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Alfonso XIII, modern but Spanish

2023-01-14T11:05:13.543Z


Campechano, womanizer and accused of corruption, he was destined to be the modernizer of Spain and ended up becoming a conservative symbol. He died in exile. The historian Javier Moreno Luzón addresses the career of Felipe VI's great-grandfather in light of his national project. This year also marks a century since the coup d'état by Miguel Primo de Rivera, supported by the Crown


On the night of April 14, 1931, Alfonso XIII escaped from Madrid by car to Cartagena, took a boat there, and headed for Marseilles.

The Republic had been proclaimed throughout the day, first in Eibar, then in Barcelona, ​​then in the capital.

The results of the elections on the 12th precipitated the events: the Republicans won in a good part of the provincial capitals —45 out of 52— and in the large towns.

Nobody lifted a finger for the monarch, he had been left more and more alone after the resignation on January 28, 1930 of Primo de Rivera, the dictator whom he supported by breaking his constitutional obligations after a military coup in 1923. Things were going for him. they were getting ugly, and their loss of prestige was such that even a conservative politician, José Sánchez-Guerra, who was prime minister during his reign,

King Alfonso XIII playing diabolo in an undated image. Dusko Despotovic / Sygma / Getty Images

Alfonso XIII (with a cigarette in his mouth) taking a break from a train journey, in an undated image published in 'Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung'.ulstein bild / Getty Images

The king in an image published in 'Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung' in 1907. Philipp Kester (ullstein bild / Getty Images)

A man shows his back with a tattoo of the portrait of Alfonso XIII (circa 1915).

Image courtesy of the Galaxia Gutenberg publishing house included in Javier Moreno Luzón's book 'El rey patriota.

Alfonso XIII and the nation'.

UNKNOWN AUTHOR © NATIONAL HERITAGE

Alfonso XIII takes golf lessons with famed instructor Percy Keen in Kingston, London, UK, circa 1920. Gamma-Keystone / Getty Images

The king with Miguel Primo de Rivera, in Barcelona in 1923, after returning from a trip to Italy.

Image courtesy of the Galaxia Gutenberg publishing house included in the book 'The Patriot King.

Alfonso XIII and the nation'.

UNKNOWN AUTHOR © NATIONAL HERITAGE

Inauguration of the Ibero-American Exhibition in Seville in 1928. The royal couple, Alfonso XIII and Victoria Eugenia, speaking with General Miguel Primo de Rivera. brandstaetter images / Hulton Archive / GETTY IMAGES

Alfonso XIII, in the center, together with Prime Minister Miguel Primo de Rivera, on the left, at a test of chemical weapons (mustard gas) in La Marañosa, Madrid, on November 16, 1929. brandstaetter images / Imagno / Getty Images

Alfonso XIII pays for his ticket on a bus during his exile in Lausanne (Switzerland) in 1931. Universal History Archive / Universal Images Group / Getty Images

His reign had begun in 1902 when he reached the age of majority at the age of 16.

There were festivities at that time that lasted 12 days, and half a million people from Madrid, to which some 100,000 foreigners added, wandered from one place to another celebrating in a splendid way the oath of that boy who had arrived to give strength to a country that was He was still traumatized by the disaster of 1898, when he lost his remaining colonies in America after a war with the United States.

The vital trajectory of that monarch who began as a shot and ended spectacularly and without any glory has been reconstructed by the historian Javier Moreno Luzón in

El rey patriota.

Alfonso XIII and the nation.

Corruption was one of the causes that ended up ruining his figure.

“It is something that leaves little documentary trace, which is inherent to the phenomenon, but there began to be rumors at the beginning of the twenties that he charged commissions for certain favors and that was a fundamental argument of his antagonists, regardless of whether it could be demonstrated ”, explains Moreno Luzón during an interview.

"Corruption is important above all for this reason, because it had political effects."

He promoted public education, but also strengthened ties with the Church and supported Franco

Alfonso XIII began with great impetus.

Spain suffered at the beginning of the 20th century a true identity crisis.

