PRIMO DE RIVERA, MIGUEL Spanish soldier and statesman, known as the Marquis de Estella, was born at Jerez de la Frontera Jan. 8, 187o, and studied at the Madrid military academy. After four years in Toledo he was ordered to Morocco in 1893 as lieutenant of the Infantry Regiment of Extremadura, and in Oct. of the same year was promoted to the grade of captain for extraordinary personal bravery. In 1895 he was adjutant to Gen. Martinez Campos in Cuba, and rose to be major commanding the infantry battalion of Zamora.
He served in the Philippines in 1897, and negotiated the Treaty of Biagnabato (Biacabato) on Dec. 12, 1897. He then held corn mands at Barcelona, on the general staff and at Algeciras. In 1915 he was appointed governor of Cadiz, and spent a month at the French front during the World War. His speech to the Hispano-American Academy advocating the exchange of Gibraltar for Ceuta or other North African territory, and corrosively criti cising the Government's policy in Morocco, resulted in his being relieved from the governorship of Cadiz. His exceptional military talents, his brilliant exploits, his unaffected simplicity and straight forwardness, his sympathy with the feelings and interests of the army and the nation, had won for him the confidence of the King, the general staff and the public, so that despite his outspokenness in the academy, he was soon afterwards promoted to be general and chief of the First Infantry Division in Madrid.
In 1921 Estella was elected senator for Cadiz, and in a power ful speech urged the necessity of relieving the nation of the Mor occan burden. Whereupon Primo once again lost his post. But the effects of his courage and patriotism prevailed once more over considerations of petty discipline, and he was entreated to under take the most difficult and dangerous post in Spain—that of captain-general of Catalonia—with a view to ending the reign of terror there, of which the central Government was content to remain a listless onlooker. The new captain-general soon reaped a measure of success fully proportionate to his chivalrous charac ter, his personal influence and his limited legal powers.
Easy and generous to the point of familiarity in his private life, Estella was punctilious and exacting in matters affecting the nation, the army and the monarch, and his integrity was pro verbial. He soon recognized the chaos in Catalonia as one of the indirect consequences of the breakdown of the parliamentary regime. This was also responsible for the mismanagement of the Morocco campaign, as well as for the ferment in the army brought about by the niggardliness, the favouritism and criminal reckless ness of the central Government. Although the evil had long been diagnosed nobody had had the courage to uproot it, until the dauntless Marquis de Estella issued the manifesto dated Sept. 12, 1923, suspending the constitution and proclaiming in its place a directorate consisting of military and naval officers. He an nounced that this arrangement was but a bridge leading to a future system of government better suited to Spain's needs than that which he abolished. This military coup d'etat was carried out with out bloodshed.
The methods of the directorate were prompt and radical. (See SPAIN : History.) Primo called into being under the name la Union Patriotica, a fellowship of "citizens of goodwill" to work for the realization of ethical ideals in public life, and hinder a return to the venal system just swept away. This innovation was welcomed with marked enthusiasm, and within a few months the members numbered over 1,250,00o. Mindful of the undertaking he had given at the outset, Primo dissolved the directorate on Dec. 3, 1925, and substituted a government composed of civil as well as military ministers—mostly young men—as a preparatory step towards a new regime. The dictator became premier, and his policy was pursued for a considerable period. He resigned on Jan. 28, 1930, and died in Paris on March 16, 1930.