Militar Directory of Primo de Rivera

Once these two problems were solved, the "dictatorship with a king", as the historian Santos Juliá has denominated it, considered its continuity with the foundation of a new political regime, with an authoritarian type, based on a "single party" —the Patriotic Union— in the style of Fascist Italy.

The culmination of this process was Primo de Rivera's coup d'état on September 13, 1923, that was, according to historian Eduardo González Calleja, "the first corporate intervention of the Armed Forces" that, unlike the proclamation of the 19th century, created "the first authentic praetorian regime in our history —the Directorio Militar—, transferring the values and attitudes of the Army to public life as a whole".

In its Exposition, published in the press under the headline A historic decree, it was declared:[6] Sir: Appointed by Your Majesty with the task of forming a Government in difficult times for the country, which I have contributed to provoke, inspired by the highest patriotic feelings, it would be cowardly desertion to hesitate in accepting the position that carries with so many responsibilities and obliges to so much fatiguing and incessant work.

[5] On the 17th day, the Gaceta de Madrid published the dissolution of the Congress of Deputies and of the elective part of the Senate, in accordance with the power conferred on the King by Article 32 of the Constitution, although with the obligation to convene them again within three months.

On November 12, once the term had passed, the presidents of the Congress and the Senate, Melquiades Álvarez and the Count of Romanones, respectively, presented themselves before the king so that he would convene the Courts, reminding him that this was his duty as constitutional monarch.

The expeditious method used was to place this task in the hand of the Army, which enjoyed, according to Eduardo González Calleja, "an omnipotent power, uncontrolled by any assembly, free of the political responsibility required of a parliamentary government, and empowered to the point of arbitrariness because of the suspension of the Constitution and the virtual disappearance of the norms inherent to public liberties".

[8] After the declaration of a state of war throughout Spain, which lasted until the end of the Militar Directory in December 1925,[9] the next measure dictated by Primo de Rivera for the militarization of "public order" was the replacement of provincial and local authorities (civil governors, mayors, presidents of the deputations) with military personnel— from April 1924 the provincial governors would be progressively replaced by civilian personnel, although some of their most important functions, such as censorship or public order, remained in the hands of military authorities—.

In the Decree, Primo de Rivera explained that the Somatén was not only an auxiliary force for the maintenance of public order but also a "spur of the spirits" to stimulate citizen collaboration with the new regime.

In spite of the fact that Primo de Rivera in a speech pronounced before Mussolini on November 21, 1923, pretended to equate it with the Fascist "blackshirts", the somatén "was an armed corps of bourgeois of order, created from, by and for the power", although workers from the Free Trade Unions were also integrated into it.

[19] However, the Somatén progressively became "a simple choreographic adornment of the regime's pomp and ceremony, parading with its badges, weapons and flags in every celebration or official commemoration that required its presence", states González Calleja.

According to Eduardo González Calleja, "almost any criticism of the government, its men or its institutions was forbidden; the allusion to any persecutory measure unleashed by the Dictatorship against its presumed enemies; the apology of any regionalist tendency; the news of the declaration of strikes and their development, of disturbances of public order, robberies, crimes, scandals, pornography or blackmail; the commentary on the problems of subsistence, fuel or communications; the detailed information of the war councils or military issues concerning Morocco or Tangier; the attacks, jokes, ironies or caricatures on foreign persons or governments; the insertion of articles on the situation in Russia (on the other hand, fascism enjoyed an understandable favorable treatment) or the commentary on news about the League of Nations contrary to Spanish interests".

[23] In addition, the government could transfer judges and judicial officials, thereby rendering ineffective the division of powers and the independence of the judiciary, with the consequent defenselessness of individuals and legal entities against the acts of the Administration.

[26] The first measures taken by the Militar Directory were aimed at controlling the Sindicatos Únicos of the CNT, dominant in Catalonia, by demanding that they present their statutes, registers and accounting books, which also served as an alibi to close down their headquarters and imprison and exile their leaders without trial, the military authorities making use of the powers conferred on them by the declaration of the state of war.

[36] They were even criticized by the politicians of the Dictatorship themselves, such as José Calvo Sotelo, who noted that they often turned their demarcations into kingdoms of taifas, an exempt territory that they ruled at will, to the detriment of the authority of the civil governor, especially when the one in charge was a civilian.

