an insurrection, La Cierva instructed the Captain General of the region to declare martial law. In response, workers dug up thousands of paving stones and set up barricades. What had started as anti-conscription protests escalated into anti-clerical disturbances and church burnings. The maintenance of order was initially rendered difficult because many troops were fraternizing with the strikers. Twenty-one churches and thirty convents were set alight, but assaults on clergy were rare. It was noteworthy that public buildings, banks and the mansions of the rich were left untouched. By Thursday, 29 July, the tide had turned with the arrival of additional troops and Civil Guards. As working-class districts were bombarded by artillery, the movement was put down by what Rafael Shaw called ‘the terrorism exercised by the priest-ridden Government of Señor Maura’. In the course of the week, 104 men and six women were killed and around 300 treated for injuries. Five soldiers and two Civil Guards lost their lives. Three monks were killed during the rioting, one of them asphyxiated as he hid in the monastery cellar, although most of the violence was directed not at individual clerics but at the symbols of ecclesiastical power. Inflamed by Lerroux’s lurid propaganda, the rioters burst into convents convinced that they would liberate nuns from torture and sexual servitude. Elsewhere in most Catalan towns, the strike went on and, in some, the Republic was declared.6
The Semana Trágica had serious consequences for Spanish politics. The officer corps of the army, determined to mask its feeble performance at Barranco del Lobo, became an ever more aggressive colonial lobby. The high command of the African Army successfully pushed for an expansion of military operations in Morocco, the costs of which quickly escalated, not just in financial terms. As both Liberal and Conservative governments had to turn to the army to suppress proletarian discontent, much of which was related to the human costs of the Moroccan adventure, the officer corps became increasingly intolerant of any civilian supervision.7 Moreover, the events of July and August were followed by a fierce repression which moulded future working-class strategies. In Barcelona, the thoughtful Ángel Ossorio y Gallardo was replaced as Civil Governor by the hard-line Evaristo Crespo Azorín, who imposed martial law, banned most left-wing organizations and was particularly harsh on Solidaridad Obrera and the Radicals. Around 3,000 prisoners were taken and 1,725 cases were subsequently brought to trial by court martial. Seventeen men were sentenced to death, of whom five were actually executed. They included Francesc Ferrer and a charcoal burner whose crime was to have danced in the street with the desiccated corpse of a nun.
Ferrer’s lay schools, like Spain’s few Protestant schools, were subjected to furious and ceaseless abuse by the Catholic press. Ferrer himself was found guilty of masterminding the events in Barcelona despite there being only the flimsiest of evidence. Nevertheless, he had been involved in the planning and funding of both failed attempts on the life of Alfonso XIII. For the government and the military high command, the repression was deemed necessary because the disturbances combined elements of anti-militarism, anti-clericalism and Catalan separatism. In this sense, during the Semana Trágica the hostility between the military and the labour movement prefigured the violent hostilities of the civil war. Ironically, the Semana Trágica also saw the Catalan bourgeoisie scurry back to the protection of the Madrid government.
