Fascism From Above: The Dictatorship Of Primo De Rivera In Spain, 1923 1930

470 Pages·1983·12.613 MB·English

by  Shlomo Ben-Ami

FASCISM FROM ABOVE

FASCISM FROM
ABOVE
The Dictatorship of
Primo de Rivera in Spain
1923-1930
SHLOMO BEN-AMI
CLARENDON PRESS • OXFORD
1983
Oxford University Press, Walton Street,"Oxford 0X2 6DP
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Ben-Ami, Shlomo
Fascism from Above: the Dictatorship of Primo de
Rivera in Spain, 1923-30.
1. Rivera, Miguel Primo de 2. Spain—Politics
and government—1886-1931 3. Spain—History—
r Alfonso XIII, 1886-1931
I. Title
946.08 DP243
ISBN0-19-822596-2
Set by South End Typographies, Pondicherry
Printed in Great Britain by
Hazell, Watson Viney Ltd.
Aylesbury, Bucks.
To the memory of my father

PREFACE
On 13 September 1923, General Miguel Primo de Rivera, the
captain-general of Catalonia, seized power in Spain by means of a
classic pronunciamiento. He established a seven-year dictatorship
of which so far no systematic study has been undertaken. The
present work is the first attempt to fill this yawning gap. The opinion
has been widely held that Primo’s coup d’état was a response to a
so-called ‘disintegration’ of the political system of the Restoration,
and therefore, only marginally, if at all, related to an economic or
social crisis.1 More recently it has been argued that the general’s
rebellion was a defensive reaction of the military caste against the
threats to its corporate interests.2
Yet the question remains whether Primo de Rivera was just the
successor to generations of ‘Spanish’ praetorians. Is the fact that a
general takes over the reins of power violently, or that a court
favourite seizes power through a palace coup de main, perse indica­
tive of the nature and significance of his rebellion?3 The mechanism
of the take-over might not have changed, but its response to the
challenges of a structurally changing society, its incisive identification
with the terrified well-to-do classes, the would-be dictator’s affinity
with European anti-parliamentarian trends, and the presence of the
‘communist’ scare in the minds of his conservative supporters might
perhaps be indicative that something new and more in tune with
European post-War anti-democratic tendencies was being bom in
September 1923. To see the emergence of Primo de Rivera’s Dic­
tatorship as just a classic manifestation of military corporatism or
syndicalism would be to reduce it to the dimensions of ‘one more’
pronunciamiento.
Primo de Rivera has been too frequently dismissed as a national
1 Javier Tusell y Genoveva García, ‘La Dictadura de Primo de Rivera como
régimen político. Un intento de interpretación* in Cuadernos Económicos de L C.E,,
(henceforth Cuadernos) no. 10,1979, pp. 39-44.
2 This is a valid emphasis competently argued by Carolyn Boyd, Praetorian
Politics in Liberal Spain (The University of North Carolina Press, 1979), pp. 236-71.
3 Such is the minimizing treatment given to Primo’s coup d'état by two contemporary
analysts: Carlo Sforza, European Dictatorships (London, 1932); Curzio Malaparte,
Técnica del golpe de estado (Barcelona, 1958).
viii Preface
Father Christmas, a Haroun-el-Rashid issuing decrees right and
left, or a sympathetic Andalusian determined to force upon a whole
nation his primitive and over-simplistic political philosophy. He was
portrayed as a coffee-house politician, a prototype of the mass of
Spaniards in which there were probably millions of potential dictators
who could do nothing but applaud the anarchic spirit and eclectic
policies of their well-intentioned hero.4 Jacques Bainville wrote
that Primo ‘somewhat resembled the toreros of his native country.
When the bullfight is over, all they think about is love-making.’5
Some contemporaries, mainly in Latin America, dismissed him as ‘a
general à la mejicana, who only thinks of drawing his machete, and
who lives between adventures and gambling’.6 Devoid of any doctrinal
basis, the Dictatorship, argued its critics, was an old-style autocracy,
almost pouvoir à l'état pur. Himself a product of liberal politics, the
Dictator could not betray his democratic spirit in order to become
the herald of a new system.7 * His whole experiment was nothing but
a ‘parenthesis’ with few, if any, important effects on Spanish life.®
What is, one may ask, the validity of a term such as historical
‘parenthesis’ at all? History is about change; and it is the task of the
student of history to detect it. To stick to the ‘folkloristic’ traits of
Primoderriverismo would hardly advance historical research. It
certainly would not enhance our understanding of the period here
under consideration and its place in the history of twentieth-century
Spain. One can easily write, for example, the ‘other history’ of
Italian Fascism, the anecdotes of Mussolini’s showmanship, stories
of ludicrous goings-on and sexual melodrama. Indeed, as Luigi
Barzini seems to imply in a witty and amusing chapter on Mussolini,
this ‘other history’ is not only relevant but might even be the real
one.9 But, whatever one’s historiographical approach might be, the
‘serious’ Primo de Rivera has still to be unearthed if a valid conclusion
4 G. Brenan, The Spanish Labyrinth (Cambridge, 1964), p. 79; H. Buckley, Life
and Death of the Spanish Republic (London, 1940), pp. 18-19; Salvador de Madariaga,
España (Buenos Aires, 1964), pp. 322-4. 343-4; S. Payne, Falange (Stanford Uni­
versity Press, 1962), pp. 5-7.
5 Jacques Bainville, Dictators (London, 1937), p. 229.
* A staunch enemy of the Dictator, Sánchez Guerra, disputed the validity of this
image; see La Nación, 28 Aug. 1926.
