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BETWEEN THE CATALAN QUAGMIRE AND THE RED SPECTRE, SPAIN, NOVEMBER 1918 – APRIL 1919*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2017

FRANCISCO J. ROMERO SALVADÓ*
Affiliation:
University of Bristol
*
HIPLA, School of Modern Languages, University of Bristol, 17 Woodland Road, Bristol, BS8 1TEf.romerosalvado@bristol.ac.uk

Abstract

Drawing upon a vast array of primary sources, this article focuses on a key period of modern Spanish history: November 1918 – April 1919. In the aftermath of the First World War and spurred on by the Allied victory, demands by Catalonia's political elites for greater autonomy seized the country's agenda. However, the political tussle between the centre and the Catalan elites ended a few months later with their mutual defeat. The upsurge of labour agitation and the hopes of the proletariat generated by the Bolshevik Revolution combined with bourgeois fear resulted in the question of national identity being superseded by bitter class conflict. This article conveys the thesis that these crucial months crystallized the organic crisis of the ruling liberal regime. Indeed, the outcome of these events proved its fragile foundations, dashed hopes for a reformist and negotiated solution, and constituted a dress rehearsal for the military coup of 1923, a clear example of the reactionary backlash which swept across Europe in the interwar years.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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Footnotes

*

I am grateful to a British Academy Grant which permitted the necessary archival work in Spain. I am indebted to the kindness of the staff at the Hemeroteca Municipal de Madrid, Fundación Antonio Maura, Real Academia de la Historia, Archivo General del Palacio Real, and Archivo Histórico Nacional. I would also like to thank Angel Smith, Pablo La Porte, Javier Moreno Luzón, and Marc Comadran for their suggestions to this draft.

References

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7 Conclusions reached, for instance, in Comalada, Ángel, España: el ocaso de un parlamento, 1921–1923 (Madrid, 1985)Google Scholar; Balfour, Sebastian, Deadly embrace: Morocco and the road to the Spanish Civil War (Oxford, 2002)Google Scholar; and Boyd, Carolyn P., Praetorian politics in liberal Spain (Chapel Hill, NC, 1979)Google Scholar.

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11 The contributors to a recent study on the downfall of the liberal regime agreed to disagree on Carr's dictum: Francisco J. Romero Salvadó and Angel Smith, eds., ‘The agony of Spanish liberalism and the origins of dictatorship’, in Romero Salvadó and Smith, eds., The agony, p. 10.

12 For instance Luzón, Javier Moreno, ‘Los políticos liberales y la crisis del liberalismo español (1917–1923)’, in Cortina, Manuel Suárez, ed., Las máscaras de la libertad: el liberalismo español, 1808–1950 (Madrid, 2003), pp. 359–98Google Scholar; Mercedes Cabrera and Fernando del Rey, ‘De la Oligarquía y el caciquismo a la política de intereses. Por una relectura de la Restauración’, in ibid., pp. 289–325; Manuel Suárez Cortina, `La Restauración y el fin del imperio colonial: un balance biográfico’, in Suárez Cortina, ed., La Restauración, pp. 31–107.

13 An exception is the incisive article by Luzón, Javier Moreno, ‘De agravios, pactos y símbolos: el nacionalismo español ante la autonomía de Cataluña’, Ayer, 63 (2006), pp. 119–51Google Scholar. However, Moreno Luzón focuses mostly on the development of Spanish nationalism as a reaction to the upsurge of Catalan demands for autonomy. There are other works that examine the events under study in this article (but they are discussed briefly as part of the analysis of the military coup of 1923) such as Smith, Angel, ‘The Catalan counter-revolutionary coalition and the Primo de Rivera coup, 1917–1923’, European History Quarterly, 37 (2007), pp. 294307 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and del Rey, Fernando, ‘El capitalismo catalán y Primo de Rivera: en torno a un golpe de estado’, Hispania, 48 (1988), pp. 294307 Google Scholar. The emphasis in the thought-provoking works by Bengoechea, Soledad is placed on the second half of 1919: ‘1919: la Barcelona colpista; l'aliança de patrons i militars contra el sistema liberal’, Afers, 23/4 (1996), pp. 309–27Google Scholar, and El locaut de Barcelona (Barcelona, 1998).

