ABSTRACT
At 3 o’clock in the afternoon on 17 October 1928, Miguel Primo de Rivera arrived at the port of Santa Cruz de Tenerife on board the gunboat Dato. The local authorities were waiting impatiently to greet him. As soon as the Marqués de Estella arrived at the dockside, a group of young girls dressed up in traditional costumes presented him with a bunch of flowers, to the sound of cheers from the hundreds of locals who were gathered to receive the dictator. 1 Next, Primo was taken to the Plaza de la Constitución, where he observed a parade of more than 3000 members of the Somatén, 600 scouts and members of the Unión Patriotica (UP). Afterwards, a Te Deum was sung in honour of the dictator at the Church of the Conception. Primo then went to review the troops at the San Carlos barracks. Events then moved to the Captaincy-General, where the dictator was handed a glass of wine. There, Primo regaled the officers with ‘a patriotically charged speech’, before receiving the civil authorities of the province. 2 That evening, the Marqués de Estella attended a banquet at the Town Hall of Tenerife with 400 guests, organised by the ‘Businesses and organisations of the province’, where he was also kind enough to say a few words about the high esteem in which he held the government in the Canary Islands. Once the dinner was over, the dictator was still keen to stay out for a while and went to an open-air dance taking place in the Plaza del Príncipe Alfonso. 3