7 Amadeu Hurtado, Quaranta anys d’advocat. Histórica del meu temps (Barcelona,
1964), vol. 2, pp. 187-9; Joaquín Arrarás, Historia de la segunda república española
(Madrid, 1964), vol. i, p. 153;Tusell, 'La Dictadura.. .*.
• Javier Tusell, La crisis del caciquismo andaluz 1923-1931 (Madrid, 1977),
p. 231. 9 Luigi Barzini, The Italians (London, 1966), pp. 133-56.
Preface ix
about his regime is to be drawn. His was not the regime of an
oriental despot or a benefactor devoid of any conceptual orientation.
Nor was he the elementary kind of nineteenth-century Caudillo.
His rule was to be imbued with ideological ingredients and with
institutional components whose affinity with ‘modem’ dictatorships
should not be disregarded.
There is no denying that much of the criticism of Primo de Rivera,
especially that referring to his personality, was right. It will not be
claimed here that his regime was wholly immersed in an all-embracing
Weltanschauung, as was the case with modem totalitarian regimes.
Nor will it be argued that the Dictator possessed a coherent, or
systematic body of doctrine. He was the first to admit his spirit of
improvisation, his pragmatism and syncretism. ‘All my life I have
been changing my views,’ he declared in a speech at the National
Assembly, ‘sometimes I reject today what I accepted only a week
ago.’10 But the expedient traits of the Dictatorship should not be
allowed to overshadow its novelty. No ‘man on horseback’ before
Primo de Rivera had developed in Spain the notion of a New State
to the degree that he did. He was not the sword of party vying for
power, nor just a rudimentary embodiment of the barracks’ political
philosophy, but the protagonist of an entirely new kind of politics.
Nor should one underestimate the Dictatorship’s elevation of anti­
democratic traditionalism to the status of an official guide-line.
Under Primo de Rivera, moreover, the Catholic criticism of demo­
cracy started to attune itself to the mainstream of counter­
revolutionary European thought; it acquired a strong flavour of
what some considered to be the Zeitgeist.
This book is an attempt to re-examine Primo de Rivera’s rise to
power and his regime, and to see to what extent he went beyond his
Originally conservative intentions to acquire the touch of a ‘modem’
dictator. It is essential in this context to examine the civilianization
of his regime, which had initially looked like a sheer military adven­
ture; and to study the extent to which the general’s rebellion against
‘decadent’ liberalism advanced the cause of a new political deal.
Did the Dictator establish a new economic and social approach?
Protectionism and economic interventionism came to Spain long
before Primo de Rivera. But at no time before him had economic
nationalism been institutionalized with such zeal and doctrinal
10 Primo de Rivera, Intervenciones en la Asamblea Nacional (Madrid, 1930),
p. 40.
x Preface
conviction. Moreover, in the past there seems to have been a certain
tension and dichotomy between the politically liberal state and its
submission to protectionism.11 Under Primo the dichotomy dis­
appeared, as both politics and the economy complemented each
other as two facets of a dictatorial, nationalist enterprise. Primo’s was
the first coherent essay made in Spain by a military ruler to establish a
developmental dictatorship, of which we have had many examples in
this century. An important aspect of the question of whether or not
Primo de Rivera should be considered the herald of a Spanish ‘new
state’ is the extent to which, by his drive to acquire a working-class
point d’appui for his regime, he had moved away from his conservative
loyalties and ceased to be committed at all costs to the sanctity of
vested interests. Not all of Primo de Rivera’s approaches went beyond
the realm of intentions and the declarative stage. They should there­
fore be evaluated accordingly. Thus, for example, his social achieve­
ments did not always live up to his boastful claims. Nor were his
promises to vindicate the greatest ‘regenerationist’ dream, the re­
vitalization of local life and institutions, exactly fulfilled. Primo de
Rivera should certainly be credited with relieving Spain from the
nightmare of the Moroccan wars. He failed, however, in his preten­
tious, even ludicrous, attempt to secure for Spain the status of a world
power. But, a révolution manquée, as the Dictatorship eventually
proved to be, it nevertheless deserves the attention of students of
history if only because it put the lid on a system that had provided a
workable framework for parliamentary politics in Spain for the pre­
ceding fifty years, and inaugurated policies that were to become
corner-stones of the Spanish right and eventually of the Francoist
state. The Dictatorship anticipated the most essential ingredients of
both the ‘blue era’ and the National-Catholic phase of Francoism. An
attempt is made, through select comparative insights, to place the
Spanish Dictatorship within a wider European context.
I have already dealt with some aspects of the Dictatorship in a
previous book and in subsequent articles. The present study will
therefore not elaborate too extensively on topics such as the Social­
ists’ ‘collaborationism’ and Primo’s confrontation with the Artillery
Corps, with the universities, and with the dynastic and the Republican
opposition. Inevitably, these issues are referred to when they are
indispensable for the understanding of the broader picture, or when
a fresh observation about them can be advanced.
" Raymond Can, Spain 1808-1939 (Oxford University Press, 1970), pp. 394-7.