.jpg) Alfonso XIII in 1932, after having been renamed España
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| History | |
|---|---|
  Spain | |
| Name | Alfonso XIII (renamed España in 1931) |
| Namesake | King Alfonso XIII of Spain; after 1931, the country of Spain |
| Builder | SECN, Naval Dockyard, El Ferrol, Spain |
| Laid down | 23 February 1910 |
| Launched | 7 May 1913 |
| Completed | 16 August 1915 |
| Fate | Sunk by naval mine, 30 April 1937 |
| General characteristics | |
| Class and type | España-class battleship |
| Displacement | |
| Length | 140 m (459 ft 4 in) o/a |
| Beam | 24 m (78 ft 9 in) |
| Draft | 7.8 m (25 ft 7 in) |
| Installed power |
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| Propulsion |
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| Speed | 19.5 knots (36.1 km/h) |
| Range | 5,000 nmi (9,300 km) at 10 knots (19 km/h) |
| Complement | 854 |
| Armament |
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| Armor |
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Alfonso XIII was the second of three España-class dreadnought battleships built in the 1910s for the Spanish Navy. Named after King Alfonso XIII of Spain, the ship was not completed until 1915 owing to a shortage of materials that resulted from the start of World War I the previous year. The España class was ordered as part of a naval construction program to rebuild the fleet after the losses of the Spanish–American War; the program began in the context of closer Spanish relations with Britain and France. The ships were armed with a main battery of eight 305 mm (12 in) guns and were intended to support the French Navy in the event of a major European war.
Despite the reason for the ships' construction, Spain remained neutral during World War I. Alfonso XIII's early career passed largely uneventfully with routine training exercises in Spanish waters, though she was used to assist civilian vessels in distress and her crew was deployed to suppress civil unrest in Spain. In the 1920s, she took part in the Rif War in the Spanish protectorate in Morocco, where her sister España was wrecked. In 1931, Alfonso XIII abdicated and the Second Spanish Republic was proclaimed; the new republic sought to erase remnants of the royal order, and so Alfonso XIII was renamed España. As part of cost-cutting measures, the ship was then reduced to reserve. Plans to modernize España and her sister Jaime I in the mid-1930s came to nothing when the Spanish coup of July 1936 initiated the Spanish Civil War.
At the start of the conflict, the crew murdered the ship's officers and attempted to resist the Nationalist rebels in Ferrol, but after the Nationalists seized coastal artillery batteries, they surrendered. España then became the core of the Nationalist fleet and she was used to enforce a blockade of the north coast of Spain, frequently patrolling and stopping freighters that attempted to enter the Republican-controlled ports of Gijón, Santander, and Bilbao. During these operations on 30 April 1937, she was fatally damaged when she accidentally struck a mine that had been laid by a Nationalist minelayer. Most of her crew was evacuated by the destroyer Velasco before España capsized and sank; only four were killed in the sinking. The wreck was discovered and examined in 1984.