Alfonso XIII (1868 - 1918)
King of Spain (1894 - 1918)
(VIII)
In several cities in the north of Spain the Workers' and Soldiers' Councils put the city administrations under their control.. In addition to this, in Bilbao and San Sebastián all civil servants loyal to the king were arrested. In Oviedo and La Coruña "Red Guards" were formed to protect the revolution. The councils took over the distribution of food and, the police force. On May 20, Largo Caballero demanded the peaceful disarmament of the garrison units by the San Fernando workforce in the daily newspaper of the PSOE
El Socialista (
The Socialist). He wanted the Soldiers' Councils to be subordinated to the Revolutionary Parliament and the soldiers to become "re-educated".
By the early days of June, as the news of the Western Front and the Balkans pointed out that the end of the war and the defeat of the Central Powers was just a matter of weeks, the left-socialists lead by Largo Caballero and Dolores Ibarruri left the PSOE and formed its own group, the
Partido Comunista de los Trabajadores (Worker's Comuunist Party, PCT). Then, on June 28, 1918, Germany surrendered. The war was over. Two days later, a ng the return o the soldiers and the end of the food restrictions took place in San Fernando. Then, on July 2, hundreds of thousands of people poured into the centre of San Fernando, many of them armed. In the afternoon, the train stations and the offices of the middle-class press were occupied. Ironically, the PCT yb no means had a leading position. The demands came straight from the workforce supported by various groups to the left of the PSOE.
Alfonso XIII, who desperately wanted to go into exile ifollowing his abdication, was kept under the protection of the Garcia Prieto's goverment. Then, when San Fernando became a city in revolt, the royal family was evacuated to Tordesillas, allegedly to protect them from the rising tide of revolution. There, Alfonso followed the events with interest but not with alarm. The army was not siding with the revolutionaries, but for some hundreds of individuals soldiers and a few small unjits.
As the revolution extended to Madrid, Barcelona, Toledo, Sevilla, Albacete, Zamora, Burgos and Cuenca, the government was virtually helpless to offer significant resistance. Railways and rail stations had been controlled by workers and soldiers, making rail travel almost impossible. Then, Tordesillas also rose in revolt on July 5 and the royal family saw itself in the hands of the revolutionaries.
The government finally reacted and the army counter-attacked. If the revolutionaries hoped that the returning soldiers were to help them, they were bitterly dissapointed when they discovered that the soldiers of the first division to return home, on July 7, were not willing to go on fighting. The war was over, and most of the soldiers just wanted to go home to their families. Shortly after their arrival to Spain, they dispersed. However, the standing army was more than willing to fight and on July 10, they moved against the revolutionaries.
In three days (July 10-12), San Fernando, Barcelona and Madrid were cleared from revolutionaries after several clashes on the streets. This fighting claimed 462 lives in these cities. As the army moved to crush the remnats of the revolution, its alleged ringleaders had to go into hiding, but, on the evening of July 13, Largo Caballero and Ibarruri were arrested by the army, and executed when they were on the way to be questioned. In Tordesillas, as the government troops came closer, the revolutionaries executed the royal family. Alfonso XIII, his wife, Queen Louise, and their three children were killed in the basement of the house where they were kept.
In the ensuing chaos that followed until the final defeat of the revolutionaries, several members of the royal family were executed by the revolutionaries, among them Jaime, duke of Girona, the only surviving brother of the king.
Alfonso XIII (1868 - 1918) - Louise (1867 - 1918)
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Alfonso (1895 – 1918)
Isabel (1897 – 1918)
María (1901 – 1918)