they boasted about their intentions. The left and liberal press reported the case and Prieto delivered protests in the Cortes. Sánchez Guerra, more to prevent a scandal than to save Pestaña’s life, instructed the Minister of the Interior, Vicente Piniés, to send Civil Guards to guard the hospital. He also ordered Martínez Anido to report daily on Pestaña’s health. Nothing was done to arrest the Libre hit squad.32
There were several unsuccessful efforts by anarchist action groups to kill Martínez Anido. The most elaborate was actually a trap set up by the police. In the hope of justifying a massacre of anarchist militants, Arlegui commissioned the agent provocateur Inocencio Feced and Pere Mártir Homs, a labour lawyer on his payroll, to mount a fake assassination attempt on Martínez Anido. According to Ricardo Sanz, it was Homs who had organized the murder of Layret. In coordination with elements in police headquarters, including Captain Lasarte, Homs was the link to the paid assassins of the Libres. Now, Feced and a police agent called Florentino Pellejero infiltrated an anarchist group from Valencia led by José Claramonte and convinced them that it would be easy to kill Martínez Anido. Feced provided dummy bombs filled with sawdust which the others believed were to be thrown at the Civil Governor’s car as he returned from the theatre.
As the group lay in ambush, Pellejero opened fire on them and shot Claramonte, who managed to shoot him in return. Another of the anarchists, Amalio Cerdeño, was captured and shot by the police, using the ley de fugas. However, he did not die immediately. He and other anarchists detained earlier in the proceedings were interrogated by a judge who quickly saw what Arlegui had planned. He informed the senior prosecutor, Diego Medina. In the early hours of the morning, Medina telephoned Sánchez Guerra, gave him details of what had happened and revealed that Arlegui and Martínez Anido had already planned to kill around 200 anarchists as a reprisal for the ‘assassination attempt’. The Prime Minister seized on the excuse for getting rid of both. He telephoned Martínez Anido and informed him that, in view of these lamentable events, he was dismissing Arlegui. Justifying the attempt on the life of Pestaña, the Civil Governor commented: ‘As long as the putrefaction that for many years has been hanging over Barcelona is not cleared away, expelling the scum that comes from all over, nothing useful can be done.’ Unused to anyone challenging him and utterly furious, Martínez Anido had already declared that, if Arlegui were dismissed, he would resign. To his consternation, Sánchez Guerra replied that he reluctantly accepted his resignation.33
The Catalan financial and industrial elites were outraged and the conservative press in Barcelona declared that Sánchez Guerra’s action had left the city defenceless. One week later, on 31 October, the Barcelona haute bourgeoisie gathered at the Ritz to give Martínez Anido a spectacular send-off.34 However, the effect of his removal was somewhat diminished by Sánchez Guerra’s appointment of Miguel Primo de Rivera as Captain General on 14 March 1922. Fiercely hostile to the CNT, Primo was furious that his close friends Martínez Anido and Arlegui had been dismissed. A delegation of employers’ organizations had visited Primo on 27 October and had been reassured by his statement that he shared their distress at the loss of two ‘most worthy officers’. The tension was increased when the government recognized the workers’ right to free association. The new Civil Governor, General Julio Ardanaz, authorized the opening of workers’ centres and the activities of Catalan trade unions.35
Feeling vulnerable, industrialists were heartened by the triumph of fascism in Italy. El Eco Patronal, the journal of the leaders of the Madrid building industry, declared that fascism was an example to be followed in Spain. Mussolini was praised as ‘a modest man’ and proudly declared to be ‘one of our own’ because he had been a building labourer. He was praised for ‘restoring normality’ to Italian political life, a euphemism for the crushing of left. The Somatén was compared with the Fascist Party and the editorial asked if it was not possible to find a Spanish Mussolini. The Duce was enviously seen as the model for the iron surgeon that Spain needed. Such enthusiasm naturally provoked fears on the left. The Confederación Patronal Española even launched an unsuccessful newspaper called La Camisa Negra (The Black Shirt) with editorial support from the extreme right-wing Maurista Manuel Delgado Barreto. The hard-line President of the Catalan federation, Félix Graupera, called for businessmen across Spain to emulate their Italian equivalents. It was hardly surprising that the patronal press approved of the violence used by the Fascists to crush the working-class movement in Italy, an operation it referred to as a ‘necessary and inevitable evil’.36
