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The sporting life, which offered Franco virtually his only escape from official routine, was abandoned in recent years for the regal pleasures of a cloistered castle existence: liveried servants, Moorish guards on white stallions, walls covered with Goya tapestries—and obsequiousness everywhere. Foreign ambassadors who were granted audiences with the Caudillo had a precise protocol of steps and bows. In addition to his love of pomp, Franco was a man of rigid decorum, methodical habit and deep Christian piety; his orderly days included regular attendance at Mass and midnight recitation of the rosary with his wife, the former Carmen Polo y Martinez Valdés. His few moments of relaxation were spent with his six grandchildren by his only child Carmencita, or in painting. Seascapes were his favorite subject.
Though he was a legend to his people, Franco was never close to them. The son of a naval paymaster, he was born in Galicia on the Atlantic coast. Franco entered the Academia de Infanteria at Toledo in 1907 at the age of 15. During the Spanish campaign against the Riffs of Morocco between 1912 and 1926 he gained a reputation for unflinching physical courage. A three-time winner of the Medal of Military Merit, Franco was promoted to Spain's youngest captain at 22, major at 23, colonel at 32, and, at 33, he became the youngest general in Europe since Napoleon.
Franco, as recent generations of Spaniards have been allowed to forget, was not a rebel leader before the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. Although he was King Alfonso's favorite general, Franco remained cautiously on the sidelines when the monarchy, abolished in a democratic election in 1931, was replaced by a reformist Republican government whose moderate policies were opposed by extremists of both right and left. He refused to take part in several abortive, ill-planned military revolts against the Republicans, and in 1934 crushed an anti-Republican uprising of Asturian miners so mercilessly that he earned the nickname "Butcher." His loyalties, however, seemed more a matter of timing than of principle. When a leftist Popular Front government of Communists, socialists and anarchists swept the elections of 1936, bringing waves of street fighting, strikes and assassinations, Franco finally joined a plot by military men, fascists, monarchists and rightists of all persuasions to overthrow the Republican government. On July 17, 1936, the daring young general gained world headlines by launching a successful air and sea invasion of the Spanish mainland. Within 24 hours, Hitler and Mussolini were sending men and supplies to the rebels, and the Republic had clearly found its archadversary. Franco was proclaimed Generalissimo of the rebel forces and Chief of State in a brief ceremony at Burgos on Oct. 1,1936.