“The king focused on the hopes and expectations of many people, from Catholic sectors to the moderate left, together with all those who had mobilized then with regenerationist projects,” explains Moreno Luzón.

"He helped the youth of the character, he was a blank paper, but he also arrived imbued with a certain providentialism: he believed that he had the historical mission of saving Spain."

The Constitution that prevailed in those years was that of 1876, the Restoration regime, with two great parties —the Liberal and the Conservative— that peacefully took turns in power after holding rigged elections and where the political role of the monarch was still important. .

“We are not talking about a parliamentary monarchy like the current one,

which greatly limits the powers of the king and leaves them practically reduced to what is purely ceremonial, representative, symbolic”, he explains.

The monarch intervened as an arbitrator when there were disagreements between the parties, "and he was the soldier king, the head of the army, and he acted as a brake on any military intervention in politics."

Moreno Luzón has tried in his work to "open the object of his historiographical camera" to also pay attention to the ceremonies, the cultural and propaganda initiatives, the speeches and the images that accompanied and marked the reign of Alfonso XIII.

His was, like all those of an era dominated by the effervescence of the masses, a scenic monarchy.

In one of the chapters, and regarding a visit by the king to Barcelona, ​​he includes an observation that Josep Pla noted in one of his chronicles: “Everywhere where there is a court, there is also an audience of dark heroes, capable of doing the sacrifice of standing firm for three or four hours to see a brilliant cavalcade go by”.

That was also what the monarchy was about, spectacle, and in those fights Alfonso XIII was a teacher.

“He was very popular, very nice,

he liked contact with people”, observes the historian.

He would put it in his pocket.

There were storms during a visit he made to El Hierro and La Gomera, and to save the difficulties the king advanced on the shoulders of some sailors.

He always played.

King Alfonso XIII, in the center, accompanied by the dictator Miguel Primo de Rivera, on the left, during a hunt held in 1930.EFE / Album

Alfonso XIII operated during his first years of reign as the regenerator of the country, the one who was going to get it out of the sinkhole of the disaster of 1898. He celebrated Agustina de Aragón, visited the ruins of Numancia, went to Covadonga —the cradle of the Reconquest—, He made a royal offering to Santiago de Compostela, passed through Las Navas de Tolosa, traveled to Ceuta and Melilla, to the Canary Islands, to Barcelona over and over again.

He threw himself into the opening of the Casa de Cervantes in Valladolid, he got along with Joaquín Sorolla and pushed him to give a new image of Spain to the world, he recovered the figure of El Greco, and also that of Goya, he sought harmony with Latin America, he approached Guinea.

"Unanimously praised and courted, it was difficult for him not to see himself as a fundamental piece of the political system and responsible for the destiny of the country," says Moreno Luzón.

"When Alfonso XIII was sworn in as king, after the regency of María Cristina, the two Restoration parties were plunged into a leadership crisis," explains the historian.

“Antonio Cánovas has been assassinated by an anarchist terrorist in 1897 and the conservatives are reconfiguring themselves around various tendencies.

As far as the liberals are concerned, their historical leader, Práxedes Mateo-Sagasta, is still alive but will not last long.

There are internal fights in each force and different ideas of what has to be done”.

And the king begins to show signs that he is a friend of the Bourbons, of influencing one and the other, of getting his hands on it, and there is talk of "Oriental crises", "because they took place in the Palace of the East and because they reminded the Ottoman Empire, the then sick of Europe, the most backward, where despotism ruled.

Alfonso XIII made some mistakes, such as forcing the resignation of Antonio Maura in 1904. And yet, he ended up prevailing;

So much so, that during his tenure, the king had much less role and the conservative politician made him travel everywhere to make him a national symbol.

"For Maura, the king was essential to attract conservative Catalanism, which was one of the most relevant strategic plans of his government."

King Alfonso XIII and his children do gymnastics on a terrace, possibly in the palace of La Magdalena, Santander (ca. 1920).

Image courtesy of the Galaxia Gutenberg publishing house and included in the book 'The Patriot King.

