Eduardo Dato

**Eduardo Dato e Iradier** (August 12, 1856 – March 8, 1921) was a Spanish politician who served as the sixth president of Spain from December 20, 1920 until his death on March 8, 1921, and was briefly the first republican prime minister of Spain from January to March 1921. Between 1883 and 1921, Dato was the founding leader of the Conservative Party, and is recognised as a founding father of Spain for his work in founding the Federal Republic of Spain.

Born in A Coruña in 1856 as the child of lawyers, Eduardo Dato attended prestigious private schools throughout his childhood and graduated in Law at the Complutense University in 1875, before opening a law office two years later. Having grown up during a period of intense political change and social unrest, Dato became a vocal advocate of liberal ideas and affiliated himself with the liberal wing of the Democratic Republican party, before leaving to form his own political party in 1883 after becoming disillusioned with Presidents Nicolás Salmerón and Emilio Castelar. As the lead candidate for his Liberal Conservative Party, Dato was elected to the Cortes Generales in 1888, and led his party into coalition with Francisco Serrano's Nationalist Party in 1890 to form a government after Serrano's election as president. Under the Serrano administration, Dato was appointed as minister of defence and oversaw the escalation in military force against rebellious groups in the early 1890s; following the 1895 election, Dato was removed from this position by President Serrano and replaced by Antonio Cánovas del Castillo, who aided Serrano in conducting a coup d'état against the constitution.

During the Serrano dictatorship, the Conservative party was largely side-lined as Francisco Serrano sought to consolidate significant amounts of power in his own office and party; despite this, Dato and the Conservative party continued to provide Serrano's government with legislative support, and Dato regularly received appointments within government, serving as an under-secretary for the Ministry of the Interior in 1898, as finance minister from 1901 to 1906, as defence minister in 1908, foreign minister from 1911 to 1917, before finally being appointed as interior minister in 1918. As minister of the interior, Dato became increasingly responsible for running the country as President Serrano grew ill from old age and was nominated as the designated successor to the presidency by Serrano.

Following the death of Francisco Serrano on December 19, 1920, Eduardo Dato ascended to the presidency on December 20, 1920 with the backing of the armed forces and pledged to implement institutional changes to the Spanish government. Within days of taking office, Dato was confirmed in office by the Cortes Generales, who granted him extraconstitutional powers to radically reform the regime; on January 20, 1921, Dato implemented a new interim constitution which dissolved the first Republic of Spain and replaced it with a new federal republic. Under the new constitution, the powers of the presidency were significantly stripped back and most duties of the office were instead invested in a new position of prime minister, appointed by the president at the recommendation of the Cortes Generales; the new office of prime minister would be the head of government and first in line for succession to the presidency. The new federal republic radically redistributed power in Spain, dividing the country into federated regions with considerable power to reject rulings of the central government, whilst a new constitutional court was established to ensure that no individual could overturn the constitution and establish another dictatorship.

On February 18, 1921, while being driven from the parliament building in Madrid, Dato was shot at by three Catalan anarchists who were riding a motorcycle. Whilst Dato survived the initial attack, the wounds sustained would ultimately prove to be fatal. With his health plummeting between February and March 1921, Dato promoted Antonio Maura and Manuel Allendesalazar within the Conservative party to position them to be his successors as prime minister and party leader respectively; in the evening of March 7, 1921, Maura was appointed as prime minister in what would ultimately be Dato's last act as president. In the morning of March 8, 1921, Eduardo Dato died of his injuries and was succeeded as president by Antonio Maura. Under his successor, Eduardo Dato was given a state funeral and was posthumously recognised as a "founding father" of the republican Spanish state. Dato's federal republic would last until 1940, when it was deposed by Francisco Franco's Nationalist Party.