Fernando Álvarez de Sotomayor experienced the vagaries of Modernism (Orpheus Attacked by Bacchantes), even in 1900 when he received the Scholarship of the Spanish Academy in Rome for his painting The Family of the Anarchist on the Day of Execution (the theme set by the San Fernando Academy for the contest, in which Manuel Benedito and Eduardo Chicharro were also scholarship recipients). He would later paint society portraits, a field in which he was highly successful (and would even paint the royal family). He also depicted rural life in Galicia in a luminist style that can be compared to the work of Abram Arkhipov and Anders Zorn. Álvarez de Sotomayor’s portraits follow the traditional approach of the English style established by Anthony van Dyck in the 17^th century and those of Sir Thomas Lawrence, but without the latter’s genius or magnificent quality. His portraits were acceptable, as was his drawing. He taught at and ran the San Fernando Academy, and was the director of the Museo del Prado for two periods: between 1922 and 1931 and between 1939 and 1960.

• Julián Gállego Serrano
• María José Alonso

José Calvo Sotelo’s first posting as a state lawyer was in Toledo. In 1923 he obtained a tenured post in the Legal Department at the Banco de España, which is why his portrait was commissioned from painter Fernando Álvarez de Sotomayor. In December of that same year he asked for unpaid leave and returned to the Bank in 1932, where he would remain until December 1934. His political career began in the Maurist Youth Movement in 1914, after he attended the ‘Maurist hotbed’ lectures at the Athenaeum in Madrid. He was elected to parliament in 1919.

Calvo Sotelo was the General Director for Local Administration during Primo de Rivera’s dictatorship and his administrative reform was embodied in the Municipal Statute (1923) and the Provincial Statute (1925). He was appointed Finance Minister in 1925. The depreciation of the peseta that began in 1928 led to his resignation in January 1930. In 1927, the state oil monopoly was established during his time in office. When he resigned, he opened a law firm but did not turn his back on politics. He founded the National Monarchist Union and launched a manifesto that was received with great hostility.The party disappeared when the Republic was proclaimed and Calvo Sotelo fled into exile in Lisbon and then France. After the 1934 amnesty, he took up his seat in Parliament again in the second biennium of the Second Republic, when the centre-right Radical Republic Party and the Catholic right CEDA party were in power. Calvo Sotelo excelled as the leader of the anti-regime monarchist right in Parliament at that time.On 13 July 1936, he was seized and assassinated in retaliation for the killing of José Castillo, a lieutenant in the Spanish Police Assault Guard. The uproar following Calvo Sotelo’s assassination pushed those wavering in the military to join the conspiracy of Mola, Franco and Varela.

Paloma Gómez Pastor