The colonial occupiers were vulnerable because they held some important towns but little of their hinterland. The towns were linked by chains of wooden blockhouses, garrisoned by platoons of twenty-one men who lived in appallingly isolated conditions and whose morale was undermined by the uncertainty of the arrival of water, food and firewood every few days. The senseless loss of life saw popular hostility in Spain intensify and Madrid ever more reluctant to sink resources into a colonial war. The government had no stomach for anything beyond action in the immediate area around the two coastal enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla. This led to a deep division between politicians opting for a defensive policy of guarding the towns and the Africanist officer corps anxious to see the full-scale occupation of the Rif. Things improved in late 1919 when a new High Commissioner, General Dámaso Berenguer, began a long-term policy of slow occupation, fanning out from Ceuta. Part of his strategy was a commitment to pacifying the colony by means of negotiation with the tribes.3
One of his policy’s greatest triumphs was the occupation, on 14 October 1920, of El Raisuni’s headquarters, the picturesque mountain town of Xauen, the ‘Sacred City’. However, the basic problem of controlling the marauding tribes between Xauen and Tetuán in the north and El Araich (Larache) to the west involved a ruinously expensive policing operation. Among those officers who thought that the answer was rapid full-scale occupation was Berenguer’s friend the hotheaded Commander-in-Chief, General Manuel Fernández Silvestre. He was a favourite of Alfonso XIII, who encouraged his foolhardy temerity.4 While Berenguer concentrated on squeezing El Raisuni’s territory in the west, the impetuous Silvestre engaged in a more ambitious, indeed reckless, campaign in early 1921, moving swiftly westward from Melilla to occupy Monte Arruit (Al Aaroui) 40 kilometres to the south. This advance into inaccessible and hostile territory brought him into conflict with Abd el-Krim, the aggressive leader of the Beni-Urriaguel kabila of the Rif, who had begun to unify the other Berber tribes of that mountain region. In the third week of July 1921, Abd el-Krim inflicted a massive defeat on Silvestre’s forces near Melilla.5
Beginning at the village of Annual, position after position fell in a domino effect over a period of three weeks, which saw the Spanish occupation rolled back as far as Melilla itself. As the Spanish troops fled, enthusiastic tribesmen joined the revolt. Garrison after garrison was slaughtered. The deficiencies of the poorly fed and equipped Spanish forces were brutally exposed.6 Those deficiencies are all the more shocking given that in 1921 the military budget absorbed more than 35 per cent of the total budget of the state. The inefficiency of national politics was matched by the military inefficiency reflected in the excessive, indeed macrocephalic, size of the officer corps in relation both to the numbers of rank-and-file troops and to Spain’s realistic military needs and capacity. There were more generals and fewer artillery pieces per 1,000 men than in the armies of Rumania, Montenegro or Portugal. There was an officer for every four rank-and-file soldiers. Accordingly, 70 per cent of the total military budget was absorbed by officers’ salaries, ensuring that equipment was not modernized.7
Spain’s long war in Morocco was of benefit only to those who had business interests in the protectorate, not least Alfonso XIII. The corollary of that was the undermining of social support for the monarchy. Hostility to the African adventure intensified popular hostility not only to the army but to all the institutions of the Restoration system.8 The local tribes had been provoked by the brutality of the occupiers and now there were horrific revenge massacres at outposts near Melilla, Dar Drius, Monte Arruit and Nador. Within a few weeks, more than 9,000 Spanish soldiers had died and huge quantities of war materiel were lost. Silvestre was thought to have committed suicide. The tribesmen were on the outskirts of a panic-stricken Melilla. However, too preoccupied with looting, they failed to capture it, unaware that the town was virtually undefended.9 Over the next two years, the territory was clawed back but the question was now starkly posed – withdrawal or occupation?
