Battle of Annual
| Battle of Annual | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of the Rif War | |||||||||
Carga del rio Igan: charge by the Cazadores de Alcántara cavalry regiment at the Igan River, Augusto Ferrer-Dalmau | |||||||||
| |||||||||
| 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 | ||||||||
The Battle of Annual was fought on 22 July 1921 at Annual, in northeastern Morocco, between the Spanish Army and Rifian 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.