Miguel Primo de Rivera

Miguel Primo De Rivera

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Miguel Primo de Rivera

Miguel Primo de Rivera y Orbaneja, 2. Marqués de Estella (Jerez de la Frontera

Jerez de la Frontera

Paris

Paris is the Capital of France and the country's largest city. It is situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the ?le-de-France Regions of France ....
, March 16, 1930) was a Spanish dictator, aristocrat, and a military official who was appointed Prime Minister by the King and who for seven years (1923-1930) was a dictator, ending the turno
Turno

El Turno Pacifico was a system put in place in Spain under the Restoration by Antonio Canovas del Castillo as a method of both rigging the elections and giving both establishment parties a turn at Government....
system of alternating parties.

el Primo de Rivera was born into a landowning military family in the sherry

Sherry

Sherry is a fortified wine made from white grapes that are grown near the town of Jerez de la Frontera, Spain. In Spanish language, it is called Vino de Jerez....
-producing city of Jerez de la Frontera

Jerez de la Frontera

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Miguel Primo de Rivera y Orbaneja, 2. Marqués de Estella (Jerez de la Frontera

Jerez de la Frontera

Paris

Early years

Miguel Primo de Rivera was born into a landowning military family in the sherry

Sherry

Jerez de la Frontera

Jerez de la Frontera is a municipality in the province of C?diz in the autonomous community of Andalusia in southwestern Spain. As of 2007, the city had 202,687 inhabitants; it is the largest city in the province of C?diz and the fifth largest in Andalusia....
. His father was a retired colonel. His uncle, Fernando, was Captain General in Madrid and the soon-to-be first marquis of Estella. Fernando later participated in the plot to restore the constitutional monarchy in 1875, ending the tumultuous First Republic

First Spanish Republic

The First Spanish Republic started with the abdication as King of Spain on February 10 1873, of Amadeus I of Spain, following the Hidalgo Affair, when he had been required by the radical government to sign a decree against the artillery officers....
. The young Miguel grew up as part of what Gerald Brenan

Gerald Brenan

Gerald Brenan, CBE was a British writer who spent much of his life in Spain. He is best known for The Spanish Labyrinth, a work of history on the background to the Spanish Civil War, and for South From Granada: Seven Years in an Andalusian Village....
called "a hard-drinking, whoring, horse-loving aristocracy" that ruled "over the most starved and down-trodden race of agricultural labourers in Europe." Yet as a boy he developed more sympathy for the workers than was common within his class. Studying history and engineering before deciding upon a military career, he won admission to the newly created General Academy in Toledo

Toledo, Spain

Toledo is a city and municipality located in central Spain, 70 km south of Madrid. It is the capital city of the province of Toledo and of the autonomous communities of Spain of Castile-La Mancha....
, perhaps with his uncle Fernando's help, and graduated in 1884.

Early military career

Duty stationed him in posts within Spain and overseas. He showed courage and initiative in battles against the Berber

Berber people

Berbers are the indigenous ethnic groups of North Africa west of the Nile Valley. They are discontinuously distributed from the Atlantic to the Siwa oasis, in Egypt, and from the Mediterranean to the Niger River....
s of the Rif

Rif

The Rif is a mainly mountainous region of northern Morocco, stretching from Cape Spartel and Tangier in the west to Ras Kebdana and the Moulouya River in the east, and from the Mediterranean Sea in the north to the river of Ouargha in the south....
region in northern Morocco, and promotions and decorations came steadily. Primo de Rivera became convinced that Spain probably could not hold on to its North African colony

Spanish West Africa

Spanish West Africa is a former possession in the western Sahara Desert that Spain ruled after giving much of its former northwestern African possessions to Morocco....
. For many years, the government had tried without success to crush the Berber rebels, wasting lives and money. He concluded Spain must withdraw from what was called Spanish Morocco

Spanish Morocco

Spanish protectorate of Morocco was the area of Morocco under colonialism rule by the Spanish Empire, established by the Treaty of Fez in 1912 and ending in 1956, when both France and Spain recognized Moroccan independence....
if it could not dominate the colony. Posted to Cuba

Cuba

The Republic of Cuba is a country in the Caribbean. It consists of the island of Cuba , the island of Isla de la Juventud, and several adjacent small islands....
and the Philippines

Philippines

The Philippines, officially known as the Republic of the Philippines, is a country in Southeast Asia with Manila as its capital city. It comprises 7,107 islands in the western Pacific Ocean....
, he witnessed their loss to the United States