14 Hoare, Quintin and Smith, Geoffrey Nowell, eds., Selection from the prison notebooks of Antonio Gramsci (London, 1986), p. 210Google Scholar.

15 It defended the promotion of the distinctive national identity of Catalonia – its language, traditions, and culture – (and Catalan-speaking territories such as Valencia and the Balearic Islands), vis-à-vis the threat presented by Spanish uniformity. Before taking a political direction with the emergence of the Lliga in 1901, it gained momentum throughout the nineteenth century during the so-called Reinaxenca (Rebirth). The publication of L'Oda a la Pàtria (Ode to the Motherland) by Bonaventura Carles Aribau in 1833 is considered its starting point.

16 This crucial link between colonial defeat and the Lliga's birth is stressed in Smith, Angel, The origins of Catalan nationalism, 1770–1898 (Basingstoke, 2014), p. 222CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 During its first elections, the Lliga's four candidates in Barcelona were the presidents of the most important Catalan industrial and landowning organizations. According to Cambó, Francesc, the Lliga embodied an electoral aristocracy: Memorias (Barcelona, 1987), p. 74Google Scholar. Ehrlich, Charles E.'s conclusions are in ‘The Lliga Regionalista and the Catalan industrial bourgeoisie’, Journal of Contemporary History, 33 (1998), pp. 399417 Google Scholar, and Per Catalunya i l'Espanya gran: Catalan regionalism on the offensive, 1911–1919’, European History Quarterly, 28 (1998), pp. 189217 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For traditional views, see de Riquer, Borja, Lliga Regionalista: la burgesia catalana i el nacionalisme, 1898–1904 (Barcelona, 1977), pp. 191206 Google Scholar; Harrison, Joseph, ‘The Catalan industrial elite’, in Preston, Paul and Lannon, Frances, eds., Elites and power in twentieth-century Spain (Oxford, 1990), pp. 53–8Google Scholar; and Jutglar, Antoni, Historia crítica de la burguesía en Cataluña (Barcelona, 1984), pp. 390–3Google Scholar. For a recent sharp analysis, see Angel Smith, ‘The Lliga Regionalista, the Catalan right and the making of the Primo de Rivera dictatorship’, in Romero Salvadó and Smith, eds., The agony, pp. 146–8.

18 On the Lliga's imperialist ambitions, see Cal, Enric Ucelay-Da, El imperialismo catalán (Barcelona, 2003)Google Scholar, and his briefest work Per un Catalanisme imperial’, L'Avenç, 27 (2003), pp. 1419 Google Scholar. See also Calleja, Eduardo González, ‘El catalanismo en la hora del imperialismo’, Studia Histórica, 23 (2005), pp. 297312 Google Scholar, and Smith, ‘The Lliga’, p. 147.

19 Cambó, Francesc, ‘El problema catalá’, 7 June 1916, Discursos parlamentaris, 1907–1935 (Barcelona, 1991), p. 321Google Scholar.

20 Let down by the Radical leaders’ hollow response during the Tragic Week, large sectors of the proletariat moved towards the apolitical struggle preached by anarcho-syndicalism. See Smith, Angel, Anarchism, revolution and reaction: Catalan labour and the crisis of the Spanish state, 1898–1923 (Oxford, 2007), p. 215Google Scholar.

21 Casassas, Jordi, ‘Batallas y ambigüedades del catalanismo’, in Sánchez, Alejandro, ed., Barcelona, 1888–1929 (Madrid, 1994), pp. 137–8Google Scholar.

