Niceto Alcalá-Zamora Torres (July 6th 1877 - February 18th 1949) was there a lawyer and a Spanish Politician , republican, first president of the Republic of 1931 with 1936.

Biography

Niceto Alcalá Zamora was born in Priego de Córdoba the July 6th 1877. Lawyer, member of the liberal party, Catholic progressist, deputy in the Cortes, minister starting from 1917 in the governments of García Prieto, Niceto Alcalá Zamora also represented Spain with the Société of the Nations.

It enters the opposition after the Coup d'etat of the September 13rd 1923 fomented by the General Miguel Primo de Rivera. Disappointed by the behavior of the King Alphonse XIII, Niceto Alcalá Zamora refuses to collaborate with the new mode.

It is converted with the republican ideas into 1930 and is imprisoned following the attempt missed by revolutionary insurrection (revolt of Jaca).

After the victory of the republicans in the provincial capital of Spain to the municipal elections of the April 12th 1931, Alcalá Zamora takes the direction of a provisional revolutionary government the April 14th which proclaims the advent of the second republic. The king Alphonse XIII refuses to cling and gives up the capacity for the exile.

In June 1931, it is confirmed with the presidency of the government but resigns in October 1931, dissatisfied with the new constitutional provisions devoting the separation of the Church and the State and dissolution of the religious orders, considered to be dangerous.

Nevertheless, the December 10th 1931, Niceto Alcalá Zamora is elected president of the Republic by the voices of 362 deputies (on a 410 present total).

In 1933, after the victory of the YIELDED to the legislative elections, it refuses with Jose María Gil-Robles the right to form the government. It justifies its decision by the fact that it wants to avoid an insurrection of the left parties, radically hostile with YIELDED. It will be finally Alejandro Lerroux, the chief of the radical party, which will form a center government.

In 1936, when Gil-Robles decides to use of its right to be appointed head of government, Alcala-Zamora decides to dissolve the Cortes.

After the victory of Frente Popular in 1936, the decision of dissolution of the Cortes will be finally considered to be illegal by the Congress which will proceed to the dismissal of Alcalá Zamora and will elect in its place Manuel Azaña.

Alcalá Zamora is in Scandinavia when bursts the Guerre of Spain. He refuses to return to Spain when he learns that militia of Frente popular invaded and plundered its house and stole the manuscript of its memories which was in the safe of its bank.

He settles then in France which he will also flee after the invasion of the German troops in 1942.

Taken refuge in Argentinian, he refuses to return to Spain in spite of the insurances which are guaranteed to him (his/her son is married with the girl of the general putschist Gonzalo Queipo de Llano).

Alcala-Zamora died in Buenos Aires the February 18th 1949. Its body was repatriated in Spain in 1979 and was buried with the cemetery of Almudena with Madrid.

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