José Antonio Primo de Rivera 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 Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera, whom she had known during her stay in Madrid where her husband, Prince Antoine Bibesco was an ambassador (1927–1931): “To Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera. I promised
José Antonio Primo de Rivera no personal ideology. At the end of the war in 1939, the mortal remains of Primo de Rivera were carried on Falangist shoulders from Alicante to Madrid and provisionally interred at El Escorial. In 1959, his mortal remains were exhumed and re-interred in the gargantuan basilica of the Valley of the Fallen outside Madrid. The postwar cult of personality had two ubiquitous icons. The first, a funereal slab placed on the external wall of many churches and cathedrals which bore the crowning inscription, "Caídos por Dios y por España" ("Fallen for God and for Spain"), followed by a list of