1921 Spanish Presidential Election

The **1921 Spanish Presidential Election** was held on Wednesday June 1, 1921 and was the seventh presidential election to be held in Spain, as well as the first election under the Federal Republic of Spain, the first under the 1921 constitution of Spain, and the first not to be conducted by the legislative Cortes Generales. The election was also the final in a series of presidential elections only contested by one candidate and dominated by the Conservative Party, though prime minister Antonio Maura acquired a single vote by a faithless elector. The 1921 presidential election occurred simultaneously with the 1921 Cortes Generales election.

Following the abdication of King Amadeo I of Spain in 1873 amid a political and economic crisis, the Cortes Generales of Spain enacted a new constitution which abolished the centuries old Kingdom of Spain and replaced it with the first Republic of Spain. Under the new republic, the executive branch of Spain became increasingly dominated by the office of president; this was exacerbated in 1895, when incumbent president Francisco Serrano conducted a self coup d'état in order to overturn an election result and maintain his presidency. Between 1895 and 1920, the first republic became an authoritarian regime under Serrano's dictatorship, with brutal violence being used against dissidents and colonial independence movements, which led to revolutions in several colonies and the eruption of the Spanish-American War in 1898. Following the death of President Serrano in 1920, interior minister and leader of the Conservative party Eduardo Dato assumed the presidency and began to implement a series of radical reforms to the ailing Spanish political system. On January 20, 1921, a new constitution was brought into force which created a new Federal Republic of Spain, giving devolved authority to the 34 regions of Spain and transferring executive power away from the presidency and into the new office of prime minister. However, after only a month and a half of the new republic, President Dato died in office after an assassination attempt mortally wounded him, leaving prime minister Antonio Maura to become acting president with a mandate to ensure the holding of new elections within six months.

Under the new Federal Republic of Spain, presidential elections became based on an electoral college modelled after that of the United States of America, with each of the 34 states receiving two electoral college votes (to be allocated according to individual state rules); in order to win, a presidential candidate was required to gain at least 40 out of 68 votes, and then have their vote share confirmed by a vote in the Cortes Generales. Whilst the popular vote was used to determine electoral college votes in individual states, the national vote had no direct impact on the final outcome of the election; indeed, only half of Spain's population even held the right to vote at the time and it would not be until the 1935 general election that women and minority groups were permitted to vote. Upon acting president Antonio Maura's calling of a new election on March 14th, Conservative party general secretary Manuel Allendesalazar nominated himself as the party's presidential candidate and became the only major candidate on the national ballot. As leader of the governing Conservative party, Allendesalazar's position as *de-facto* leader of Spain allowed him to mobilise government assets and ministers to aid his campaign, with acting president Antonio Maura frequently joining Allendesalazar's tours of Spain.

On June 1, 1921, the election was held, with Allendesalazar winning both the popular and electoral college votes in a landslide; only one electoral college vote was given to a rival, with Antonio Maura gaining a vote due to a faithless elector. On June 11, 1921, Manuel Allendesalazar was inaugurated as the seventh president of Spain, before reappointing Maura as prime minister in a new government. Allendesalazar would go on to be president until 1930, winning re-election in 1925, and briefly held office as prime minister from 1930 to 1931 under a military-led regime.