Antonio Maura
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Antonio Maura y Montaner (Catalan: Antoni Maura i Montaner; May 2, 1853 — December 13, 1925) was Prime Minister of Spain on five separate occasions: 1903-04, 1907-09, 1918, 1919, and 1921-22.
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[edit] Biography
Born in Palma de Mallorca on the Balearic Island of Majorca, Maura studied law in Madrid. He entered the Cortes Generales in 1881 as a liberal delegate for Majorca, but later joined the Conservative party. In 1886 he held the position of vice president of the Congress of Deputies. As prime minister, he attempted to carry out a reform plan, but this was opposed by the liberals. He fell from power after the brutal suppression of an uprising in Barcelona in 1909, called the Tragic Week. The execution of Francesc Ferrer, who was charged with leading the Tragic Week uprising, provoked a European-wide outcry which contributed to Maura's downfall.
Maura was a hero of a youth movement, the Mauristas, who wanted him as a new head of state of Spain at a time of substantial resentment of King Alfonso XIII. This and Maura's rather messianic attitudes caused him to fall out with the King. Maura later headed coalition cabinets with other parties (1918, 1919, 1921–22), but he did nothing to advance unconstitutional methods. Many of his followers later supported the dictatorship of Miguel Primo de Rivera, but he remained aloof from both Primo de Rivera and King Alfonso XIII. Maura had first entered the political arena to fight the "caciquismo" culture which he considered a cancer of Spanish political culture and the main obstacle towards authentically democratic institutions.
When he was Prime Minister, during the reign of Alfonso XIII, he spent summers at the estate of Can Mossenya, historically part of the Royal Charterhouse of Jesus of Nazareth in Majorca, where Chopin and George Sand had also stayed the previous century. Azorín, who admired him at the time, traveled from the continent to meet him there. The International Foundation Can Mossenya named an entrance to its historic estate "Gate of Friendship - Azorín and Maura" after this encounter.[1]
He was a prolific watercolorist and often painted scenes of nature or old buildings from past eras.
Maura died in Torrelodones, Madrid in 1925.
[edit] Descendants
- Gabriel Maura y Gamazo, Duke of Maura, son of Antonio, historian and Labour Minister in the last government of the reign of Alfonso XIII.
- Miguel Maura Gamazo, Minister of Security in the first government of the II Spanish Republic; son of Antonio.
- Honorio Maura Gamazo, playwriter and monarchist deputy, son of Antonio; killed by leftist militia at the beginning of the Spanish Civil war, 1936.
- Luisa Isabel Álvarez de Toledo y Maura, Duchess of Medina-Sidonia.
- Jaime Chávarri, film director.
- Carmen Maura, actress (his great-niece)
- Jorge Semprún Maura, famous novelist, communist, and education minister of Spain during the Premiership of Felipe González
- Carlos Semprún Maura, writer and journalist, brother of Jorge. Both longtime residents of France as their father was a republican governor who went into exile after the republic lost the Civil War.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
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