de Rivera staged a successful coup d’état in Barcelona in the mould of 19th-century pronunciamientos. With the army's support, he ousted the parliamentary government of Manuel García Prieto. Primo de Rivera stated he would create a temporary government to save Spain from the corrupt politicians that had been mismanaging it since 1898. Shortly after, on 14 September, King Alfonso XIII declared his support for Primo de Rivera's coup and dismissed the civilian government, suspending the 1876 Spanish constitution. He made Primo de Rivera the head of a new Military Directory, with powers to propose "whatever decrees are convenient" to the king. There was initially a lot of support in Spain for the coup. Not only were conservative newspapers like La Vanguardia supportive, liberal media such as El Sol also stated their support for the regime on the understanding that Primo de Rivera would leave power in three months, as he initially declared. In El Sol, Jose Ortega y Gasset wrote: "The alpha and omega of the military directory's task is to do away with the old politics. Their goal is so excellent as to preclude reservations." The Catholic Church and the wider Spanish public also showed their backing of the dictatorship, and the stock market rising immediately after the coup is indicative of the confidence Spaniards had in the new regime. Some of the only detractors of the coup were the small Communist party (Partido Comunista de España) and Anarchist trade unions. The Military Directory (1923–1925) Ideology The Military Directory consisted of eight generals and one admiral. They were subordinate to Primo de Rivera, who could alone approve Decrees for the Directory and present them to the king to sign. Primo de Rivera framed the formation of his dictatorship as a patriotic action against the ineffectiveness of Spain's liberal system. Through this, Primo de Rivera presented himself as Joaquín Costa's 'Iron Surgeon,' who would perform surgery on Spain to cure the political corruption and social chaos that plagued it. He stated: "I have no experience in government. Our methods are as simple as they are ingenious. They are methods for which the good of the [homeland] dictates and our resolutions are taken while we are kneeling at the shrine of the national spirit." Primo de Rivera connected many of his speeches with religious themes, and Catholicism was integral to his dictatorship's discourse. Primo de Rivera stated how disseminating patriotism was