Alfonso XIII

Alfonso XIII (Spanish: Alfonso León Fernando María Jaime Isidro Pascual Antonio de Borbón y Habsburgo-Lorena; French: Alphonse Léon Ferdinand Marie Jacques Isidore Pascal Antoine de Bourbon; 17 May 1886 – 28 February 1941), also known as El Africano or the African for his Africanist views, was King of Spain from his birth until 14 April 1931, when the Second Spanish Republic was proclaimed. He became a monarch at birth as his father, Alfonso XII, had died the previous year. Alfonso's mother, Maria Christina of Austria, served as regent until he assumed full powers on his sixteenth birthday in 1902. Alfonso XIII's upbringing and public image were closely linked to the military estate; he often presented himself as a soldier-king. His effective reign started four years after the Spanish–American War, when various social milieus projected their expectations of national regeneration onto him. Like other European monarchs of his time he played a political role, entailing a controversial use of his constitutional executive powers. His wedding to Princess Victoria Eugenie of Battenberg in 1906 was marred by an attempt at regicide; he was unharmed. With public opinion divided over World War I, and moreover a split between pro-German and pro-Entente sympathizers, Alfonso XIII used his relations with other European royal families to help preserve a stance of neutrality, as espoused by his government; however, several factors weakened the monarch's constitutional legitimacy: the rupture of the turno system, the deepening of the Restoration system crisis in the 1910s, a trio of crises in 1917, the spiral of violence in Morocco, and especially the lead-up to the 1923 installment of the dictatorship of Miguel Primo de Rivera, an event that succeeded by means of both military coup d'état and the king's acquiescence. Over the course of his reign, the monarch ended up favouring an...