Chapter 4: Praetorian Politics in Liberal Spain

THE LIBRARY OF IBERIAN RESOURCES ONLINE Praetorian Politics in Liberal Spain Carolyn P. Boyd

CHAPTER FOUR The Revolutionary Summer of 1917

[69] As the Conde de Romanones put it, after June 1, 1917, the Juntas were "the masters of Spain."⁽¹⁾ Yet they owed their power as much to the timidity of the government and to the favorable public reception of their rebellion as to any serious threat of force. The Juntas set the example for two currents of protest in the summer of 1917. One was the syndicalization of civilian bureaucrats and noncommissioned officers, whose economic and professional grievances had grown during the war. The other was the renovationist movement, composed of regionalists, Republicans, and Socialists, who viewed the wartime crisis as a mandate for constitutional change. As in the years of the Isabelline monarchy, the inflexibility of the governing parties encouraged their political opponents to turn to the army as a moderating power; in the aftermath of June 1, the renovationists would hail the Juntas' revolt as the harbinger of a dramatic reorientation of Spanish political life. In response, the Infantry Superior Junta would attempt to claim an active role for the army in the impending revolution.

But the majority of officers were not prepared to follow the lead of the activists in the Superior Junta. Although they employed regenerationist rhetoric, the majority of junteras were, as they so often insisted, essentially "apolitical," indifferent to the details of political organization so long as their professional demands were satisfied. After June 1, the dynastic parties reacted to the slightest shifts in military opinion, leaving the Juntas in the enviable position of dictating policy without being responsible for government in general, a situation they had every reason to wish to preserve. Thus they stood by the government and the monarchy during the revolutionary summer of 1917.

The loose alliance between the regionalists and the Republican and revolutionary left would not last through the summer. Frightened [70] by the threat of social revolution, the Catalan bourgeoisie would withdraw from the coalition into an alliance with the ruling oligarchy in Madrid. Alone, the left did not possess the strength to transform the regime, especially against the will of the army. The revolutionary moment of 1917 slipped away, and the parliamentary monarchy emerged weakened, defensive, but essentially unchanged.

First Reactions to the Juntas

The Junta manifesto of June 1 appeared at a moment in Spanish history when most of the politically significant forces in Spain recognized the urgency of reform. War, rapid industrialization, labor unrest, and inflation presented problems that only strong government could resolve, while at the same time awakening hopes for social and political democratization. Yet by 1917 the traditional political leadership was discredited, divided, and too distracted by intraparty squabbles to deal effectively with the national crisis. By summer, the usual critics of the Canovite system had been joined by the more thoughtful members of the dynastic parties in demanding "renovation" of Spain's political life.

This politically charged atmosphere explains the enormous impact of the manifesto of June 1. Its regenerationist language, really a smoke screen for the professional demands of the military middle class, was taken at face value by those who wanted to be convinced that the Juntas' protest against the military oligarchs was indicative of a broader democratic spirit within the officer corps. Thus, men who in normal circumstances would have unconditionally condemned the Juntas' breach of civil supremacy hailed the rebellion as the first step toward radical change: the military crisis that began on June 1 and ended ten days later with the appointment of Eduardo Dato as prime minister had laid bare the inadequacy of the dynastic parties, the inflexibility of the system, and the unreliability of the Crown as an agent of reform. In general, this was the view of bourgeois liberals who hoped to modernize the constitutional monarchy without destroying it. It was best expressed in El Imparcial on June 13 by José Ortega y Gasset in an article entitled "Beneath the Arch in Ruins":

[71]

⁽²⁾

The same viewpoint was shared by the Lliga Regionalista, the party of the Catalan industrial bourgeoisie, whose resentment at their exclusion from the Canovite system had deepened since the beginning of the war. On June 14 regionalist senators and deputies released a manifesto calling for the constitution of a federal, democratic state reinvigorated by the full participation of the Basque and Catalan provinces. The regionalists condemned the military rebellion as "a manifest transgression of constitutional law, a true peaceful pronunciamiento" that in a normal country would have provoked "a formidable reaction," but that in Spain had been received with "clear sympathy" because of the decadence and injustice of the existing regime. Like Ortega, the Catalans demanded the reopening of the Cortes to begin the process of constitutional revision.⁽³⁾

On the left, the military rebellion was viewed with even greater optimism because it seemed to presage the collapse of the parliamentary monarchy. On June 5 Republicans and Socialists under the nominal leadership of the Reformist Melquíades Álvarez formed an alliance to work for a bourgeois democratic republic; on June 16 the Revolutionary Committee, composed of Alejandro Lerroux, Álvarez, and Pablo Iglesias (represented by Julián Besteiro), issued a manifesto calling on "all the left" to work together for the "triumph of popular sovereignty."⁽⁴⁾ The Socialists provided the link with the revolutionary general strike being planned for later in the summer. Their alliance with the Anarchosyndicalists had grown out of the economic crisis; the pact with the bourgeois left was a response to the political crisis ushered in by the officers' rebellion of June 1. The Socialists' attitude toward the Juntas was ambivalent. On the one hand, they seem to have feared a military coup, perhaps in support of a Maura ministry. On June 7, and again on June 12, the Madrid Socialist Group published protests against the "seditious" military breach of civil supremacy.⁽⁵⁾ On the other hand, the Socialists also seem to have hoped that the Juntas were not only "antioligarchical" but also "democratic" and that the military would support a revolutionary change of regime.⁽⁶⁾ On the fourteenth, the Federation of Socialist Youth qualified a warning against military repression by carefully distinguishing between "militarism" and "the army."⁽⁷⁾

[72] The Juntas inspired the most enthusiasm in the state administration, where employees suffered many of the same economic hardships and professional inequities as the military middle class. A "Law of Authorizations" of March 2, 1917, had allowed the government to initiate 25 percent personnel reductions in all ministries except the Post Office and the Ministry of Public Instruction. Although half of the savings thus acquired were eventually to be used to raise salaries, this was of necessity a long-range benefit whose effects were less immediate than slower promotions and inadequate salaries.⁽⁸⁾ Civil servants had never been well paid; nearly one-third of the employees were earning between 1,080 and 1,380 pesetas annually.⁽⁹⁾ Furthermore, most low-level employees lacked job security, being subject to patronage turnovers and transfers as well as hiring freezes. When the military Juntas emerged as the collective voice of the military bureaucracy, employees in other ministries quickly followed suit. By mid-June, Juntas de Defensa of civil servants had been formed in the Ministries of Finance, Interior, Development, and Public Instruction, in the Corps of Telegraph and Postal Workers, and in the municipal police. Finally, in self-defense, a Defense Junta of Taxpayers was organized.⁽¹⁰⁾ In a movement potentially as revolutionary as those of the regionalists and the left, Spain was witnessing the full-scale syndicalization of its middle class.

The Juntas Enter Politics

The profound political impact of the manifesto of June 1 brought national attention to the Infantry Superior Junta, whose members quickly came to believe that the Juntas had a mission beyond the protection of professional interests. On June 6 La Correspondencia Militar, the self-appointed voice of the Juntas, referred to the manifesto of June 1 as "perhaps the most grandiose document of the contemporary age" and suggested that it represented "the death sentence ... of the rule of caciquismo and oligarchy in every order of national life. . . ."⁽¹¹⁾ On June 11 the Superior Junta issued a public declaration of its new motto, Morality and Justice, and offered to extend its "protective aegis over all the organisms of the state administration,"⁽¹²⁾ an offer readily accepted by the civilian Juntas then being formed. By mid-June, the leaders of the Superior Junta could well imagine themselves the political masters of Spain.

