Spanish Civil War
Leaders & Personalities
Postcard depicting Francisco Franco in a three-quarter length pose. The card was sent during the Spanish Civil War from Zaragoza to an address in Bologna, Italy. Ref: 14.10.1937
Spanish Civil War
LEADERS & PERSONALITIES
Francisco Franco (1892-1975). Link to further information.
José Antonio Primo de Rivera (1903 - 1936), 1st Duke of Primo de Rivera, 3rd Marquess of Estella, often referred to simply as José Antonio, was a Spanish fascist politician who founded the Falange Española ('Spanish Phalanx'), later Falange Española de las JONS.
On 14th March 1936, he was arrested in Madrid and charged with illegal possession of firearms (at that time, Spain was awash in privately held weapons on the part of all political factions). Nine weeks later he was transferred to the prison in Alicante. In both Madrid and in Alicante, he was able to maintain intermittent secret contact with the Falange leadership and, several times, with General Emilio Mola. On 3rd October he was charged with conspiracy against the Republic and military insurrection, both capital offences, even though he had been imprisoned long before the insurrection of 18th July. Primo de Rivera conducted his own defence. On 18th November he was found guilty by a people's tribunal and sentenced to death by firing squad. The three career judges who participated in the trial, along with the popular tribunal, asked for the death sentence be commuted to life imprisonment but this was rejected by the majority of government ministers (the two ministers from Izquierda Republicana voted against the death sentence). The sentence was carried out on 20th November by local authorities in Alicante.
It is said by some that the Republic offered the Nationalists a prisoner exchange involving Primo de Rivera and a son of the Republic's head of government Francisco Largo Caballero and that Franco turned down the offer. Others contend that it was the Republican government who rejected the deal of the Nationalists and that General Franco approved several failed commando raids on the Alicante prison to try to rescue José Antonio. Either way the death of the founder of Falange rid the general of a formidable rival. Perhaps tellingly, it was well known that the two men disliked each other. After one of the two meetings they had, Franco dismissed José Antonio as 'a playboy pinturero' (a foppish playboy).
Elizabeth Bibesco's last novel, The Romantic, published in 1940, starts with a dedication to José Antonio Primo de Rivera, whom she had known during her stay in Madrid where her husband, Prince Antoine Bibesco, was a diplomat from Romania in Spain between 1927 and 1931: 'To José Antonio Primo de Rivera. I promised you a book before it was begun. It is yours now that it is finished – Those we love die for us only when we die–'.
Source: Wikipedia
Enrique Marzo Balaguer (1875 - 1947) was a Spanish soldier and politician, Minister of the Interior during the Dictablanda of General Dámaso Berenguer.
Balaguer was promoted to Brigadier General in 1918 and Lieutenant General in 1926. He held the position of Captain General of the Balearic Islands when he was appointed Minister of the Interior on 30th January 1930. He held the position in the cabinet of General Dámaso Berenguer until the 25th November of the same year, when he was replaced by Leopoldo Matos y Massieu. He died on 18th April 1947.
Source: Wikipedia
Further research required as to Balaguer's involvement in the Spanish Civil War
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