José Calvo Sotelo

The Most Excellent José Calvo Sotelo
Minister of Finance
In office 3 December 1925 – 21 January 1930
Leader	Miguel Primo de Rivera
Preceded by	José Corral Larre
Succeeded by	Francisco Moreno Zuleta
Member of the Congress of Deputies
In office 1919 – 1920; 1934 – 1936
Constituency	Carballino; Orense
Personal details
Born	6 May 1893 Tui, Spain
Died	13 July 1936(1936-07-13) (aged 43) Madrid, Spain
Resting place	Almudena cemetery
Political party	Renovación Española
Other political affiliations	Maurist
Spouse	Enriqueta Grondona (1892-1971)
Relations	Leopoldo Calvo Sotelo (brother) Leopoldo Calvo-Sotelo (nephew)
Occupation	politician, jurist

José Calvo Sotelo, 1st Duke of Calvo Sotelo, GE (6 May 1893 – 13 July 1936) was a Spanish politician, minister of Finance during the Dictatorship of Miguel Primo de Rivera and a leading figure of the anti-republican radical right during the Second Republic. His assassination in July 1936 by the bodyguards of the Socialist party leader Indalecio Prieto was an immediate prelude to the triggering of the military coup plotted since February 1936 whose partial failure marked the beginning of the Spanish Civil War.

Biography

Early years

Calvo Sotelo was born on 6 May 1893 in Tui, Pontevedra, to Pedro Calvo y Camina and Elisa Sotelo Lafuente.

He received a degree in Law and moved to the capital, Madrid. In 1913 he joined a maurist circle in the Ateneo where he socialised with other members of the Maurist Youth such as Melchor Fernández Almagro, Pío Zabala, Antonio Ballesteros Beretta, Pío Ballesteros Álava, Quintiliano Saldaña, Manuel Palacios Olmedo, Rogerio Sánchez and Fernando Suárez de Tangil. He became Secretary of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences of the Ateneo Mercantil de Madrid and a professor at the Universidad Central. He was a member of Antonio Maura's Conservative Party. In his first post he was an administrative officer in the Ministry of Grace and Justice.

Calvo Sotelo dressed in the uniform of the Cuerpo de Abogados del Estado.

In the 1919 election to the Congress of Deputies, despite Maura having in mind the plan of not putting forward a Maurista in the district of Carballino in exchange for a seat in another district, the 25 year-old Calvo Sotelo put himself forward as a candidate. Challenging mainstream conservative candidate Leopoldo García Durán, a follower of Gabino Bugallal (Count of Bugallal), Calvo Sotelo won the seat in the election.

In 1922 he was made civil governor of Valencia.

Dictatorship of Primo de Rivera

After the 1923 coup d'état by Miguel Primo de Rivera, Calvo Sotelo lent support to the dictatorship. Appointed Director General of Local Administration in 1923, he was the creator of the 1924 Municipal Statute that, inspired by previous projects of Antonio Maura, sought to reform the structure of the State at a local level and was cemented by the free election of the Mayor and the Ayuntamiento. He also promulgated a Provincial Statute in 1925. Neither statute got to be enforced. Primo de Rivera then appointed Calvo Sotelo as finance minister of the Civil Directory of the dictatorship in 1925, and he served from December 1925 until January 1930. During his tenure as Minister of Finance, his programme to achieve economic growth featured protectionist, nationalist and interventionist policies.

Second Republic

Calvo Sotelo giving a speech in the Urumea Fronton of San Sebastián (1935).

After the proclamation of the Second Spanish Republic on 14 April 1931, Calvo Sotelo, because of his prior collaboration with the dictatorship and his fear of being subject to trial, went in exile to Portugal and later France along with other politicians. He was welcomed the day after his arrival in Lisbon by António de Oliveira Salazar, then minister of Finance. Calvo Sotelo spent his time in Portugal studying the Ditadura Nacional regime. After being given a passport by the Portuguese authorities, he lived between February 1932 and May 1934 in Paris, where he became connected with the ideas of Charles Maurras. He also befriended Léon Daudet, Jacques Bainville and Charles Benoist in France. Despite his exile he had been elected as member of the parliament for the district of Orense both in the 1931 and 1933 elections.

After the passing of an Amnesty Law on 20 April 1934, he returned to Spain with the intention of leaving a more totalitarian imprint on the Alfonsine radical right, then represented by Renovación Española and led by Antonio Goicoechea. After his return, he had also tried to join the Fascist Falange Española de las JONS, but, albeit endorsed by Ruiz de Alda and Ledesma, his application was vetoed by José Antonio Primo de Rivera, who understood his leadership was being challenged and deemed the Galician politician as "reactionary". By the 9 May Calvo Sotelo was in the Cortes.

He stated that the "Restoration" of the prior liberal monarchy was not intended, but the "instauration" of an anti-liberal one. Sotelo had more personal charisma than Goicoechea and eventually eclipsed him. He became the leading figure of the Bloque Nacional ('National Block'), a newly created electoral project that sought to unite the anti-republican right. The foundational manifesto espoused a return to traditional values, through the means of an authoritarian monarchy and the role of the Armed Forces as counter-revolutionary agent. Neither the leader of the CEDA (José María Gil-Robles) nor the leader of the Falange Española de las JONS (José Antonio Primo de Rivera) endorsed the initiative, which, aside from members of Renovación Española, drew most of its support from the ranks of the traditionalist carlists; it was also supported by the small group headed by the Doctor Albiñana, leader of the Spanish Nationalist Party.

After the victory of the leftist Popular Front in the February 1936 election, José Calvo Sotelo became the leading speaker of the anti-republican right in the Parliament, preparing the mood of the right wing masses for a coup d'état.

Assassination

After the Guardia de Asalto leader José Castillo was killed by falangists at 10 pm on 12 July, a group of Guardia de Asalto and other leftist militiamen led by Civil Guard Fernando Condés went to Calvo Sotelo's house in the early hours of 13 July on a revenge mission. Sotelo was arrested and later shot dead in a police truck. His body was dropped at the entrance of one of the city's cemeteries. According to all later investigations, the perpetrator of the murder was a socialist gunman, Luis Cuenca, who was known as the bodyguard of PSOE leader Indalecio Prieto.

In the days following the assassination, the Spanish government undertook a routine investigation that never reached a conclusion. The cabal of anti-republican conspirators led by General Emilio Mola seized the moment, accelerating the military coup that had been plotted since the February election. The uprising of part of the Army, starting with the Army of Africa in Melilla on 17 July 1936, under the assumed command of Generals Emilio Mola, Francisco Franco, Gonzalo Queipo de Llano and José Sanjurjo, marked the beginning of the Spanish Civil War.

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External links

• Newspaper clippings about José Calvo Sotelo in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW