Niceto Alcalá-Zamora

Niceto Alcalá-Zamora y Torres (6 July 1877 – 18 February 1949) was a Spanish lawyer and politician who served, briefly, as the first prime minister of the Second Spanish Republic, and then—from 1931 to 1936—as its president. Alcalá-Zamora was born on 6 July 1877 in Priego de Cordoba, son of Manuel Alcalá-Zamora y Caracuel and Francisca Torres y del Castillo. His mother died when Niceto was three years old. A lawyer by profession, from a very young age, he was active in the Liberal Party. Chosen as a deputy, he quickly gained fame for his eloquent interventions in the Congress of Deputies, becoming Minister of Public Works in 1917 and of War in 1922, and it comprised part of the governments of concentration presided over by García Prieto. He was also Spain's representative in the League of Nations. Disappointed by the acceptance on the part of King Alfonso XIII of the coup d'état by General Miguel Primo de Rivera on 13 September 1923, Alcalá-Zamora did not collaborate with the new regime. After the departure of the dictator in 1930, he declared himself a republican in a meeting that took place on 13 April in the Apolo Theatre of Valencia. He was one of the instigators of the Pact of San Sebastián. The failure of the military uprising (Revolt of Jaca) in Aragon the same year sent him to prison, as a member of the revolutionary committee, but he left jail after the municipal elections of 12 April 1931. In the elections, although the monarchist candidates won more overall votes than the republicans did, the republicans did so well in the provincial cities that Alfonso soon abandoned power. Without waiting for a fresh election, Alcalá Zamora put himself at the head of a revolutionary provisional government, becoming the 122nd Prime Minister, which occupied the ministries in Madrid on 14 April and proclaimed the Second Spanish Republic. Confirmed as Prime Minister in June, he resigned on 15 October, along with Miguel Maura, the minister of the interior.