The execution of Ferrer on 13 October 1909 unleashed massive protest demonstrations across Spain and in several European capitals. The campaign with the slogan ‘Maura No’ was strengthened by the bullying policies of La Cierva. When the Liberal leader Segismundo Moret protested in the Cortes about the repression and called for Maura’s resignation, La Cierva aggressively suggested that Moret’s opposition to his methods was responsible for events such as the assassination attempts against the King. His tone was widely condemned, but Maura congratulated him on his speech. Although Maura had a substantial parliamentary majority, on 21 October Alfonso XIII seized the opportunity to get rid of Maura by precipitately accepting what the devastated Prime Minister had intended as merely a symbolic offer of resignation.8 The King therefore ensured that the Conservative Party would henceforth be in the hands of elements opposed to substantial reform.9 Alfonso then offered the government to Moret, who, unable to unite the faction-ridden Liberal Party, was replaced in February 1910 by José Canalejas, leader of the left wing of the Liberals and a politician genuinely concerned with social justice. There was an assassination attempt on Maura in Barcelona in the summer of 1911.10
In October 1908, to avoid imprisonment for his involvement in the assassination attempt on Alfonso XIII, Lerroux had gone to Argentina, where he remained until August 1909. Greeted by cheering crowds, he had returned a changed man. While in Argentina, he had received considerable gifts, including shares in meat-export companies and amusement parks as well as cash. In consequence, he began to invest in service companies that were then granted lucrative contracts by town councils controlled by the Radicals. The corruption of party members with positions in local administration helped Lerroux both to become a very rich man and to finance his party. And as he accumulated possessions, cars, jewellery and an estate in San Rafael, his rhetoric became ever more conservative. He was also involved in corrupt activities in the cement and building-supplies trade.11
The first elections called by Canalejas, on 8 May 1910, saw for the first time the election to the Cortes of a Socialist deputy. It has been suggested that Canalejas was, in his heart of hearts, a republican whose acceptance of the monarchy was purely pragmatic.12 Certainly, he came to power determined to implement a regenerationist programme in the hope of weaning the working class away from anarchism and socialism. He was prepared to countenance state arbitration in wage settlements, to legislate on working conditions and even to contemplate the expropriation of the great latifundio estates on grounds of social utility. He introduced several important reforms including universal military service which put an end to the divisive practice whereby the rich could buy their way out. He also replaced the unjust tax on the consumption of food, drink and fuel known as the impuesto de consumos with taxes on the wealthy.
However, despite his reforming ambitions, he was beset by growing opposition. There was continued anti-war agitation and, in August 1911, some members of the crew of the warship Numancia mutinied and threatened to bombard Malaga in support of a republican coup. The intensification of left-wing and trade union agitation brought out Canalejas’s instincts as a man of order. He used the army to repress strikes, most notably a nationwide general strike in September 1911 after which he suspended the CNT. There was a conviction within the anarchist movement that he was in collusion with Lerroux to destroy Solidaridad Obrera and subsequently the CNT. Indeed, he was the object of a hate campaign by both the left and the extreme right. Canalejas was shot dead by an anarchist in front of the Librería San Martín in Madrid’s Puerta del Sol on 12 November 1912.13
Maura informed Alfonso XIII that he would not work with the Liberals because they were moving too close to republicanism. That decision together with the death of Canalejas left the two dynastic parties in chaos and marked the end of any serious attempt to reform the Restoration system. In 1913, when a government led by the Conde de Romanones fell, Alfonso XIII ignored the fact that Maura was leader of the Conservative Party and opened discussions with the lacklustre lawyer Eduardo Dato who, in contrast, was prepared to work with the Liberals. In protest at what they regarded as disrespect for their leader, Maura’s more dynamic followers formed a group called Los Jóvenes Mauristas. Rather like the broader regenerationist movement, Maurismo would divide into two incompatible wings. On the one hand, led by Ossiorio y Gallardo, were those who shared their leader’s desire to carry out political reform by putting an end to caciquismo. On the other hand, the majority, led by Antonio Goicoechea, would eventually develop into a key right-wing anti-republican group.14
The Liberal Party also divided into two major factions led respectively by Manuel García Prieto, the Marqués de Alhucemas, and Álvaro de Figueroa, the Conde de Romanones, the canny cacique of Guadalajara, an expert more in the exploitation than in the reform of the system. Nevertheless, in 1915, Romanones did bring the dynamic Santiago Alba into his government as Minister of the Interior. Alba was determined to reduce the size of the bureaucracy and the army in order to finance investment in both agriculture and industry. This seduced the Reformist Republicans of Melquíades Álvarez away from their alliance with the Socialists.
The CNT was becoming more radical as, gradually, the Socialists and Republicans became more moderate. In the course of the