Adolfo Suárez González

prime minister of Spain
Also known as: Adolfo Suárez González, 1st duke of Suárez, grandee of Spain
Quick Facts
In full:
Adolfo Suárez González, 1st duke of Suárez, grandee of Spain
Born:
September 25, 1932, Cebreros, near Ávila, Spain
Died:
March 23, 2014, Madrid (aged 81)
Title / Office:
prime minister (1976-1981), Spain
Founder:
Central Democratic Union

Adolfo Suárez González (born September 25, 1932, Cebreros, near Ávila, Spain—died March 23, 2014, Madrid) was a Spanish politician who, as prime minister of Spain (1976–81), worked closely with King Juan Carlos to dismantle the authoritarian regime (1939–75) that Francisco Franco had controlled and to transform Spain into a multiparty constitutional monarchy.

Suárez’s father was a minor civil servant, and his mother belonged to a politically influential Cebreros family. At the age of 16 he entered the University of Salamanca, and at age 21 he received a degree in law. He later obtained a doctorate cum laude from the University of Madrid. He held various small posts in the provinces, most of them within Franco’s National Movement. He later worked with the national radio and television network and became responsible for the first television channel. After serving as civil governor and provincial head of the National Movement in Segovia during 1968–69, he moved back to radio and television as director general. Government censorship laws were relaxed during his tenure.

In March 1975 he was appointed deputy secretary-general of the National Movement and in December, after Franco’s death, he was appointed secretary-general, with cabinet rank, by Prime Minister Carlos Arias Navarro. Also in 1975 he was a founding member of the Union of the Spanish People, a mildly reformist political association within the National Movement, of which he later became president. In June 1976 he strongly defended in the Cortes (parliament) the new law legalizing political parties.

In July 1976 his appointment to head Spain’s second government under King Juan Carlos provoked mixed reactions. Although he was more liberal than the old Francoists, Suárez’s position in Franco’s National Movement guaranteed at least a measure of loyalty to the Francoist past. In addition, Suárez had links to the powerful Roman Catholic lay organization Opus Dei. Upon gaining office, however, Suárez showed moderation in his policies. He opened political dialogue, challenging Francoist sentiment in the military by legalizing the socialist and communist parties, and he called Spain’s first free elections since 1936.

Suárez formed a political party consisting of social democrats and liberals, the Union of the Democratic Centre (Unión de Centro Democrático, or UCD). His party won the elections in 1977, and Suárez was elected to a four-year term. His government was increasingly plagued, however, by the push for autonomy by several of Spain’s regions and, toward the same end, by heightened terrorist activity on the part of the Basque separatist group ETA. Already in 1978 there was strain within Suárez’s own party and increasing popular competition from the opposition Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party. In elections in 1979 the UCD failed to win an overall majority in the Cortes, but Suárez retained sufficient parliamentary support to remain in power. He was compelled to form a fifth cabinet in September 1980 and gained another vote of confidence only by promising members of the Andalusian Socialist Party a fully autonomous regional government, which added to the government’s loss of popularity nationwide. In addition, Basque terrorism was on the rise; in 1980 there was an average of one political assassination every three days.

Suárez resigned as prime minister in 1981. Later that year King Juan Carlos awarded him the hereditary titles duke of Suárez and grandee of Spain. In 1982 Suárez founded a new political party, the Democratic and Social Centre, but it never achieved any significance. He made his last public appearance in 2003, before being diagnosed with Alzheimer disease.

This article was most recently revised and updated by Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Quick Facts
Date:
July 17, 1936 - March 28, 1939
Location:
Spain
Participants:
Republican
Nationalists
Top Questions

What caused the Spanish Civil War?

Who fought in the Spanish Civil War?

How was the Spanish Civil War a preview for World War II?

How did the Spanish Civil War end?

News

The Australians who fought General Franco and his forces in the Spanish Civil War May 20, 2025, 11:04 PM ET (ABC News (Australia))

Spanish Civil War, (1936–39), military revolt against the Republican government of Spain, supported by conservative elements within the country. When an initial military coup failed to win control of the entire country, a bloody civil war ensued, fought with great ferocity on both sides. The Nationalists, as the rebels were called, received aid from Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. The Republicans received aid from the Soviet Union as well as from the International Brigades, composed of volunteers from Europe and the United States.

The war was an outcome of a polarization of Spanish life and politics that had developed over previous decades. On one side, the Nationalist, were most Roman Catholics, important elements of the military, most landowners, and many businessmen. On the other side, the Republican, were urban workers, most agricultural labourers, and many of the educated middle class. Politically, their differences often found extreme and vehement expression in parties such as the Fascist-oriented Falange and the militant anarchists. Between these extremes were other groups covering the political spectrum from monarchism and conservatism through liberalism to socialism, including a small communist movement divided among followers of the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and his archrival, Leon Trotsky. In 1934 there was widespread labour conflict and a bloody uprising by miners in Asturias that was suppressed by troops led by General Francisco Franco. A succession of governmental crises culminated in the elections of February 16, 1936, which brought to power a Popular Front government supported by most of the parties of the left and opposed by the parties of the right and what remained of the centre.