22 Massana, Carme, Industria, ciutat i proprietat (Barcelona, 1985), pp. 1416 Google Scholar. Over 70 per cent of the Catalan capital's population was engaged in industrial activities while 57 per cent in Spain still depended on the primary sector. By 1920, Barcelona represented 75 per cent of Spain's textile sector, 33 per cent of its chemistry, and 25 per cent of its metallurgy.

23 Mail between Lerroux and Alba, Dec. 1915, Biblioteca de la Real Academia de la Historia (BRAH), Santiago Alba's papers (ASA), 9/8081, 8/105/4. For the Catalanist reaction, see La Veu de Catalunya (Veu), 4 Apr. 1916; and notes, Apr. 1916, Arxiu Nacional de Catalunya (ANC), Prat de la Riba's papers (AEPR).

24 Veu, 10 Apr. 1916: ‘the triumph of Catalonia’.

25 Salvadó, Francisco J. Romero, Between war and revolution: Spain, 1914–1918 (London, 1999), pp. 46–7Google Scholar.

26 A detailed study of Alba's plans is in Cabrera, Mercedes, Comín, Francisco, and Delgado, José Luis García, Santiago Alba: un programa de reforma económica en la España del primer tercio del siglo XX (Madrid, 1989)Google Scholar. According to Cambó (Memorias, pp. 223–4, 240), Alba's defeat was necessary to prevent him from rising to the top of his party and a warning to those keen on fighting Catalanism. Cambó added that Romanones, fearful of the threat to his leadership by his own minister, had to make strenuous efforts not to applaud his performances. See also Cambó to Prat, 9 July 1916, AEPR, private correspondence. For the disarray of the Liberal Party, see 13–14 and 19 Dec. 1916, BRAH, Natalio Rivas's papers, 11/8903.

27 Márquez, Benito and Capó, José-María, Las juntas militares de defensa (La Habana, 1923), pp. 2340 Google Scholar; Boyd, Praetorian, pp. 51–65.

28 Lacomba, La crisis, pp. 165–212.

29 For an analysis of the events, see Francisco J. Romero Salvadó, ‘Spain's revolutionary crisis of 1917’, in Romero Salvadó and Smith, eds., The agony, pp. 76–81.

30 For the Lliga's betrayal, see Cordero, Manuel, Los socialistas y la revolución (Madrid, 1932), p. 30 Google Scholar. His Pabón, biographer Jesús, Cambó, 1876–1947 (Barcelona, 1999), p. 470 Google Scholar, staunchly defends Cambó: ‘Unlike his left-wing partners in the Assembly, revolution was never an objective, but to uproot the dynastic monopoly of office.’

31 El Liberal, 2 Feb. 1918.

32 This advice was made in a speech at the Palacio de la Música: Veu, 17 Mar. 1918. With Romanones's complicity, the monarch summoned the dynastic leaders, the night of 21 Mar. 1918. Once there, he appealed to them to bury their differences. Otherwise he threatened to abdicate. Romanones, Notas de una vida, 1912–1931 (Madrid, 1999), pp. 421–2Google Scholar.

33 Cambó to Durán, 23 Mar. 1918, ANC, Lluis Durán i Ventosa's papers (ADV), private correspondence.

34 Cambó, Memorias, pp. 281–2; mail between Alba and Maura, Oct. 1918, ASA, 9/8081, 8/108/4.

35 Ventosa to Durán, 27 Oct. 1918, ADV, private correspondence.

36 Correspondence Cambó-Maura (1909–21), Institut Francesc Cambó (IFC).

37 Luzón, Javier Moreno, Romanones (Madrid, 1998), pp. 354–5Google Scholar.

38 Both the monarch and Cambó were worried that political reform could turn into a revolutionary situation. As Lacomba noted (La crisis, p. 201): ‘the Regionalists wanted a constituent assembly to change the country peacefully, not a storming of the Bastille’. For secret contacts with the king, see Nadal, Joaquín, Memòries (Barcelona, 1965), pp. 269–70Google Scholar; and Ossorio to Maura, 13 July 1917, Fundación Antonio Maura, Antonio Maura's papers (AAM), 362/2.

