Fernando de Santiago y Díaz

Who was Fernando de Santiago y Díaz?

Fernando de Santiago y Díaz de Mendívil was a conservative deputy and interim prime minister of Spain during the Spanish transition to democracy in the late 1970s. He had earlier been a general in the Spanish Civil War and under the dictatorship of Francisco Franco.

As an active soldier, Santiago participated in the Second Moroccan War in the 1920s and threw in with the Spanish Nationalists in the 1936 Civil War, rising to the rank of lieutenant general. During the Franco regime, he served as a professor and later director of the Escuela Politécnica Superior del Ejército.

In the waning years of Franco's rule, from March 4, 1971 to April 24, 1974, the dictator gave Santiago a task as political as it was military: serve as governor-general of Spanish Sahara after Spanish forces had massacred members of a native independence movement in the "Zemla Intifada". Santiago presided over the introduction of limited home-rule in the region, which was eventually decolonized a few years later.

Following the dictator's death, November 20, 1975, Santiago was named Vicepresidente del Gobierno para la Defensa of Spain's first post-Franco government, under Prime Minister Carlos Arias Navarro. Following Arias' resignation, Santiago briefly served as interim prime minister, July 1-July 3, 1976.