Networks of Imputation and the Judicial Construction of Conspiracy: A Network Analysis of a Political Case File under the Primo de Rivera Dictatorship (1929)

This article proposes a methodological approach based on Social Network Analysis (SNA), critically applied to a judicial case file, specifically to examine the charge of conspiracy formulated in Summary Proceedings 166/1929, conducted during the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera. In contrast to interpretations that assume the existence of an underlying clandestine organization, the study analytically distinguishes between documented networks of sociability and networks of imputation produced by the judicial procedure itself. Based on the complete transcription of the proceedings, three differentiated network layers are reconstructed: explicitly declared person–person relations, bipartite person–space networks, and person–documentary evidence networks. These layers are projected through a controlled and weighted procedure designed to prevent the analytical fabrication of co-implication based on formal membership or spatial coincidence. The results reveal an extensive but weak social structure compatible with open cultural and associative environments, alongside intense but localized material evidence insufficient to support the existence of an organized conspiracy. The analysis highlights the active role of judicial proceedings in producing connectivity, centralities, and structural coherence, as well as the function of visual dispositifs—particularly a schematic diagram incorporated into the case file—in anticipating and stabilizing the conspiratorial hypothesis. In order to ensure transparency and replicability, all data, the complete transcription of the judicial file, and the Python code used in the analysis have been deposited in a public open-access repository (Zenodo). The article concludes that conspiracy does not emerge as a demonstrable empirical reality, but as a judicial construction of relational ties, and proposes a replicable methodological framework for the historical study of political justice and preventive repression.