Fernando Primo de Rivera y Orbaneja Fernando Primo de Rivera y Orbaneja Fernando Primo de Rivera y Orbaneja (Jerez de la Frontera (Cádiz) 30 July 1879 - Mount Arruit, Morocco, 5 August 1921) was a Spanish soldier, brother of the dictator Miguel Primo de Rivera y Orbaneja and uncle of Falange’s founder José Antonio Primo de Rivera. He entered the Cavalry School in Valladolid in 1898, excelling at both riding and fencing. He completed his training in the French Cavalry School in Saumur. In 1909 he married María Cobo de Guzmán. After various postings on the peninsula and being promoted to Captain, he was ordered to
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