The president, Colonel Benito Márquez, accepted his destiny with relish. At fifty-nine years of age, Márquez was a stout and slightly deaf [73] peninsular officer with a uniformly undistinguished career behind him. In many ways, Márquez seems typical of the officers he represented: a lackluster but self-important military bureaucrat with a limited understanding of politics and history. An acquaintance later called him "a well-intentioned man, although easygoing and uncultivated," and suggested that the real intelligence within the Junta was its secretary, Captain Manuel Álvarez Gilarranz, who manipulated the vanity of Márquez for his own ends.⁽¹³⁾ Another source of political ambition was the author of the June 1 manifesto, forty-four-year-old Captain Isaac Villar, whose rhetoric had started the Infantry Junta on its political journey. None of the juntero politicians had a previous history of serious political concern, let alone experience. Instead, they were responding to the heady atmosphere of 1917 and to their even headier taste of personal political power.

Having influenced the formation of the Dato government, which compliantly sanctioned the Junta statutes on June 12, and encouraged by the attention of the political opposition, the Superior Junta immediately embarked on a rather indiscriminate search for a civilian leader to form a "regenerationist" government whose first concern would be the redress of army grievances. While Major Rafael Espino made the rounds of the monarchical parties in Madrid, Márquez and Gilarranz made contact with the antidynastic parties through Lerroux. The first choice of the Junta, however, was still Antonio Maura. Through an intermediary in Barcelona, Márquez and the secretary of the Artillery Junta offered to bring down the Dato government in favor of a Maura ministry, an offer that Maura refused diplomatically in a letter of June 23 and denounced more intemperately in a private letter to his son Gabriel a few days later.⁽¹⁴⁾

Temporarily thwarted in their effort to enlist a civilian leader, the Superior Junta decided to make a public appeal for support. On June 25 El Noticiero Universal, a Barcelona daily, published a manifesto addressed to the country at large that explained the formation of the Junta, justified the insubordination of June I, and outlined its goals, which were now expanded to claim a permanent political role for the military within the Spanish state.⁽¹⁵⁾ The lengthy document first summarized the injustices the army had suffered since the War of 1898, culminating in the humiliating proficiency tests that had triggered the formation of the Defense Junta in 1916. This was followed by an analysis of the ills affecting the Spanish army, categorized, in descending importance, into moral, technical, and economic questions, and containing the familiar complaints against favoritism and neglect.

Less familiar -- and more alarming -- were the sections on civil- [74] military relations, which basically denied the principle of civil supremacy. While neither prepared nor willing to govern the state, the Infantry Junta did claim the right to govern the internal affairs of the Corps independently, separate from and marginal to the civil power. This was not merely an appeal for internal institutional control over professional matters; the Junta demanded a "renovation of political concepts" to give the army a greater role in policymaking. To replace the prevailing constitutional system, the Junta proposed a model of the executive branch in which the civil and military coexisted, "harmonized" by the "moderating power"-- presumably the monarchy. Arguing that the supremacy of any power was a sign of "abnormality" in the state, the Junta made clear its intention to secure the military reforms it desired with or without the aid of civilians. The manifesto of June 25 was thus simultaneously an ultimatum to the dynastic parties, an appeal to the monarchy, and an invitation to the opposition.

The clearest political notion in the manifesto was the assumption, shared by the civilian opposition, of a connection between military and political reform: the failure of the state to undertake military reform was symptomatic of its impotence. But vague references to "reform" on both sides conveniently masked differences as to what reform entailed. Most of the democratic left envisioned a small but efficient army that would no longer be a drain on the national budget; junteras wanted efficiency, but not at the expense of their own job security. For civilian reformers, military reform was a small part of a greater political or social revolution; for the Junta, reform of the state was the means to an end -- the professional autonomy of the army. This confusion of purpose would thwart any concerted effort between the army and the civilians to reform the Spanish state in the summer of 1917.

The Reaction in the Army

Although the Infantry Junta claimed to speak for the army as a whole, in reality the appearance of the Juntas divided the military along its traditional fissure points. The victory of June I had overcome the resistance of officers in Madrid and Morocco to the Juntas; by June 6 a majority had signed the "act of adhesion."⁽¹⁶⁾ But the generals had not relaxed their opposition. A few of the more accomplished political maneuverers, however, made small gestures of appeasement during the month of June. While eighty-year-old General Weyler toured the provincial garrisons bearing greetings from the king, the equally ancient War Minister, the Marqués de Estella, made a series of appointments [75] intended to demonstrate the government's good will. Other generals made quiet overtures to the Junta leadership, apparently hoping to use them as a personal power base. The most prominent was the nephew of the War Minister, General Miguel Primo de Rivera, who had initially denounced the Infantry Junta in a letter to a friend as "untimely, illegal, inopportune, and divisive."⁽¹⁷⁾ When this letter was leaked to the press early in June, Primo attempted to mend his fences by praising the Juntas in letters to strategically chosen colleagues. But the Barcelona Junta remained wary of his sincerity.⁽¹⁸⁾ Primo was the epitome of the system of patronage that they had risen to protest. Nevertheless, Primo would continue his courtship of the junteras during the next six years. In 1923 they would provide support for his pronunciamiento against the parliamentary regime.

What the generals failed to recognize in 1917 was the extent to which the officer corps was alienated from the political and military elites that controlled the Restoration system. From the perspective of the military bureaucrats, the senior hierarchy had sacrificed the army's welfare to personal ambition on countless occasions in the past and would undoubtedly do so again in the future. The generals plainly could not countenance the Juntas' major demands, which subverted the normal chain of command in the army. Thus, throughout the summer, the Juntas remained overtly hostile to the senior hierarchy in general and the War Minister in particular.⁽¹⁹⁾

The formation of the Infantry Junta also provoked an open break between regular and noncommissioned officers. Relations between the NCOS and the academy-trained, middle-class officers on the active list had deteriorated since 1912, when General Luque had prohibited further NCO promotions into the reserve list.⁽²⁰⁾ Both reserve officers and NCOS resented their second-class status and limited career opportunities, for which they correctly held regular officers responsible. Their suspicion of their superiors hardened into hostility in June when the Infantry Junta forced reserve officers to form separate Juntas and rebuffed the overtures of the newly created Central Defense Junta of Subofficials, Brigades, and Sergeants.

The NCO Junta -- also based in Barcelona -- had initially hoped to flatter the commissioned officers into supporting its goals. On June 12 the Central Junta directed an appeal to the Infantry Superior Junta sonorously praising the "noble cry and saving rebellion" of June 1 and asking for a sympathetic hearing. "Before all, above all, and on top of all," the NCOS requested greater "social dignity." They resented being treated like common soldiers when in reality they too were professionals in "the august religion of arms." More concretely, the NCOS [76] demanded the abrogation of the 1912 law ending promotions into the reserve list. The manifesto closed with a scarcely veiled threat: "if, contrary to what we hope, facts in time convince us of the sterility of these hopes, the ties of our affection will be broken and the bitter moment will have arrived to think and to believe that our superior officers are going to be the first dam we must level when the solemn hour of our longed-for demands sounds in its turn."⁽²¹⁾

Neither the flattery nor the threats moved the Infantry Junta. Despite the "democratic" pretensions of the Superior Junta, regular officers had joined the Junta to protect and extend the exclusivity of the active list. An influx of officers from the ranks could only cut further into already limited funds and appointments. If anything, Infantry junteros would have preferred to imitate the Artillery Corps and abolish the reserve list altogether.

Perhaps not too surprised at their failure with the Superior Junta, the NCOS then turned to the generals, hoping to profit from their antagonism toward the new organization. On June 14 their Central Junta wrote the War Minister, denouncing the "hateful and reckless conduct" of the Infantry.⁽²²⁾ The NCOS explained that the "absolute divorce" separating them from the officers had its origins in their "systematic opposition" to all measures aimed at the improvement of the "moral situation" of noncommissioned officers and repeated their request for the abrogation of the law of 1912. In conclusion, the manifesto guaranteed that NCOS would disobey their superiors in the event of a confrontation between the officers' Juntas and the government.