United States

The United States of America is a Federal government constitutional republic comprising U.S. state and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its Contiguous United States and Washington, D.C., the Capital districts and territories, lie between the Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Oceans, Borders of the U...
in 1898, bringing a close to his nation's once-great empire

Spanish Empire

The Spanish Empire was one of the largest empires in world history, and one of the first global empires. It included territories and colonies ruled by Spain in Europe, the Americas, Africa, Asia and Oceania between the 15th and late 19th centuries....
. That loss frustrated many Spaniards, Primo de Rivera included. They criticized the politicians and the parliamentary system which could not maintain order or foster economic development at home, nor preserve the vestiges of Spain's imperial glory.

Primo de Rivera went to Madrid to serve in the Ministry of War with his uncle. Renowned for his amorous conquests, he reverted to the carefree days of his youth in Jerez. Then in 1902, he married a young Hispano-Cuban, Casilda Sáenz de Heredia. Although his wife could never escape jealous suspicions about her husband's womanizing, their marriage was happy, and Casilda bore six children before her death in 1908, following the birth of Fernando. He later was sent on a military mission to France, Switzerland, and Italy in 1909.

The British historian Hugh Thomas

Hugh Thomas

Hugh Thomas can refer to:* Hugh Thomas - British historian and life peer* Hugh Thomas * Hugh Evan-Thomas World War I admiral...
says of Primo de Rivera in his monumental The Spanish Civil War: "He would work enormously hard for weeks on end and then disappear for a juerga of dancing, drinking and love-making with gypsies. He would be observed almost alone in the streets of Madrid, swathed in an opera cloak, making his way from one café to another, and on returning home would issue a garrulous and sometimes even intoxicated communiqué--which he would have to cancel in the morning."

Between 1909 and 1923, Primo de Rivera's career blossomed, but he became increasingly discouraged with the fortunes of his country. Having returned to Spanish Morocco

Spanish Morocco

Brigadier General

Brigadier General is the lowest ranking General Officer in some countries, usually sitting between the ranks of Colonel and Major General.The rank can be traced back to the militaries of Europe where a brigadier general, or simply a brigadier, would command a brigade in the field....
in 1911, the first graduate of the General Academy to receive such a promotion. Yet social revolution had flared briefly in Barcelona

Barcelona

Barcelona is the capital and most populous city of the Autonomous communities of Spain of Catalonia and the second largest city in Spain, with a population of 1,615,908 in 2008, while the population of the Metropolitan Area was 3,161,081....
, during the Tragic Week

Tragic Week

File:TragicWeekroundup.jpgTragic Week is the name used for a series of bloody confrontations between the army and the working classes of Barcelona and other cities of Catalonia, backed by the anarchists, socialists and republicans, during the last week of July 1909....
of 1909. After the army had called up conscripts to fight in the Second Rif War in Morocco, Radical republicans and anarchists in Catalonia had proclaimed a general strike. Violence had erupted when the government declared martial law

Martial law

Martial law is the system of rules that takes effect when the military takes control of the normal administration of justice.Martial law is sometimes imposed during wars or occupied territory in the absence of any other civil government....
. Anticlerical rioters had burned churches and convents, and tensions grew as socialists and anarchists pressed for radical changes in Spain. The government proved unable to reform itself or the nation and frustration mounted.

After 1918, post-World War I

World War I

World War I, or the First World War , was a global military conflict which involved the Great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies of World War I and the Central Powers....
economic difficulties heightened social unrest in Spain. The Cortes

Cortes

Cortes or Cort?s can refer to:...
(Spanish parliament) under the constitutional monarchy seemed to have no solution to Spain's unemployment, labor strikes, and poverty. In 1921, the Spanish army suffered a stunning defeat in Morocco at the Battle of Annual, which discredited the military's North African policies. By 1923, deputies of the Cortes called for an investigation into the responsibility of King Alfonso XIII

Alfonso XIII of Spain

Alfonso XIII , List of Spanish monarchs, posthumous son of Alfonso XII of Spain, was proclaimed King at his birth. He reigned from 1886-1931. His mother, Maria Christina of Austria, was appointed regent during his minority....
and the armed forces for the debacle. Rumors of corruption in the army became rampant.

Miguel Primo de Rivera

Early years

Early military career

Military establishes dictatorship