The murder of Dato had seen the return to power, on 13 March, of Manuel Allendesalazar, at the head of a hard-line coalition determined to put an end to the anarchist threat. However, within three months the disaster of Annual, blamed on the incompetence of his cabinet, particularly of the Minister of War, the Vizconde de Eza, exacerbated the crisis of the Restoration system. While near civil war raged in the streets of Barcelona, a deeply damaging national controversy began over the issue of responsibility for Annual. The Africanistas blamed the government for failing to commit enough funds for an efficient war. The left blamed the King and the army high command for its incompetence.10 In desperation, Alfonso XIII turned again to Maura. Maura had long since abandoned his grand ambition of reforming the Restoration system and was deeply reluctant to return to active politics. He did so only because he felt that the monarchy was under threat and so reconciled himself to being the fireman of the system. He faced considerable difficulty in forming a government not least because of the mutual hostility of the followers of Dato and of La Cierva. Even greater was the mutual antipathy between the fiercely anti-Catalanist La Cierva and Cambó. In consequence, Maura’s oddly assorted cabinet, including La Cierva as Minister of War and Cambó as Minister of Finance, was not settled until 14 August.11
In fact, the defeat in an already deeply unpopular colonial war had unleashed a wave of public hostility against both the King and the dynastic parties. It was popularly believed that Alfonso XIII had specifically encouraged Silvestre in his disastrous advance. The Moroccan situation saw successive governments faced with considerable economic demands.12 In addition, the defeat intensified the divisions between the Junteros and the Africanistas. The consequent instability would conclude only with the establishment of a military dictatorship in September 1923.13
Maura was confronted by a daunting range of pre-existing problems: working-class discontent and subversion, particularly in Barcelona, the Catalan question and the profound economic difficulties following the end of the world war, all exacerbated by the Moroccan disaster. The cost of the military adventure had to be met and the responsibilities for it confronted. Maura wrote to his son on 26 August 1921: ‘We shall see how long the wedding cake lasts. It will last as long as we don’t squander with our mistakes the overwhelming weight of opinion currently running in our favour and divert it towards those who would be delighted to see the government have a spectacular failure.’ Until October 1921, he governed with the Cortes closed. Nevertheless, over the following months, he achieved considerable practical success. In military terms, the territory lost in July 1921 was soon reconquered. As Minister of Finance, Cambó had reformed the banking system.14 Moreover, the wave of left-wing opposition had been calmed by one of the Vizconde de Eza’s last and most efficacious acts. Eza’s principal concern had been to prove that he was not to be blamed for the debacle and, on 4 August 1921, he had appointed the sixty-four-year-old General Juan Picasso González to head an inquiry into the responsibilities for Annual. The much decorated General was uncle to the artist Pablo Picasso.15
There was generalized support for the massive revenge campaign that saw the recovery of the territory lost after Annual. The sight of masses of corpses of hideously tortured Spanish soldiers triggered vengeance of untrammelled savagery. The brutalization of the officer corps would be visited on the Spanish left during the civil war.16 There was disagreement over Cambó’s ambitious economic reform plans, although the central preoccupation was the reconquest of the Moroccan colony. Cambó clashed constantly with La Cierva who, with the encouragement of the King, pursued policies of ingratiation with the army as well as supporting the Unión Monárquica Nacional. Such was the tension between La Cierva and Cambó and indeed between La Cierva and other ministers that the government fell in the second week of March 1922.17 In the hope of preventing Maura from resigning, Alfonso XIII had proposed, via Cambó, that the two should form a new government and rule by decree. Maura refused on grounds of age, saying ‘It’s already too late for me.’18
Maura was replaced by José Sánchez Guerra. Sánchez Guerra’s government lived in dread of the impending Picasso report on the responsibility for the Moroccan disaster. The Socialist Indalecio Prieto had travelled to North Africa on 24 August 1921 and toured the area indefatigably for seven weeks interviewing survivors, accompanying the troops, witnessing the most gruesome sights. His series of twenty-eight vividly written articles about conditions after