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Between 1923 and 1930 Spain was ruled by General Miguel Primo de Rivera (whose son José Antonio will,  before being put to death by a Leftist tribunal, create the semi-fascist, quasi-socialist movement, Falange). While the regime of Miguel was officially authoritarian, it lacked many traits that are usually associated with military dictatorships: it was bland rather than bloodthirsty or cruel; it was not rightist –on the contrary, it favored the lower classes; it was not ended by a coup d’état, a revolution or a foreign invasion. The dictator resigned as soon as he found out that the side effects of the international Depression had dried up the reasonable prosperity his government had brought to Spain in the mid- and late Twenties. Furthermore, Marquis Primo de Rivera, a top general and a member of the Andalusian landowning upper nobility, did not uphold his class. On the contrary, he aroused the discontent of his fellow aristocrats, then still the dominant stratum of Spanish society.

The dictatorship used to be the legal, highly respected top office of the pristine Roman republic, a very strong position that in hard times was deemed vital to the survival or success of the State. In the 90 years between 1833, when king Ferdinand VII died, and 1923 (Primo’s military coup), Spain had 111 governments, 3 bloody civil (“Carlist”) wars and, in 1898, was disastrously defeated by the United States, so losing the last remnants of her American and Pacific empires. In addition, the country suffered serious reverses in North Africa and a few Anarchist attempts at social revolution, including in 1909 the Semana Tragica (Tragic Week). When Primo de Rivera stormed the government, the parliamentary regime of the liberal oligarchs had reached its end.

Immediately after the disaster of 1898, Joaquin Costa, the leading mind of the “Regenerationist” movement, had prophesied that Spain’s disease was so advanced that only an “iron surgeon”, that is a dictatorial innovator, could possibly heal the nation. That was exactly what Primo de Rivera was for seven years after 1923 –a Roman-type legal dictator who would demolish the parliamentary politics, wind up the colonial adventure in Morocco and then start doing something new in favor of the country: mitigating the century-old poverty of the masses and modernizing the economy. Ludovico Incisa di Camerana, a career ambassador who investigated Spanish problems for years, stressed in a remarkable book that Primo’s dictatorship “was oriented in favor of the working men, their unions and the Socialist party” and that he “destroyed the power of the oligarchy”.

Indeed, the social orientation of the dictator appeared so strong that his top labor lieutenant was Francisco Largo Caballero, who in the ‘30s, after Primo’s fall, led the whole of the Spanish left as “the Spanish Lenin” and in the Civil War became head of the Republican government. With the strong support of Socialist Largo Caballero and of José Calvo Sotelo (who at 32 was appointed the supremo of economy and finance, and whose assassination in 1936 ignited the Civil War), dictator Primo de Rivera acted decisively in favor of the workers. Then, he built roads, railroads, canals, hydroelectric dams, promoted industrialization and other economic programs. Strikes almost disappeared, the salaries improved. Between 1920 and 1929 state expense grew 50% in the field of education, 98% in subsidies to the poors, 200% in the overall health budget, of 2,246% in help to caring for children (before Primo the State gave practically nothing to children).

Most bona fide historians routinely admit that Primo de Rivera, while despising democratic institutions and practices, strove to help the working class. So much so that he aroused the bitter resentment of the privileged– especially those upper aristocrats who were insensitive, brutal and foolish enough as to try keeping everything they had, only to be almost annihilated in 1936 (many were put to death).

Of course, Primo de Rivera antagonized intellectuals, Miguel de Unamuno first of all, who certainly was the best. But political choices of intellectuals are very seldom realistic or relevant. It’s a fact that the temperament and behavior of General Primo were often such to excite criticisms. He was overly spontaneous, unmethodical, individualistic, sometimes capricious, much attracted by women, and so forth.

On the other hand, Primo was principled. He decided not to marry a very rich fiancée, Mercedes Castellanos (in the opinion of the King she was the Second Lady of Spain), after discovering that she made some money out of her social connections. And he vetoed a love affair between a son of his (not José Antonio) and Infanta Beatriz, daughter of the King. The explanation: a Primo de Rivera, being born very high, must not further climb the social ladder by becoming a relative of the monarch. Primo made a number of favors to his friends, but was also lenient with his enemies and very generous with poor people. Above all he, unlike so many liberal/democratic politicians, did not steal public money. No historian is known to have advanced allegations of corruption against Marquis Primo de Rivera, who was born rich.

In conclusion, having taken power a few months after Mussolini did, for 5-6 years Primo was as popular as the Duce would be. The Spanish dictator lost consensus when the economy worsened, both for too many public works and subsidies and for the consequences of the international Depression of 1929. In the previous years, most Spaniards approved Primo’s forcing out of power the oligarchs (the liberal politicians) and cancelling parties and parliamentary institutions. Labor particularly supported the populist, socially inclined side of the Dictadura, a regime which in a few ways resembled Fascism but in the main was rather inspired by the social doctrine of the Church (in addition to simple common sense).

On Jan. 28, 1930, the dictator resigned and left Spain, only to die in Paris 48 days later. Considering the tragedies of Spain between the very beginning of the XIX century and the Civil War of 1936, any dispassionate student of history cannot help judging Primo de Rivera as  the statesman who acted better than all Spanish liberal politicians, including the respected Canovas del Castillo, Sagasta and Antonio Maura. Of course, said politicians were not dictators. But they were worse than that– they perpetuated the socio-political marasmus that in 1936 made the rebellion of the proletarians inevitable and killed the national peace.

Massimo Calderazzi is member of the Société Européenne de Culture, to which many eminent
scholars and a few Nobel prizewinners belong.