[1] A monarchist opponent of the Second Spanish Republic proclaimed in 1931, he led a coup d'état known as la Sanjurjada in August 1932.

The authorities easily suppressed the coup and initially condemned Sanjurjo to death, then later commuted his sentence to life imprisonment.

Following the coup, Sanjurjo, expected by some to become the commander-in-chief of the Nationalist faction, died in an air crash on the third day of the war, when travelling back to Spain.

With the completion of the 1920 Rif War, King Alfonso XIII awarded him the Gran Cruz de Carlos III on 28 March 1931.

[6] General Dámaso Berenguer was ordered by the king to form a replacement government,[7] which annoyed Sanjurjo, who considered himself far better qualified.

[7] In the municipal elections of 12 April 1931, little support was shown for pro-monarchy parties in the major cities, and large numbers of people gathered in the streets of Madrid.

When Niceto Alcalá-Zamora was replaced as President of the Republic by Azaña on 10 May 1936, Sanjurjo joined with Generals Emilio Mola, Francisco Franco and Gonzalo Queipo de Llano in a plot to overthrow the republican government.

Determined to annihilate the Spanish Republic, when he was asked to become the leader of the rebellion by envoy Luis Bolín on 12 July 1936, Sanjurjo declared: ... to make political parties disappear, to sweep from the national spheres every liberal structure and to destroy their system.

Ansaldo had warned him that the load was too heavy, but Sanjurjo answered back: "I need to wear proper clothes as the new caudillo of Spain.

The larger plane was an 8-passenger de Havilland Dragon Rapide, the same one which had transported Franco from the Canary Islands to Morocco.

His behavior from then on is described as diverging from that of the actual Franco, with Spain taking a less isolated role in World War II and joining the Axis Powers.