The ever-increasing presence in Morocco forces an unbearable economic effort and throws the country into open war. More than 65,000 soldiers are sent there from 1912, when the protectorate is established. This is a conflict that nobody favors, except for the young officers of the Africanist army, who get decorations and promotions at great speed. The differences between these and the officers stationed in the peninsula raise grievances in the latter. Although Spain did not participate in the First World War, however, it did not manage to escape from the international climate of war. In 1917, after the initial economic euphoria derived from non-intervention in the war, different economic and social sectors began protests, from corporate complaints to revolutionary-type movements, throughout the country. The Moroccan conflict reaches its peak in 1921, when the Spanish army is defeated in Annual, losing much of the territory conquered since 1909 and leaving thousands dead in a chaotic retreat. The scandal unleashed, a new disaster, once again places the military in the spotlight.
Pronunciation by Primo de Rivera
The growing participation and influence of the army in public life reached its zenith on September 13, 1923, the date on which General Primo de Rivera launched from Barcelona, where he was captain general, a pronouncement that led to the dictatorship . In the manifesto he explains his action, despite beginning by saying that "we don't have to justify our act" , makes a detailed list of all the evils that, from his point of view, afflict the country and support its conduct:murders, robberies, depreciation of the currency, political intrigues, communist and separatist propaganda... A military Directory is immediately constituted in Madrid which is supported by Alfonso XIII, thus linking the fate of the monarchy to that of the newly initiated dictatorship. The coup interventionism of the army, in view of the success achieved on this occasion, will be an anti-liberal constant in future crisis contexts.
Government of Primo de Rivera
The dictatorship of Primo de Rivera tries to tackle the two main problems from the outset:Morocco and public order . In the first case, after the landing at Alhucemas, facilitated by the agreement with France, pacification was achieved. As for public order, the protest is repressed and, without disappearing completely, mitigated. The opposition to the dictatorship arises above all from the university and intellectual world. Unamuno, who was exiled to Fuerteventura in 1924, will be the symbol of the fight against Primo de Rivera and his corporate and anti-liberal movement . The wave of protests in the university, which began in 1928 when the Church was granted the ability to issue university degrees (especially to the Jesuits of Deusto), ended with the closure of the University of Madrid in 1929 and the abandonment of its chairs, as sign of protest, from professors of the stature of Ortega y Gasset, Jiménez de Asúa or Sánchez Román, among others. Although the dictatorship, at first, achieved notable economic successes (an ambitious public works plan, significant growth in industrial production, the creation of state-owned companies...), it failed to articulate a political system capable of managing the demands social. In 1924, imitating the dynamics followed in Mussolini's Italy, he tried to create a party to suit him, the Patriotic Union, which despite its efforts failed miserably. Without a defined ideology, without firm institutions, without popular support and with the rejection of part of the army itself (where the discomfort over the issue of promotions gave rise to the declaration of a state of war in 1926 and, even more, to the dissolution of the Artillery Corps in 1929) the future of the regime becomes unviable. At the moment in which the economic situation worsens, starting in 1929, and the mobilization against the dictatorship increases, its fall is inevitable.