Manuel Allendesalazar

**Manuel Allendesalazar y Muñoz de Salazar** (August 24, 1876 – May 17, 1943) was a prominent Spanish politician, diplomat, and lawyer who was the *de-facto* ruler of Spain for a decade between 1921 and 1931, drawing his power from various political offices. Between 1921 and 1930, Allendesalazar held office as the seventh president of Spain, and later served as prime minister of Spain between August 1930 and April 1932. From 1921 until the party's dissolution, he was also the leader of the Liberal Conservative party, having previously served in various cabinet and party political roles since 1910.

Allendesalazar was born in the Biscayne town of Guernica in August 1876, during a period of regional unrest at the policies of President Francesc Pi i Margall. After graduating as an agronomist and teaching classes as a professor at the School of Engineering where he had studied in the 1890s, he began his political career in the Liberal Conservative Party under Eduardo Dato in 1903 and entered the Cortes Generales as a deputy for the Vizcaya constituency in 1905. After a period as a backbench representative, Allendesalazar was appointed as Minister of Public Instruction and Fine Arts in 1910 and served until 1913, when he was appointed as Minister of Agriculture, Industry, Commerce and Public Works. In 1917, Allendesalazar became the Minister of Finance in the Serrano administration and continued to hold office until the death of President Francisco Serrano in December 1920. With Serrano's death, Conservative party leader Eduardo Dato ascended to the presidency and re-appointed Allendesalazar to the office of finance minister. After an assassination attempt in February 1921 left President Dato mortally wounded, Manuel Allendesalazar was appointed as general secretary of the Liberal Conservative party as part of Dato's attempts to ensure the separation of power within government, giving Allendesalazar power over the party's representatives whilst giving Antonio Maura power over government as prime minister. Upon Dato's death in March 1921, prime minister Antonio Maura became acting president, but was left in a politically weak position as Manuel Allendesalazar controlled the Cortes Generales and could thus arrange Maura's removal from office; consequently, Maura declined to stand for a full term as president in the 1921 snap presidential election and instead endorsed Allendesalazar for the position.

On June 11, 1921, Manuel Allendesalazar was inaugurated as president of Spain; in his new government, Antonio Maura remained as prime minister, whilst other major allies like lieutenant general Miguel Primo de Rivera were rewarded with cabinet positions. As president, Allendesalazar sought to implement a series of societal reforms under his "*Una Nacion*" (One Nation) programme after noting the vast divides in society being caused by unfettered capitalism; inspired by key conservative figures, such as former British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli, Allendesalazar's programme focused on preventing the formation of a major divide between the richest and poorest in society, viewing such a divide as being a dangerous step towards civil unrest. Allendesalazar also personally sponsored the development of new railroad connections between the states of Spain, which, whilst beneficial to internal industrial production, brought with it the spread of radical anarchist and communist ideas across the country; attempts to crush radical groups frequently ended in massacres and only furthered to spread their causes to ever greater portions of the population. In the 1925 general election, Manuel Allendesalazar was narrowly re-elected as president of Spain and retained a slim majority in the Cortes Generales; despite this victory, political trends indicated a move away from the Liberal Conservative party and towards the growing Liberal Republican party and the leftist Republican Union. In the early 1920s, President Allendesalazar authorised the use of military force to topple the Spanish installed puppet regime in Morocco and began a direct colonial occupation, draining significant resources away from the destabilising Spanish peninsular.

Following the completion of his second term as president in June 1930, Manuel Allendesalazar was constitutionally prohibited from serving a second term in office, and instead hand-picked prime minister Antonio Maura as his choice for the Conservative party nomination in the 1930 presidential election. Despite the backing from an incumbent president, Maura was resoundingly defeated by Niceto Alcalá-Zamora of 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 Allendesalazar to the premiership on August 18, 1930. As the joint leader of the new military-civilian government, prime minister Allendesalazar sought to continue the implementation of his economic restructuring programme at any cost, threatening to suspend the 1921 constitution in order to create a dictatorship if opponents to the regime continued to protest; in turn, this combativeness resulted in the outbreak of an open rebellion in Catalonia in August 1931, prompting the government to pursue peace negotiations with ousted president-elect Niceto Alcalá-Zamora. As part of the agreed upon settlement, both Allendesalazar and President Miguel Primo de Rivera agreed to stand down and transfer power to Alcalá-Zamora over a year-long transition period. On December 10, 1931, Alcalá-Zamora became president of Spain, whilst Manuel Allendesalazar remained in office as prime minister until April 17, 1932, when he resigned from office in protest against perceived violations of the transition agreement.

Upon leaving office, Allendesalazar was challenged for the leadership of the Conservative party by former prime minister Antonio Maura, who blamed Spain's economic issues on Allendesalazar's transition to democracy; the subsequent leadership contest sparked internal discontent and ultimately led to the dissolution of the Conservative party in 1933. In May 1935, Allendesalazar resigned as a member of the Cortes Generales and entered a brief political retirement, before joining the Nationalist party of Francisco Franco in 1939 after being promised a cabinet position in the instance of Franco's election in 1940. In June 1940, Allendesalazar was elected as a Nationalist member of the Cortes Generales and became minister of foreign affairs following Franco's coup d'état in November 1940. After a brief illness, Manuel Allendesalazar died in office on May 17, 1943, and was awarded a state funeral by prime minister Francisco Franco.