Sometent

According to Jaume Vicens Vives, in the medieval sometent "when the king or his officials thought it convenient and necessary, the royal people of a certain district or vegueria were summoned to come with arms in defense of their lord.

Thus, for example, they collaborated in the arrest of Francisco Ferrer Guardia (1909), accused of complicity in the attack of the anarchist Mateo Morral against Alfonso XIII, and against the strikers in Alella, in the years prior to the military dictatorship of Primo de Rivera.

[3] On September 17, 1923, only two days after the triumph of the coup d'état that established the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera, the Militar Directory issued a royal decree extending the Catalan institution of the Sometent (referred in Spanish as Somatén) to all the provinces of Spain.

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 "black shirts", the Somatén "was an armed corps of bourgeois of order, created from, by and for the power", although some workers from the Sindicatos Libres were also integrated into it.

Its structure and mission –initially, the model of the Catalan Somatén was copied– were established by a Royal Order of the Ministry of War of June 13, 1924 on the Organic Regulations for the Corps of Armed Somatenes of Spain, and in successive decrees the legal privileges of the agents of authority were extended to its members, even when they were off duty.

[6] To promote enlistment and encourage social support for the institution, innumerable civic acts were organized, the rites of which González Calleja describes as follows: "popular reception of the military representative of the Directory (civil or military governor or government delegate); a review of the local Somatén; a campaign mass officiated by the bishop or the parish priest in the main square with the attendance of the garrison forces, if any, of the personalities of the town and the region (mayor, secretary, town councilors, teachers, doctors, etc.

), and even of the youth organizations of the region such as the Exploradores de España; speeches by the godmother of the Somatén, the corporal of the district and the concurrent civil or military authority; blessing of the flags of the Institution; parade of the Somatén (care was taken to avoid excessive identification with military customs, discouraging the execution of any step rhythm or the uniform holding of the long weapon, and prohibiting the use of bugle and drum bands), and civic banquet in the City Hall, in a public hall or in the home of a prominent neighbor, often a close relative of the godmother".

It reached its maximum in August 1928 with 217,584, and from then on it began a gradual decline, due to the fact that it lost much of its purpose in improving public order and that it failed to take root outside of Catalonia; "the caciquesque springs of local power prevented the independent development of a civic and truly apolitical organization for protection", affirms González Calleja.

[11] Another reason for its decline was the cold reception it received from the popular classes due to its bourgeois component, since it was made up almost exclusively of "respectable people" (merchants, industrialists, lawyers, doctors, engineers, landowners, etc.).

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

[13] However, Primo de Rivera, only two and a half weeks before presenting his resignation, continued to believe in the validity of the Somatén when in an act with Somatenistas held in Madrid on January 12, 1930, he assured:[14]The Somatén and the Unión Patriótica are perfectly organized and have such a force of cohesion, such a decision to act nobly and civically, that I no longer believe that with the existence of these entities the days of turbulence, unrest and anxiety, such as those we have all known, can return to Spain.After the fall of the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera and the end of censorship, a good part of the press denounced the excesses, and even the crimes committed by its members, and demanded its dissolution.