Unfortunately for the NCOS, their appeal to the War Ministry was not as warmly received as they had expected. In the revolutionary summer of 1917, with officers brandishing swords and revolvers in the streets of Barcelona and soldiers shouting slogans in the cafes, the syndicalization of the NCOS conjured up visions of workers' and soldiers' soviets, and not only for the beleaguered government. The left was conscious of the same possibility. On June 20, as rumors of the conflict between the NCOS and the Superior Junta circulated through the city, the Catalan Republican Marcelino Domingo published an article entitled "¡Soldados!" that was essentially a plea for insubordination when the revolutionary movement planned for later in the summer got underway.⁽²³⁾ In tense Barcelona, its impact was enormous. Copies of the June 20 edition of La Lucha were selling for three and four pesetas apiece when the paper was denounced under the Law of Jurisdictions and continued to circulate for many days afterward, especially among soldiers in the Barcelona barracks. Marina asked the government to allow him to arrest Domingo, who as a deputy possessed parliamentary [77] immunity, but his request was refused. Thereafter, Domingo and his paper were special objects of juntero resentment in Barcelona.

In the meantime, rumors of the quarrel between officers and NCOS had reached Madrid. On June 22 El Socialista and El País, a republican daily, and some of the right-wing press as well, printed the manifesto of the NCOS to the Infantry Superior Junta.⁽²⁴⁾ Energetically -- and vainly -- the government tried to stifle the conflict by stifling public knowledge of it; within a few days five more newspapers had been denounced under the Law of Jurisdictions.⁽²⁵⁾ As news arrived from Africa of Juntas of NCOS, and even of corporals and soldiers,⁽²⁶⁾ Estella decided to take more vigorous action. On June 23 he wired all captains general to keep the NCOS under surveillance and prepare to suppress their Juntas with force if necessary.⁽²⁷⁾ Estella was not blind to the difficulty of prohibiting the NCO Junta when those of the regular officers were being condoned and even courted. But the fear of revolution forced him to try. If the antidynastic flirtations of the Infantry Superior Junta were threatening, the revolutionary potential of the working-class NCOS was much more obvious. The government's best hope lay in a policy of divide-and-conquer. For the immediate future, survival demanded the continued cultivation of the officers' Juntas.

The government's fortress mentality was reinforced by the appearance of the manifesto of the Infantry Superior Junta on June 25. In order to suppress the circulation of the manifesto and thus knowledge of the continuing disaffection of the officer corps, on June 26 constitutional guarantees were suspended and prior censorship established.⁽²⁸⁾ Newspapers were prohibited from discussing the army, the war, political meetings, or the social question -- in short, any subject of real interest in 1917. These measures only further infuriated the democratic left. Prudently, the government attempted to buy support in the army for the revolutionary siege that lay ahead. A decree of July 2 raised the daily food allotment for both noncommissioned officers and troops to compensate for inflation, a necessary expedient that nevertheless failed to pacify the NCOS. More successful was another decree the following day that modified the king's Military Household to require the inclusion of officers below the rank of colonel and to limit membership to four-year terms. While the decree displeased the king, who was forced to dismiss six regular members of his camarilla, it answered one of the principal grievances of junior officers and somewhat lessened their hostility toward Madrid.

[78] The Assembly of Parliamentarians

The Assembly movement of July 1917, initiated by the Lliga Regionalista and seconded by Catalan Republicans, the Reformists (the party of the Asturian bourgeoisie), and the Socialists, was an abortive attempt to modify the Restoration settlement of Cánovas, which had concentrated political power in the hands of the agrarian interests of Castile and Andalusia. Economic expansion since the beginning of the war had strengthened the political leverage of the regions of industrial and mercantile power in Spain even as it convinced them that their needs were not understood by the parties of the turno in Madrid. The Assembly of Parliamentarians was designed to alter the constitution, both literally and functionally, to reflect the new balance of forces in Spain. In short, it was an attempt at bourgeois revolution.

The mutiny of June 1 created a revolutionary situation that the political dissidents in Barcelona hoped both to exploit and to control. The leader of the Lliga Regionalista, Francisco Cambó, initially tried to achieve his political revolution legally, through Constituent Cortes under the direction of a "national" government composed of representatives of all significant political groups in Spain.⁽²⁹⁾ When neither the king nor the Dato government responded to the regionalists' demand for a reopening of the Cortes, the Lliga called a meeting of Catalonia's entire parliamentary delegation on July 5 to work out plans for calling an unofficial session of the Cortes to consider constitutional reform. After the July 5 meeting still produced no positive response from Madrid, an invitation was extended to all Spanish senators and deputies to attend an extralegal parliamentary assembly in Barcelona on July 19.⁽³⁰⁾

The Lliga's decision to defy the government brought it the collaboration of the revolutionary committee of Reformists, Republicans, and Socialists that had been formed in early June to establish a bourgeois republic. The alliance was an uneasy one, however. From the beginning, the Catalan bourgeoisie were uncomfortable with their new allies, especially the Socialists, whose goals exceeded the purely political transformation envisioned by the Lliga. Moreover, Cambó's political instincts correctly warned him that if the Assembly were to capture majority sentiment in the country, it would have to counterbalance its leftist orientation and overcome the public tendency (encouraged by the government) to see the movement as nothing more than a separatist attack on the unity of the nation. Accordingly, Cambó took precautions to prevent the calling of the general strike on July 19 and [79] made every effort to enlist the cooperation of Antonio Maura and the Juntas de Defensa.

The absence of Maura from the Assembly movement of 1917 was the key to its failure. Not only would his presence have reassured an essentially conservative middle class, it would have legitimated the Assembly as a reunion of all the political forces in Spain alienated from the old oligarchies and excluded from the turno. Yet Maura remained aloof, both out of respect for the legal authority of the government and out of disdain for the industrial and commercial elements represented by the Lliga. Both publicly and privately in the weeks before July 19, Maura indicated his lack of sympathy for the movement, which he alternately referred to as "subversive" and as a "professional souk."⁽³¹⁾ Maura's abstention from Cambó's "revolution from above" was his greatest political failure. Spiritually aloof from the changing political and social reality of twentieth-century Spain, he resisted compromise with new political forces that might have transformed the regime, while claiming the role of a disinterested statesman.

The inability of the Assembly movement to attract Maura meant that it would fail to attract the Juntas as well. In addition to his great prestige within the officer corps, Maura offered a guarantee against social revolution and separatism. Fully conscious of this, in the two weeks after July 5, Assembly supporters did their best to compensate for the absence of Maura by flattering the Junta leadership into an alliance. A flurry of circulars, manifestos, and speeches addressed directly or indirectly to the Juntas, appealed to the supposedly "democratic," antioligarchical orientation of the Juntas, while Cambó attempted to reassure them of the movement's moderate goals. In a persuasive and flattering letter on July 10, Cambó assured Márquez that "Catalonia neither is nor can be separatist" and argued that the common enterprise that lay before Catalonia and the army must be to "liberate the whole of Spain from a political system that, if it persisted, would lead Spain to her perdition."⁽³²⁾

Receptive to the attention and praise and increasingly dissatisfied with the resistance of the War Ministry to their major demands, the Superior Junta did nothing publicly to discourage the idea that they were spiritually a part of the renovationist movement. In an effort to restore the army to its role as the bulwark of the regime, the government nervously sent the Civil Governor of Barcelona, Leopoldo Matos, to negotiate further concessions with Márquez on July 9. But Márquez, now completely infatuated with political power, refused to promise anything, and the official Junta reply to Matos was extremely cool.⁽³³⁾

[80] Márquez's evident interest in the Assembly movement persuaded Cambó to contemplate abandoning his alliance with the left. A few days before the proposed Assembly, he met with Márquez, two members of the Superior Junta, Captains Arturo Herrero and Isaac Villar, and a military chaplain, Padre Planas, who had previously served as an emissary from the king. After refusing to cancel the Assembly (as the king requested through Planas), Cambó agreed to its peaceful dissolution after the first meeting. The Lliga would thus be assured of a moral victory without risking a social revolution. In exchange, Cambó expected royal and juntero support for an autonomous Catalonia within a federal Spanish state. The Lliga and the army in turn would defend the monarchy against the challenge from the left coalition of Republicans and Socialists. Márquez readily acquiesced in this plan, in the belief he that was securing a tutelary role for the juntas within the new political order.⁽³⁴⁾

As it developed, both Márquez and Cambó had miscalculated. On July 13 a majority in the Infantry Superior Junta censured Márquez and ordered local Juntas to remain loyal to the government on the day of the Assembly.⁽³⁵⁾ Two days later, a joint note signed by all the branch Juntas in Barcelona declared their "firm intention to remain apart from political struggles and to obey the orders of the legally constituted government."⁽³⁶⁾ Apart from Márquez and his allies, Villar and Herrero, sentiment in the Infantry Superior Junta and among the juntero rank and file was strongly against an activist role for the army, particularly if it involved support for the Assembly movement. Many officers distrusted even the mild regionalism of the Lliga, making no distinction between Cambó and the separatists who occasionally appealed to the warring European powers for "liberation." Some officers also blamed Catalan industry and the protective tariff for the scarcity of consumer goods and high prices. Moreover, within the Superior Junta, opposition was mounting to the political pretensions of Colonel Márquez, who was thoroughly enjoying his preeminence, his contacts with leading political figures, and his access to the king.⁽³⁷⁾ The Juntas had arisen to protest the personalist politics of the military turno; they were not eager to exchange political generals for equally political colonels.

