Militar Directory of Primo de Rivera

The Militar Directory of Primo de Rivera or Military Directory of Primo de Rivera (Spanish: Directorio Militar) constituted the first stage of the Dictatorship of Primo de Rivera established in Spain during the reign of Alfonso XIII after the triumph of Primo de Rivera's coup d'état of September 13–15, 1923. Militar Directory was the name given to the institution made up exclusively of militaries (eight generals and a rear admiral) which, under the presidency of General Miguel Primo de Rivera, had to advise him in the functions of government and in the promulgation of the decrees which would have the force of law —the Courts elected in April 1923 were closed—. In December 1925 the Militar Directory was substituted by a government in which there were military and civilians also presided by Primo de Rivera, which would be known as the Civil Directory, which constituted the second and last stage of the primorriverist Dictatorship, ending in January 1930.

The regime of the Militar Directory, like other corporatist military regimes established in Eastern and Southern Europe in the interwar period, differed from fascism —established in Italy after the march on Rome in October 1922— in that it was a single-party system but under the tutelage of the government and that the state apparatus remained controlled by the old ruling classes that allowed only limited changes. However, according to historian Eduardo González Calleja, "the primorriverist dictatorship also had some similarities with fascism", such as corporatism.^[1]

During this first stage, the Dictatorship achieved two great successes: the solution of the Morocco problem (including the issue of the responsibilities that were shelved) and the reestablishment of public order in Catalonia (two issues on which the "old politics" of the parties of that time had been defeated). Once these two problems were solved, the "dictatorship with a king", as the historian Santos Juliá has denominated it, considered its continuity with the foundation of a new political regime, with an authoritarian type, based on a "single party" —the Patriotic Union— in the style of Fascist Italy.^[2]