists, were the ones that contributed most directly.
From 1929 the crisis triggered by the Crak of the 29 in the USA. and that caused a global crisis joined these circumstances. The economy began to retreat, unemployment was increasing and it was necessary to devalue the peseta.
The events that lead to the resignation of Miguel Primo de Rivera on January 30, 1930, are precipitated. Exiled in Paris Primo will die a few months later as a result of a serious illness.
Alfonso XIII commissions new government to General Dámaso Berenguer.
While these circumstances occurred in August 1930, regionalist, constitutionalist, historical republicans and socialists met in San Sebastian in a political agreement and led to the formation of a revolutionary committee composed of: Alcalá Zamora, Miguel Maura, Domingo Prieto, Azaña, Albornoz and De los Ríos. This Committee issued a manifesto in December 1930 in which the population was called to overthrow the Monarchy. It was the so-called Pact of San Sebastian that will end the Monarchy of Alfonso XIII. They proposed a coup that failed. The coup attempt will be in Jaca and Cuatro Vientos and even if it failed it showed the rise of republicanism.
Meanwhile, the governments of Berenguer and Aznar (Dictablandas) organized a staggered electoral process that culminated in constituent Cortes. To reach this goal, the first procedure was to call municipal elections to replace the city councils of the dictatorship.
Berenguer's mistake was to act as if nothing had happened (the king's consent to the dictatorship) and Aznar's mistake was to call municipal elections on April 12, 1931 in order to poll the opinion of the country and thus find the exit more convenient.
The elections were held on April 12, 1931. These elections were a plebiscite against Alfonso XIII. Thus, although the general results of the elections were favorable to the Monarchy, in most of the large cities, Republican candidacies triumphed. In different cities thousands of people demonstrated in the street in favor of the Republic. When General Sanjurjo, head of the Civil Guard, made it known that his men would not fight for the monarchy, Alfonso XIII took the path of exile.
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