José Sanjurjo

José Sanjurjo (1932)

José Sanjurjo y Sacanell (born March 28, 1872 in Lumbier , Navarra , Spain ; † July 20, 1936 in Estoril , Portugal ) was a Spanish military officer and, alongside Francisco Franco and Emilio Mola, one of the officers whose military coup on July 17, 1936 led to the Spanish Civil War waged. One of the two Zaragoza airfields bore his name during the war and in the years that followed.

Life

Early years

Sanjurjo was an orphan and the son of a Carlist colonel. Like his father, he chose a military career and served in Cuba (1894–98), the Spanish-American War and the Rif War. Because of his service in the war, he was promoted to the General Staff in 1921, and in the same year he was also appointed military governor of Saragossa . From there he supported the coup d'état Miguel Primo de Riveras in 1923, with whose dictatorship he worked closely.

As General Commander of Melilla , he prepared the landing in Alhucemas (1925), which ended the uprising of Abd el-Krim . He put the Spanish protectorate in Morocco on a stable foundation and thus gave the dictatorship one of its greatest successes.

His work at the front of the army in Morocco helped him achieve rapid advancement, awards, a title of nobility (Marqués del Rif, 1927) and an undisputed reputation among the young officers of the colonial army (africanistas).

In the republic

After the proclamation of the Second Republic on April 14, 1931, he took the post of director of the Guardia Civil . Due to his excessive reprisals against the labor movement such as that of Arnedo ( Logroño ) in 1932, he was removed from office.

He became head of the Carabineros, the Spanish Customs and Coast Guard, which exploited political rights as discrimination on the part of the Azañas government . Sanjurjo sympathized neither with the left-wing government nor with democracy in general, which the attempted coup in Seville in 1932 under his leadership clearly showed, but which failed. This attempt reinforced the will to reform of the republican forces, which a little later passed the Agrarian Reform Act ( Ley de Reforma Agraria ) and the Catalan Statute of Autonomy ( Estatuto de Autonomía de Cataluña ).

Sanjurjo in court

Sanjurjo was arrested for the attempted coup. In a subsequent court case, the death penalty was imposed, which was suspended a short time later and converted to life imprisonment, but which he no longer had to serve. No sooner had Sanjurjo commenced imprisonment than the right-wing government under Prime Minister Alejandro Lerroux, which emerged victorious in the parliamentary elections of 1933 , released him .

Exile and death

In 1934 he went into exile in Portugal , where he lived with his family in Estoril and from where he freely conspired against the Spanish Republic. Sanjurjo enjoyed some popularity in Portugal and was featured in the daily press. Elevated to the status of a symbol of the reactionary military disappointed in the 1936 election victory of the left, he was recognized as leader by Emilio Mola, Francisco Franco and the rest of the conspirators who prepared the uprising for July.

Sanjurjo died in a plane crash on July 20, 1936, while he was on the way to Burgos with General Juan Antonio Ansaldo to take over the government offered by the insurgents. It is believed that the plane crash was due to Sanjurjo's insistence on taking two heavy suitcases of parade uniforms for the head of the new Spanish state. The plane is said to have grazed the tree tops, whereupon the machine caught fire and burned Sanjurjo inside it. Ansaldo survived the accident injured.

Honors

	Grand Cross of the Order del Mérito Militar (1920)
	Grand Cross Real y Military Orden de San Hermenegildo (1926)
	Grand Cross of the Order del Mérito Naval (1926)
	Grand Cross of the Royal and Military Order of San Fernando (1927)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Announcement of the Ministry in the Gaceta de Madrid núm. 239, pág. 1475 (1932).
2. ↑ Bolinaga, Iñigo (2008): Breve historia de la Guerra Civil. Madrid: Ediciones Nowtilus. ISBN 978-84-9763-580-6 . P. 468