Cambó, however, stressing its anti-democratic character, saw Italian fascism as merely chronologically parallel to events in Spain but not suitable for emulation.37 The Conde de Romanones was aware of efforts to create a fascist party out of the Sindicatos Libres. The commander of the Barcelona garrison, Bartolomé de Roselló, held a meeting of officers in the Casino Militar in the spring of 1923 ‘to discuss the creation of a fascist party whose basis would be the Sindicato Libre, to which end the secretary is already in Italy’. The Secretary of the Libres, the notorious Juan Laguía Lliteras, had indeed gone to Rome. He held talks with the Fascists which came to naught. Discussions with the Partito Popolare were more fruitful. Important right-wing civilians were present at the meeting in the Casino Militar. The pro-fascist officers from the Barcelona garrison formed a group known as La Traza (the Project) with links to other garrisons. Emulating Mussolini’s Black Shirts, they wore a blue shirt as their uniform. Their aim to become a nationwide organization failed totally. That there was never to be a full-scale Spanish equivalent of Italian fascism until the civil war was largely the consequence of Spanish neutrality in the Great War and the lack of thousands of post-war ex-combatants.38
The concerns of the Catalan elite about the departure of Martínez Anido were exacerbated by the continuing instability of the political system, over which hung the issue of responsibility for the disaster of Annual. The two principal parties were divided internally and the cabinet of Sánchez Guerra could not muster a parliamentary majority to get approval for the budget. Prieto had kept the issue at boiling point in the Cortes on 4 May 1922 with his stark analysis of the army’s failure.39 However, his most devastating intervention came after Sánchez Guerra, who had also assumed the portfolio of Minister of War, had responded to the widespread demand for action by agreeing, on 19 July, that General Picasso’s findings could be discussed in the Cortes after a special parliamentary commission had analysed it. Prieto thanked him for this act of respect for the Cortes. Romanones, in contrast, was appalled. He was planning his own comeback with a grand coalition of the four main Liberal factions – his own more conservative grouping, the moderate centrist ‘liberal-democrats’ under García Prieto, the followers of the progressive, albeit personally corrupt, Santiago Alba and the Reformists under Melquíades Álvarez. Accordingly, he was aghast that Sánchez Guerra should have made this concession and thereby exposed García Prieto and other ministers to accusations of complicity in the disaster.40
The final Picasso report was presented to the Cortes on 15 November but not fully discussed until one week later.41 Prieto, who was a member of the special commission, made a passionate speech to the Cortes over two days, on 21 and 22 November. He found reason to blame every government since 1909 but reserved his most pungent criticisms for that of Allendesalazar. He also criticized the three most senior generals at the time of Annual, Berenguer, Navarro, who was the captive of Abd el-Krim, and Fernández Silvestre, who was dead. The President of the Cortes was scandalized when Prieto quoted Silvestre as saying that he was going to Morocco to capture Alhucemas (the key to the Rif) ‘because the King had authorized it and urged him to do so’. He ended with a sarcastic reference to the King’s pleasure-seeking in Paris and on fashionable French beaches.42
Romanones was not alone in questioning the political wisdom of the Prime Minister. The King told Romanones that it was reckless folly to allow the Picasso report to be discussed by the Cortes.43 Desperate for more stable government, he revealed further doubts about Sánchez Guerra when he implicitly compared him to Maura. He remarked to Maura’s friend César Silio: ‘We used to be in the Ritz Hotel and now we’ve ended up in the Posada del Peine.’ (The Posada del Peine was a traditional and very modest inn in old Madrid.)44 The King’s solution was to turn to Cambó. Cambó was one of the few prominent politicians who seemed to be exempt from corruption, electoral or otherwise. On 30 November, Alfonso XIII offered him the post of Prime Minister, suggesting that he could rule