The Lliga Regionalista, the Catalan Right and the Making of the Primo de Rivera Dictatorship

Between 1916 and 1923 Spain see-sawed between three political alternatives: a democratization of its political structures, a revolution led by the working-class Left, and a military inspired reaction. Barcelona was at the centre of all these movements and Catalonia’s major political party, the Lliga Regionalista, played a major role throughout. It was at the forefront of the campaign both to democratize Spain and achieve political autonomy for Catalonia between 1916 and 1918. It played a key part in organising Catalonia’s middle-class citizens against the anarchist-syndicalist threat in 1919, and it supported the military coup by General Miguel Primo de Rivera in September 1923. This chapter aims to explain the Lliga’s changing stance over this period and the impact this had on the Spanish polity.

This not only has relevance to the Spanish case. A key factor in the rise of authoritarian right-wing and Fascist leaders in interwar Europe was the complicity of liberal-conservative individuals and parties. Faced with the threat of proletarian revolution they could easily move in an authoritarian direction and link up with more Radical Right options. Amongst these groups there was a widespread over-optimistic assumption that the authoritarian forces unleashed in the aftermath of the First World War could be channelled and controlled; that they were a useful tool in combating left-wing subversion but that the genie could subsequently be put back into the bottle.