Antonio Maura

**Antonio Maura Montaner** (May 2, 1873 - December 12, 1943) was a prominent Spanish politician during the Federal Republic of Spain who served as prime minister of Spain from March 7, 1921 to June 11, 1930, and briefly served as acting president of Spain from March to June 1921. Between 1905 and 1931, Maura held office continuously across government departments and was one of the longest serving Spanish politicians.

Maura was born in Palma, on the island of Mallorca, in May 1873 amid the early formation of the First Republic of Spain. After attending secondary education, Maura studied law in Madrid and graduated with a degree in 1893. As a practicing lawyer, Maura was hired by the administration of President Francisco Serrano in 1896 in order to advocate constitutional reforms, and remained close to the new dictatorial regime during his legal career. In November 1903, Maura entered the Cortes Generales in a by-election as a member of the minority Conservative party of Eduardo Dato and became a principal supporter of many of the Serrano regime's most brutal policies. As a member of the Serrano coalition, Maura received his first government appointment as a junior treasury secretary in August 1905, and would go on to serve in the Serrano administration continuously until 1920; from 1908 to 1911, Maura held office as a junior defence minister, followed by a stint as an undersecretary in the ministry of foreign affairs from 1911 to 1918, and finally being appointed as Eduardo Dato's direct deputy as deputy minister of the interior in 1918.

Following the death of President Francisco Serrano in December 1920, interior minister Dato briefly became acting president of Spain before being confirmed by the Cortes Generales to a full term in office 10 days later; under Dato's first administration, Maura was appointed to the powerful position of minister of the interior and assumed responsibility for implementing President Dato's plans for a new republic and a new constitution. Within a month of Dato's taking office, Maura implemented the new constitution which created the Federal Republic of Spain on January 20, 1921; under the new federal republic, the regions of Spain gained considerable autonomy and power over the central government, whilst the power of the executive branch became invested in the new office of prime minister, which was initially held by Dato simultaneously with his presidency in a bid to lead to a peaceful and stable transfer of power between the two offices. After an assassination attempt mortally wounded President Dato in February 1921, Antonio Maura was promoted to the office of prime minister a day before Dato's death; on March 8, 1921, Maura became acting president of Spain following the death of President Eduardo Dato. During his acting presidency, Antonio Maura primarily focused on organising snap presidential elections for June 1921 and was succeeded by Manuel Allendesalazar as president on June 11, 1921.

Upon the inauguration of Manuel Allendesalazar as president in June 1921, Antonio Maura was re-appointed as prime minister at the head of a new government. Under the Allendesalazar administration, Maura became personally responsible for the implementation of Allendesalazar's signature "*Una Nacion*" (One Nation) programme, which was designed to reduce the wealth and living standards gap between the richest and poorest in society, and frequently toured the country to inspect new infrastructure and social projects constructed with government funds. With President Allendesalazar's championing of the railway, new radical ideas such as communism and anarchism began to spread rapidly across Spain in the mid 1920s, and civil unrest was only furthered after the government redeployed Spanish soldiers to create a colony in Morocco in 1923. After the 1925 general election saw the government's legislative majority reduced to a slim margin, prime minister Maura began to rely increasingly on the use of presidential executive orders to pass the government's legislative agenda.

In the 1930 presidential election, Antonio Maura became the Liberal Conservative party's nominee for the presidency but was defeated by Niceto Alcalá-Zamora and the Liberal Republican party; in response, Maura used his position to lead the Conservative party legislative group to block all attempts to certify the election's results. With no confirmed president, defence minister Miguel Primo de Rivera assumed the presidency on June 11, 1930 and appointed himself prime minister, before appointing Manuel Allendesalazar to the position. Between 1930 and 1932, Maura served in the military government as minister of the interior, and publicly denounced Primo de Rivera and Allendesalazar for their decision to hand executive power to Niceto Alcalá-Zamora gradually between December 1931 and April 1932.

Having returned to the backbenches of the Cortes Generales, Antonio Maura launched a bid for the leadership of the Conservative party in September 1932, prompting an internal feud which would lead to the party's dissolution a year later. In 1935, Maura resigned his seat in the Cortes and joined the Nationalist party as an advisor to party leader Francisco Franco; upon Franco's 1940 seizure of power, Maura publicly backed the new government and lent it legitimacy. On December 12, 1943, Antonio Maura died of old age and was given a state funeral.