Battle of Annual
| Battle of Annual | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of the Rif War | |||||||
Charge of the River Igan Augusto Ferrer-Dalmau, 2013 | |||||||
| |||||||
| Belligerents | |||||||
| Riffian tribes | Spain | ||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||
| Abd el-Krim | Manuel Silvestre † | ||||||
| Strength | |||||||
| 3,000 | 20,000–23,000 | ||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||
| 800 killed and wounded |
13,192 killed or 12,000-19,000 killed | ||||||
The Battle of Annual was fought on 22 July 1921 at Annual, in northeastern Morocco, between the Spanish Army and Riffian Berbers during the Rif War. The Spanish suffered a major military defeat, which is almost always referred to by the Spanish as the Disaster of Annual (Spanish: Desastre de Annual) which is widely considered to be the worst defeat ever suffered by the modern Spanish Army. It resulted in major political crises, the fall of several governments, a military dictatorship led by Miguel Primo de Rivera, the abdication of King Alfonso XIII and a complete reassessment of the Spanish colonial policy toward the Rif as the entire Spanish colonial enterprise was at one point threatened.