John Picasso
Juan Picasso González (Málaga, August 22, 1857-Madrid, April 5, 1935) was a Spanish soldier, awarded the Laureate Cross in the First Rif War in Morocco and commissioned of the important military investigation known as the Picasso File. In the extensive report, he denounced the bad decisions of the military high command and the widespread corruptions during the Annual disaster in 1921. This file would have important military and political consequences, ending the so-called Bourbon restoration in Spain in 1923.
He was also part of the Supreme Council of War and Navy, military delegate of Spain in the Council of the League of Nations between 1920 and 1923.
Biography
His father, Juan Bautista Picasso Guardeño lived in Málaga, a neighbor of Plaza de la Merced and was the brother of Francisco Picasso, Pablo Ruiz Picasso's maternal grandfather.
He entered the Academy of the General Staff in July 1878 as a student ensign, rising to lieutenant in June 1880. Between 1880 and 1893 he held various posts in the districts of Castilla la Nueva, Andalucía (mainly in Granada) and Ceuta.
The siege in Melilla
With the Royal Order (R.O.) of December 20, 1890, he was part of the commission to reconsider the jurisdictional limits of Melilla, established in 1863, and the subsequent demarcation of a 500-meter-wide neutral zone determined by the agreement with Morocco signed on October 30, 1861 after the African War. For the next two years, no agreement was reached between the two countries.
He married María Luz Vicent Lasso de la Vega and had two children: Néstor in 1887 and Adalberto in 1893.
In the fall of 1893 as a captain, he was sent to Melilla, where the so-called Margallo war had begun, as an attaché to the second brigade of the second division. On October 27, he was with General Juan García y Margallo, in the Cabrerizas Altas fort, besieged by the Riffians, without being able to communicate his delicate situation. The following day, he received the general's order to march on horseback and with an escort to the nearby fort of Rostrogordo, from there to inform the governor of the siege. However, when he arrived at the Rostrogordo fort, he saw that it was similarly surrounded and headed directly for Melilla at great personal risk, managing to report the situation and sending aid to the encircled forts. However, General Margallo would die organizing a counterattack to recover the forts. For this action on August 28, 1893, he would receive the second class Laureate Cross of San Fernando and promotion to commander at the age of 36.
Two years later he rose rapidly to lieutenant colonel and in 1902 to the rank of colonel. From the end of November 1909 to the end of March 1910, he held the post of Chief of Staff of the military government of Melilla. In 1915 he was promoted to brigadier general, spending most of the rest of his military career as part of the Ministry of War in Madrid.
In February 1919 he was nominated for Minister of War at the age of sixty-two and was almost unknown. Picasso replied: "Well, I thank you very much, but look, I prefer to continue working on my business and be what I am, an honest soldier."
In November 1911, under pressure from the United Kingdom, France ceded the Spanish protectorate of Morocco to Spain. The government, encouraged by the military command, began the military conquest of the territory with which, although poor and tribal, it offered to recover a Spanish society humiliated by the loss of its last colonies in the brief Spanish-American war. It will be during the so-called Rif War, during which a group of conservative and aggressive officers known as the Africanists emerge, including a young Francisco Franco.
While the Spanish and international situation suffered from continuous upheavals and failures, they are reflected in the Barcelona Tragic Week (1909), the First World War (1914-1918), the Russian Revolution (1917), the revolutionary general strike (1917), among many other tumultuous events.
Annual's disaster investigation
On February 16, 1921, he was promoted to major general. The prominent conservative politician and president of the government, Eduardo Dato Iradier, is assassinated on March 11 by some anarchists.
On July 21 in Morocco, conquered two weeks earlier, Igueriben fell after a four-day siege. A day later, Annual's withdrawal to Dar Drius occurs. Suicide of the commander in chief of the Spanish army Silvestre. On the 24th, panic took over the city of Melilla.
Picasso, from the early 1920s to 1923, was the Spanish military representative to the Permanent Advisory Commission on Military, Naval and Aviation Affairs at the League of Nations. At this time he was the first major general in the ranks. Between July 30, 1921 and August 23, 1923, Picasso was a member of the government's Supreme War and Navy Council.
