José Antonio Primo de Rivera Dean of the Illustrious College of Lawyers of Madrid". In 1931, he constituted "Agrupación al Servicio de la República" (Assembly at the Service of the Republic) "and" paradoxically ran for office under the monarchist banner of "Unión Monárquica Nacional"—he failed to get elected. He was detained briefly in 1932 for collaboration in General José Sanjurjo's attempted coup. On October 29, 1933, Primo de Rivera launched the Falange Española ("Spanish Phalanx"), a nationalist party, inspired in part with some ideas, such as the necessity of authority, hierarchical order of society, and grassroots populism, that were being expounded in Italy in the
Miguel Primo de Rivera the wealthy and working classes in Spain at the time. Despite his paternalistic conservatism, Primo de Rivera was enough of a reformer and his policies were radical enough to threaten the interests of the traditional power elite. According to British historian Gerald Brenan, "Spain needed radical reforms and he could only govern by the permission of the two most reactionary forces in the country—the Army and the Church." Primo de Rivera dared not tackle what was seen as Spain's most pressing problem, agrarian reform, because it would have provoked the great landholding elite. Writes historian Richard Herr, "Primo was not