Los militares ante la justicia: El Consejo Supremo de Guerra y Marina y las responsabilidades del desastre (1922-1924)

The Supreme Council of War and The Navy and the responsibilities of the disaster (1922-1924)

Abstract

General Aguilera, former Minister of War (1917), was the president of the Supreme Council of War and the Navy between 1921 and 1924, and became the main responsible for incorporating, studying, debating and dispensing justice in the matter of the responsibilities of the military in the Annual disaster. The Expediente Picasso, which had been underway since August 1921 for purely informative purposes in order to determine possible responsibilities, was submitted in 1922 to the Supreme Council of War and the Navy with the aim of determining the criminal responsibilities of the military personnel involved in the military campaign that ended in the disaster. The issue of responsibility took a new turn at the highest military justice body, which tried to find all those responsible and apportion blame among all those involved, including the military commanders deliberately excluded from the Expediente Picasso. The relentless research for political and military leaders in both the Cortes and the Supreme Council was to prove decisive in the coup d’état of 13 September 1923. King Alfonso XIII, according to all indications, may have played an important role in the origin of the dictatorial regime in order to get rid of the nightmare of the responsibilities of the Annual disaster. In addition, it includes the opinion of the then young commander of the Legion Francisco Franco Bahamonde on the causes and responsibilities of Annual, expressed in a series of unpublished letters written between 1921 and 1923.