For the R.O. On August 4, 1921, the government of Allendesalazar with Minister Luis de Marichalar y Monreal, Viscount of Eza, appointed Picasso as a judge -together with an auditor and a secretary- to prepare an official report, to examine the background and circumstances that concurred in the abandonment of positions in the Moroccan territory assigned to the General Command of Melilla. It had a controversial limitation, established at the beginning, not to extend to the actions of the high commissioner, General Dámaso Berenguer. On August 9, Monte Arruit capitulated and thousands of Spanish soldiers were massacred.
On August 24, for an R.O. the Minister of War, Juan de la Cierva, warns Picasso not to carry out investigations that could involve the High Command. On September 1st another new R.O. —At the behest of Berenguer—, warn Picasso again so that he does not extend his investigation. On September 6 there is a "personal and reserved" telegram from the new minister La Cierva to Picasso, inappropriately in the form of "Royal Order".
On April 18, 1922, he handed over to the Congress of Deputies the file with a final report written by himself that made up a total of 2,417 pages. His work became known as the Picasso File, and it pointed out multiple military errors as well as widespread corruption in the army. It led to a series of political and military consequences, it was used by the opposition to the different conservative governments at that time. moment, to the military called Africanists and to King Alfonso XIII himself.
On December 21, the newspaper La Libertad featured a caricature of Exoristo Salmerón in the center of its front page under the headline: «Figuras y figurones» by Juan Picasso followed by the text:
What Diogenes wanted,find his lighter,
in Picasso, the vigilante,
our homeland possessed.
And so when he heard his name,
proud and pleasant,
says to the world Spain:
"He is my man!"Exoristo Salmerón. Freedom. 1922
The arrival of the dictatorship, the republic and the retirement
On September 13, 1923, there was a military coup that established the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera with the support of the king, and ended with the exhibition of Picasso's work on the disaster in congress. With the arrival of the dictatorship, the report was abandoned and the copies were lost.
He entered the reserve on August 23, 1923, upon his sixty-sixth birthday. He accepted the regime change and continued as a member of the Supreme War and Navy Council.
Two years later, on August 22, 1925, he passed to the second reserve with the rank of lieutenant general.
The Second Republic was peacefully established on April 14, 1931. When the Constituent Cortes met in July 1931, another Responsibilities Commission was formed to examine those that had been contracted under the dictatorial regime. It was ordered that the Picasso file be returned to the hands of that commission, however, everything was suspended due to the new problems that the new democracy had. Picasso was not surprised by the arrival of the new republic at his home on Calle Amnistía, in Madrid. He died in 1935, his death was known by an obituary that appeared in the ABC newspaper two days later.He was buried in the Sacramental of San Lorenzo and San José. His wife, María Luz Vicent, died a month later from breast cancer and was buried next to him.
Access to the Picasso File and other content related to the disaster of Annual
Known in fragmentary form for a long time, the Picasso report was recovered in its entirety and transferred to the National Historical Archive in 1990. The Picasso File itself consists of ten pieces and 2,418 pages.
Along with the Picasso File itself, the National Historical Archive contains a closely related piece, which includes testimonies obtained later, for example those of the Spanish prisoners implicated in the Annual Disaster and released years later. This case has 39 separate pieces, all of them publicly accessible. An extensive description of both files can be found in the article referenced in the previous lines, as well as their genesis and history.
Acknowledgments
In 1922 he was named with the honorary title of favorite son of the city of Malaga.
Juan Picasso's «charreras», a currency that forms part of the uniform, are exhibited in the military museum of Melilla after a donation by one of his descendants.
Between 2016 and 2017, the Fundación Picasso Museo Casa Natal in Malaga organized the exhibition “El General Picasso. Military and Draftsman", focused on the facet of Juan Picasso as draftsman.
In 2022, the ABC newspaper published an article about the letters of support that General Picasso received.