Alfonso García-Valdecasas was born on 14 May 1904 in
Montefrio,
Granada. He obtained a doctorate of law from the
University of Bologna in 1925, and became a chair at the university. Together with
Fernando de los Ríos,
Luis Jiménez de Asúa,
Felipe Sánchez-Román Gallifa,
Wenceslao Roces and
José Ortega y Gasset, García-Valdecasas resigned from his position as chair in 1929 in protest due to Spanish leader
Miguel Primo de Rivera's persecution of student politicians. In 1931, García-Valdecasas joined the parliamentary group known as
Agrupación al Servicio de la República ("The Grouping at the Service of the Republic"), an organization of intellectuals created by José Ortega y Gasset to support
Spanish Republican politicians. He was soon elected as deputy of the Granada constituency in the
1931 Spanish general election. He was secretary of the parliamentary commission involved in drafting the
Spanish Constitution of 1931. In 1932, he left the Agrupación al Servicio de la República to create the
Frente Español (Spanish Front) alongside
José Antonio Maravall, Antonio Garrigues Díaz-Cañabate,
María Zambrano, Antonio Sacristán Colás, Salvador Lissarrague Novoa, Antonio Bouthelier Espasa, Eliseo García del Moral y Bujalarce and Antonio Riaño Lanzarote. He later became involved with the
Movimiento Español Sindicalista (Spanish Syndicalist Movement, or MES). By March 1933, García-Valdecasas began to collaborate with
José Antonio Primo de Rivera, a lawyer and the eldest son of Miguel Primo de Rivera, and the two became founding members of the Falange Española alongside
Julio Ruiz de Alda. The Falange Española was a
fascist successor group that split from the Movimiento Español Sindicalista. García-Valdecasas participated as a speaker at the founding ceremony of the Falange, which was held on 29 October 1933 at the Teatro de la Comedia in Madrid. García-Valdecasas ran under the banner of the Falange in their first election, and was appointed a member of the
Comité de Mando de Falange (Falange Command Committee), alongside cofounders Ruiz de Alda and Primo de Rivera. In November 1933, he ran as a candidate for the right-wing
Bloque de Derechas coalition in Granada, but was replaced by
Ramón Ruiz Alonso. He soon retired from parliamentary politics but remained a member of the Falange. After the breakout of the
Spanish Civil War, García-Valdecasas joined the
Francoist side, and in 1938 he was appointed Undersecretary of Education by
Francisco Franco. Between 1939 and 1943 he served as the first president of the Institute for Political Studies, an organ of the
Falange Española Tradicionalista y de las Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional Sindicalista (FET y de las JONS), successor to the Falange Española and ruling party of
Spain. In 1944, he was removed from his position due to his defence of
Juan de Borbón, count of Barcelona. He then became an attorney in the
Cortes Españolas from 1943 to 1946, and again from 1967 to 1971, and from 1971 to 1977. García-Valdecasa was a member of the
Royal Academy of Jurisprudence and Legislation (elected on 29 July 1939), the
Real Academia de Ciencias Morales y Políticas (Royal Academy of Moral and Political Sciences, elected 1953), and the
Royal Spanish Academy (from 25 April 1965). He died in Madrid on 11 April 1993 at the age of 88. == References ==