Cara al Sol Cara al Sol Cara al Sol ("") is the anthem of the Falange Española de las JONS. The lyrics were written in December 1935 and are usually credited to the leader of the Falange, José Antonio Primo de Rivera. The music was composed by Juan Tellería and Juan R. Buendia. The circumstances of its creation are unusual. The Falangists needed a stirring song of their own to counter the popular appeal of "El Himno de Riego" (the official anthem of the Second Spanish Republic) and "A las barricadas" (a very popular Anarchist song). To solve the problem, Primo de Rivera
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