Alfonso XIII: The 1923 mistake that cost him the crown

He left without losing elections: the sacrifices Alfonso XIII made

The accounts of Alfonso XIII's departure agree on one uncomfortable detail: he left at night, and according to the most repeated versions, alone, leaving the queen and his children behind in the palace. He chose the ship over the journey through France because he trusted the Navy more. The official explanation reduces everything to a matter of municipal elections. The problem is that a king does not renounce the crown over a poor local result; he leaves when there is no one left willing to defend him. And that, exactly that, is what had peine.

The assassinated presidents who marked his reign

To understand the environment in which the monarchy operated, one needs only a list:

• Prim, President of the Council of Ministers, assassinated in 1870.
• Cánovas, President of the Government, assassinated in 1897.
• Canalejas, in 1912, also presiding over the Council.
• Eduardo Dato, in 1921, in the same capacity.

Alfonso XII faced attempts on his life in 1878 and 1879; Alfonso XIII endured one serious attempt in 1906. Anyone who reviews this sequence understands that a Bourbon of that era internalized the idea that the position could be bought with life.

The 1923 error: Maura warned him and the king ignored it

When Primo de Rivera staged the coup in 1923, Alfonso XIII ratified it. Antonio Maura had advised him precisely the opposite: do not involve yourself or openly support any military coup. The consequence was the liquidation of the Crown's political supports. The Conservative and Liberal parties ceased to exist, and with them, their leaders lost the ability to distribute seats, ministries, undersecretariats, and mayoral posts. Without patronage, there is no clientele; without clientele, a king has no support network.
Maura summarized it before anyone else: «This man (Primo) is mad. This is the end of Monarchy; a Republic will come; then chaos; and afterwards, naturally, the military.»

Did he leave out of physical antiestéticar or because he had nobody left?

Probably both. Berenguer even told him that his physical security was not guaranteed, and from there, packing bags trinc quickly. Queen Victoria Eugenia was a descendant of Queen Victoria of England and a cousin to Tsarina Alexandra, who was executed with the Russian imperial family in 1917. Anyone familiar with that scene needs little imagination to understand a certain haste. There is also a circulating conspiracy theory about a Guasonic plot that allegedly decided their fate: it originates from a 1965 book signed by a former police inspector and has no more documentary backing than that source.

Telefónica, CAMPSA and the tariff: the economic balance sheet of the dictatorship

Here, the narrative splits into two parts. On one side, Compañía Telefónica Nacional de España, founded in 1924 with the American ITT, along with CAMPSA, Iberia, Renfe and Transmediterránea, operating within a framework of state interventionism and protectionism that benefited from the happy Twenties. On the other side, the tariff which would have kept millions of Spaniards in misery, with the Catalan textile industry protected at the expense of Castilla y León and Galicia. And the corruption of the single party: there are accounts from that era regarding intermediaries of the Unión Patriótica who used their position to obtain sinecures and contracts.

Alfonso XIII did not leave behind an orderly handover of power to a republican regime. He left, and that was it. What he left behind, according to a family account of someone who served his mandatory service in Cartagena during those days, was cargo that took days to embark.