Miguel Primo de Rivera forces. Alfonso XIII suspended the monarchy on 14 April 1931, leaving the royal family in Madrid. The act ushered in the Second Republic. Two years later Primo de Rivera's eldest son, José Antonio, founded the Falange, a Spanish fascist party. Both José Antonio and his brother Fernando were arrested in March 1936 by the republic, and were executed in Alicante prison by Republican forces once the Spanish Civil War began in July 1936. The Nationalists led by Francisco Franco won the Civil War and established a far more authoritarian regime. By that time, many Spaniards regarded Primo de Rivera's relatively
Miguel Primo de Rivera one to waken sleeping dogs, especially if they were big." Primo de Rivera chiefly failed because he did not create a viable, legitimate political system to preserve and continue his reforms. He seems to have sincerely wanted the dictatorship to be as brief as possible and initially hoped that Spain could live with the Constitution of 1876 and a new group of politicians. The problem was to find new civilian leadership to take the place of the military. In 1923, he began to create a new "apolitical" party, the Patriotic Union (UP), which was formally organized the following year. Primo