When the Cortes debate began as a result of the official inquiry led by General Picasso, there were broadly three approaches. The government of Sánchez Guerra wanted to limit responsibilities to the military high command in Morocco. The first casualty within the high command was General Berenguer, who resigned as High Commissioner on 10 July 1922 and was replaced by General Ricardo Burguete.20 The Liberals wanted to widen the issue to include the Allendesalazar government in power at the time of Annual. Prieto and the Socialists, however, wanted to go further and implicate the King.21 Prieto took the lead with several powerful speeches in the Cortes, the first of which was delivered eight days after his return from Morocco. The Picasso report exposed the incompetence and corruption within the high command in relation to the disappearance of funds and the sale of food supplies to hotels and restaurants and of weaponry to the enemy. The issue went further in that the financial interests of the Spanish oligarchy in terms of mining, electricity and railways as well as shipping were protected by the army without any particular benefit to the nation. The military high command were involved in corrupt relations with the economic interests that they protected.22 This was hardly new. For years, corruption had been denounced by the left-wing press, particularly in La Lucha, the newspaper of the Partit Republicà Català, which had been founded in 1917 by Marcelino Domingo, Lluís Companys and Francesc Layret.23 Nevertheless, for the Picasso report to bring the matter to national prominence and in a way that demanded action constituted a bombshell.
In Melilla, large-scale funding for roads, for barracks and for equipment disappeared into the pockets of the colonels and generals. There were cases where money requisitioned for the bribery of non-existent Berber chieftains had been pocketed. These devices, together with large-scale selling of weaponry by senior officers, saw the accumulation of considerable fortunes. In the same way as underpaid government officials depended on bribes, lower-rank officers traded in army supplies of soap, building materials, food and arms and ammunition. It was discovered that, in just one ordnance depot, 77 million pesetas had been spent without any plausible account appearing on the books. Officers and their wives bartered guns and ammunition for fresh vegetables in the market places of the protectorate. Rank-and-file soldiers were often the victims in terms of poor-quality food and equipment. Indeed, they were often forced to go barefoot. Even more scandalous was the appalling state of military hospitals where the lack of pharmaceuticals was notorious. The military monopoly on all aspects of the colonial administration meant that contracts for garrison construction were often given to relatives of officers. Private individuals who wished to build houses were obliged to employ military engineers, who charged exorbitant fees for their work. While the corruption of the politicians could occasionally be reported in the press, the Law of Jurisdictions made it dangerous to comment on military misdeeds.24
Prieto’s devastating oratory had a huge national impact. Speaking of the ‘putrefaction’ of Melilla, he highlighted government incompetence, military corruption and the atrocities committed against the Moroccan population by officers of the African Army, especially the frequency with which women were raped. He declared: ‘Melilla is a brothel and a den of thieves.’ He accused La Cierva – who had put obstacles in the way of Prieto’s tour of Morocco – of so favouring the Juntas as to undermine military efficiency. He condemned the government for not issuing figures for the number of dead, which he put at 8,000. When seeking to allocate responsibility, he blamed the King for encouraging Silvestre and denounced ‘this wretched reign’. He ended with the damning words: ‘Those fields of colonial dominion are now fields of death; eight thousand corpses are gathered on the steps of the throne to demand justice.’25 Eventually, Picasso’s report would put the casualties at more than 13,000.
An indication of the scale of the corruption can be seen in the considerable fortune that Santiago Alba made in 1921 while he was Foreign Minister, with the help of Juan March, from the sale of weaponry to the Moroccan rebels. The arms were transported from Dutch and Portuguese ports and from Gibraltar. At the time, the Compañía Transmediterránea, of which March was one of the major shareholders, had the monopoly of troop and materiel transport for the North African coast for the duration of the war.26 Military corruption was not confined to the Moroccan colony. Niceto Alcalá-Zamora, who was Liberal Minister of War in 1923, discovered that the quartermasters’ corps (Intendencia) was involved in a massive swindle involving invented purchases of flour.27
Despite being preoccupied with establishing responsibility for Annual, Sánchez Guerra had embarked on a conciliatory social policy. To the fury of the Catalan industrialists, and even more so of Martínez Anido, he restored constitutional guarantees and opened the way to the legalization of the CNT. In fact, this coincided with a move to greater moderation within the CNT. A delegation was sent to Martínez Anido to request the reopening of workers’ centres and the legalization of trade unions. He responded violently: ‘I shit on Sánchez Guerra’s order to restore constitutional guarantees. Here in Barcelona and its province, I’m in charge, not him. Get out of my sight immediately if you don’t want a hard time.’ With so many senior figures either dead or imprisoned, the leadership was in flux and Martínez Anido’s response strengthened the more radical elements. Among the new figures there was intense enthusiasm for the Russian revolution and consequently a bitter conflict over the relationship of the CNT to the Comintern.28
The Secretary General of the CNT Evelio Boal López had been arrested in March 1921 and subsequently murdered by the police in a demonstration of the ley de fugas. Boal had been replaced by a young journalist, Andreu Nin. His sympathy for the Comintern was matched by that of Joaquín Maurín, who become leader of the CRT Federation in Lleida in April 1921. Nin was born in 1892 in El Vendrell in the province of Tarragona where he had been a pupil of the cellist Pau Casals. Maurín was born in 1896 in the tiny village of Bonansa in the province of Huesca. It had been decided in April 1921 to send a small CNT delegation to the inaugural congress of the Red International of Labour Unions (Krasnyi Internatsional Profsoyuzov, or Profintern) that took place in Moscow in July 1921. The visit confirmed Nin and Maurín in their view that the CNT should join the Comintern. Nin remained in Russia and eventually became a close collaborator of Trotsky. Maurín returned to Catalonia and replaced Nin as Secretary General of the CRT but faced a wave of hostility to the idea of adherence to the Comintern. However, he was arrested in February 1922.29 The resurgence of the more moderate elements was confirmed at the Congress of Zaragoza on 11–12 June 1922. Ángel Pestaña had visited the Soviet Union in 1920 and returned deeply disillusioned. He had been arrested immediately on arrival in Spain and was therefore unable to put his views to the organization. Now, he and Seguí argued successfully against joining the Profintern. They both felt that it was important to reunite the anarchist movement and to seek legality. They were even ready to cooperate with liberal political groups. The moderate syndicalist Joan Peiró replaced Maurín.30
Both Martínez Anido and the employers’ organizations, ‘the Patronal’, were dismayed by the re-emergence of the CNT, which they blamed for the more liberal policies of Sánchez Guerra. However, the triumph of the trade union wing of the CNT was, thanks to the Civil Governor’s intransigence, paralleled by a resurgence of pistolerismo by the action groups. Needless to say, the Libres were not slow to retaliate. From March to October 1922, the Libres carried out eight assassinations and the anarchists five. Martínez Anido was engaging in a deliberate provocation to build up opposition to Sánchez Guerra. Criticism of the Libres in the Cortes by Indalecio Prieto saw the group’s deputy leader, Juan Laguía Lliteras, travel to Madrid and, on 16 May, physically attack the Socialist deputy. On 7 August, Martínez Anido made a token offer of resignation which, under threats from Primo de Rivera and demonstrations of support from industrialists’ organizations, Sánchez Guerra was obliged to refuse.31
Some weeks later, the Civil Governor was outraged to learn that Pestaña was going to make a speech in Manresa. On 25 August, Pestaña was waylaid by a gang of gunmen including Laguía Lliteras. The operation was ordered by Martínez Anido and financed by Muntadas. Pestaña was badly wounded, with one of the bullets puncturing a lung. He was laid up for two months during which