ABSTRACT
At two in the morning of 13 September 1923, four reporters working for Barcelona dailies arrived at the Captaincy-General of Catalonia. 1 Having been called by Primo the previous afternoon, the Marqués de Estella explained that the ungodly hour of the meeting owed to the fact he was leading a coup d’état. Primo understood that control of information would be crucial, and so he had felt it a good idea to meet with the press two hours before he had mobilised the troops. The reporters were obliged to wait for a few minutes, since their arrival coincided with a tense discussion between Primo and the Minister of War, General Aizpuru, which ended with the Captain-General of Catalonia cutting off communications with Madrid. Primo received the press in his office, gave them copies of his ‘Manifesto for the Country and the Army’ and asked for ‘their word of honour that they would simply print the manifesto, without any commentary’. 2 At five in the morning, Primo once again received the press in his office. This time, with news of the uprising spreading, there were many more reporters. The Captain-General outlined the political aims of the ‘movement’, which would ‘dissolve the Cortes’, dismiss the public officials then in post, create a ‘new administrative, governmental, judicial and perhaps even military framework’ for the country and tackle the ‘unhealthy Catalan sentiment of hostility to Spain’. 3 Primo added with pride that he
did not have to imitate the Fascio, nor the great figure of Mussolini, although his actions have been a useful lesson to us all […] For in Spain we have the Somatén and we have had Prim, an admirable military and political figure. 4
