The military directorate of Miguel Primo de Rivera, also referred to as the Military Directory (), constituted the first stage of the personal dictatorship established in Spain during the reign of Alfonso XIII after the triumph of Primo de Rivera's coup d'état of September 13–15, 1923. It was an institution made up exclusively of military officers (eight generals and a rear admiral) who, under the presidency of General Miguel Primo de Rivera, had to advise him in the functions of government and in the promulgation of the decrees which would have the force of law —the Cortes elected in April 1923 were closed—. In December 1925, the directorate was substituted by a government in which there were military and civilians also presided by Primo de Rivera, which would be known as the Civil Directory, which constituted the second and last stage of the primorriverist dictatorship, ending in January 1930.
The regime of the Military Directory, like other corporatist military regimes established in Eastern and Southern Europe in the interwar period, differed from fascism —established in Italy after the march on Rome in October 1922— in that it was a single-party system but under the tutelage of the government and that the state apparatus remained controlled by the old ruling classes that allowed only limited changes. However, according to historian Eduardo González Calleja, "the primorriverist dictatorship also had some similarities with fascism", such as corporatism.
During this first stage, the dictatorship achieved two great successes: the solution of the Morocco problem (including the issue of the responsibilities that were shelved) and the reestablishment of public order in Catalonia (two issues on which the "old politics" of the parties of that time had been defeated). Once these two problems were solved, the "dictatorship with a king", as the historian Santos Juliá has denominated it, considered its continuity with the foundation of a new political regime, with an authoritarian type, based on a "single party" —the Patriotic Union— in the style of Fascist Italy.
Background
Since the disaster of 98, there was a growing interference of the Army in the political affairs of Spain. Two key moments of this praetorian attitude of the Army were the Cu-Cut! crisis of 1905 —the assault by officers of the Barcelona garrison on the editorial office and workshops of this nationalist satirical publication in response to a cartoon about the Army— which led to the Law of Jurisdictions of 1906, and the Spanish crisis of 1917, in which the self-proclaimed Defence Juntas (Spanish: Juntas de Defensa) Boards, made up exclusively of military personnel, took on a special role. The culmination of this process was Primo de Rivera's coup d'état on September 13, 1923, that was, according to historian Eduardo González Calleja, "the first corporate intervention of the Armed Forces" that, unlike the proclamation of the 19th century, created "the first authentic praetorian regime in our history —the Directorio Militar—, transferring the values and attitudes of the Army to public life as a whole".
When Primo de Rivera and King Alfonso XIII met on September 15, 1923, at the Palacio de Oriente, they agreed on a formula that kept the appearance of constitutional legality. Primo de Rivera would be appointed "Head of the Government" and "sole minister", assisted by a military directorate, formed by eight brigadier generals, one representing each military region, and a counter admiral, Antonio Magaz y Pers, Marquis of Magaz, representing the Navy.
The Gaceta de Madrid of the following day published the Royal Decree, signed by the King and countersigned by the Minister of Grace and Justice Antonio López Muñoz, again to keep the appearance of legality, which stated: "I am appointing as head of the Government Lieutenant General Miguel Primo de Rivera y Orbaneja, Marquis of Estella". In the same issue of the Gaceta de Madrid of September 16 appeared the first royal decree which Primo de Rivera had presented to the King for his signature, creating the Military Directory presided over by him and that would have "all the faculties, initiatives and responsibilities inherent to a Government as a whole, but with a single signature" and that proposed to "constitute a brief parenthesis in the constitutional march of Spain". In its Exposition, published in the press under the headline A historic decree, it was declared:
Article 1 of the Royal Decree conferred on Primo de Rivera the position of "President of the Military Directory in charge of the Government of the State, with powers to propose to me as many decrees as may be convenient for public health, which shall have the force of law". Article 2 established that the Directory would be formed by its president and eight brigadier generals, one for each military region, plus a counter admiral of the Navy. Article 3 stated that the President of the Directory would be the one to sign the decrees, "with the faculties of sole Minister", and "with the prior advice of the Directory". In the 4th, the positions of President of the Council of Ministers, Ministers of the Crown and Undersecretaries were suppressed, except for the Undersecretaries of State and War.