Thus, by July the unanimity of June 1, even then illusory, had completely vanished. Officers could unite against real or imagined assaults on their professional interests, but they lacked a consensus on a course of positive action. In the chaotic summer of 1917, the power of the Juntas was real enough, but that power was essentially negative: without army support, none of the contenders for political power could hope to survive.

[81] The abstention of Maura and the Juntas, the reservations of Cambó, and the press campaign directed against the movement by the government, successfully emasculated the Assembly of July 19.⁽³⁸⁾ Only 71 of the 760 senators and deputies attended, and most of these were Catalans, giving the Assembly the aspect of a separatist meeting, which was not overcome by the collaboration of the Republicans and Socialists. Before the Assembly, the participants had agreed on two points of substance: the necessity of Constituent Cortes and the incorporation of the left -- represented by the Reformist Melquíades Álvarez -- into the new political settlement.⁽³⁹⁾ At the meeting itself, the delegates had just enough time to schedule a second meeting for August 16 in Oviedo before the Civil Governor dissolved the Assembly and arrested its members, who were set free as soon as they left the building.

In the weeks that followed, Cambó tried once again to bring the Infantry junta into open support for the movement, counting on the favorable reception given the Assembly in the press and the absence of popular disturbances in Barcelona to overcome the resistance of the junteros to collaboration. As in July, Cambó turned to Márquez and their intermediary, Padre Planas, to make it clear to the king that the political revolution desired by the Lliga posed no threat to the monarchy. Márquez was still a willing accomplice and still convinced that he could speak for the army as a whole. The first week in August the three political activists in the Infantry Junta -- Márquez, Villar, and Herrero -- prepared a message for the king after consultation with one of Cambó's colleagues, the Conde de Güell.⁽⁴⁰⁾ After the usual renovationist preamble, the message urged the king to undertake directly the reconstruction of the Fatherland in harmony with the national will and the army. Only vigorous action could forestall the resurgence of separatism, the inflammation of social disorder, and possibly, the loss of his throne. Specifically, the message reiterated the demands of the Assembly movement -- Constituent Cortes, under the direction of a "national government of concentration" that included Melquíades Álvarez -- and proposed an independent Interior Minister -- preferably General José Marvá, the social reformer -- to supervise free elections.⁽⁴¹⁾ In the improbable event that the Cortes should threaten the Crown, the army promised to dissolve them.

Alfonso, who now held the tactical advantage, paid no attention to the message, which was delivered by Padre Planas. In its first test, the Infantry Junta had stood by the king and the government, not by Márquez or his political allies in Catalonia. Furthermore, the government was by early August confident of its ability to discredit the Assembly movement through the general strike scheduled for later in [82] the summer; quite possibly, plans had already been laid to defuse the strike by provoking it prematurely. In any event, the Minister of the Interior, José Sánchez Guerra, confidently wired the civil governors that the Juntas could be safely ignored.⁽⁴²⁾

The General Strike

The second session of the Assembly movement was postponed because of the outbreak of the general strike on August 13.⁽⁴³⁾ The failure of the strike guaranteed the defeat of the renovationist movement of 1917 by shattering the uneasy alliance between the bourgeoisie and the revolutionary left. It also settled any lingering doubts about the essentially conservative temper of the Juntas de Defensa. Emerging from the strike with their political leverage greater than ever, the Juntas were in a position to press their professional demands on the politicians and the king in Madrid.

The general strike was an attempt by the Socialist UGT to capitalize on the mounting labor unrest created by wartime shortages and inflation. Since 1916 the UGT and its rival, the Anarchosyndicalist CNT, had joined in a series of pacts to direct this discontent against the political system; the failure of the government to respond positively to the workers' distress led to a radicalization of the movement's goals in 1917. On March 25 UGT and CNT leaders agreed to call an "indefinite general strike," hoping to deploy the growing strength of labor to force basic structural changes in the regime: political democratization and state intervention to secure social and economic reforms. In June the Socialist leadership joined the coalition of Republicans that was planning the creation of a bourgeois republic; at the same time, links were established with the Assembly movement through Alejandro Lerroux and Melquíades Álvarez. Thus in early July all the opposition in Spain had been loosely united in a movement aimed at substantive political change.

Plans were not made to call the general strike to coincide with the Assembly, although Socialist party (PSOE) and UGT leaders agreed in mid-July to call a general strike should the Juntas attempt a coup on July 19.⁽⁴⁴⁾ Broad support for the strike was not yet assured: Cambó was openly hostile; the Republicans, hesitant; the Juntas, still uncommitted. On the other hand, the CNT and industrial workers throughout Spain had by July worked themselves into a fever pitch of revolutionary excitement. During June there were strikes in Bilbao, Beasáin, Cartagena, Huelva, and San Sebastian, and on July 4 a large strike of metalworkers [83] began in Bilbao.⁽⁴⁵⁾ On July 17 the Anarchosyndicalists, impatient with the methodical preparations of the Socialists, outlined their revolutionary program -- a melange of practical trade union demands and Utopian social projects -- in a widely circulated manifesto.⁽⁴⁶⁾

Despite the caution of the Socialists, on July 19 a strike broke out in Valencia that ultimately -- and fatally -- led to the premature declaration of the general strike on August 13. The origins of the Valencia railway strike are still obscure: it is possible that it was initiated by agents provocateurs in order to divide the left from their bourgeois allies in the Assembly movement.⁽⁴⁷⁾ Events following the Valencia strike, which was over by July 23, tended to confirm this hypothesis. The Compañía del Norte refused to rehire thirty-five members of the local branch of the Railworkers' Union of the North, who retaliated on August 1 by calling a strike on all company lines for August 10. Since this would have blunted the impact of the general strike, the Socialist-dominated National Federation of Railworkers convinced its affiliate to compromise with the Compañía, which was also being pressured into conciliation by the Development Minister, the Vizconde de Eza. On August 9, however, negotiations were abruptly broken off at the insistence of the Interior Minister, Sánchez Guerra, who announced at his press conference that he was "ready to go to the strike."⁽⁴⁸⁾ Rising to the bait, the Federation voted by the narrowest of margins to go out on a sympathy strike on August 13.