A well-planned military uprising began on July 17, 1936, in garrison towns throughout Spain. By July 21 the rebels had achieved control in Spanish Morocco, the Canary Islands, and the Balearic Islands (except Minorca) and in the part of Spain north of the Guadarrama mountains and the Ebro River, except for Asturias, Santander, and the Basque provinces along the north coast and the region of Catalonia in the northeast. The Republican forces had put down the uprising in other areas, except for some of the larger Andalusian cities, including Sevilla (Seville), Granada, and Córdoba. The Nationalists and Republicans proceeded to organize their respective territories and to repress opposition or suspected opposition. Republican violence occurred primarily during the early stages of the war before the rule of law was restored, but the Nationalist violence was part of a conscious policy of terror. The matter of how many were killed remains highly contentious; however, it is generally believed that the toll of Nationalist violence was higher. In any event, the proliferation of executions, murders, and assassinations on both sides reflects the great passions that the Civil War unleashed.

D-Day. American soldiers fire rifles, throw grenades and wade ashore on Omaha Beach next to a German bunker during D Day landing. 1 of 5 Allied beachheads est. in Normandy, France. The Normandy Invasion of World War II launched June 6, 1944.
Britannica Quiz
A History of War

The captaincy of the Nationalists was gradually assumed by General Franco, leading forces he had brought from Morocco. On October 1, 1936, he was named head of state and set up a government in Burgos. The Republican government, beginning in September 1936, was headed by the socialist leader Francisco Largo Caballero. He was followed in May 1937 by Juan Negrín, also a socialist, who remained premier throughout the remainder of the war and served as premier in exile until 1945. The president of the Spanish Republic until nearly the end of the war was Manuel Azaña, an anticlerical liberal. Internecine conflict compromised the Republican effort from the outset. On one side were the anarchists and militant socialists, who viewed the war as a revolutionary struggle and spearheaded widespread collectivization of agriculture, industry, and services; on the other were the more moderate socialists and republicans, whose objective was the preservation of the Republic. Seeking allies against the threat of Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union had embraced a Popular Front strategy, and, as a result, the Comintern directed Spanish communists to support the Republicans.

Both the Nationalist and Republican sides, seeing themselves as too weak to win a quick victory, turned abroad for help. Germany and Italy sent troops, tanks, and planes to aid the Nationalists. The Soviet Union contributed equipment and supplies to the Republicans, who also received help from the Mexican government. During the first weeks of the war, the Popular Front government of France also supported the Republicans, but internal opposition forced a change of policy. In August 1936, France joined Britain, the Soviet Union, Germany, and Italy in signing a nonintervention agreement that would be ignored by the Germans, Italians, and Soviets. About 40,000 foreigners fought on the Republican side in the International Brigades largely under the command of the Comintern, and 20,000 others served in medical or auxiliary units.

By November 1936 the Nationalists had advanced to the outskirts of Madrid. They laid siege to it but were unable to get beyond the University City area. They captured the Basque northern provinces in the summer of 1937 and then Asturias, so that by October they held the whole northern coast. A war of attrition began. The Nationalists drove a salient eastward through Teruel, reaching the Mediterranean and splitting the republic in two in April 1938. In December 1938 they moved upon Catalonia in the northeast, forcing the Republican armies there northward toward France. By February 1939, 250,000 Republican soldiers, together with an equal number of civilians, had fled across the border into France. On March 5 the Republican government flew to exile in France. On March 7 a civil war broke out in Madrid between communist and anticommunist factions. By March 28 all of the Republican armies had begun to disband and surrender, and Nationalist forces entered Madrid on that day.

The number of persons killed in the Spanish Civil War can be only roughly estimated. Nationalist forces put the figure at 1,000,000, including not only those killed in battle but also the victims of bombardment, execution, and assassination. More recent estimates have been closer to 500,000 or less. This does not include all those who died from malnutrition, starvation, and war-engendered disease.

Are you a student?
Get a special academic rate on Britannica Premium.

The political and emotional reverberations of the war far transcended those of a national conflict, for many in other countries saw the Spanish Civil War as part of an international conflict between—depending on their point of view—tyranny and democracy, or fascism and freedom, or communism and civilization. For Germany and Italy, Spain was a testing ground for new methods of tank and air warfare. For Britain and France, the conflict represented a new threat to the international equilibrium that they were struggling to preserve, which in 1939 collapsed into World War II. The war also had mobilized many artists and intellectuals to take up arms. Among the most notable artistic responses to the war were the novels Man’s Hope (1938) by André Malraux, Adventures of a Young Man (1939) by John Dos Passos, and For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) by Ernest Hemingway; George Orwell’s memoir Homage to Catalonia (1938); Pablo Picasso’s painting Guernica (1937); and Robert Capa’s photograph Death of a Loyalist Soldier, Spain (1936).

This article was most recently revised and updated by Encyclopaedia Britannica.