Miguel Primo de Rivera y Urquijo of José Antonio Primo de Rivera, the founder and leader of Falange Española. He attended school with future King Juan Carlos I of Spain. It was in their school years that they became life-long friends. Because of his friendship with then Prince Juan Carlos and his commitment to the restoration of the monarchy after General Franco's death, he lobbyied inside the Francoist institutions, as instructed by the newly proclaimed King, to produce a candidate for Prime Minister, namely Adolfo Suárez, who was prepared to implement democratic reform. He was then tasked with presenting the Political Reform Bill to the Francoist
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