The military reform of Manuel Azaña was the set of decrees approved between April and September 1931 by the Provisional Government of the Second Spanish Republic (which were later recast and endorsed by the Constituent Courts in the so-called "Azaña Law") and the subsequent laws approved by the Courts at the proposal of the Minister of War Manuel Azaña, a position that he held simultaneously with that of President of the Government since October 1931, and whose objective was to modernize and democratize the Spanish Army as well as to put an end to military interventionism in political life. Azaña's reform was the only one of those approved during the first biennium that was not changed by the center-right governments of the second.
When the provisional government was formed, the Ministry of War fell to Manuel Azaña because he was the only member of the "revolutionary committee" who had knowledge of military matters (he had published the first part of a study on the French army) and because he had a clear idea of what had to be done: to reduce the excessive number of officers, a prior step to modernize the army, and to put an end to the "autonomous" power of the military, placing them under the authority of civilian power. It was precisely his outstanding management at the head of this ministry that made him the most prestigious figure in the government and which would finally lead him to preside it after the resignation of Niceto Alcalá-Zamora in October 1931 because of the "religious issue". As Javier Tusell has pointed out, "Azaña knew how to see the opportunities offered by a situation of regime change and had the courage to confront a reform, the military, before which his predecessors in office had retreated".
Modernization and democratization of the Army Azaña wanted a more modern, professional, efficient and civic army. When he took office at ten o'clock in the evening of the same day, April 14, when the Republic was proclaimed, he addressed the military chiefs present at the Ministry of War, according to what Lieutenant Colonel Felipe Díaz Sandino, who had accompanied him to the Ministry, told years later, "making them aware of the proclamation of the Republic in Spain, its democratic aims, which were based on the maintenance of order and the reestablishment of justice in all the State bodies, and especially in the Army, which he considered to be insufficiently equipped with material; that one of the Government's concerns would be to make it more efficient, reorganizing it and trying to achieve the greatest professional competence, maintaining discipline and removing the military from politics".
Azaña also wanted a more republican army. That is why one of his first decrees, on April 22, obliged the chiefs and officers to promise fidelity to the Republic, with the formula: "I promise on my honor to serve the Republic well and faithfully, to obey its laws and to defend it with arms". Likewise, in line with the secular definition of the State, Azaña suppressed the Army Ecclesiastical Corps made up of military chaplains. He also dissolved the somatén and suppressed the Military Orders. As an argument for the dissolution of the former, it was stated that the Government of the Republic could not "prolong for a moment longer the existence of unduly and tendentiously armed irregular armies which, unnecessary as a support for order, could cause, through misunderstanding or abuse, disturbances of the same".
Reduction of the number of officers In 1931 the Spanish Army had 16 divisions to which normally 80 generals would have sufficed, but it had 800, and in addition it had more commanders and captains than sergeants. It had 21,000 chiefs and officers for 118,000 men.
In order to reduce the excessive number of officers (the objective was to achieve a peninsular army of 105,000 soldiers with 7,600 officers and the African contingent would consist of 42,000 soldiers and 1,700 officers), the Provisional Government at the proposal of Azaña approved on April 25, 1931, a decree of extraordinary retirements in which Army officers who so requested were offered the possibility of voluntarily withdrawing from active service with full pay (going to the second reserve —practically retirement—). If the required number of retirements was not reached, the minister reserved the right to dismiss, without any benefit, as many officers as he deemed appropriate. Almost 9,000 commanders (among them 84 generals) availed themselves of the measure, approximately 40% of the officers (the highest percentage of desertions occurred in the higher ranks), therefore, Azaña was then able to undertake the reorganization of the Army. Some historians point out that politically it was a debatable measure because it did not contribute to making the army more republican, since part of the most liberal sector of officers left active service at that time.
According to the balance of Azaña's reform made by Francisco Alía Miranda, the number of generals and assimilated officers went from 190 in 1931 to 90 in 1932, and the number of chiefs and officers was reduced by more than 8,000, from 20,576 to 12,373.
In March 1932 the Cortes passed a law authorizing the Minister of War to transfer to the reserve those generals who had not received any assignment for six months. This was a covert way of getting rid of those generals whose loyalty to the Republic the government doubted. The same law provided that officers who had accepted the retirement established in the decree of May 1931 would lose their pensions if they were found guilty of defamation according to the Law for the Defense of the Republic. This last measure raised a lively debate in the Cortes, as both Miguel Maura and Ángel Ossorio y Gallardo denounced the injustice to which the approximately 5,000 recently retired officers who at any given time criticized the Government could fall victim. Azaña responded that it would be intolerable for the Republic to have to pay its "enemies".