39 Cambó, Memorias, pp. 288–9.

40 Veu, 17 Nov. 1918.

41 Casanova, José Antonio González, Federalismo y autonomía: Cataluña y el estado español, 1868–1938 (Barcelona, 1979), p. 211 Google Scholar.

42 Cambó, ‘El dret de Catalunya a l'autonomia’, 20 Nov. 1918, Discursos, p. 582.

43 Veu, 29 Nov. 1918.

44 Notes, Dec. 1918, BRAH, Count Romanones's papers (ACR), 10/6. Cambó (Memorias, pp. 295–7) recognizes Romanones's goodwill. See also Moreno Luzón, Romanones, p. 363.

45 Moreno Luzón, ‘De agravios’, pp. 128–38.

46 Ironically, he would sign the Catalan statute of autonomy as president of the Second Republic in 1932.

47 Cambó, Memorias, pp. 292–3.

48 IFC, 1/22 (26).

49 Cambó, Memorias, p. 294; Cambó to King, 12 Dec. 1918, Archivo General del Palacio Real, Alfonso XIII's papers (AGPR), 15,601/5.

50 27 Dec. 1918, ACR, 19/20.

51 Riquer, Borja de, ‘Francesc Cambó: un regeneracionista desbordado por la política de masas’, Ayer, 28 (1997), p. 107 Google Scholar.

52 Cambó, Memorias, p. 298.

53 Exchanges between Rothwos and interior minister, Dec. 1918 – Jan. 1919, ACR, 12/31; Rothwos's dispatches, Dec. 1918 – Jan. 1919, ACR 28/74 (3); Milans to war minister, Dec. 1918 – Jan. 1919, ACR 20/5; Milans to Dato, 30 Jan. 1919, BRAH, Eduardo Dato's papers (AED), correspondence to military officers. The garrison's anger is in officers’ exchanges with Julio Amado, the editor of La Correspondencia Militar, Jan. 1919, ACR, 20/18; Gustavo Peyrá (leading Catalan Maurista) to Maura, 27 Jan. 1919, AAM, 82/29; and La Correspondencia Militar, 26–8 Jan. 1919. For the UMN, see Puy, Josep, ‘La Unión Monárquica Nacional frente al catalanismo de la Lliga, 1918–1923’, Estudios de Historia Social, 28–9 (1984), pp. 468–70Google Scholar; Milans to Maura, 15 Jan. 1919, AAM, 67/43.

54 Both draft statutes are in El Sol, 14 and 23 Jan. 1919. González Casanova (Federalismo, pp. 228–34) notes that the key difference was of a juridical nature: a sovereign state without a federal constitution could not accept the existence of another de facto state within. See also Balcells, Albert, Catalan nationalism (Basingstoke, 1996), p. 77 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Molas, Isidre, ‘El projecte d'estatut d'autonomia de Catalunya del 1919’, Recerques, 14 (1983), p. 71 Google Scholar.

55 7 Feb. 1919, IFC, 3/ii/14/22.

56 Pabón, Cambó, pp. 630–1.

57 Moreno Luzón, ‘De agravios’, p. 127.

58 As González Casanova (Federalismo, p. 179) notes: ‘the Lliga identified with an ideal of Catalonia as synonymous with social order and economic progress. Labour conflicts were often dismissed as inspired by agitators from “outside” or caused by mere migrant rabble.’

59 Ealham, Chris, Class, culture and conflict in Barcelona, 1898–1937 (London, 2005), p. 8 Google Scholar.

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61 Mir, Mercedes Tatjer, ‘Els barris obrers del centre históric de Barcelona’, in Oyón, José Luis, ed., Vida obrera en la Barcelona de las entreguerras (Barcelona, 1996), pp. 43–4Google Scholar; Ealham, Class, pp. 6–9.

62 Ramos, José Luis Martín, ‘Anàlisi del movement vaguístic a Barcelona, 1914–1923’, Recerques, 20 (1988), pp. 94–7Google Scholar.

