The coalition made vain efforts to deal with the great problems of the day. Santiago Alba hoped to resolve the Moroccan issue by replacing military rule over the protectorate with a civilian administration. This required a prior resolution of the colonial conflict, which in turn involved a choice between withdrawal and a massive campaign of conquest. Since neither was feasible, Alba became the object of virulent right-wing and military hostility. In late January and throughout February 1923, there had been intensifying discontent that Alba had managed, with the help of the Basque financier Horacio Echevarrieta, to secure the release of the prisoners held by Abd el-Krim. The idea that huge sums had been handed over was seen as an affront to military dignity because it implied that the army was incapable of rescuing its own men. The King did not bother to greet the prisoners when they reached Malaga, choosing instead to go hunting on the estate of the Duke of Tarifa in Huelva. This was unsurprising since he missed few opportunities for pleasure, particularly in the casino at Deauville. It was rumoured that, when he had heard of the scale of the ransom, he commented contemptuously: ‘poultry is getting very dear’. Nevertheless, he did nothing to diminish the desire of many officers for revenge attacks on the Moroccan population.59 In contrast, on 1 February, General Miguel Primo de Rivera wrote a letter of congratulation to Santiago Alba: ‘Although, as you rightly say, it is neither a triumph nor an occasion for rejoicing, it is certainly worthy of congratulations for having relieved us of the nightmare of there being Spanish prisoners and the fear of them dying. There was no hope of freeing them by any better means than the one used. God willing, this will be the last episode of this reckless African adventure to hurt and humiliate us.’60
Alba and the Spanish High Commissioner, Luis Silvela, were trying to negotiate peace through the mediation of Dris-ben-Saíd, a pro-Spanish friend of Abd el-Krim. To the outrage of most of the high command, Dris-ben-Saíd had been authorized to offer substantial public works in the Rif. Alba’s determination to bring about the peaceful resolution of the Moroccan problem brought him into conflict with the Minister of War, Alcalá-Zamora, who resigned on 25 May. On that day, there were fierce attacks by Abd el-Krim on Spanish positions. The new Minister of War, General Luis Aizpuru, responded by appointing Martínez Anido as commander of Melilla on 7 June. A few days later, Dris-ben-Saíd was shot in mysterious circumstances. Given Martínez Anido’s track record in Barcelona, it was widely believed that he was behind the murder in order to put an end to the peace negotiations. He produced wildly ambitious plans for an amphibious expedition to seize Alhucemas which appalled Alba and provoked protests on the left. An influential article by Pablo Iglesias denounced this ‘mad adventure’ and referred to the entire Moroccan project as ‘a huge tomb for Spanish youth’. After a detailed study by the General Staff which calculated that the operation would involve unacceptably high casualties, the cabinet turned down Martínez Anido’s plans. Furious, he resigned on 10 August. He was regarded as a hero by the bulk of an officer corps that deeply resented what they saw as unwarranted civilian control over military policy. Right-wing disgust generated by Martínez Anido’s departure soon deepened. Casualties were mounting as fighting intensified. Outraged supporters of the Africanistas spread alarmist rumours that another Annual could happen because of Alba’s cost-cutting pacifist policies.61
On 23 August, in an echo of the Semana Trágica, in the port of Malaga a detachment of conscripts embarking for Melilla mutinied. Women chanted, ‘Don’t go to Morocco. They are taking you to the slaughterhouse,’ civilians were jostled and army officers assaulted. Some of the recruits were merely drunk, others were Catalan and Basque nationalists making political protests. Discipline was finally restored by the Civil Guard. This incident was planned to coincide with the outbreak of a Communist-organized general strike in Bilbao. An NCO in the Engineering Corps, José Ardoz, was killed and the crime was attributed to a Galician, Corporal José Sánchez Barroso. He was quickly tried by summary court martial and sentenced to death. In a context of widespread public revulsion against the Moroccan enterprise, there was an outcry against the death sentence. On 28 August, Sánchez Barroso was given a royal pardon, at the request of the cabinet. The officer corps was outraged by the Malaga incidents, by the subsequent public rejection of its cause in Morocco and by what it saw as the slight involved in the pardon. For the top brass, it was further evidence of the weakness of the Liberal government.62