Having been outmaneuvered by the government, the national committees of the UGT and the PSOE, meeting in Madrid, reluctantly agreed to call their revolutionary general strike to coincide with the railway strike on August 13, even though plans were not yet complete. With the railway strike a fait accompli, they succumbed to their fears and illusions: fears that the revolutionary momentum of 1917 would be dissipated; illusions that the wavering Republicans would provide substantial support and that the army would side with the workers against the regime.⁽⁴⁹⁾ In order to reach as wide an audience as possible, the strike manifesto of August 12 contained only political, not social or economic, objectives. The strike was aimed only at the peaceful establishment of a democratic republic.⁽⁵⁰⁾

But as the government had calculated, the broad revolutionary coalition did not materialize. Although the strike, which began in Madrid on August 13, spread quickly to the major urban and industrial areas of Spain, it found no echo in the countryside, where a majority of the Spanish population still lived and worked. Had the general strike begun a year or two later, when inflation and the Bolshevik Revolution had raised the expectations of rural workers, it might have succeeded, [84] although whether the political goals emphasized by the Socialists in 1917 would have aroused much enthusiasm among illiterate peasants and farm laborers is of course open to doubt.⁽⁵¹⁾ Even in urban Spain, the impact of the strike was blunted by the lack of coordinated leadership, especially after the arrest of the strike committee in Madrid on August 15. Some organized labor, including railworkers on the Madrid-Saragossa-Alicante line, abstained from the strike.⁽⁵²⁾ In spite of the committee's decision to protest peacefully, violence broke out in most cities, including Madrid -- where a riot was brutally suppressed in the Model Prison -- and in Barcelona, where CNT organizers were prepared from the first for a bloody confrontation. And the Republicans, with the exception of Marcelino Domingo in Barcelona, provided little support once the fragmentary character of the strike became apparent.

As the government had anticipated, the alliance between the Lliga and the left did not withstand the initial outbreak of violence in Barcelona. On August 14 a manifesto signed by the leaders of the Catalan parliamentary delegation made it clear that the Assembly of Parliamentarians would neither support nor accept responsibility for the general strike.⁽⁵³⁾ Cambó was furious, and with reason. The outbreak of the strike had forced cancellation of the August 16 meeting of the Assembly in Oviedo and, as he noted on August 18, had led to the accusation that the Lliga had "provoked the strike and then abandoned it, frightened by our own handiwork. . . ,"⁽⁵⁴⁾ Much of the Assembly movement's goodwill had thus been at least temporarily dissipated.

Most significant for the failure of the general strike was the attitude of the army, whose repressive zeal on the whole exceeded the demands of the situation. As a precaution, Infantry regiments in Barcelona were placed under surveillance by more reliable Artillery and Cavalry units, as well as by the Civil Guard and police, but the fears of the government were not realized.⁽⁵⁵⁾ On the contrary, in Sabadell, where Colonel Márquez's regiment was posted, clashes between workers and the army produced ten deaths.⁽⁵⁶⁾ Noncommissioned officers also ignored appeals for class solidarity and temporarily buried their grievances against their superiors. On August 15 Marcelino Domingo was arrested on the orders of General Marina, in violation of his rights as a deputy, and was nearly shot out of hand by officers resentful of his earlier efforts to subvert the troops. To insure his safety, Marina ordered him transferred to the cruiser Reina Regente.⁽⁵⁷⁾ In the north, where the militancy and high wages of the Asturian miners kept the strike alive for nearly five weeks, the military response was exceptionally severe.⁽⁵⁸⁾ Although for the first four days of the strike the miners employed only peaceful tactics, the Military Governor of Oviedo, General Ricardo [85] Burguete, insisted on forcing the strike into more violent channels. In two notorious edicts of August 13 and 17, Burguete accused the strikers of lèse patrie and treason and promised to hunt them down "like wild beasts" a promise he eventually made good.⁽⁵⁹⁾ Subordinates who attempted to negotiate with the rebels, like Major Borbón and Colonel Angel Rodríguez del Barrio, were either dismissed or reprimanded. In time, the implacable repression of the Military Governor and the failure of the strike elsewhere in Spain took their toll. On September 17 the miners returned to work. Official figures after the strike showed 80 dead, 150 wounded, and 2,000 arrested.⁽⁶⁰⁾

In spite of this grim harvest of violence, the days of the August general strike soon became known as the "Comic Week," a bitter parody of the Tragic Week of 1909.⁽⁶¹⁾ The strike and the renovationist movement had raised hopes high; the collapse of the coalition of mid-July inevitably spread cynicism and disillusionment. The failure of the strike and the defection of the bourgeoisie also postponed indefinitely the unification of the Spanish labor movement by confirming the Anarchosyndicalists in their apoliticism and estranging them once again from the Socialists. The Socialist leadership, on the other hand, retreated rapidly from their brief foray into violent revolution into a new preoccupation with electoral politics. In 1918, when inflation, the armistice, and the news of the Bolshevik Revolution raised millennial hopes among both rural and urban workers, there was little enthusiasm among the Socialist leadership for another attempt at revolution.

Their reluctance was understandable. The Spanish regime had showed its resiliency in 1917, when appearances had indicated that its defenses were weak, while the revolutionary forces, seemingly confident and united, had been divided and destroyed, one by one. Most significantly, the army, which had seemed to promise political renovation in June 1917 had, during the course of the summer, repudiated reform and acquired a debt that could be collected only by preserving the political status quo. After 1917, the left had no illusions about the success of an appeal to the army. On the contrary, the army appeared as the first and most essential obstacle to political and social change.

The Aftermath of the Strike

After their enthusiastic repression of the strike, the Juntas were in a position to make almost unlimited demands upon the Dato government; Márquez's new nickname -- Benito I -- summarized the political moment. As before, the political leverage of the junteros was derived [86] largely from the defensive position of the government. On June 1, July 19, and August 13, the principal weapon of the Juntas had been the threat of inaction, of withdrawal of support from a regime that from the first had implicitly relied on the military to secure its existence. To translate this negative gesture into positive action, however, required greater unanimity within the officer corps than in fact existed. Although Colonel Márquez would once again try to establish a reformist political role for the army in the fall of 1917, the bulk of the Juntas would forsake him for the promise of a military reform bill tailored to their interests.

Thoroughly conscious that the loyalty of the army had been decisive during the August strike, the Dato government moved quickly to repay its debt. On August 21 the cabinet voted a 77 million peseta credit for defense expenditures.⁽⁶²⁾ But the Juntas wanted more: continuation of martial law and the execution of the Socialist strike committee, composed of Julian Besteiro, Francisco Largo Caballero, Daniel Anguiano, and Andrés Saborit. Refusing the latter demand, the government found it convenient to allow the court-martial, which began in Madrid on September 28, to deal as harshly as it chose with the committee. The military prosecutor presented two accusations against the committee: a frustrated attempt at military sedition, punishable under the Code of Military Justice by life imprisonment, and a successful attempt at common rebellion, punishable under the Civil Code by a nine-year prison sentence.⁽⁶³⁾ Although the committee was enthusiastically defended by two young officers with Masonic connections, Infantry Captains Ramón Arronte Girón and Julio Mangada Rosenorn, the outcome of the trial was never in doubt.⁽⁶⁴⁾ On October 4 the court found the four Socialists guilty of common rebellion, but ruled that a frustrated intent to commit military rebellion was not punishable under military law. Nevertheless, the court imposed the maximum military penalty -- life imprisonment -- to satisfy the Juntas. Captain Mangada received fifteen days' corrective arrest for his excessive zeal in the committee's defense.

The Juntas were equally intransigent about the release of Marcelino Domingo, who was scheduled to be tried for rebellion before a court-martial in Barcelona in violation of his rights as a deputy, which required the submission of a suplicatorio to the Cortes requesting permission for the trial.⁽⁶⁵⁾ As president of the Congress, the Liberal Miguel Villanueva repeatedly pointed out to Dato that the army's disregard for Domingo's rights implied a disregard for the sovereignty of the Cortes as well, but Dato would respond only with vague public assurances that the law would be observed.⁽⁶⁶⁾ In private, he was unable to [87] persuade the Juntas to surrender jurisdiction over the Republican deputy. It was not until the eve of Dato's fall in late October that the civil Supreme Court asserted its jurisdiction over the case, and not until November 5, two days after the formation of a new coalition government, that Domingo was placed in provisional liberty.

