The Primo de Rivera coup was a military takeover in Barcelona on September 13, 1923, led by Captain General Miguel Primo de Rivera. It overthrew the government and began a dictatorship justified as a temporary remedy for political and economic disorder. The account places the coup within a longer crisis of authority: Primo de Rivera eventually lost the support of the king and army, resigned in 1930, and the monarchy gave way to the Second Spanish Republic in 1931.

The Coup and Its Justification

On September 13, 1923, Miguel Primo de Rivera headed a military coup in Barcelona and overthrew the government. He presented his intervention as a means of overcoming political and economic problems, abolishing corruption, and restoring order. He claimed that democratic rule would return once those aims had been achieved. The account records that much of the public supported him, indicating that his seizure of power was accompanied by popular approval as well as military action.

King Alfonso named Primo de Rivera prime minister. The appointment gave the new ruler royal backing, even as the coup had displaced the existing government. The stated promise of restored democracy thus framed the dictatorship as provisional, though the supplied account does not describe how that promise was put into practice.

Economic Crisis and Loss of Support

By the end of the 1920s, the economic boom in Spain had ended as the Great Depression was beginning. In 1929 a poor harvest and rampant inflation compounded the downturn. Government spending on public works projects was blamed by many for worsening conditions. These pressures form the economic setting for the account of Primo de Rivera’s declining support, though they are not presented as the sole cause of his fall.

Primo de Rivera lost the support of both the king and the army. On January 28, 1930, he resigned. The contrast with the coup’s founding promise is marked: a regime established in the name of restoring order ended after its political and military backing had ebbed.

Aftermath and Historical Frame

The collapse of Primo de Rivera’s rule preceded a wider change in Spain’s political order. The king subsequently lost the army’s support and abdicated on April 14, 1931; the Second Spanish Republic followed. The account presents these developments as part of the coup’s historical aftermath, while distinguishing the dictator’s resignation from the monarchy’s later fall.

The retrospective note extends the chronology beyond the establishment of the republic. Two years after the king’s abdication, Primo de Rivera’s eldest son, José Antonio, founded the Spanish Falange. When the Spanish Civil War began in July 1936, both of Primo de Rivera’s sons were imprisoned and executed; the Nationalists led by Franco won the war and established a fascist regime. These later events do not constitute the coup itself, but place it within the political history that followed.