Don Miguel Primo de Rivera y Orbaneja, 2nd Marquis of Estella, 22nd Count of Sobremonte, Knight of Calatrava was a dictator, aristocrat, and military officer who served as Prime Minister of Spain from 1923 to 1930 during Spain's Restoration era.
Background
Miguel Primo de Rivera was born on January 8, 1870 into a landowning military family of Jerez de la Frontera. 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.
His great-grandfather was Bertrand Primo de Rivera (1741–1813), 21st Count of Sobremonte, a general and hero of the Spanish Resistance against Napoleon Bonaparte.
Education
Educated at the Madrid military academy, he served with the army in Morocco, Cuba, and the Philippines as well as in Spain.
Career
As captain general of Catalonia, Rivera seized power by a military coup in September 1923, when the parliamentary monarchy had failed to provide stable government and to solve the social question in Barcelona, the regionalist issue in Catalonia, and the war in Morocco.
The coup was accepted by King Alfonso XIII and supported by public opinion.
The dictator's immediate aims were to achieve political reform by a short, sharp period of military government and to settle the Moroccan and Catalan questions; these accomplished, he would retire and let the country revert to constitutional normality.
His municipal statute was a long-needed reform intended to revitalize local life and get rid of local bosses.
After the army resisted his proposal for withdrawal in Morocco in 1925, with the cooperation of the French he destroyed the power of the Riff rebel Abd-el-Krim in the Alhucemas campaign (September 1925).
Unable or unwilling to return to normality, he set up a Civil Directory (1925 - 1930) and was forced to promulgate a new constitution--an amalgam of Italian Fascism and Spanish traditionalism--to be sanctioned by a national assembly, a final breach with constitutional tradition.
An ambitious program of public works and social and labor legislation brought him the support of the Socialists; however, he failed in his attempt to build up a new party, the Patriotic Union.
From 1927 Rivera's popularity waned.
Most important was the opposition of the army. Rivera, an infantry officer, attempted to destroy the privileged promotion system of the artillery, giving rise to a conflict in which the entire artillery officer corps was suspended.
Thus in 1928 discontented soldiers cooperated in the unsuccessful revolt in Valencia of Sanchez Guerra, a former prime minister. The regime was too feeble to punish the rebels. The final blow was the fall of the peseta, attributed by the opposition to inflation hidden from the country by a "dishonest" extraordinary budget.
This crisis brought suspension of the public-works program and emphasized disagreements in the ministry on the advisability of returning to a democratic form of government. Rivera, without consulting the King, vainly appealed to the generals for support.
Alfonso, aware of the dangers of supporting an unsuccessful dictatorship, used this unconstitutional consultation to dismiss the dictator. Rivera retired to Paris, where he died on March 16, 1930.
The support Alfonso XIII had given the dictatorship was the most important factor in the overthrow of the monarchy in 1931.
Achievements
In 1915 he was named governor of Cadiz, and in 1921 he was elected to parliament, but he lost both posts because of his opposition to the government's North African policy, particularly in Morocco. Rivera successfully suppressed anarchism and overt manifestations of Catalan regionalism and separatism.
Opposition spread from the ousted politicians to include most Catalans and most intellectuals and students, who objected to the censorship he had imposed and to his support for Catholic education.
Politics
Unable or unwilling to return to normality, he set up a Civil Directory (1925 - 1930) and was forced to promulgate a new constitution--an amalgam of Italian Fascism and Spanish traditionalism--to be sanctioned by a national assembly, a final breach with constitutional tradition.
Views
His slogan was "Country, Religion, Monarchy. "
Connections
Then in 1902, he married a young Hispano-Cuban, Casilda Sáenz de Heredia. Their marriage was happy, and Casilda bore six children before her death in 1908, following the birth of Fernando.
