minister of the Civil Directory of the dictatorship in 1925, and he served from December 1925 until January 1930. During his tenure as Minister of Finance, his programme to achieve economic growth featured protectionist, nationalist and interventionist policies. Second Republic After the proclamation of the Second Spanish Republic on 14 April 1931, Calvo Sotelo, because of his prior collaboration with the dictatorship and his fear of being subject to trial, went into exile to Portugal and later France along with other politicians. He was welcomed the day after his arrival in Lisbon by António de Oliveira Salazar, then minister of Finance. Calvo Sotelo spent his time in Portugal studying the Ditadura Nacional regime. After being given a passport by the Portuguese authorities, he lived between February 1932 and May 1934 in Paris, where he became connected with the ideas of Charles Maurras. He also befriended Léon Daudet, Jacques Bainville and Charles Benoist in France. Despite his exile he had been elected as member of the parliament for the district of Orense both in the 1931 and 1933 elections. After the passing of an amnesty law on 20 April 1934, he returned to Spain with the intention of leaving an imprint on the Alfonsine right, then represented by Renovación Española and led by Antonio Goicoechea. After his return, he had also tried to join the Fascist Falange Española de las JONS, but, albeit endorsed by Ruiz de Alda and Ledesma, his application was vetoed by José Antonio Primo de Rivera, who understood his leadership was being challenged and deemed the Galician politician as "reactionary". By the 9 May Calvo Sotelo was in the Cortes. He stated that the "Restoration" of the prior liberal monarchy was not intended, but the "instauration" of an anti-liberal one. Sotelo had more personal charisma than Goicoechea and eventually eclipsed him. He became the leading figure of the Bloque Nacional ('National Block'), a newly created electoral project that sought to unite the anti-republican right. The foundational manifesto espoused a return to traditional values, through the means of an authoritarian monarchy and the role of the Armed Forces as counter-revolutionary agent. Neither the leader of the CEDA (José María Gil-Robles) nor the leader of the Falange Española de las JONS (José Antonio Primo de Rivera) endorsed the initiative, which, aside from members of Renovación Española, drew most of its support from the ranks of the traditionalist Carlists. It