Many years later Generalissimo Francisco Franco privately made the following judgment on Azaña's Retirement Law:Azaña's Law of Retirements was not badly planned nor was it as bad as it was said at that time; it had the sectarianism of wanting to remove from the ranks of the Army the Officers of monarchist ideals; but this was not realized, since those who wanted to retire did so and we remained the majority.
Affected Some of the most relevant military men who made use of the Azaña Law were:
Francisco Gómez-Jordana Sousa Eloy Fernández Navamuel Adolfo Prada Vaquero Juan Vigón Germán Gil y Yuste José María Paternina Iturriagagoitia Luis Alarcón de la Lastra Luis Valdés Cavanilles Francisco Zubillaga y Reillo Jesús Teijeiro Pérez Rafael del Rosal Caro Eusebio de Gorbea.
Creation of organic divisions and regulation of promotions By a decree of May 25, 1931, the army of the peninsula was reorganized. The number of divisions was reduced from 16 to 8; The captaincy general created by Philip V at the beginning of the 18th century were suppressed (and with them the military regions, administrative divisions of the Monarchy) and were replaced by eight organic divisions, and Military Commanders in the Canary Islands and the Balearic Islands, These were placed under the command of a major general (the highest rank that a military officer could attain since the rank of lieutenant general had been abolished), and on which the machine gun, mountain and hunter units depended (the Air Force became an independent General Corps, with its own officer ranks).
The decree of July 4, 1931, which reorganized the Army of Africa, separated the positions of High Commissioner —commended to a civilian— from that of Superior Chief of the Military Forces of Morocco —assumed by a general and subordinated to the first—.
Another of the issues that Azaña dealt with was the conflictive issue of promotions, promulgating Decrees in May and June which annulled a large part of those produced during the Dictatorship for "war merits", which meant that some 300 military personnel lost one or two ranks, and that others suffered a strong regression in the ranks, as in the case of General Francisco Franco. These decrees were confirmed by the Cortes by a law on Recruiting and Promotions of the Officers of September 12, 1932, which also established a scale for promotions in which professional training was more important than seniority. This law also unified career officers and those coming from the troops in a single scale.
Closure of the General Military Academy and creation of the non-commissioned officers corps Azaña also decreed on July 1, 1931, the closure of the General Military Academy (located in Zaragoza and which was closed on July 14, the same day that the Constituent Courts were opened), and which was directed by General Franco. The academy was a creation of the Dictatorship of Primo de Rivera in 1928, as a response to the conflict between the dictator and the Artillery Arm due to the promotion system (the seniority defended by the artillerymen against the "war merits" defended by the "Africanist" military, who were now supported by the dictator). Primo de Rivera tried to put an end to the artillerymen's opposition by dissolving their officer corps and putting an end to the technical training provided by the Segovia academy, where, after five courses, cadets received the titles of Artillery lieutenant and industrial engineer. On the other hand, in the Infantry and Cavalry academies located in Toledo, the cadets only studied for three years and did not receive any civilian degree. Thus, in order to put an end to the "artillery spirit", the dictatorship established a new plan of military studies which consisted of Army cadets studying two years in a new general academy and another two years in their own academy. At the end of the four years, they would be promoted to lieutenants, without titles or civilian ranks. To head the new institution, General Primo de Rivera thought of a military man with a mentality radically opposed to that of the "artillery spirit" (which he considered enlightened, elitist and bureaucratic) and for this purpose he first thought of General Millán Astray, founder of the Legion and a furious "Africanist", but he was advised against his appointment because he was a conflictive character, with enemies in the Army. So he decided to choose General Franco, who had been his second in the Legion. When Azaña closed the Zaragoza Academy, he distributed his students among the academies of the respective arms (Toledo: Infantry, Cavalry and Quartermaster; Segovia: Artillery and Engineers; Madrid: Military Health). In addition, it was established that the cadets of the academies would also study at the universities as a complement to their military training.
The closure of the General Military Academy was one of the most controversial measures of Azaña's military reform, but he considered that the academy under the direction of General Franco had become a center for the diffusion of militaristic ideas of the "Africanist" military and therefore constituted an obstacle to his project of politically neutralizing the Army and placing it under the control of the Cortes and the government, as was the case with the Western European armies —Azaña always used the French army as a professional and civic model—.
On the other hand, in December 1931, the non-commissioned officers corps was created —applicants were required to have a bachelor's degree— with the possibility of joining the officers corps in the Complementary Scale and, in addition, 60% of the places in the military academies were reserved for them. In this way it was intended to democratize the social and ideological base of the Army commands. It was also intended to narrow the professional gap between officers and non-commissioned officers.