José Antonio Primo de Rivera death (although his sentence was commuted). Franco appointed his own brother-in-law Serrano Suñer to replace him. The reign of Francisco Franco nurtured a convenient cult of personality around the dead figure of Primo de Rivera whom Falangists dubbed "El Ausente" (The Missing One). The founder of Falange was anointed a martyr of the "crusade against Marxism." Notwithstanding the apparent veneration by the Francoist State, it remains true that the Missing One's demise had removed a dangerous opponent: Primo de Rivera had been Marquess, a doctor of civil law, a political thinker; Franco owned no comparable pedigree, no comparable education and
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