The Spanish government was deposed in a coup led by Miguel Primo de Rivera y Orbaneja, 2nd Marquis of Estella, a military officer. The coup came about as it's leaders were upset with the Spanish government's inability to deal with the economic conditions which were a precursor to the Great Depression.
Coming during the last days of Spain's Bourbon Restoration, Primo de Rivera secured the support of the King and a significant percentage of the Spanish population and ruled until 1930, when an economic boom brought about during his dictatorship foundered and Spain began a return to democracy. He died later that year, at age 60. The Bourbon Restoration itself would end the following year with the establishment of the short-lived Second Spanish Republic.
Perhaps instructive for us today, the period overall saw increasing tension between Spanish leftists and Spanish conservatives, with the middle ground increasingly evaporating. The government was seized first by the monarchical right, and then restored to democracy which lurched increasingly leftward, resulting finally in a collapse of democracy entirely and a right wing coup which brought Francisco Franco to power.
Interestingly, we just dealt with something similar happening in Chile in 1973 the other day. In both instances, the society in question was unable to deal with increasingly radical opposing forces and the middle more or less evaporating.
In common accounts of the period, little attention tends to be given to the fact that the revolution that brought Franco to power was, in some ways, a continuation of one that began on this day in 1923.
A revolution was also occurring in Bulgaria but was put down by the put down by the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization
Some experimentation was engaged in on this day with tanks converted into tractors.
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