Picasso file

The government presided by the conservative José Sánchez Guerra then decided to take the Picasso File to the Congress of Deputies, where a first Commission of Responsibilities was formed in July 1922.

The Second Spanish Republic, proclaimed in April 1931, formed a new Commission of Responsibilities which focused on the actions of ex-king Alfonso XIII, who was condemned in absentia for "high treason" in November 1931.

Regarding the possible political responsibilities, the Supreme Court concluded that the only ones that could be derived would be subject "to the judgment of history, and only demandable by public opinion or through its representative bodies".

In what would be known as the "Disaster of Annual", more than 8,000 men died —most of them replacement soldiers— including General Fernandez Silvestre who commanded the troops and who for several years had been a member of the Military Household of King Alfonso XIII.

Alfonso XIII entrusted the old conservative leader Antonio Maura to form a government, who managed to count on the support of the two parties of the time, of the Catalanists of Francesc Cambó, of the reformists of Melquiades Álvarez and even of the Republicans of Alejandro Lerroux.

After giving a grotesque account of the war in Morocco (he said, for example, that Melilla was "a brothel and a hideout for thieves"), he made direct accusations against King Alfonso XIII, which provoked continuous protests from the majority of the deputies and the intervention of the president of the Chamber in defense of the person "who, because of his prerogative, is here beyond criticism".

In August 1921, King Alfonso XIII commissioned Antonio Maura to form a government, and he appointed Juan de la Cierva as Minister of War.

General Berenguer sent the letter to the Minister of War on August 20, requesting instructions in this regard and also stating that he did not consider himself authorized to provide such information as it was a reserved matter.

[13] The writer Miguel de Unamuno, a furious anti-Alfonsino, was also skeptical ("the first person of the State is the one to blame for everything shameful and illegal that happens in our country", he had said publicly about Alfonso XIII).

[14] By Royal Order communicated on April 21, 1922, the Supreme Council of War and Navy received the file, passing it on April 24 to the military prosecutor, José García Moreno, who on June 26 returned it to the Supreme Council, pronouncing to "pass on the proceedings to the gathered, in the Justice Chamber, for having found indications of criminal responsibilities, requesting to ratify all the testimonies and to correct the deficiencies found; to open a file to detail merits and rewards; and to communicate the proceedings to the Ministry of War".

What General Picasso presented was a summary of some four hundred pages, in which he imputed the Command in the first place, since "with unconsciousness, with incapacity, with dazedness or recklessness it has caused the collapse of the artificial construction of the territory".

[16] At the July 6 meeting, the Supreme Council of War and Navy, presided over by General Francisco Aguilera, decided to prosecute 39 military personnel for negligence or dereliction of duty in Annual, in addition to the 37 officers charged in the Picasso file itself.

In the same order it was agreed not to prosecute any civilian because they did not fall under the jurisdiction of the Council, so the President of the Government Manuel Allendesalazar and the Minister of War Juan de la Cierva were left out of the investigation.

In reality there were three opinions: that of the conservative majority, which defended that the responsibilities were exclusively military and that they were already being judged by the Supreme Council of War and Navy; that of the liberals, which also pointed to the military command but included the conservative cabinet of Allendesalazar; and that of the socialist Indalecio Prieto, who held responsible for the "disaster of Annual" all the governments of the parties of that time since 1909 and demanded the prosecution of High Commissioner Berenguer and that of General Felipe Navarro, who was still a prisoner of Abd el-Krim.

[23][24][20][21][25] The sessions of the Congress of Deputies in which the opinions were debated were stormy, especially when Indalecio Prieto, who had traveled to Morocco and talked to the victims, and the Count of Romanones, who had lost a son in the fighting, intervened.

"Mr. President [of the Congress of Deputies]: in view of the attitude of the minorities, I say to Your Majesty that the session cannot continue because there is no Government, so I am leaving from here to the Palace to present my resignation", said Sánchez Guerra.

The king appointed as his replacement as head of the presidency of the government the liberal Manuel García Prieto and the debate on the political responsibilities for the "disaster of Annual" continued.

In view of the turn of events and the lack of agreement of the members of the Commission, they agreed to convene the Plenary of the Chamber for October 2 and to hold a general vote on the matter.

However, the Plenary never met: on September 13 the captain general of Catalonia, Miguel Primo de Rivera, staged a coup d'état, dissolved the Chambers and proclaimed the dictatorship with the king's approval.

In a statement to the British newspaper Daily Mail on January 20, 1924, the king justified his "acceptance" of Primo de Rivera's dictatorship because, among other reasons, "it was necessary to use an energetic therapy on the malignant tumors that we suffered in the Peninsula and in Africa".

[29] In the manifesto made public by General Miguel Primo de Rivera to justify the coup d'état in Spain in 1923, he alluded to the "tendentious passions surrounding the problem of responsibilities".

The manifesto went on to say: "The country does not want to hear any more talk of responsibilities, but to know them, to demand them promptly and justly, and this we will entrust, with a time limit, to Courts of moral authority and dispassionate about what has poisoned politics up to now".

Regarding the possible political responsibilities, the Supreme Court concluded that the only ones that could be derived would be subject "to the judgment of history, and only [sic] demandable by public opinion or through its representative bodies".

Together with the Picasso File itself, the National Historical Archive contains a closely related piece, which includes testimonies obtained later, for example those of the Spanish prisoners involved in the Annual Disaster and released years later.