On the 17th day, the Gaceta de Madrid published the dissolution of the Congress of Deputies and of the elective part of the Senate, in accordance with the power conferred on the King by Article 32 of the Constitution, although with the obligation to convene them again within three months. On November 12, once the term had passed, the presidents of the Congress and the Senate, Melquiades Álvarez and the Count of Romanones, respectively, presented themselves before the king so that he would convene the Courts, reminding him that this was his duty as constitutional monarch. The response they received was their immediate dismissal from the two positions they held. Primo de Rivera justified it with these words:
On December 21, 1923, the first reorganization of the Directory was carried out, becoming a collegiate structure, and therefore the generals who were part of it could assume the responsibility of a ministerial office, which until then had corresponded to Primo de Rivera, as "sole minister". The post of Undersecretary, previously held only by General Severiano Martínez Anido in the Ministry of the Interior, was also reestablished, with the power to participate in the meetings of the Directory. A new step towards the conversion of the Directory into a de facto government was taken in June 1924 when the members of the Directory could sign the decrees delivered to the king for his approval —a power which until then had corresponded exclusively to Primo de Rivera—.
Permanent state of emergency and reestablishment of "social peace"
Militarization of public order The reestablishment of "order", considered by the rebels to have been broken, was the most immediate objective. The expeditious method used was to place this task in the hand of the Army, which enjoyed, according to Eduardo González Calleja, "an omnipotent power, uncontrolled by any assembly, free of the political responsibility required of a parliamentary government, and empowered to the point of arbitrariness because of the suspension of the Constitution and the virtual disappearance of the norms inherent to public liberties". In this way, González Calleja concludes, the dictatorship transformed "Spanish public life into a permanent state of exception".
After the declaration of a state of war throughout Spain, which lasted until the end of the Military Directory in December 1925, the next measure dictated by Primo de Rivera for the militarization of "public order" was the replacement of provincial and local authorities (civil governors, mayors, presidents of the deputations) with military personnel— from April 1924 the provincial governors would be progressively replaced by civilian personnel, although some of their most important functions, such as censorship or public order, remained in the hands of military authorities—. Afterwards, "political crimes" (including the display of non-national flags or the use of non-Spanish languages in official acts) and a good part of common crimes such as armed robbery in stores and banks, the handling of explosives and those of treason and lèse majesté were attributed to military jurisdiction.
Those in charge of applying the policy of "public order" were the two people most responsible for it during the darkest years of the pistolerismo in Barcelona: the former civil governor, General Severiano Martínez Anido, appointed undersecretary of the Ministry of the Interior; and the former chief of police, General Miguel Arlegui, who occupied the reestablished General Directorate of Security, on which the Surveillance and Security Corps depended. On the other hand, the Civil Guard recovered its traditional autonomy, and the civil governors had no command over it.
The declaration of the state of war and the rest of the measures to militarize public order and restrict rights and liberties managed to reduce the number of attacks —between 1923 and 1928 there were 51 attacks, compared to 1,259 in 1919-1923— and the number of strikes was reduced, although this was also due to the economic growth experienced in the "roaring twenties".
Somatén
Another of the decisions of the Directory that also had to do with public order, and one of the first it agreed upon, was a royal decree of September 17, which extended the Catalan institution of the Somatén to all the provinces of Spain. According to the Royal Decree, the Somatén Nacional, the official name it received, would be recruited within a month by the captains general, under the command of a Brigadier General. In the Decree, Primo de Rivera explained that the Somatén was not only an auxiliary force for the maintenance of public order but also a "spur of the spirits" to stimulate citizen collaboration with the new regime. 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 "blackshirts", the somatén "was an armed corps of bourgeois of order, created from, by and for the power", although workers from the Free Trade Unions were also integrated into it. As Primo de Rivera said, the Somatén "has as its motto 'peace, justice and order', the three principles of true democracy".
In order to stimulate the enlistment of men over 23 years of age and to encourage social support for the institution, countless civic events were organized, all following the same ritual. The Somatén had a notable role in the police of good manners, taking care of establishing a certain conservative bourgeois civic behavior, with a strong religious component. In practice, it is possible to differentiate between the rural Somatén, aimed at the repression of common crimes, such as theft, and the urban Somatén, which acted under the tutelage of the Army and the Police in the repression of so-called "social crimes", such as strikes. However, the Somatén progressively became "a simple choreographic adornment of the regime's pomp and ceremony, parading with its badges, weapons and flags in every celebration or official commemoration that required its presence", states González Calleja.
Restriction of rights and freedom: censorship