Hardly any action was recorded elsewhere except Seville, where local rebel commander general José Sanjurjo took control for some 24 hours but acknowledged defeat when faced with resolute governmental response.

[4] There is little indication that growing opposition among some of the generals was fuelled by ongoing political controversies, especially the problems of agrarian reform, relations between state and church, re-defining labor regulations and ambitions of peripheral nationalisms.

A contemporary scholar distinguished between 3 different lobbying groups pursuing 3 paths: a "constitutional" revolt aimed at installing a new less radical regime, a coup leading to monarchist restoration and a technical "rectification" of the Republic, equidistant between the former two.

[14] The remaining plotters were retired generals José Cavalcanti and Emilio Barrera [es],[15] some lower-rank officers,[16] a handful of second-rate politicians, chiefly Manuel Burgos y Mazo,[17] and possibly few industrial tycoons.

Prime Minister Azaña judged that the plotters lacked extensive backing and that instead of mounting a pre-emptive strike, he would be better off allowing the coup to unfold, effectively setting up a trap.

On August 9 Azaña was already fully informed about the decision taken the previous day by the plotters; he forewarned generals in provincial capitals, e.g. in Zaragoza, Barcelona, and Cadiz,[27] and made sure loyal security units were located near the Ministry of War.

At the same time, other military conspirators were tasked with taking control of a number of provincial garrisons, the key ones in Seville, Pamplona, Valladolid, Granada and Cádiz; in case of a stalemate in Madrid, they were supposed to send rebel reinforcements to the capital.

Little is known about outcome of these talks; some authors claim Ansaldo was promised 200 machine-guns[36] and some suggest that a shipment from Italy might have been already sent;[37] confirmed or not, no foreign impact on the future developments has been proven.

[40] A vague practical compromise was agreed; following the victorious coup Barrera would create a committee assuming supreme power, headed by himself with Cavalcanti and Fernandez Perez forming part; their task was to restore public order.

[43] The conspirators were aware of the sketchy nature of their plan, but they feared that delay would lead to arrests and decimate the command structure; the moment of rebellion was set at 4 AM, August 10, 1932.

[44] Despite the plan, no organized military sub-unit showed up in the very early morning hours in the neighborhood; instead, rather loose groups of some 100 officers and civilians[45] attempted to enter the building using the back entrance at calle de Prim.

Another, smaller group of equally disorganized rebels entered the nearby Palacio de Comunicaciones hoping to take command of Guardia Civil stationed there, but some were taken prisoner and the others withdrew.

Since the city remained calm[53] he made it to Biarritz seeking a long-distance aircraft which would take him to Seville, but having failed he returned to Pamplona and flew back to Madrid, where he spent the night.

One of the reasons was that the decision to rise did not reach some local conspirators;[55] also, many of them remained vacillating and in fact preferred to join the already successful action than to take the risk of initiating the insurgency.

[62] With no opposition, Sanjurjo moved his command post to Capitania General building at Plaza de la Gavidia, declared state of war, gave press interviews, issued a manifesto and started appointing new civil and military authorities in the province.

[64] He was also aware that the rebels seized control in Jerez de la Frontera,[65] a city in the neighboring province of Cádiz; the local Guardia Civil commander Pedro Romero Basart was an oldtime Sanjurjo acquaintance.

However, Sanjurjo took some measures which allow a glimpse into his vision of the future Spain and which are at times referred to when judging political leaning of the rebels and their actual or would-be social basis.

It pledged to restore order, tranquility and social justice by means of discipline and the rule of law; it declared formation of a provisional governing Junta, which would hand over power to a new, legitimate parliament elected by the people.

[69] Sanjurjo dismissed both the civil governor and the military commander; he conducted talks with local established conservative politicians, either related to Acción Popular or to defunct Unión Patriótica, some of them landholders, former diputación dignitaries and monarchists.

[70] However, he seemed to have most trust in the Carlists; Cristóbal González de Aguilar was nominated the new civil governor[71] while others were appointed either to ayuntamiento[72] or to some military positions,[73] both in the city or in the controlled areas.

Key conspirators captured were trialed: Esteban-Infantes was sentenced to 12 years in prison, Garcia de Herrán to lifetime incarceration and Sanjurjo received death penalty, soon commuted to life imprisonment.

Since the Republican legal system did not allow trials in absentia, leaders who fled Spain, including Barrera, were effectively barred from re-entering the country and condemned to exile.

[88] Some 200 officers were brought to trial; ultimately 144 of them, plus some civilians, were deported to the Spanish Saharan military prison outpost in Villa Cisneros, few released as late as the fall of 1933.

Perhaps its most important result was further radicalization of the Left;[96] ensured that reaction would never come to terms with the Republican regime, their propaganda embraced increasingly sectarian tone and spurred belligerency of the party militias.

Future conspirators concluded that any action should not rely on retired or off-duty generals but must be organized by officers holding key command positions, as indeed would be the case 4 years later.

[106] There are students who compare Sanjurjada to 19th-century Spanish pronunciamientos: military-driven, politically ambiguous, praetorian in concept, with restoring order as key rationale and no popular mobilisation involved.

In Marxist historiography the coup is presented as a counter-revolutionary attempt financed by oligarchy of landowners,[108] though also in many other scholarly works Sanjurjada is lined-up in a history of right-wing violence, increasingly flavored with authoritarian trends.