As tensions festered in Morocco, the situation had grown more poisonous in Barcelona. Before the elections, in an effort to deal with the social problem, García Prieto had replaced General Ardanaz as Civil Governor of Barcelona with Salvador Raventós Clivilles, a Catalan deputy of his own Liberal Party. This, together with the introduction of arbitration committees in labour disputes, had permitted the more moderate elements of the CNT to continue rebuilding the trade unions under Salvador Seguí. After a clandestine meeting with Juan Laguía Lliteras, Seguí presided over a tacit truce with the Sindicatos Libres, who were inclined to be more conciliatory now that they no longer had Martínez Anido to protect them. The revival of the CNT infuriated the employers who, in the absence of Martínez Anido, could turn to the Captain General, his friend, Miguel Primo de Rivera. Moreover, they were further consoled by appointment of the hard-line Colonel Heraclio Hernández Malillos as chief of the Barcelona police and his choice of Captain Julio de Lasarte to be his deputy.63 The hostility to the CNT of Primo and the bulk of the military high command was clinched when Seguí announced his readiness to collaborate with the Socialists in a campaign to push for Spanish withdrawal from Morocco. In any case, the brief truce between the CNT and the Libres ended in March 1923. The revival of the CNT under Pestaña, Peiró and Seguí had seen the return to the fold of many workers who had taken refuge in the Libres during the Martínez Anido persecution. Hard-liners among the Libres were ready to go to war again to undermine the growth of the CNT as a legitimate union.64 Accordingly, their targets were the moderate anarcho-syndicalists. The renewal of violence began with the shooting on 24 February of Amadeu Campí, a leader of the Libres’ textile finishing union. Although the CNT was accused, it is more likely that Campí was shot by Ramon Sales, with whom he had fallen out. Two other renegade members of the Libres were also shot.65
On 10 March, Seguí and his friend Francesc Comes were gunned down by a group of Libres, among whom was Inocencio Feced. The assassins’ escape was covered by policemen led by Captain Lasarte. The action was organized by Pere Mártir Homs, who had previously set up the murder of Layret and the fake assault on Martínez Anido. Again, the operation was financed by the industrialist Maties Muntadas. Martínez Anido commented: ‘I’m not really surprised. Those who play with fire sooner or later get burned.’ It was later revealed by Feced that the Employer’s Federation had financed the shooting. Certainly, Muntadas and other important members of the Patronal hoped for a military coup and believed that the murder of Seguí would provoke CNT retaliation that, in turn, would consolidate support for an army takeover. The death of Seguí was just one, albeit the most important, of a cycle of assassinations of both CNT and Libres militants. Over the following ten weeks, sixteen CNT militants and ten members of the Sindicatos Libres were shot dead and there were others wounded.66 To avoid mass demonstrations, Salvador Raventós, the Civil Governor, arranged for Seguí’s body to taken from the hospital and buried clandestinely. This provoked strikes in Barcelona, Gijón and Zaragoza with fighting between the police and action groups. When Comes was buried on 18 March, nearly 200,000 people followed the coffin.67
The murder of Seguí was a devastating blow to the CNT, which was left rudderless without the one man capable of bridging the gap between the trade unionists and the action groups.68 In the aftermath of his death, a vain effort was made by Pestaña and the CNT Secretary General Joan Peiró to stop bloodshed. Significantly, the anarchists targeted by the Libres were those who had tried to put an end to the violence. Then Peiró himself was the target of two attacks. Others wanted revenge for the deaths of Seguí and Comes. Pestaña and Peiró reluctantly acquiesced, as much as anything in the desperate hope of counter-terrorism putting a stop to the Libres’ onslaught. An action committee was set up to choose important targets, one of whom would be Martínez Anido. The actual dirty work was entrusted to a specialist unit. Its origins went back to 1920 when Manuel Buenacasa and Buenaventura Durruti were involved in a group called Los Justicieros which had unsuccessfully tried to kill the King in the Basque Country. They fled in early 1921 to Zaragoza,