José Calvo Sotelo

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Momument to Calvo Sotelo (1960)
Momument to Calvo Sotelo (1960)

José Calvo Sotelo (Tui, Pontevedra, May 6, 1893—Madrid, July 13, 1936) was a Spanish political figure prior to and during the Second Spanish Republic. His murder by a commando unit of the Assault Guards (and several socialist activists), a special police corps created to deal with urban violence, just the day after a harsh confrontation in Parliament, aroused suspicions of a government involvement in the crime and helped precipitate the Spanish Civil War.

An economist and jurist, he was secretary of the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences of the Ateneo Mercantil de Madrid and a university professor of the Universidad Central. He was a member of Antonio Maura Montaner's Conservative Party. He first served as an administrative officer in the Ministry of Grace and Justice. In 1919 he was chosen as a deputy to the Cortes for the district of O Carballiño, in Ourense, and in 1922 he was made civil governor of Valencia.

When Miguel Primo de Rivera became dictator of Spain in 1924 he appointed Calvo Sotelo as finance minister in 1925. Calvo Sotelo was forced into exile when the Republic was proclaimed (1931), but returned to Spain when he was amnestied in May 1934, becoming then a deputy for Renovación Española. He soon became one of the most important right-wing political figures in the country. Calvo Sotelo unsuccessfully attempted to gain control of the Falange Española from José Antonio Primo de Rivera in 1935. Calvo Sotelo was harshly critical of the Republican government after the electoral victory of the leftist Popular Front in February 1936.

[edit] Assassination

On the night of July 12, 1936, a lieutenant in the Republican Assault Guards and active member of the Socialist Party, José Castillo, was murdered in Madrid by gunmen of far right, Carlist members of the Tercio de Requetés of Madrid, according to the historian Ian Gibson, or Falangists according to other authors like Paul Preston. In the first hours of the next day, July 13, members of the Assault Guards, Juventudes Socialistas Unificadas and the captain of Civil Guard Fernando Condés, went to Calvo Sotelo's house, took him in front of his wife and children showing a fake arrest warrant, and later killed him in a police truck. His corpse was later left in the cemetery. According to all later investigations the perpetrator of the murder was a socialist gunman, Luis Cuenca, who was known as bodyguard of the Socialist Party leader Indalecio Prieto.

In the days following, the Spanish Government, apparently unwilling of both asserting itself in front of its own police and to deny the general perception of that it was somehow involved in the shocking murder, only undertook a routine investigation that never reached any conclusion. This only accelerated the preparations for a military revolt that was being developed since the electoral triumph of the Popular Front in the month of February. These preparations lead to the uprising of the army of Africa in Melilla on July 17, 1936 that, under the assumed command of Generals Emilio Mola, Francisco Franco and José Sanjurjo, marked the beginning of the Spanish Civil War.

[edit] Bibliography