ALFONSO XIII, RE DI SPAGNA

ALFONSO XIII, king of SPAIN. - Posthumous son of the preceding, b. 17 May 1886, d. 28 Feb. 1941. He received from his mother, Maria Cristina, a good religious and literary education. During the regency, the war in Cuba, which had begun in 1895, had to be deplored, followed by the revolt in the Philippine islands, which fatally led to the armed intervention of the United States of America in favor of the insurgents. After useless bloodshed and vain heroism, in 1898 the peace of Paris was reached, by which Spain ceded to the American Republic the islands of Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam and the entire Philippine archipelago. The war in Morocco was also resumed and won. The king was sixteen years old when, in 1902, he was declared of age and head of state. In the travels that he made subsequently, he gained general sympathy and strengthened his throne, especially after he married in 1906 Princess Ena Victoria of Battenberg, granddaughter of King Edward VII of England, who had converted to Catholicism shortly before her marriage to the Spanish king. But subversive forces and secret societies had conceived an implacable hatred against the young monarch. The first anarchist attempt against the person of the king took place in Paris on 31 May 1905; on the same date the following year, during the wedding procession itself, a bomb endangered the royal couple; other attempts were made, always however unsuccessfully, against the life of the monarch. On the other hand, the instability of the governing parties, especially after the assassination of Canovas and the death of Sagasta, prevented the realization of excellent projects against which the severe repression of the revolutionary uprisings in Barcelona (1909) was exploited and the consequent execution of Francisco Ferrer. As religious acts, during the reign of A., the International Eucharistic Congress of Madrid (1911) stands out, in which he took part despite the temporary coolness of relations with the Holy See due to the government of Canalejas (assassinated shortly after), and especially the solemn consecration of Spain to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, made by A. at the "Cerro de los Angeles" in May 1919. Among the international political events, the Algeciras Conference of 1906 concerning the Moroccan question and the various treaties with France regarding the two zones of that region must be recalled. The uprising of the Rif tribes under the leadership of Abd-el-Krim in 1921, the revolutionary movements and the prevailing indiscipline led in 1923 General M. Primo de Rivera to carry out a coup d'état, which established a dictatorship and seemed to give the nation a rebirth of order and prosperity. During this time, the visit of King Alfonso and Queen Victoria to Pope Pius XI (Nov. 1923) and the universal expositions of Barcelona and Seville (1928; 1929) deserve to be remembered. However, after the Moroccan disaster of 1921, A.'s popularity began to wane. With the fall of Primo de Rivera's dictatorship in 1929, in the elections of 12 Apr. 1931 for the renewal of municipal councilors, a strong anti-monarchist majority was obtained. This was enough to immediately order A.'s expulsion from the nation; he left Madrid on the 14th of the same month, while the Second Republic was proclaimed. The deposed monarch first lived in Paris and finally in Rome, where all his children had married, and where he died on 28 Feb. 1941.