As outrage over the strike faded, public opinion turned in favor of the persecuted strike leaders and against the Juntas, whose professed progressivism now seemed rather thin. In order to recoup some of its lost moral authority, the Infantry Superior Junta began to distance itself publicly from the repressive policy it was privately forcing upon the government. In a circular of September 7, it warned local Juntas of the danger of a rift between the army and the people, and for the first time made a distinction between the general protest of August and the goals of a tiny, revolutionary minority. While justifying the court-martial of these subversives, the Superior Junta now recommended a more conciliatory policy toward the rest -- specifically, the end of martial law, supposedly imposed by Dato in order to discredit the army. Finally, the Junta leadership asked for a prior vote of confidence in the event they were called upon to fulfill their "sacred obligation" to impose on the politicians "morality, justice, and foresight."⁽⁶⁷⁾

At the same time, the activists in the Infantry Junta tried to lead the membership into a more active political role. Since early August delegates from the regional Juntas (representing the eight military districts) had been in session in Barcelona, their deliberations only temporarily interrupted by the general strike.⁽⁶⁸⁾ On September 12 the assembly reconvened and agreed to intervene directly in the political process by writing letters to the government, the press, the king, and favored generals, with the vaguely stated purpose of restoring "morality and justice" to government under the benevolent eye of the Junta. On September 25 they dispatched General Marina to Madrid to warn the prime minister of their displeasure at the adverse publicity surrounding their role in the general strike and to advise him of their intention to intervene in the political crisis. Although Dato's official reply could not have been more temporizing,⁽⁶⁹⁾ the Junta leadership was now more eager than ever to replace him with Antonio Maura.⁽⁷⁰⁾ Márquez and his allies in the Superior Junta still envisioned themselves as the shepherds of the renovationist movement.

The majority of the Infantry Junta, however, was less interested in politics than in the professional grievances that had originally sparked its formation. In August the delegates had vented their anger against the senior hierarchy by compiling a blacklist of generals, some of whom should be immediately retired, others of whom might be rehabilitated [88] after a proper penance. The sessions in September were equally absorbed by the bureaucratic matters that had preoccupied Infantry officers for decades, especially the extension of the seniority principle and the elimination of favoritism. Rejecting General Aguilera's appointments decree of May 31, the delegates proposed that all appointments be made on the basis of strict seniority. On September 25 the Junta moved against the Staff Corps, voting to require candidates for the Superior War College to indicate in advance of their acceptance whether they intended to enter the Staff Corps or return to the Infantry as diplomados after graduation. Officers who chose the Staff Corps and then failed the entrance exam to the War College would not be allowed to return to the Infantry but would find their careers at an end. This measure, which reflected the widespread resentment in the Infantry against the privileges and rapid promotions of Staff officers, demonstrated clearly the general desire to convert the Junta into a professional union.

When the government finally restored constitutional guarantees on October 18, these deliberations were made public. Freed from prior censorship, two Madrid dailies, El País and El Parlamentario, published several of the supposedly secret Junta circulars and letters, together with the August classifications of offending generals. Outraged by this evidence of insubordination, the Marqués de Estella resigned from the War Ministry the same day. On October 20 both Estella and General Luque, the senior political generals of the turno, publicly condemned the vetoing process and demanded an immediate return to the normal chain of command.⁽⁷¹⁾ But the government and the king had decided that real power in the army now lay with the Juntas. Ignoring the generals, Dato endeavored to placate the irate Superior Junta, which had dispatched two of its members to Madrid to investigate the source of the leaks to the press. To replace Estella in the War Ministry, Dato appointed the general most favorable to the Infantry Junta, General Marina. Even Marina, however, was less sympathetic to the Junta since the revelation of its vendetta against the senior hierarchy.⁽⁷²⁾

The Crisis of October 1917

During the last week in October, the renovationist coalition mounted its final assault on the government. Thoroughly discredited by its pusillanimous conduct during the fall, the Dato government was clearly doomed; although the Liberals made haste to add their voices to the rising chorus of criticism, it was equally clear that their own party [89] was too divided to assume office. The Assembly movement, temporarily eclipsed by the strike, now appeared as the only possible solution to the political stalemate. During September and October Cambó had made the rounds of the principal resort cities, mustering support for a coalition government that would dissolve the existing Cortes and proceed toward constitutional reform. It was a measure of Cambó's persuasiveness and of the general disillusionment with Dato that the Liberal president of the Cortes allowed one of the Assembly's study commissions to meet in the Palace of the Cortes itself in mid-October. The program of constitutional reform the commission released to the press on October 18 made a calculated appeal to popular indignation over the conduct of the government since the August strike.⁽⁷³⁾ Cambó also endeavored to exploit the well-known hostility of the Juntas toward Dato by publicly praising their rebellion against an illegitimate government, although he apparently did not renew his contacts with Márquez.⁽⁷⁴⁾ Having thus at least temporarily resuscitated the broad opposition movement of early June, Cambó scheduled a second session of the Assembly for October 30.

On October 23 the Infantry Junta moved against the government. In collaboration with Captains Villar and Leopoldo Pérez Pala, Colonel Márquez wrote another message to the king. This time, however, he submitted it to the assembly of regional Junta representatives for approval, hoping to avoid the disunity of the summer.⁽⁷⁵⁾ The assembled colonels not only approved the message but also voted to allow the king only seventy-two hours to take the first steps toward meeting their demands for political renovation. If there were no response, the army would recover its freedom of action to proceed "in the national interest," probably by seconding the decisions of the Assembly of Parliamentarians. On October 24 Márquez presented the message to the presidents of the other branch Juntas, whose reluctance to sanction a flagrant breach of constitutional legality was overcome only with great difficulty. After several false starts, however, all the branch Juntas save the Engineers signed the document, which was entrusted to two separate sets of emissaries for communication to the king.⁽⁷⁶⁾ In an interview with El Heraldo on October 24, Márquez justified the ultimatum to the Spanish public as necessary to avoid "dangerous temporary incumbencies or long constituent periods." While insisting that the army believed in civil supremacy, he warned that the nine thousand members of the Infantry Junta, and the other corps as well, stood unanimously behind his leadership.⁽⁷⁷⁾

On October 26 two events convinced Alfonso that the hour had arrived to sacrifice Dato. The president of the Congress, Villanueva, [90] once again permitted two study commissions of the Parliamentary Assembly to meet in the Palace of the Cortes, a sign that the Liberals were growing impatient for power. The principal order of business of one commission was an army reform bill -- more proof, if any were needed, that the Lliga was still courting the Juntas.⁽⁷⁸⁾ In the evening there was a large meeting of junteros in the military casino. When Dato waited on the king the next morning, he was discreetly asked for his opinion of the "Liberal situation." The same afternoon, Dato resigned.

It was clear, however, that a Liberal solution was impossible. Above all, the unrelenting hostility of the Juntas and the Lliga since June had been directed against Dato as a symbol of the old turno; their success in finally bringing him down meant that they had destroyed the turno as well. The political postmortems that followed the news of Dato's resignation recognized this at once, just as they recognized the impossibility of any solution that could not guarantee military discipline, as the faction-ridden Liberals certainly could not.⁽⁷⁹⁾ At stake was the principle of civil supremacy, a fact understood by everyone, but articulated most emphatically (if somewhat orotundly) by Antonio Maura, whose reference to the Juntas as "a seditious armed band" made it clear that he was still uninterested in cultivating juntero support. Maura diagnosed the problem of the regime as its failure to lay a secure foundation in national opinion. He then offered a quasi-fatalistic prognostication of military dictatorship that was destined to be repeated incessantly during the next six years: "If this [civil supremacy] is not achieved, then those who do not allow others to govern, should govern themselves, assuming complete responsibility."⁽⁸⁰⁾ At issue, of course, was the kind of solution that could generate the broad national support needed to resist military pressure. Maura's star had faded since June. The left was still vociferously opposed, the Juntas had been put off by his cool reception of their overtures, and the Catalans now vetoed a Maura government. But other dynastic party leaders could offer no promise of substantial reform.

The only alternative seemed to be the Assembly of Parliamentarians, who held their second plenary session in Madrid on October 30, in the midst of the crisis, and reiterated their demand for Constituent Cortes and an opening to the left, symbolized by the inclusion of the Reformist Melquíades Álvarez in a new government. The breach in the alliance with the Republicans and Socialists had been mended; chastened by the failure of the revolutionary general strike, the Socialists now aimed only at the making of a bourgeois revolution. Bowing to forces that could no longer be ignored, Alfonso sent a message to Cambó asking him to leave the Assembly to come for a consultation.

