At the end of the 1920s, General Primo de Rivera was, as president of the Council of Ministers, the highest authority in the State after the monarch. With the acquiescence of Alfonso XIII, he had been the main person responsible for the 1923 coup d’état that had left constitutional guarantees suspended.
Widowed since the death of his wife, Casilda Sáenz de Heredia, in 1909, he had not had a known partner. There was only talk of a sporadic relationship with the cuplet player Raquel Meller (1888-1962) and, always in a low voice, it was mentioned that he frequented unrecommended female companies.
An open secret that had been confirmed when he was linked to Caoba, a prostitute involved in cocaine trafficking who, upon being arrested in 1924, had implored the general’s help. Primo de Rivera had not hesitated to lend her support and, to this end, he had met with the judge in charge of the case to demand the detainee’s freedom.
The magistrate refused to follow the dictator’s orders and, consequently, was suddenly dismissed. The measure was followed by the dismissal of the president of the Supreme Court, Buenaventura Muñoz, who had come out in support of his colleague.
The case soon became public and gave rise to an intense press campaign against the dictator, supported by intellectuals of the time such as Miguel de Unamuno and other illustrious members of the Ateneo de Madrid. It cost the professor exile to Fuerteventura and the aforementioned institution was closed.
That scandal seriously damaged the personal image of the dictator, whom they wanted to present as a blameless widower and protector of his six children (among them, José Antonio, founder of Falange Española, and Pilar, who would direct the Women’s Section of Falange).
Certainly, he did little to remedy it. As Unamuno recorded in From Fuerteventura to Paris: intimate diary of confinement and exile (1926), he limited himself to offering a statement in which he expressed his displeasure at the “insidious campaign founded on his intervention” and assured that he would return to proceed from the Likewise, for “having been inclined all his life to be kind and benevolent towards women.”
Those terms, in Unamuno’s words, were “the most embarrassing insults that have been leveled at Spain, which the dictator has treated like another whore he has met in brothels.”
Over time, the Caoba scandal seemed to be forgotten, but the truth is that the gallant life of Miguel Primo de Rivera was in the public domain, although fear of reprisals kept the topic in the realm of speculation. In that context, his upcoming marriage to a woman like “Nini” Castellanos, daughter of the Countess of San Félix, seemed inconceivable.
Due to her father’s status as a diplomat, Nini was born in Sweden, although she had lived in Spain since she was twelve, where she had been educated at the Sisters of the Assumption school. He was twenty years younger than Primo de Rivera and considered her to be a cultured and formal young woman, whom he only knew through her involvement in charity work. On the other hand, her aristocratic origins made her close to the circle of Queen Victoria Eugenia, where she was always modest in her manners.
However, contrary to what it might seem, the rumors were not without foundation. The dictator and the aristocrat had met in 1921 at the Carabanchel hospital, where, after the Annual disaster, she worked as a volunteer nurse. Since then, they had been seen together at various social events, attending theater performances or horse races held at the Castellana racecourse.
The hoax became news in mid-April 1928 when the newspaper ABC published a short article confirming the rumors and announcing the next relationship between Primo de Rivera and Nini Castellanos.
Shortly after, on the 21st of the same month, a journalist from La Vanguardia, René Hernández, managed to interview the dictator’s fiancee. In the piece, Nini presented herself as a happy and in love woman. What’s more, she did not hesitate to express the concern that had caused her, during the seven years of their courtship, not knowing whether the general had the intention of passing through the altar, which she attributed to her fiancé’s multiple military obligations and his political responsibilities. .
In this regard, Nini insisted on his desire to never become an obstacle to his work as ruler. “I have begged you,” she stated, “not to take time away from her magnificent work to dedicate it to me.”
From that moment on, media interest in the wedding increased. La Nación published a full-page photo of the couple at the races and, shortly after, the journalist and writer César González Ruano (1903-1965) obtained an extensive interview with the bride.
Ultraist poet, law graduate, writer and journalist by vocation, González Ruano had a fair reputation as both a dandy and an intrepid reporter. His interviews, filled with rhetoric and endowed with a lyricism unusual in the press of the 1920s, marked an era in Spanish journalism.
A regular contributor to ABC, Blanco y Negro and Estampa, he did not hesitate to appear unexpectedly at the mansion on Juan Bravo Street in Madrid, at number 6, where Nini Castellanos lived. Although it was difficult for him to convince her, he finally got her to answer her questions, and Estampa magazine opened its April 24, 1928 edition with a photo of Nini on the cover and an extensive interview inside.
In it, Nini confirmed her relationship with the general, and even brought forward the wedding date: September 24, the bride’s birthday. Not only was she open at all times to the interviewer’s curiosity, but she did not hesitate to recognize the social preeminence of the wedding, saying: “It’s a great wedding. A dream for a simple Miss Castellanos like me, right? But the only thing that matters to me is the love I have for Miguel. I adore him!”
Given the political and social situation that Spain was going through, before its publication, the interview had to go through the censor, who verified its content by consulting Nini, who did not raise any objection to González Ruano’s statements. As the journalist stated in his Memoirs, the same would not have happened if he had asked Primo de Rivera for approval.
A few days before, the general had also confirmed the commitment in a brief interview in El Noticiero del Lunes. In it, he justified the long years of courtship by his dedication to the task of ruler, adding the euphemism of his “independent and cheerful disposition.”
However, it seems that the interview given by Nini to González Ruano was not to his liking. A few weeks after the publication, in a chance meeting with the journalist, the general insulted him for “having made Miss Castellanos ridiculous.” Knowing that the interviewer had limited himself to reproducing Nini’s words, the general responded: “Then the one who made a fool of herself was her.”
In any case, the wedding never took place, without the reasons for the breakup being revealed. Nini Castellanos continued with her social work and her obligations as supervisor of a school for girls and young women with limited resources, on Toledo Street in Madrid, sponsored by the Catholic Ladies.
Presumably she forgot the scandal, since, after years, she married a military man. For his part, Primo de Rivera, after losing the favor of Alfonso purpose of progressively returning to constitutionalism prior to 1923. Exiled in Paris, he died a few weeks later.