Francisco Gómez-Jordana Sousa

Francisco Gómez-Jordana y Sousa, 1st Count de Jordana (1 February 1876 – 3 August 1944), was a Spanish soldier and politician who served as Minister of Foreign Affairs during the rule of Francisco Franco.

Early life

Born in Madrid, the son of an officer who went on to become a General and the High Military Commissioner of Spain in Morocco, Gómez-Jordana enrolled as a student at Spain's "Academia General Militar" (Military General Academy) in Zaragoza in 1892.

Early career

During the Cuban War of Independence, he went to Cuba as a second lieutenant, where he was wounded on 23 November 1896. After returning to Spain, he became a captain at the Escuela Superior de Guerra ("Higher School for the Conduct of War") in Madrid. In 1911, he went to Melilla, a historical Spanish stronghold in North Africa since 1497, and he joined his father, Colonel Francisco Gómez Jordana. The younger Gómez-Jordana became a lieutenant colonel in 1912 and a colonel in 1915.

From 9 July 1915 to 27 January 1919, he served his first of two terms as High Commissioner of Spain in Morocco, the third being registered in April 1913. He became General of Brigade in 1922.

After the 13 September 1923 coup d'état, led by General Miguel Primo de Rivera, Gómez-Jordana became a member of the Military Directory. Primo de Rivera conferred upon him wide powers to deal with colonial initiatives in Africa, including the "peacemaking resorts" within the Spanish Protectorate of Morocco.

Action in Morocco

On 8 September 1925, General Leopoldo Saro Marín, along with Colonel Billot and Colonel Freydenberg, both of France enacted a joint naval landing attack at Al Hoceima, Rif. In what is now referred to as the Al Hoceima landings, the attack was directed against rebel Kabilas in northern Morocco. The operation featured the first amphibious landing of tanks. The naval forces employed massive air and gunfire support, directed by spotting personnel with communication devices.

After the success of the attack, the King awarded Marín the title of 1st Count of La Playa de Ixdain and General Gómez-Jordana the title of 1st Count of Jordana. The titles were awarded on 19 July 1926 at the town of Úbeda, province of Jaén. Alfonso later honoured the Africanist General José Sanjurjo y Sacanell for the "peacemaking actions" in the Rif and invested him as 1st Marqués del Rif in 1927.

The military actions led to the exile of the Rif independence leader Muhammad Ibn 'Abd al-Karim al-Khattabi, commonly known as Abd el-Krim, from Ajdir in the Berber area of Morocco, a locus of the resistance movement. Abd el-Krim had been known as the creator of the Confederal Republic of the tribes of the Rif (Amazigh: Tagduda n Arif) since 1921.

Between November 1928 and 19 April 1931, Gómez-Jordana served another term as High Commissioner.

Among other Africanist military men was Spanish General Dámaso Berenguer y Fusté. In 1927, he had been awarded the title of Count of Xauen for his military actions in the conquest of Xauen, in northern Morocco, in 1920. Dámaso acted as the second "soft" dictator, a term then used by Spanish civilians in comparison to Primo de Rivera, from 30 January 1930 to 18 January 1931. His term as Minister for War coincided with the term of Jacobo Fitz-James Stuart, 17th Duke of Alba as Minister of State and Public Instruction.

Struggle in army

Broadly speaking, the XVIII and XIX Military Academies in Spain had been located traditionally at Toledo, Infantry, 1850, Segovia, Artillery, 1764, Alcalá de Henares, Engineers, 1803, Valladolid, Cavalry, 1852. One joint, basic General Military Academy, the Academia General Militar, was created during the times of King Alfonso XII on 20 February 1882 at Zaragoza.

On 17 August 1930, the so-called Pact of San Sebastián, was led on one side by the rightist leaders Miguel Maura, the son of the Majorcan conservative prime minister of Spain, and Duke Antonio Maura and Niceto Alcalá-Zamora.

They banded together with members of other rather small liberal and regionalist republican parties and called for action to support modern civil liberties and progress in education.

On 14 April 1931, the Second Spanish Republic was approved by the masses after the earlier municipal elections and the dissolution of the royally+approved Military Directorate (1923–1931).

A civil law notary, Manuel Azaña, and a professor of chemistry at the University of Salamanca, José Giral, were founders of the Republican Action Spain from the Pact of San Sebastián.

Infantry officers won quick promotions to general through the Morocco actions, and aristocratic cavalry officers also progressed fairly rapidly, but engineering and artillery officers did not flourish. Strong tensions emerged between the groups.

Minister of War Manuel Azaña closed access to the General Military Academy at Zaragoza on 30 June 1931. The director of the institution was an Africanist, General Francisco Franco. The ruling military was critical of that decision.

Sources

* B. H. Liddell Hart, ''The Other Side of the Hill. Germany's Generals. Their Rise and Fall, with their own Account of Military Events 1939–1945'', London: Cassel, 1948; enlarged and revised edition, Delhi: Army Publishers, 1965. .
* ''Milicia y Diplomacia: Diarios Del Conde de Jordana, 1936–1944'' by Francisco Gómez-Jordana Souza, Carlos Seco Serrano, Rafael Gómez-Jordana Prats, , 312 pages, Hardcover, Dossoles, Editorial, Burgos, (2002).
* ^ Beevor, Antony (2006). ''The Battle for Spain: the Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939''. New York: Penguin Books, 144 pages. .
*
* Javier Tusell

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