José Sanjurjo

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José Sanjurjo Sacanell (March 28, 1872 – July 20, 1936) Marquess of the Rif and general, was a Spanish army officer who was one of the chief conspirators in the military uprising that led to the Spanish Civil War.

Born in Pamplona, he served in Cuba in 1896 and in several campaigns in Morocco in 1909, among them the reconquest of lost territory in Melilla after the Battle of Annual in 1921. In 1922, in the front of the separate military command of Larache, he investigated the cases of corruption in Intendance and armed intervention. He was High Commissioner of Spain in Morocco and reached the rank of lieutenant general. In 1925 he participated in the disembarkation of Alhucemas. In 1927, with the completion of the War of the Rif, King Alfonso XIII awarded him on March 28, 1931 the Gran Cruz de Carlos III. In 1928 he was made chief of a main directorate of the Civil Guard.

After the elections of April 1931, he was the first general appointed to army command by the republican Revolutionary Committee after proclamation of the Republic. The reason was that by his influence as a commander in the Civil Guard, he enabled the creation of the Republic.

He opposed Manuel Azaña over his military policy and was replaced in his position by General Miguel Cabanellas. He was demoted by Azaña to chief of the customs officers in 1932 because of the events of Castilblanco and Arnedo. This confrontation with the government along with the autonomy measures and the military reforms of Azaña, led him to join with some Carlists of Fal Conde and the conde de Rodezno, and other military officers in a revolt in Seville on August 10, 1932. He achieved initial success in Seville but absolute failure in Madrid in his revolt known as the sanjurjada. He asserted that his rebellion was only against the current government and not against the Republic. He tried to flee to Portugal, but in Huelva he decided to give himself up. He was condemned to death, a sentence which was later commuted to life imprisonment in the penitentiary of the Dueso. In March 1934 he was granted amnesty by the Lerroux government and went into exile in Estoril, Portugal. When on May 10, 1936 Niceto Alcalá-Zamora was replaced as President of the Republic by Azaña, Sanjurjo, along with Generals Emilio Mola, Francisco Franco and Gonzalo Queipo de Llano started plotting to overthrow the leftist Popular Front government. This led to the National Rising on July 17, 1936, which started the Spanish Civil War .

Sanjurjo died in Estoril, Portugal, in a plane crash when flying back to Spain on July 20, 1936 in an aircraft piloted by Antonio Ansaldo. One of the main reasons of the crash was his very heavy luggage. Ansaldo warned him that bags were too heavy, but Sanjurjo answered him:

I need to wear proper clothes as the new caudillo of Spain.

Ironically, Sanjurjo chose to fly in Ansaldo's small airplane rather than a much larger and more suitable airplane that was available. It was an 8-passenger de Havilland Dragon Rapide, the same one which had transported Franco from the Canary Islands to Morocco. Sanjurjo apparently preferred the drama of flying with a "daring aviator".

When Mola also died in an aircraft accident, Franco was left as the effective leader of the Nationalist cause. This led to rumors that Franco had instigated the deaths of his two rivals, but no evidence has been produced to support this allegation. [1]