“Do not faint! Know that in its old foci the Falange stands firm in the open and that in these hours of collective despondency it rehabilitates, with its combative courage, the national decorum of the Spanish”.
This time, spring did not laugh again for José Antonio Primo de Rivera when the authorities in charge of the recently inaugurated Popular Front government arrested the Falangist leader on March 14 for illegal possession of firearms, finding two pistols in his home .
The veracity of this accusation is something that today remains in question, since what was really sought was to keep him away from the possible military uprising that the government already suspected, since Primo de Rivera had been suspected on several occasions of being involved. in conspiracy plots that had as their objective the overthrow of a Second Republic that, according to him, was really directed from the Stalinist spheres that came from Russia through Azaña, which he referred to as the «Spanish Kerensky»and, therefore, of the Popular Front government.
Explaining it from an objective point of view, the Falange did not represent in the period of the Second Republic the maximum exponent of the conservative right in Spain, but its message had penetrated deeply among the university youth.
The most important traditionalist parties at that time were the Spanish Renovation, with leaders such as Antonio Goicoechea and José Calvo Sotelo, the Traditionalist Communion or the CEDA of José María Gil Robles. All these parties were in favor of an insurrection, both civil and military, since they considered that the Republic had become an aberration that threatens Spanish values and morals.
To these was added in 1934 the Spanish Falange, a party whose ideology was inspired by the doctrines of Italian fascism, which saw the possibility of reestablishing the order that had been lost in the Second Republic with the inauguration of a totalitarian government, in the one in charge would be Primo de Rivera.
Jose Antonio was a charismatic leader, knowledgeable about the law and who distanced himself from the traditional Spanish right because he considered that it had lost its proximity to the people, without thinking about its real needs. This character, added to the continuous trips he made throughout the national territory, allowed him to have followers among the younger right and his message to penetrate among them.
To promote this change of government, he sought a rapprochement between various Spanish soldiers who were not very supportive of the situation, coming to devise a government that would include Francisco Franco as Minister of National Defense, Emilio Mola as Minister of the Interior and Ramón Serrano Suñer as Minister of Justice. .
In 1935, he brought together the leadership of the Falange at the Gredos inn to plan a military insurrection that would begin in Fuentes de Oñoro (Salamanca) so that General Sanjurjo, who was in exile, could join it. at that time in Estoril (Portugal). However, the military leaders who were planning the uprising did not plan to include José Antonio in their plans, leaving the Falange in relative oblivion from which it would not emerge until the death of its most relevant figures: Onesimo Redondo, Ramiro Ledesma and José Antonio Primo de Rivera.
Imprisonment and transfer to Alicante
After being arrested and taken to the Madrid Model Prison on March 14, 1936, he is finally transferred on June 5 to the Alicante prison, from which he will never leave.
As of May, he will maintain contact with General Mola through a series of letters, where he realizes that the Falange is not going to have a transcendental ideological role in the military uprising. Because of this, he will send a series of letters on June 24 to the territorial leaders of the Falange urging them not to support an insurrection in which they are considered nothing more than a mere shock force. However, five days later he changed his mind, considering that they should not be left out of that movement, again sending various circulars so that the various sections of the Falange put themselves at the service of the different military leaders when the conflict broke out.
As Paul Preston tells us in «The Spanish right in the 20th century: authoritarianism, fascism and coup» On July 13, José Antonio wrote a letter to Emilio Mola urging him the need to advance the military uprising. This message crossed with the one that General Mola sent him informing him of the date of the uprising.
On July 18, when the Civil War began, José Antonio was still imprisoned in Alicante, which made it impossible for him to join the coup and for him to efficiently direct the movements and the role he wanted his party to play in the conflict. Despite having planned various escape plans that were never carried out, and rejecting the offer of a group of members of the Assault Guard from Alicante to take him out of prison in a truck on July 18 and thus take him away from Alicante, where initially the uprising had a resounding failure.
