Portal de Turismo de Castilla y León

Dates

June 6, 2026

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Presented by: Alicia Santiago

Speaker: José Luis Campos Santiago

José Luis Campos Santiago , retired Army Officer, and Knight of the Order of the Temple.
A compulsive reader, he was first interested, and then impressed, after I researched the events that took place during the Rif War.
He has given lectures on the life and miracles of the Templars, their origins, vicissitudes, and dramatic end. But the subject of Annual always lingered in his subconscious.

In Annual and in what is known as "The Annual Disaster" a series of factors came together that led to the outcome.
It was all so terrible, so chaotic, an inhuman cruelty to which our poor conscripted soldiers were subjected! A result of the incompetence, improvisation, and criminal lack of foresight of the high military command, who only shone and escaped disgrace and shame in isolated cases involving those very same poor conscripts and a few honorable officers who, knowing all was lost, chose to die with honor.

If anyone expects this lecture to be just another one, I must tell you that my intention is to shock you by showing and recounting the events with the same cruelty and starkness as they occurred there. I want you to be able, by the end of this lecture, to appreciate the tremendous cruelty, I repeat, that was unleashed in those fateful days of 1921 in the ravines and hills of the Rif, resulting in the deaths of nearly 9,000 Spanish soldiers and almost another 3,000 Rif soldiers under horrific circumstances. 11,000 dead is a lot of deaths, especially when they are due to the negligence and incompetence of a government and its generals.

Assembly hall
Free admission until capacity is reached