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.

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.

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.

The subsequent elections of November 1933 gave victory to the right to which Alcalá-Zamora was very hostile, with constant institutional confrontations throughout its term in office.

The party with the highest number of votes was the Confederación Española de Derechas Autónomas (CEDA), but it did not have enough seats to govern on its own.

He decided to stay away from Spain when he found out that militiamen of the Popular Front government had illegally entered his home, stolen his belongings and plundered his safe-deposit box in the Madrid Crédit Lyonnais bank, taking the manuscript of his memoirs.

An offer was allegedly made to him that he would be left unmolested if he returned since one of his sons was married to a daughter of General Gonzalo Queipo de Llano, one of the leaders of the uprising.