However, during the four months following the coup, continuing his stay in the Alicante prison, José Antonio’s discourse softened and he went from fully supporting the coup and considering it as something “absolutely necessary and an element of progress” to seek a conciliatory position by proposing to Martín Echevarría, delegate of the Government Board of Levante, his abandonment in prison and integration into the government to try to carry out a series of steps in the revolted area aimed at putting an immediate end to the civil war, stating that after them he would resume his sentence in prison. In addition, it is known that José Antonio went so far as to affirm that a civil conflict would cause Spain to unravel and that the absolute triumph of one side without any supervision would have as a consequence a setback of the conquests achieved in the social, economic and political spheres.
After two pistols and one hundred rounds of ammunition were found in the cell of José Antonio and Miguel Primo de Rivera, all the privileges that the inmates had in prison due to their position were cut and both entered a regime of solitary confinement with the outside world.
All the attempts to release and exchange prisoners among whom José Antonio would enter failed, although no special emphasis was placed on them either, since the figure of the leader of the Falange, as has been verified in the subsequent years of the war and throughout the regime pro-Francoist, it turned out to be more useful by focusing on her as a martyr, because after José Calvo Sotelo died, the soldiers who carried out the uprising, especially Francisco Franco, would not have to deal with a true political leader who questioned their decisions and who had the capacity to mobilize masses that would threaten the government plan that would be developed during the conflict, and Serrano Suñer himself later affirmed that Franco had no special sympathy for José Antonio.
Finally, the case against José Antonio Primo de Rivera for conspiracy and military rebellion was opened on October 3, and proceedings were carried out against his brother Miguel and his sister-in-law Margarita Larios. After appearing for the first time on November 3, the oral hearing was held on November 16 and 17, in which 14 members of the jury found José Antonio and Miguel guilty of conspiracy and Margarita as an accomplice to it, however , Miguel was sentenced to life imprisonment, Margarita to 6 years in prison and José Antonio to die under the bullets of a firing squad.
According to some versions, the execution ordered by the Public Order Committee for the morning of November 20 did not reach the knowledge of the government of the Republic.
When the order was carried out, the remains of José Antonio Primo de Rivera, 33 years old, were placed in a mass grave in the Alicante cemetery. With the entry of the national troops in the municipality of Alicante, the remains of the Falangist founder were exhumed on March 31, 1939, being housed in their own niche in the city’s cemetery. However, once the war was over, on November 9, 1939, it was agreed to transfer his mortal remains to the Basilica of El Escorial, where his coffin would be carried on the shoulders of members of the Falange from Alicante to San Lorenzo de El Escorial itself. , where he would remain until his lodging in the recently inaugurated Basilica of the Valley of the Fallen in 1959, where he rests today.
After the inauguration of the regime in 1939, Francisco Franco used everything related to José Antonio as a propaganda element for a martyr who had died for his country, writing and publishing his speeches, erecting monuments in honor of him, narrating his words to through radio and television, making commemorative plaques with the will of Primo de Rivera and even using his word as a justification for his government and each of his acts.
Testament of José Antonio Primo de Rivera
«Condemned yesterday to death, I ask God that if he still does not exempt me from reaching that trance, that he preserve me until the end the decorous conformity with which I foresee it and, when judging my soul, do not apply the measure of my merits, but that of his infinite mercy.
The scruple assails me as to whether it will be vanity and excessive attachment to the things of the earth to want to leave accounts of some of my acts at this juncture; but since, on the other hand, I have dragged the faith of many of my comrades to a far greater extent than my own worth (too well known to me, to the point of dictating this sentence to me with the simplest and most contrite sincerity), and since I have even driven countless of them to bear enormous risks and responsibilities, it seemed to me inconsiderate ingratitude to walk away from all of them without any kind of explanation.
It is not necessary for me to repeat now what I have said and written so many times about what the founders of the Spanish Falange intended it to be. It amazes me that, even after three years, the vast majority of our compatriots persist in judging us without even beginning to understand us and even without having sought or accepted the slightest information. If the Falange consolidates into a lasting thing, I hope that everyone perceives the pain that so much blood has been shed for not having opened a gap of serene attention between the fury of one side and the antipathy of another. May that spilled blood forgive me for my part in provoking it, and may the comrades who preceded me in sacrifice welcome me as the last of them.
Yesterday, for the last time, I explained to the Court that I was being judged by what the Falange is. As on so many occasions, I reviewed, I adduced the old texts of our family doctrine. Once again, I observed that a great many faces, at first hostile, lit up, first…