José Sánchez Guerra: conservador a fuer de liberal

Abstract

Jose Sanchez Guerra (1859-1935) was a Spanish politician of the last years of 19 th century and the first decades of the 20 th century. His life and actions during his long career allow a better understanding of the political system during Spanish Restoration, its limits and achievements. He was MP between 1886 and 1933; three times Home Office Secretary; president of the lower chamber of the Parliament (1919-1922) and Prime Minister (1922). He thought that the consolidation of the Spanish Restoration closed the cycle of liberal conquest and solved one of the most important problems of the Spanish 19 th Century: the internal fight between the constitutional monarchy parties. For that reason, from the 1890s on his main aim was to preserve that political system: he abandoned the Liberal Party and became a conservative. As a conservative leader he fought against the socialists and republicans subversive actions and attempts to destabilize the social and political order, but also the Army attempts to control the political system. And when the king Alfonso XIII betrayed his constitutional oath, closed the Parliament, and supported the general Primo de Rivera military dictatorship, he fought the king and the dictator too. Sanchez Guerra finished his political career as an independent republican conservative in the first term of the Second Republic.