Alfonso XIII and the nation'.

UNKNOWN AUTHOR © NATIONAL HERITAGE

The same did not happen with the liberal José Canalejas.

"He thought that the conservatives had a lot to gain with the support of the Catholic middle classes and, seeing himself in a minority, he considered that they needed the king's lever to transform Spain in a progressive sense."

Canalejas wanted to turn the king into the head of a political program to modernize the country, it was what he called the "nationalization of the monarchy."

The king liked the idea and came to support measures such as promoting public education or imposing compulsory military service, which were inspired by the French Third Republic.

On November 12, 1912, Canalejas was assassinated by the anarchist Pardiñas, who had been wandering around Madrid without finding his true target, the king, and shot himself when he met the then prime minister.

The attack against the great political figures was common in those times, and it was not only a matter of anarchists, but also occurred among the nationalists of some oppressed minority.

They fell, among others, the Austrian Empress Sissi, the King of Italy Umberto I and the President of the United States William McKinley.

“They thought that by shooting in the head they were going to bring down the system,” says Moreno Luzón.

In addition to assassinating Cánovas and Canalejas, in Spain the anarchists liquidated another conservative, Eduardo Dato, in 1921.

Alfonso XIII came to suffer three attacks, the second of them after his wedding in 1906 with the British princess Victoria Eugenia of Battenberg, niece of Edward VII.

In the third, in 1913, he managed to escape the shots and felled the terrorist with a movement of his horse.

He knew how to keep a cool head.

In his book, Moreno Luzón writes: “I wanted to play the role of an active man with well-tempered nerves, the tireless athlete and the brave soldier who faced the danger of attacks without blinking, who was associated with the most prestigious of global society. but he did not lose a traditional touch and a bomb-proof patriotism.

Modern but Spanish”.

He spoke three languages, he had four children with Victoria Eugenia between 1907 and 1914, two daughters and an ill-fated boy, he also got involved with numerous women, fathered at least five bastards.

For 15 years he had a very intense relationship with the actress Carmen Ruiz Moragas, she gave him a small hotel in the capital, on Avenida de la Reina Victoria.

And, according to a story spread half a century after his death, he commissioned pornographic films from a production company called Royal Films.

He spent his summers in La Granja and San Sebastián, then in Santander.

He wanted to aim higher and rub shoulders with the European aristocracy, and he went to Deauville, on the French Normandy coast: casinos and ladies, pure luxury and extreme frivolity.

Miguel de Unamuno, who harshly criticized him, called him "king of cabaret" or "Kaiser Codorníu".

He cultivated the figure of the dandy,

Portrait of Alfonso XIII kept in the collection of the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya, in Barcelona.

Fine Art Images / Heritage Images / Getty Images

World War I broke out in 1914 and Spain proclaimed itself neutral, although the king would have liked to support France and England, the entente cordiale that had allowed him in 1904 to reserve for Spain, also thanks to his efforts, a relevant role in the area northern Morocco.

The Army was so fragile that it was unable to deal with its part of the protectorate, much less could it participate in a carnage of that size and of that modernity.

Moreno Luzón: “A year before the outbreak of the war there is a real possibility that Alfonso XIII trusts the reformists.

There is a minority but influential sector of intellectual, professional and political circles that come from governmental republicanism and are linked to the Institución Libre de Enseñanza,

that he is willing to take the step of getting closer to the monarchy in exchange for the king supporting a democratization of the system.

And he eventually becomes a parliamentary monarchy.

Alfonso XIII met with figures of the stature of Cosío Villegas and Ramón y Cajal, and with a politician of as much weight as Gumersindo de Azcárate.

But the initiative fails due to the opposition of the liberals, who do not want to lose that political space.

"There are affinities between Alfonso XIII and Juan Carlos I, but he did the opposite on 23-F than his grandfather"

It was perhaps one of the last opportunities for Spain to modernize with Alfonso XIII, from there the king was going to turn more and more towards authoritarian positions.

