ABSTRACT
The officers who rebelled against the Republic’s government in July 1936 had many historical precedents for their actions. It was nothing new for the Spanish army to intervene forcefully in politics. It had done so regularly throughout the nineteenth century, and during the constitutional monarchy the army enjoyed such power and influence that, for the most part, it did not need to make public its wishes in order to see them realized. When it did intervene, either to protect its corporate interests through the Juntas movement of 1917 or, with Primo de Rivera’s coup, to put a lid on allegations of corruption and incompetence in the prosecution of the Moroccan campaign, the army revealed openly the extent to which it saw itself as the legitimate embodiment of national interest.