63 Led by women, the longest food riot took place in Barcelona during the bitter winter of 1918. See Kaplan, Tema, Red city, blue period (Berkeley, CA, 1992), pp. 118–24Google Scholar. Solidaridad Obrera, 28–30 Aug. 1918, covered the vicious industrial dispute in Badalona (Barcelona's industrial belt). The employers’ attempt to break a strike by bringing non-unionized labour left thirty wounded and six dead.

64 Ealham, Chris, ‘Class and the city: spatial memories of pleasure and danger in Barcelona, 1914–1923’, Oral History, 29 (2001), pp. 40–2Google Scholar.

65 The re-emergence of the anarchist action groups and their pursuit of a terrorist agenda was recognized by the CNT leader Ángel Pestaña, Lo que aprendí en la vida (2 vols., Murcia, 1971), ii, pp. 64–5. See also Calleja, Eduardo González, El Máuser y el sufragio: orden público, subversión y violencia política en la crisis de la Restauración, 1917–1931 (Madrid, 1999), pp. 116–19Google Scholar; Pradas, María Amalia, L'anarquisme i les lluites socials a Barcelona, 1918–1923 (Barcelona, 2003), pp. 3941 Google Scholar; and Meaker, Gerald, The revolutionary left in Spain, 1914–1923 (Stanford, CA, 1974), pp. 173–7Google Scholar. The upsurge of social violence was entangled with the murky spy world that flourished then in Barcelona. German intelligence sought to hinder industrial production for the Allies by any means: Aug. 1918 – Mar. 1919, Archivo del Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores, H2789; dispatches by British ambassador, 5, 7, and 14 Mar. 1918, FO 371/3,373/44,846, 46,712, and 54,288; report by the British consul at Barcelona, 5 July 1918, FO 371/3,375/11,8036.

66 Confederación Trabajo, Regional del, Memoria del Congreso celebrado en Barcelona los días 28, 29, 30 de Junio y el 1 de Julio de 1918 (Barcelona, 1918), pp. 1720 Google Scholar. The Sindicato Único of Woodworkers was the first that officially registered its statutes, Dec. 1917, Archivo del Gobierno Civil de Barcelona (AGCB), Asociaciones.

67 Gabriel, Pere, ‘Red Barcelona in the Europe of war and revolution’, in Smith, Angel, ed., Red Barcelona: social mobilization and labour conflict in the twentieth century (London, 2002), pp. 51–3Google Scholar.

68 Solidaridad Obrera, 11 Nov. 1917.

69 Chris Ealham, ‘An impossible unity: revolution, reform and counter revolution: the Spanish left, 1917–1923’, in Romero Salvadó and Smith, eds., The agony, p. 100; Farré, Juan Avilés, La fe que vino de Rusia: la revolución bolchevique y los españoles, 1917–1931 (Madrid, 1999), pp. 99100 Google Scholar.

70 Buenacasa, Manuel, El movimiento obrero español, 1886–1926 (Madrid, 1977), p. 50 Google Scholar; Pestaña, Ángel, Consideraciones y juicios acerca de la III Internacional (Madrid, 1970), p. 12 Google Scholar.

71 Instructions from Madrid to civil governor, 16–20 Jan. 1919, ACR, 12/31; and Jan. 1919, Archivo Histórico Nacional, Serie A Gobernación (AHN), 42A/3. For the CNT's neutrality in the autonomist issue, see ‘Ni con unos ni otros’ (‘With neither of them’) in Solidaridad Obrera, 16 Dec. 1918.

72 For the Canadiense, see conversations between authorities in Madrid and Captain General Milans, Feb.–Mar. 1919, ACR, 20/5; between Madrid and Rothwos, Feb.–Mar. 1919, ACR, 20/6; Canadiense's manager asks for martial law, 10 Mar. 1919, ACR, 20/18; Milans to the war minister, 19 Mar. 1919, ACR, 96/6; Rothwos's dispatches and British embassy's pressure for harsh measures, Feb.–Mar. 1919, AHN 57/10; dispatches from the British ambassador, 21–2 Feb. and 18 Mar. 1919, FO 371/4,120/29,898, 29,928, and 35,476, national press sources consulted include: El Imparcial, El Liberal, El Sol, El Debate, and El Diario Universal; Catalan publications include: El Correo Catalán, La Publicidad, and Veu. See also Balcells, Albert, El Sindicalisme a Barcelona, 1916–1923 (Barcelona, 1965), pp. 6776 Google Scholar; Ferrer, Joaquim, Simó Piera (Barcelona, 1975), pp. 7896 Google Scholar; Madrid, Francisco, Ocho meses y un día en el Gobierno Civil de Barcelona (Barcelona, 1932), pp. 1324 Google Scholar.

73 Rothwos had been appointed civil governor of Barcelona in March 1918. During his previous tenure of that post (Apr. 1903 – June 1905), he already made clear his strong anti-union feelings (AAM, 46/31).

74 A fantastic amount given the fact that the annual income for a working-class household was below 1,000 pesetas.

75 Mar. 1919, Fundación Pablo Iglesias, Amaro del Rosal's papers: minutes of the UGT's executive in 1919.

76 Ferrer, Simó, pp. 90–3.

77 El Sol, 19 Mar. 1919.

78 Service, Robert, Comrades. Communism: a world history (Basingstoke, 2007), p. 61 Google Scholar.

79 Calleja, Eduardo González and Reguillo, Fernando del Rey, La defensa armada contra la revolución (Madrid, 1995), pp. 1722 Google Scholar.

80 Nadal, Memòries, p. 294; El Debate, 17 Jan., 2 Feb., and 1 Mar. 1919; El Sol, 16 Jan. 1919. Examples of alarmist reports: 11 Jan. 1919, ACR, 96/38; Jan.–Mar. 1919, ACR, 10/14; Jan.–Apr. 1919, AGPR, 15,601/6 and 15,666/10; and Jan.–Mar. 1919, AHN, 17A/1.

81 For Catalan editorials, see El Correo Catalán, 23 Feb. 1919; and Veu, 11 and 13 Mar. 1919. Calls for a dictatorship are in El Debate, 12 and 19 Mar. 1919; La Acción, 8 Mar. 1919; and La Correspondencia Militar, 10 and 17 Mar. 1919.

82 Violence was confined to the killing of the collector Baró, the shooting of a textile foreman following an earlier vendetta, and one bomb in the central Calle de Córcega on 10 Mar. Catalan employers’ mail to king, Mar.–Apr. 1919, AGPR, 15,601/6; and to Maura, 29 Apr. 1919, AAM, 221/4.

83 Nacional, Archivo del Fomento del Trabajo (AFTN), Memoria de la junta directiva, 1919–1920 (Barcelona, 1920), pp. 1821 Google Scholar.

84 AFTN, Federación Patronal de Cataluña (Patronal), pp. 4–5; statutes of the Barcelona employers’ federation, 12 Mar. 1919, AGCB, Asociaciones, 366/9,722.

85 AFTN, Patronal, pp. 6–7; Bengoechea, Soledad, Organització patronal i conflictivitat social a Catalunya (Barcelona, 1994), pp. 154–65, 192–5Google Scholar; Sellés, Magda, El Foment del Treball Nacional, 1914–1923 (Barcelona, 2000), pp. 285–9Google Scholar.

86 Sellés, El Foment, pp. 273, 279–80, 312–13. For collaboration between the FTN and the CPE, see AFTN, Memoria, pp. 28–31, 44–5, and 1 Apr. 1919, and AFTN, Actas, vol. 13, pp. 278–80. See also Bengoechea, Organització, pp. 98, 238, 243.

