THE DREAMED AND HAPPENED: THE SPANISH COLONIAL SYSTEM AND ITS EFFECTS IN ANNUAL

Abstract

El Desastre de Annual (1921) is undoubtedly the most relevant event in our recent military history due to the military and political connotations it had. Often times, the defeat has been rightly blamed on factors such as the ineffectiveness of the Spanish strategic system, the ineptitude of superior officers, or unfavorable ground conditions. The late arrival of Spain to the international concert in the division of Africa, due to the previous existence of an overseas empire that made the search for wealth in other places superfluous, led to our country being relegated to the less fertile and hostile areas of the continent; Spain's manifest weakness in the international order at the end of the 19th century was subordinated to the interests of the great powers; on the other hand, the decline of this empire coincided with the rise of the other powers, affecting self-esteem and therefore the professionalism and effectiveness of the troops. Therefore, the purpose of the following article is to reflect and relate a series of ideas that, in our opinion, were key to understanding El Desastre de Annual and that appeared in the preceding decades, launching small but illustrious warnings of what could happen.