A People Betrayed. Paul Preston

in favour of home rule in all three regions. Anti-Spanish slogans were shouted, including some in favour of the Rif rebels, and there were clashes with the police. As was to be expected, the officers of the Barcelona garrison were outraged. As Captain General of the Catalan military region, Primo de Rivera overreacted and responded with a declaration of martial law.82

Primo de Rivera had made little secret of his wider plans. Apparently, he had visited the King’s summer residence in San Sebastián to discuss the prospect with him. Afterwards, at a dinner in Cordoba, Alfonso XIII had confided in his hosts that Primo was preparing a movement that would resolve the problems of the day.83 Primo returned to Madrid on 7 September and met the generals of the Cuadrilátero to make the final arrangements for a coup one week later. This secured the support of senior Africanistas. He had a vague commitment from General José Sanjurjo, the Military Governor of Zaragoza. Immediately on his return from Madrid on 23 June, he had courted the support of the Junteros. Primo admitted to General Eduardo López Ochoa, a freemason and republican, that he used different arguments with different interlocutors. He told López Ochoa that, in order to resolve the problems of Morocco, pistolerismo and Catalan nationalism, the coup would impose a competent civilian government with military backing, and that the army would remain in power only briefly. López Ochoa claimed later to have learned that Primo had made a deal with senior Catalanists, offering autonomy and a favourable customs regime in return for their support. He told another senior officer of the Barcelona garrison, General Mercader, a friend of the King, that the plan was to save the monarchy, while assuring López Ochoa that ‘afterwards things would go very differently’.84 This seems to be confirmed by a claim by Portela Valladares that, shortly after his arrival in Barcelona, Primo de Rivera confided in him his plans for a coup. Allegedly, Portela responded that his scheme would meet an insuperable obstacle in the King to which Primo replied: ‘the day he gets in my way is the day I put him over the border’.85 During this second sojourn in Madrid, he wrote letters to the generals in command of Ceuta (Enrique Marzo y Balaguer) and Melilla (Manuel Montero Navarro) to secure their support. These letters expressed his commitment to continued operations against Abd el-Krim.86

In the early hours of the morning of 13 September 1923, Primo’s coup d’état was launched. He had long since ingratiated himself with the Catalan elite. It was alleged at the time that he had held secret meetings with Junoy, the architect Josep Puig i Cadafalch, President of the Catalan assembly of local councillors, the Mancomunitat, and other Catalan business leaders at the Font-Romeu health spa on the French side of the border. There, apparently, he agreed, in return for their support, to promote their ambitions in terms of greater autonomy, protectionist policies and public order.87 In what must be presumed to be a cynical pantomime, he had made efforts to speak Catalan at public events and gave every sign of admiring Catalan culture, especially the national dance, the sardana. When he coincided with Cambó, he would always ask, ‘How are you, my dear Chief?’ He regularly dined with the leading industrial barons of the most conservative elements of the Lliga, such as Félix Graupera of the Federació Patronal, Domingo Sert of the Foment de Treball Nacional, the Marqués de Comillas and Ferran Fabra y Puig (Marqués de Alella).88 In that sense, Primo’s coup was more about meeting Catalan determination to see the CNT crushed than silencing the Picasso report on the responsibility for Annual, although that certainly clinched the support of both the Africanista generals and Alfonso XIII. The role of the King was crucial, not because he played an active role but rather because he irresponsibly stood and watched. When the crunch came, the response of the government was feeble largely because of a conviction that the overall political situation required desperate measures. Thus, despite knowing what Primo and the Cuadrilátero were up to, nothing was done to stop him returning to Barcelona. In fact, far from sure of success, he was fearful, as he had been in June, that he would be arrested on the way back. According to López Ochoa, Catalanist supporters had a car ready to spirit him across the French border if things went badly.89

Meanwhile, the carefree monarch was trying out a new sports car on the road between San Sebastián and Biarritz. On 12 September, Santiago Alba, the minister deputed to accompany Alfonso on his summer holiday learned of the imminence of the coup. Knowing how much military hatred was directed at his person, Alba resigned. Moreover, Martínez Anido, a key collaborator in the plot, was in San Sebastián with orders to arrest Alba as soon as the coup had succeeded, subject him to a summary court martial and shoot him. Warned of this and fearing for his life, Alba crossed the international bridge into France.90 In Madrid, the government dithered. García Prieto was in favour of arresting Primo, but the Minister of War, General Luis Aizpuru, was reluctant to believe that he was involved in a plot. By the time of their inconsequential conversation, Primo de Rivera had already issued orders for the establishment of martial law in Barcelona, for the occupation of all major public buildings and for street patrols by the Somatén. At the same time, he published a manifesto to the nation in which he described himself as the long-awaited iron surgeon who would clear away the incompetence and corruption of the venal professional politicians as the first step to national regeneration. To do so, he would perform radical surgery on the sick body politic. Among the problems to be solved, he listed subversion, social violence, public disorder and separatism but was non-committal about his plans for Morocco, declaring only that he aimed to find a ‘prompt, worthy and honourable’ resolution.91

Without popular support, the government could do little to stand in the way of the army. Even less was it likely to stand against Alfonso XIII, who may not have been actively involved in the coup but certainly knew about it and was not displeased to see it prosper. He had long been indiscreet about his impatience with the inefficiency of various governments and their weakness in the face of revolutionary threats. He believed that he represented the national will better than any corruptly elected government. There had been his rash speech in May 1921 in Cordoba. In February and March 1923, rumours that he was thinking in terms of a dictatorship were fed by the right-wing daily La Acción, whose director, Manuel Delgado Barreto, was a prominent figure on the extreme right. Now there was the immediate advantage of preventing parliamentary discussion of the Picasso report.92 It was therefore no surprise that, on 14 September, a beaming Alfonso XIII, wearing army uniform, arrived in Madrid and announced his support for the military rebels. He refused to dismiss the rebellious generals and thereby obliged his civilian government to resign. He then summoned Primo de Rivera to Madrid and named him head of a Military Directory with executive and legislative powers. García Prieto seemed more relieved than anything, commenting to journalists, ‘I have a new saint to whom I can pray: St Miguel Primo de Rivera, because he has freed me from the nightmare of government.’93 Around 4,000 well-dressed Catalans headed by the Mayor of Barcelona, the Marqués de Alella, the President of the Mancomunitat, Puig i Cadafalch, and the most prominent industrialists, were at the station on the evening of 14 September to bid farewell to Primo on his journey to Madrid to take power.94 The significance of what had just happened has been frequently expressed in medical metaphors for the obvious reason that Primo himself adopted the classic regenerationist image of the iron surgeon. For Raymond Carr and Shlomo Ben-Ami, Primo butchered the mewling democracy of García Prieto’s cabinet, while for Javier Tusell and José Luis García Navarro, he simply buried a corpse. Both views rather let Alfonso XIII off the hook. After all, without his intervention, the coup could easily have been stopped. By indulging his penchant for military government, the King left himself with no alternative when the military too ran out of ideas. More subtle altogether is the brilliant conclusion of Francisco Romero: ‘In fact, the “iron surgeon” had just switched off the life support system of the comatose patient. Having thought to do so himself, the chief consultant, King Alfonso XIII, was not troubled to sign the death certificate.’95

      Miguel Primo de Rivera and Alfonso XIII, together with the generals of the recently formed Military Directory.