1930 Spanish Presidential Election

The **1930 Spanish Presidential Election** was held on Sunday June 1, 1930, and was the ninth Spanish presidential election, as well as the third presidential election under the Federal Republic of Spain and the final election contested by the Conservative party. The election was the first Spanish election to be overturned since the 1895 presidential election, and the first to be overturned under the 1931 constitution.

With the death of President Francisco Serrano in December 1920, interior minister and leader of the Conservative party Eduardo Dato assumed the presidency and began implementing a series of radical democratic reforms to the Spanish state, transforming the first Republic of Spain into the Federal Republic of Spain with a decentralised distribution of power. After a botched assassination attempt left President Dato mortally wounded, prime minister Antonio Maura briefly assumed the presidency before the June 1921 election of Manuel Allendesalazar as president of Spain. As president, Allendesalazar perused a series of societal reforms designed to bridge the vast economic divide between the upper and working classes which had been caused by unfettered capitalism. Allendesalazar's social policies also included investment into the growing Spanish railway network, allowing for greater interconnectivity between the disparate regions of the federation; however, this had the unintended consequence of allowing for the spread of radical socialist and anarchist political groups between states, with Catalonia serving as the centre of a nation-wide network of leftist organisations united in their distaste of the government. Allendesalazar's authorisation of force against dissidents in Barcelona and the use of the armed forces to impose direct colonial rule over Morocco during the mid 1920s only served to contribute to the growing unpopularity of the Conservative party

Under the 1921 constitution of the Federal Republic of Spain, presidential elections were based on an American style electoral college, with each of the 34 states receiving two electoral college votes (to be allocated according to individual state rules); following amendments to election rules in 1928, a presidential candidate was required to gain a simple plurality of the 68 available electoral college 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. With President Manuel Allendesalazar limited to two presidential terms, the Conservative party nominated prime minister Antonio Maura as its candidate for the presidency, whilst the Liberal Republican Party and the Republican Union continued their electoral coalition to back Niceto Alcalá-Zamora for a second consecutive election.

Following the election, Niceto Alcalá-Zamora won 56 out of 68 electoral college votes, compared to Antonio Maura's 12 votes. However, unlike previous elections under the Federal Republic of Spain, the Conservative party-dominated Cortes Generales refused to confirm the final results of the election, prompting a constitutional deadlock. With no presidential candidate formally elected, on June 11, 1930, defence minister Miguel Primo de Rivera seized power and appointed himself as president at the head of a military government, before handing over control of government by appointing former president Manuel Allendesalazar as prime minister just weeks after taking power. In December 1931, following a transitional agreement, Primo de Rivera stepped down as president and Alcalá-Zamora took office; in April 1932, Allendesalazar resigned as prime minister, marking the end of the transition back to democracy. In order to pass legislation, the Liberal Republican party formed a coalition with the Republican Union; however, Alcalá-Zamora's dependence on other parties to pass legislation led to the Republican Union taking de-facto control over the government with the appointment of Diego Martínez Barrio as prime minister.