[91] As he had in July, Cambó betrayed his alliance with the left. The decision of the Lliga leadership to abandon the Assembly movement had been made on October 25 after an Executive Committee meeting with Lerroux and Iglesias; in the deepening crisis, Cambó was no longer certain he could contain the revolution from the left.⁽⁸¹⁾ Under the circumstances, it seemed necessary to sacrifice the bourgeois revolution in order to save the monarchy and the social order. Cambó had already partially defused the threat from the Juntas by persuading one of the emissaries sent to Madrid to refrain from presenting the ultimatum to the king.⁽⁸²⁾ At his meeting in the palace with the king and the Liberal leader García Prieto on October 30, Cambó agreed to the formation of a coalition government in which the Catalanists would be given two portfolios. In return, he agreed to drop the Assembly's demands for Constituent Cortes. Although it supposedly represented a break with the past, the new government would be committed primarily to the preservation of the political status quo, slightly expanded to include the Catalan bourgeoisie. García Prieto offered no reform other than free elections guaranteed by an independent Interior Minister.

To neutralize the threat from the Juntas, Cambó and García Prieto agreed on the appointment of Juan de la Cierva as Minister of War.⁽⁸³⁾ As a civilian, La Cierva represented a break with the traditional military turno that controlled the War Ministry. A Conservative with a strong authoritarian streak, La Cierva had already made contact with the two remaining Junta emissaries, who were distracted from their political mission to the king by the promise of immediate attention to the junteros' professional grievances. The junteros, Major Espino and Captain Miguel García Rodríguez, had never supported the renova-tionist program advocated by Colonel Márquez. Thus they were easily persuaded to throw their support behind the proposed coalition government. As La Cierva suspected, their indifference toward political reform was characteristic of the majority of the officer corps.⁽⁸⁴⁾

In Cambó's view, the participation of La Cierva was a realistic response to the threat posed by the Juntas, who might otherwise have brought down the throne.⁽⁸⁵⁾ The evidence for this is thin, however. As Cambó was aware (he had been insisting on it all summer and fall), the political leverage of the army was less of its own making than of the government's. It was unlikely that the army would overthrow the monarchy in the fall of 1917, because it lacked the unity to do so. The junteros pressing La Cierva's candidacy during the crisis were no more representative of the entire army than was Márquez, who was in Barcelona, unaware of the negotiations underway in Madrid. For one thing, the appointment of La Cierva was a repudiation of the political generals [92], who had hitherto controlled access to the War Ministry. With the officer corps internally divided, a coup was not likely to be attempted; it would most certainly not succeed. His arguments in favor of "realism" notwithstanding, Cambó's attitude in 1917 smacked heavily of opportunism.

The inclusion of La Cierva in the García Prieto coalition completed Cambó's break with the left, which since 1909 had stood firm against a return of Maura and his former lieutenant, La Cierva, to office. Melquíades Álvarez refused to participate in the new government as a matter of principle, although he was offered a portfolio. The final goal of the renovationist movement -- an opening of the regime to the democratic left -- was thus abandoned.

The resolution of the crisis undeniably enhanced the political power of the Juntas, particularly of the majority faction concerned with purely professional demands. Few civilian observers made the distinction, of course; it was assumed that "the army" had acted as one. Moreover, the turbulent summer and fall of 1917 had convinced the dynastic parties that government in opposition to "army opinion"-- supposedly represented by the Juntas -- was impossible. But with the officer corps, and even the Juntas themselves, divided, the army would not be able to respond decisively or constructively to the political responsibilities impressed upon it by civilian government. The Juntas' attempt to exercise their power would therefore be disruptive and demoralizing for both the regime and the army.

Their first victim would be the coalition government that took office on November 3, 1917, a conglomeration of political forces that quickly earned its nickname, "the Horatian monster."⁽⁸⁶⁾ Inspired by the patriotic "unity" governments of wartime Europe, the Spanish coalition lacked the continuing presence of a common enemy to give it cohesion once the threat of the Juntas had been removed. Furthermore, the left was completely excluded. A positive program to eliminate the root causes of military power in 1917 by broadening the base of the constitutional monarchy was thus not likely; apart from the commitment to free elections, García Prieto had no other program than to appease the army. Indeed, his very lack of substance made García Prieto the ideal minister for the final years of parliamentary government in Spain, as the dynastic parties revealed their incapacity to rule. Between 1917 and 1923 he would head four cabinets.

Besides the Juntas, the real victor in 1917 was Francisco Cambó, who had negotiated the incorporation of the Catalan bourgeoisie into the governing elite by exploiting the chaos created by the army. At the same time, he had manipulated the Juntas so skilfully that their potential [93] danger had been blunted, or at least deferred. The community .of interest between conservative Catalans and the army would endure another six years, overriding the original military distrust of regionalism. That community of interest would disappear and the old hatreds flare up only when the army discovered that it could govern by itself.

Notes for Chapter Four

1. Conde de Romanones, Obras completas, 3:371.

2. El Imparcial, June 13, 1917, p. 1.

3. The manifesto is in El País, June 17, 1917, pp. 1-2.

4. El Liberal, June 17, 1917, p. 1.

5. The June 7 declaration contained the following points:

First. That everything that occurs is the fault of the arbitrary regime of the Governments of the Monarchy, both in what concerns civil life as well as in the military.

Second. That by neglecting the prestige of the civil Power, the Government is making a shameful and contemptible spectacle.

Third. That [the Madrid Socialist Group] will oppose with all its forces, at whatever cost, any solution that tends to diminish the sovereignty of the civil Power, or to place at the head of the country's destiny the men who embody reaction, and particularly, a government led by Maura. |El País, June 9, 1917, p. 2]

On June 12 the Madrid Socialist Group issued a five-point declaration:

First. Declare that in the latent military question there is a socio-political aspect that it is necessary to clarify.

Second. In the confusion, favoritism, and disorganization of the Army, the military is not free from fault, because they are represented in every government.

Third. Faced with the seditious attitude and indiscipline of the officer corps, the people should be ready to defend civil supremacy.

Fourth. The responsibility for what is happening does not extend to the most recent governments alone, but to all institutions.

Fifth. Protest one more time against the Law of Jurisdictions and against Maura. [CM, June 13, 1917, p. 1]

6. See Luis Araquistáin Quevedo, Entre la guerra y la revolución, p. 105.

7. El País, June 16, 1917, p. 1.

8. Alejandro Nieto, La retribución de los funcionarios de España, pp. 209-10.

9. Mundo Gráfico, Apr. 10, 1918, p. 4.

10. The manifesto of the Defense Junta of Taxpayers is in Sucesos de agosto, pp. 175-76, and Juan Antonio Lacomba Avellán, La crisis española de 1917, p. 425.

11. CM, June 6, 1917, p. 1.

12. El País, June 13, 1917, p. 2.

13. Emilio Mola Vidal, Obras completas, pp. 1001, 1011, 1015.

14. Letters in Gabriel Maura Gamazo and Melchor Fernández Almagro, Por qué cayó Alfonso XIII, pp. 303-5, 486.

15. The complete manifesto is in José Buxadé, España en crisis, pp. 98-113, and is partially quoted in Lacomba, Crisis de 1917, pp. 434-47, and in Alejandro Lerroux, Al servicio de la república, pp. 106-10.

