Military reform of Manuel Azaña
Decrees approved in 1931 by the Provisional Government of the Second Spanish Republic / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The military reform of Manuel Azaña was the set of decrees approved between April and September 1931 by the Provisional Government of the Second Spanish Republic (which were later recast and endorsed by the Constituent Courts in the so-called "Azaña Law") and the subsequent laws approved by the Courts at the proposal of the Minister of War Manuel Azaña, a position that he held simultaneously with that of President of the Government since October 1931, and whose objective was to modernize and democratize the Spanish Army as well as to put an end to military interventionism in political life. Azaña's reform was the only one of those approved during the first biennium that was not changed by the center-right governments of the second.[1][2]
When the provisional government was formed, the Ministry of War fell to Manuel Azaña because he was the only member of the "revolutionary committee" who had knowledge of military matters (he had published the first part of a study on the French army) and because he had a clear idea of what had to be done: to reduce the excessive number of officers, a prior step to modernize the army, and to put an end to the "autonomous" power of the military, placing them under the authority of civilian power.[3] It was precisely his outstanding management at the head of this ministry that made him the most prestigious figure in the government and which would finally lead him to preside it after the resignation of Niceto Alcalá-Zamora in October 1931 because of the "religious issue". As Javier Tusell has pointed out, "Azaña knew how to see the opportunities offered by a situation of regime change and had the courage to confront a reform, the military, before which his predecessors in office had retreated".[4]