Miguel Primo de Rivera y Orbaneja, 2nd Marquis of Estella, GE (8 January 1870 – 16 March 1930), was a Spanish dictator and military officer who ruled as prime minister of Spain from 1923 to 1930 during the last years of the Bourbon Restoration.

During the crisis of the Restoration regime, specifically upon political turmoil in the wake of setbacks in the Rif War and the ensuing spillover of the enquiries of the Picasso file, Primo de Rivera staged a military coup d'état on 13 September 1923 with help from a clique of Africanist generals close to King Alfonso XIII.

Once economic tailwinds diminished, he lost the support of most of his generals, and he was forced to resign in January 1930 amid increasing inflation and civic unrest, dying abroad two months later.

The young Miguel grew up as part of what Gerald Brenan called "a hard-drinking, whoring, horse-loving aristocracy" that ruled "over the most starved and down-trodden race of agricultural labourers in Europe."

They criticized the politicians and the parliamentary system which could not maintain order or foster economic development at home, nor preserve the vestiges of Spain's imperial glory.

The British historian Hugh Thomas says: "He would work enormously hard for weeks on end and then disappear for a juerga of dancing, drinking and love-making with gypsies.

He would be observed almost alone in the streets of Madrid, swathed in an opera cloak, making his way from one café to another, and on returning home would issue a garrulous and sometimes even intoxicated communiqué -- which he would often have to cancel in the morning.

After the army had called up conscripts to fight in the Second Rif War in Morocco, Radical republicans and anarchists in Catalonia had proclaimed a general strike.

In 1921, the Spanish army suffered a stunning defeat in Morocco at the Battle of Annual, which discredited the military's North African policies.

Resentful of the parliamentarians' attacks against him, King Alfonso tried to give Primo de Rivera legitimacy by naming him prime minister.

In justifying his coup d'état, Primo de Rivera announced: "Our aim is to open a brief parenthesis in the constitutional life of Spain and to re-establish it as soon as the country offers us men uncontaminated with the vices of political organization.

Those Spaniards were tired of the turmoil and economic problems and hoped a strong leader, backed by the military, could put their country on the right track.

When members of the Cortes complained to the king, Alfonso dismissed them, and Primo de Rivera suspended the constitution and dissolved the legislative body.

Despite some reservations, the great Spanish philosopher and intellectual, José Ortega y Gasset, wrote: "The alpha and omega of the task that the military Directory has imposed is to make an end of the old politics.

Primo de Rivera talked of abandoning the colony altogether, unless sufficient resources were available to defeat the rebellion, and began withdrawing Spanish forces.

His economic planners built dams to harness the hydroelectric power of rivers, especially the Duero and the Ebro, and to provide water for irrigation.

Imitating the example of Benito Mussolini in Italy, Primo de Rivera forced management and labor to cooperate by organizing 27 corporations (committees) representing different industries and professions.

The government financed such projects with huge public loans, which Calvo Sotelo argued would be repaid by the increased taxes resulting from economic expansion.

Furthermore, many of the dictator's economic reforms did not actually help the poor as huge public spending led to inflation, which the rich could cope with more easily.

Despite his paternalistic conservatism, Primo de Rivera was enough of a reformer and his policies were radical enough to threaten the interests of the traditional power elite.

According to British historian Gerald Brenan, "Spain needed radical reforms and he could only govern by the permission of the two most reactionary forces in the country—the Army and the Church."

Primo de Rivera dared not tackle what was seen as Spain's most pressing problem, agrarian reform, because it would have provoked the great landholding elite.

Primo de Rivera chiefly failed because he did not create a viable, legitimate political system to preserve and continue his reforms.

By summer 1926, former politicians, led by conservative José Sánchez-Guerra y Martínez, pressed the king to remove Primo de Rivera and restore constitutional government.

Alfonso, who had sponsored the establishment of Madrid's University City, watched with dismay as the country's students took to the streets to protest the dictatorship and the king's support for it.

Primo de Rivera retired and moved to Paris, where he died a month and a half later at the age of 60 from a combination of fever and diabetes on 16 March 1930.

While monarchist parties won in the overall polls, republican candidates commanded the majority in urban centres, winning the elections in 41 provincial capitals including Madrid and Barcelona.

Two years later Primo de Rivera's eldest son, José Antonio, founded the Falange, a Spanish fascist party.

Both José Antonio and his brother Fernando were arrested in March 1936 by the republic, and were executed in Alicante prison by Republican forces once the Spanish Civil War began in July 1936.

The Nationalists led by Francisco Franco won the Civil War and established an authoritarian, reactionary regime which re-built the social structure of the Primo de Rivera dictatorship.