87 Romanones, Notas, p. 434.

88 El Sol, 25 Mar. 1919.

89 Armengol, Ramón Pla y, Impresiones de la Huelga General de Barcelona del 24 marzo–7 abril 1919 (Barcelona, 1930), pp. 1396 Google Scholar; Soldevilla, Fernando, El año político 1919 (Madrid, 1920), pp. 96105, 108–12Google Scholar.

90 Portillo's spy activities are in ACR, 16/25; and report by the British consul at Barcelona, 5 July 1918, FO 371–3,375/118,036. For his gang, see Mazo, Manuel Burgos y, El verano de 1919 en Gobernación (Cuenca, 1921), pp. 460–2Google Scholar; González Calleja, El Máuser, p. 146; Pradas, L'anarquisme, pp. 44–7.

91 González Calleja and Rey, La defensa, pp. 74–96.

92 Foix, Pere, Los archivos del terrorismo blanco (Madrid, 1978), pp. 4953, 57–9Google Scholar.

93 For the Somatén during the strike, see its mouthpiece Paz y Tregua, 3–4, Mar.–Apr. 1919. The establishment of the Somatén in various cities is in AHN, 59A/9.

94 AHN, 57A/4, military bulletins (2–10 Apr. 1919); 1 Apr. 1919, AFTN, Actas, vol. 13, pp. 268–71.

95 There were 450 delegates representing 699,369 members and 56,642 from non-affiliated unions. CNT, Memoria del Congreso celebrado en el Teatro de la Comedia de Madrid, los días 10 al 18 de Diciembre de 1919 (Toulouse, 1948)Google Scholar.

96 Pabón, Cambó, p. 921. Cambó lobbied for the appointment of General Severiano Martínez Anido as civil governor of Barcelona one year later through Piedad Iturbe, a very close friend of the then Prime Minister Dato. Anido presided over a period of veritable manhunt of labour activists. Iturbe, Piedad, Erase una vez (Madrid, 1954), pp. 263–4Google Scholar.

97 Employers’ hostility to the ‘partiality’ of the government is in AFTN, Memoria, pp. 22–4, 34–6.

98 Milans's own exculpatory version is in 18 Apr. 1919, AAM, 263/16. La Correspondencia Militar, 17 Apr. 1919, called the accusation that the army had expelled the civil governor of Barcelona slanderous. Yet, evidence to the contrary was overwhelming: interview with former chief of police of Barcelona Doval in El Sol, 1 Aug. 1919; Romanones, Notas, pp. 436–45; Count Figols to Maura, 15 Apr. 1919, AAM, 219/16; British ambassador's confidential dispatches, 15–16 Apr. 1919, FO 371/4,120/62,519 and 62,523. See also various documents in AED, vol. 83: Milans's first letter of resignation due to discrepancies with the government's conciliatory line, 19 Mar. 1919; declaration of martial law, 25 Mar. 1919; Milans's demands for the removal of Montañés and Doval, undated; Montañés's opposition to Milans's repressive approach, 8 Apr. 1919; Milan's support for Portillo and second resignation, 9 Apr. 1919; the ‘visit’ of some officers before the departure of the civil governor, undated. Equally, crucial documentary evidence can be found in ACR: transcripts of telephonic conferences between Milans and the war minister, 8–9 and 14 Apr. 1919, 20/5; letter from the CPE's secretary, José Pallejá, to Milans backing Portillo, Apr. 1919, 96/38; and Doval's incompatibility with Portillo's dirty work, 8 Apr. 1919, 96/60. Most scholars agree on the army's subversive role: Alonso, Ángeles Barrio, ‘La oportunidad perdida: 1919, mito y realidad del poder sindical’, Ayer, 63/3 (2006), pp. 174–7Google Scholar; Boyd, Praetorian, pp. 26–9; Balcells, El sindicalisme, pp. 84–8; and Bengoechea, Organització, pp. 203–5.

99 Cambó, Memorias, p. 305.

100 Gramsci, Antonio, ‘On fascism, 1921’, in Beetham, David, ed., Marxists in the face of fascism (Manchester, 1983), pp. 82–3Google Scholar.