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| 1919, Jan. 24 |
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| A Catalonian Union met at Barcelona and drafted a program for home rule. The government appointed a commission to consider the question, but its carefully circumscribed report was rejected by the Catalonians as inadequate. | 1 |
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| 1921, July 21 |
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| DISASTER AT ANUAL, Morocco, culmination of the troubles there. Gen. Fernandez Silvestre and 20,000 Spaniards were defeated by the Riffians under Abd-el-Krim and 12,000 were killed. Silvestre committed suicide. The disaster precipitated a political crisis and a widespread demand for an investigation of responsibility. A parliamentary commission was established, but its report, when submitted to the cabinet in 1922, was at once suppressed. | 2 |
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| 1922 |
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| The dramatist Jacinto Benavente y Martinéz (1866–1954) won the Nobel Prize. Other literary figures of interwar Spain included the poet Juan Ramon Jiménez (1881–1958), the novelist Vicente Blasco Ibáñez (1867–1928), and the essayists Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo (1864–1936) and Ortega y Gasset (1873–1955). In the world of music Manuel de Falla (1876–1946) gained recognition for his orchestral works, especially ballet music. | 3 |
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| 1923, Sept. 12 |
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| Mutiny of the garrison at Barcelona and outbreak of a separatist movement. | 4 |
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| Sept. 13 |
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| MILITARY COUP OF GEN. MIGUEL PRIMO DE RIVERA, who acted with the approval of the king. He took Barcelona, formed a military directorate, proclaimed martial law throughout the country, dissolved the cortes, suspended jury trial, and instituted a rigid press censorship. Liberal opponents were imprisoned or harried out of the land (Migúel de Unamuno, Blasco Ibáñez). The military government tried to bolster the economy through public works programs like the Confederaciones Sindicales Hidrográficas, running up a budget deficit of a billion pesetas by 1928. These were largely ineffectual, however, as industrialists remained cautious and farmers had little capital. The government was equally ineffective in its social policies, such as the creation of compulsory arbitration boards. | 5 |
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