16. El Liberal, June 7, 1917, p. I.

17. La Acción, June 7, 1917, p. 4.

18. Benito Márquez-Martínez and José-Maria Capo, Las juntas militares de defensa, pp. 180-81.

19. See CM, June 24, 1917, p. 1.

20. Law of July 15, 1912. See above, pp. 28-29.

21. The full text is in SHM-GL, leg. 73, carp. 4.

22. In ibid.

23. La Lucha, June 20, 1917, p. 1. See also the account in Marcelino Domingo, En la calle y en la carcel, pp. 13-33.

24. The manifesto appeared in La Acción, El Mundo, and La Correspondencia de España.

25. El País, June 28, 1917, p. 1.

26. Guillermo Cabanellas, Militarismo y militaradas, pp. 63-64.

27. SHM-GL, leg. 73, carp. 4.

28. See El País, June 27, 1917, p. 1, for the censorship list and the decree suspending guarantees.

29. An overly sympathetic, but nevertheless very useful biography of Cambó is Jesús Pabón, Cambó. Despite some tactful omissions, these volumes are among the best available on Catalan regionalism and the Spanish parliamentary system at the beginning of the twentieth century.

30. Pabón, Cambó, 1:503-5. The official response of the government is in El Liberal, July 9, 1917, p. 1.

31. Maura and Fernández Almagro, Por qué cayó Alfonso XIII, pp. 488-89.

32. In Márquez and Capo, Juntas de defensa, pp. 184-87; Pabón, Cambó, 1:527-30; and Lacomba, Crisis de 1917, pp. 459-61.

33. In Buxadé, España en crisis, pp. 168-71; Fernando Soldevilla, Tres revoluciones, pp. 138-41; and Lacomba,Crisis de 1917, p. 157, n. 134.

34. Márquez and Capo, Juntas de defensa, p. 50; Maximiano García Venero, Eduardo Dato, pp. 282-83.

35. García Venero, Dato, p. 284.

36. El Liberal, July 16, 1917, p. 1.

37. Márquez and Capo, Juntas de defensa, p. 54.

38. The Assembly is fully described in Pabón, Cambó, 1:512-19, and Gerald Meaker, The Revolutionary Left in Spain, 1914-1923, pp. 70-76.

39. Lacomba, Crisis de 1917, p. 202.

40. See Márquez and Capo, Juntas de defensa, pp. 204-8, and Lacomba, Crisis de 1917, pp. 441-45.

41. The proposed cabinet included: President, Whomever His Majesty designates; Interior, General José Marvá; War, General Alberto de Borbón; State, Santiago Alba; Development, Francisco Cambó; Finance, Angel Urzáiz; Justice, Melquíades Alvarez; Public Instruction, Santiago Ramón y Cajal; Labor, Leonardo Torres Quevedo (in 1917 there was no Ministry of Labor).

42. Márquez and Capo, Juntas de defensa, pp. 66, 68, n. 1.

43. Accounts of the general strike of August 1917 may be found in Meaker, Revolutionary Left, pp. 76-98; Andrés Saborit, La huelga de agosto de 1917; Jacinto Martín Maestre, Huelga general de 1917; Fernanda Romeu Alfaro, Las clases trabajadoras en España (1898-1930); Lacomba, Crisis de 1917, pp. 213-84; Pabón, Cambó, 1:536-45; and Manuel Tuñón de Lara, El movimiento obrero en la historia de España, pp. 581-602.

44. Saborit, Huelga de agosto, p. 63.

45. Manuel Tuñón de Lara, La España del siglo XX, pp. 44, 49.

46. The CNT manifesto is in Lacomba, Crisis de 1917, pp. 472-75.

47. The two men accused of working secretly for the government were Felix Azzati, the leader of the Valencia Republican movement, and Ramón Cordoncillo, secretary of the Southern Federation of Railworkers and a relation of Julio Amado, the editor of La Correspondencia Militar. Saborit, Huelga de agosto, p. 12.

48. El Liberal, Aug. 10, 1917, p. 1.

49. See the "Instructions for the Strike" in Saborit, Huelga de agosto, p. 73.

50. Ibid., pp. 72-73.

51. See Alberto Balcells, El sindicalismo en Barcelona, 1916-1923, pp. 39-43.

52. Cordoncillo and Amado were blamed for crippling the railway strike once it was underway.

53. Manifesto in Buxadé, España en crisis, pp. 268-71, and Lacomba, Crisis de l917, pp. 511-12.

54. Pabón, Cambó, 1:454.

55. García Venero, Dato, p. 289; Márquez and Capo, Juntas de defensa, pp. 58-59.

56. Meaker, Revolutionary Left, p. 88.

57. Domingo, En la calle, pp. 104-55.

58. See the account in Saborit, Huelga de agosto, pp. 109-10, and Manuel Llaneza, "La huelga de agosto en Asturias," España, Nov. 1, 1917, pp. 7-8.

59. El País, Oct. 19, 1917, p. 2.

60. Tuñón de Lara, Siglo XX, p. 55.

61. Amadeu Hurtado, Quaranta anys d'avocat, 1:295.

62. El Liberal, Aug. 21, 1917, p. 2.

63. The trial proceedings are in ibid., Sept. 28-Oct. 5, 1917.

64. Mangada, an ardent Republican and Esperantist, was involved in a famous incident with General Manuel Goded in 1932. He remained loyal to the Republic in 1936.

65. The prosecution of senators and deputies was regulated by Article 47 of the constitution and a law of Feb. 9,1912. See El Liberal, Sept. 15, 1917, p. 1.

66. Ibid.

67. ABC, Oct. 20, 1917, pp. 8-9.

68. Minutes of the assembly are in Buxadé, España en crisis, pp. 297-99, 300-302, and in Márquez and Capo, Juntas de defensa, pp. 71-75, n. 2.

69. El Liberal, Sept. 28, 1917, p. 1.

70. Maura and Fernández Almagro, Por qué cayó Alfonso XIII, p. 505.

71. ABC, Oct. 20, 1917, p. 8; El Liberal, Oct. 22, 1917, p. 1.

72. General Marina to Captain General Barraquer in Barcelona, Oct. 20, 1917, and reply of Superior Junta on Oct. 22, 1917, SHM-GL, leg. 73, carp. 5. See also CM, Oct. 18, 1917, p. 1.

73. El Liberal, Oct. 18, 1917, p. 1.

74. ABC, Oct. 23 and 24, 1917, pp. 13, 12.

75. The message is in Márquez and Capo, Juntas de defensa, pp. 210-23, and Lacomba, Crisis de 1917, pp. 534-38.

76. SHM-GL, leg. 73, carp. 5; Gustavo Peyra to Maura, Oct. 26, 1917, in Maura and Fernández Almagro, Por qué cayó Alfonso XIII, pp. 505-6; El Liberal, Oct. 25, 1917, p. 1.

77. El Heraldo de Madrid, Oct. 24, 1917, p. 1.

78. El Liberal, Oct. 27, 1917, p. 2.

79. The notes are in ABC, Oct. 29, 1917, pp. 8-11.

80. Quoted in Pío Zabala y Lera, Historia de España y de la civilización española cu la edad contemporánea, 2:400.

81. Pabón, Cambó, 1:559.

82. See Márquez's letter of self-justification, published in El Mundo, Jan. 30, 1918, after his resignation as president of the Superior Junta. The account in his book varies rather markedly. Márquez and Capo, Juntas de defensa, pp. 71-78.

83. Juan de la Cierva (1864-1938) was a powerful cacique from Murcia. The saying went, "Kill the king and go to Murcia." The proverb referred to La Cierva's enormous influence in his home province, but it seems to have originated early in his career as a criminal lawyer with a formidable record of acquittals. In 1909 La Cierva had acquired an infamous reputation on the left for his harsh repression of the Tragic Week. Since then, like his political ally Antonio Maura, he had been kept at the margin of Conservative party politics.

84. See Juan de la Cierva y Peñafiel, Notas de mi vida, pp. 187-90.

85. For Cambó's view of the crisis, see Pabón, Cambó, 1:568-75.

86. The García Prieto government of November 3, 1917, included: Interior, Vizconde de Matamala (without affiliation); Justice, Joaquín Fernández Prida (Maurist); War, Juan de la Cierva (Ciervist); Finance, Juan Ventosa (Lliga Regionalista); Navy, Amalio Gimeno (Romanonist); Development, Niceto Alcalá-Zamora (Democrat); Public Instruction, Felipe Rodés (Catalan Left).