But in the 1936 elections as proof of his poor support among public opinion, José Antonio didn’t get a single seat. By then, the Falange was already decidedly inclined towards the use of force and the abandonment of the legal political struggle, against the rise of power of the left and of regional nationalisms, which he understood it as threats against his essential values. The 1936 electoral defeat confirmed that trend and launched the Falangists to gunslinger and conspiracy against the Republic.
In that same year, the leftist government declared the Falange illegal as responsible for public disorders, and imprisoned its head, José Antonio Primo de Rivera. Five months later, the military coup d'etat led by generals Emilio Mola and Francisco Franco took place, with which the Guerra Civil began (1936-1939). The republican government, aware of the collusion of the Falange with the coup plotters, transferred José Antonio from Madrid to a safer prison in Alicante, where he was sentenced to death by a popular court and shot.
The military raised in arms against the Republic did nothing to save the life of José Antonio, whose death in full youth gave them a heroic myth widely exploited in the following years; at the same time, the disappearance of José Antonio eliminated from the rebel side the only leader with charisma that could
The Falange Española flag's.
shade the military, leaving the expeditious path for the conversion of the Falange into a single party of the regime (unified with the traditionalists forming FET of the JONS), a domesticated Falange and devoid of its initial revolutionary mysticism, with Francisco Franco as national leader.
- 15 -