José Antonio Primo de Rivera of one-party rule Falange preferred the formalities of a liberal democracy. The party had no formal view on religion other than to guarantee freedom of worship while at the same time acknowledging and affirming that Roman Catholicism was the historical religion of the Spanish people and its spiritual role in society was important to them. In Primo de Rivera's thinking the ultimate goal of the new political movement was the resurgence of Spain as a major power. Article 1 of the Falangist Manifesto of 1934 reads, We believe in the supreme reality of Spain. To strengthen her, to make her
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