The Republican Eduardo Ortega y Gasset went even further when he declared that Spain was thus subjugated to a regime similar to that of the African protectorate, since the mission of the government delegates was no different from that of the administrators of the Moroccan cabala.

Furthermore, despite the fact that "its decisions had an important propagandistic echo that allowed the regime's popularity to be reinforced", "the interventionist character of the dictatorial policy as a whole increased the bureaucracy, and along with it the favored treatment of those with similar interests, the abusive accumulation of positions and the salary compensations with representation expenses, bonuses, and so on.

In short, no real reform of the local or provincial administration was achieved, but the survival of clientelist attitudes disguised with superficial measures of a disciplinary nature against the most flagrant corrupt or unpatriotic actions".

[40] In Primo de Rivera's "regenerationist" project, the Catholic religion had a very important role, which is why from the very first moment he proclaimed the defense of the moral and material interests of the Church, as could be seen in the ultramontane speech delivered by King Alfonso XIII in November 1923 before Pope Pius IX in Rome:[41] If one day... the faith were to demand the greatest sacrifices from Catholics; and if, in defense of the persecuted, new Urban II, you were to raise a Crusade against the enemies of our holy religion, Spain and its king, most faithful to your mandates, would never desert the place of honor that its glorious traditions point outOne of the first measures taken by Primo de Rivera was to renounce in March 1924 the intervention of the State in the appointment of the bishops of the Spanish dioceses, a prerogative —the Patronato real— that had always been exercised by the governments of the Restoration.

[45] On April 5, 1924, Primo de Rivera wrote a circular to the government delegates in which he urged them to "unite and organize all men of good will in order to prepare them for when the Directory had carried out its mission".

[46] On April 29, he gave instructions to the civil governors "to organize the new citizen hosts" creating UPT committees, many of which were appointed to form the new town councils according to the regulations of the recently approved Municipal Statute of 1924.

One of its ideologues, the writer José María Pemán, took care to differentiate it from fascism and affirmed that the State defended by the Patriotic Union was the "traditional social-Christian" one, and also rejected universal suffrage, considered "a great mistake".

[53] Likewise, Primo de Rivera declared on October 12 that he proposed to suppress "the 49 small provincial administrations" replacing them with 10, 12 or 14 regions endowed with "all that within the unity of the land it is possible to grant".

[55] The appointment of prominent "Spanishists", mostly from the National Monarchist Union, at the head of the Catalan deputations, as had already happened with the city councils, provoked the disaffection of the members of the Lliga Regionalista led by Josep Puig i Cadafalch, who had initially believed in the regionalist goodwill of Primo de Rivera.

On October 13, 1925, the directors of the educational centers —and also the rectors of the Universities— were ordered to watch over the diffusion of "antisocial doctrines or against the unity of the Fatherland that could be exposed by some professors or teachers within their classes, proceeding of course with the greatest rigor to the formation of the opportune file prior suspension of employment and half salary, if there were sufficient indications of guilt".

[60] After the disappearance of the Mancomunitat, Primo de Rivera's statements on the culture, identity, language and institutions of Catalonia grew in virulence, expressing his total opposition to any kind of regional autonomy.

Acció Catalana took the "Catalan case" to the League of Nations and Francesc Macià, a former military man and founder of Estat Catalá, became the symbol of Catalonia's resistance to the Dictatorship.

When Primo de Rivera finally decided to resume the war in Morocco, Lieutenant Colonel Franco, like other "Africanist" officers, changed his attitude and became staunch supporters of the Dictatorship.

[64] Primo de Rivera managed to hide the magnitude of the disaster from public opinion thanks to censorship,[65] but in October 1924 he had to personally assume the position of Spanish High Commissioner in Morocco.

[64] Abd el-Krim's attack on the areas of Morocco under French protectorate was enough for France for the first time to show its willingness to collaborate with Spain to put an end to the Rifian rebellion.

General Primo de Rivera's will to remain in power from 1925 onwards, despite the fact that he himself had indicated the provisional nature of his regime, was precisely that he had solved a problem that had been the nightmare of all Spanish rulers since 1898.Once the parliament was closed and the documentation of the Commission of Responsibilities was seized, the trials of the military accused for the disaster of Annual were placed under the jurisdiction of the Supreme Council of War and Navy.