During the war, he still wanted to play a moderating role between the opposing powers and engaged in various humanitarian tasks.

Within Spain, the polarization was then brutal and the country split between allies and Germanophiles (as happened, on the other hand, in the rest of Europe).

The triumph of the Russian revolution became the king's great obsession.

During the 1920s, all the elements that marked those years came to fruition on the political scene: the Bolshevik thrust, the self-determination of the peoples encouraged by Woodrow Wilson at the end of the Great War, the obsession of the great countries to maintain their colonies, the reactionary drift with the advent of fascism.

Moreno Luzón: “There is the issue of seeing if there are continuities within the Spanish monarchy, the reign of Juan Carlos I is often compared with that of Alfonso XIII.

There are affinities: the character's character, his involvement in shady affairs, his fondness for sex and infidelities.

But the key is found on February 23, 1981 when Juan Carlos rejected the military coup, just the opposite of what his grandfather did on September 13, 1923 by supporting Primo de Rivera ”.

From that moment on,

Juan Carlos no longer meddles in everyday politics;

Alfonso XIII, on the other hand, became more and more involved.

He consecrated Spain to the Heart of Jesus to strengthen the ties of the monarchy with the Catholic Church, he leaned towards the Africanists and their cruel methods in Morocco —he was fascinated by Millán-Astray and the Legion—, and then he supported Franco's coup, repressed the labor movement, halted any autonomist activity in Catalonia, despite approaching Francesc Cambó, the leader of the Regionalist League, even proposing an autonomy statute in 1917 that he ended up rejecting.

He lost all prestige, the Republic triumphed, he embarrassedly went into exile in 1931. He lived for a few more years, during which high society considered him a jinx.

In January 1941 he abdicated in his son don Juan's,

Find it in your bookstore

From Alfonso XIII to Manolo Escobar

In

El rey patriota

, Javier Moreno Luzón talks about the approach that Alfonso XIII had to religion in his last years when throughout his life he had frequently skipped the moral norms of the Church.

He then recalls Antonio Machado's poem

, Llanto de las virtues y coplas por la muerte por don Guido

, and observes that the phrase “carousing when young and a great prayer in old age” could perfectly fit him.

The novelist Vicente Blasco Ibáñez published a pamphlet in several languages ​​at the end of 1924 where, in the manner of Zola in his

J'accuse

he charged against the Restoration monarchy and considered that, writes the historian, "Alfonso de Borbón resembled his great-grandfather Ferdinand VII above all: nice, devious and cruel."

The socialist Indalecio Prieto, already in the final stretch of his reign, attacked him and demanded that his political responsibilities in the disaster of Annual and in the military coup of 1923 be purged and pointed to the numerous corruptions in which he became mired during the dictatorship going so far as to say that it had sponsored "a time of robbery".

Carousing and praying, nice, devious and cruel, corrupt: Alfonso XIII was defined in many ways, "frivolous" was one of the most recurrent.

Javier Moreno Luzón drops another in

El rey patriota

, that of “modern but Spanish”.

"That came to me from a seminar organized by Vicente Sánchez-Biosca, one of the historians who knows the most about cinema, and where Manolo Escobar sings a song with that title," he explains.

It is about

En un lugar de La Manga

, it premiered in 1970, directed by Mariano Ozores.

The sequence has the hallmark of the cinema of those years, and there are José Luis López Vázquez and Concha Velasco who are besieging some kind of

business

to a Manolo Escobar who is involved in fixing a car.

He suddenly takes off with the song: “Gentlemen, I am a man from the 20th century but Spanish / which is as much as laughing at the whole world except God”.

There are still plenty of allusions in the theme that fit with the monarch.

He began his reign with the project of pulling Spain out of the hole and bringing it to modernity, and then surrendered in the twenties to the old Spain of the Cid and to the more retrograde circles of the Church, the Army and the aristocracy.

He celebrated Franco's coup and surely he would have found himself reflected in that Manolo Escobar who readily accepts that he likes miniskirts but that his thing is tradition.   

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Source: elparis

All news articles on 2023-01-14

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