Ricardo Rada Peral (1885-1956) was a Spanish officer, who rose to the rank of lieutenant general. In the 1910s and 1920s he spent 12 years in Morocco, both on combat missions and garrison service; during the Spanish Civil War he sided with the Nationalists and commanded units up to a corps. In the 1940s he was the first commander of the first Spanish armored division. His highest army assignment was command of the II. Military Region (Seville) in 1946-1952. He is best known as instructor and de facto leader of paramilitary militias of the Falangists (Primera Línea) in 1933-1934 and the Carlists (Requeté) in 1935-1936. Until the 1930s he did not engage in politics; later following a brief period in Falange Española he joined Comunión Tradicionalista and entered the top Carlist wartime executive. In the late 1930s he fully identified with the Francoist regime and abandoned other party activity.
Family and youth
Rada descended from an Andalusian family of military traditions. His paternal grandfather, Ricardo Rada Martínez from Granada (died 1900) served in Guardia Civil. He fought during the Hispano-Moroccan war and during the Third Carlist War in the Alfonsist ranks; he received military honors for his contribution to defense of Bilbao and other campaigns. Since the late 1870s he held numerous high Guardia Civil positions in Andalusia and retired as a highly decorated coronel subinspector of the Benemérita. At unspecified time he married Nicolasa Cortines Espinosa de los Monteros; they had 5 children. One of them was the father of Ricardo, most likely the oldest of the siblings, Ricardo Rada Cortines (1858-1923). He also joined Guardia Civil, but later moved to infantry; in 1888 he served as teniente, in 1903 he was comandante, in 1911 he rose to teniente coronel, and he retired as general de brigada. He married Natalia Peral Obispo (1861-1946), daughter to a landholder family from Guadix; she later inherited real estate in Fiñana and Abla.
The couple had 9 children, Ricardo born as the second oldest and the first son. There is close to nothing known about his childhood, probably spent in the maternal estates; in the late 1890s he was already a boarder at the Instituto Provincional in Almeria. Relatively late at the age of 21 he commenced the military career; in 1906 Rada entered the infantry academy in Toledo. He progressed in line with the standard curriculum and graduated in 1909; he was nominated to the lowest officer rank, segundo teniente. His first assignment was to Badajoz, where in 1909 he commenced regular garrison duties.<ref>Brocos Fernández 2008. However, contemporary press claimed that as segundo teniente in 1910 Rada was posted to detachment of the Cordoba regiment, stationed in Granada, 'Cronica Meridional 27.01.10, available here</ref>
In 1911 Rada married Presentación Martínez Martínez; her father Juan Manuel Martínez Alcalde was the landowner from Huéneja. Ricardo and Presentación had 5 children, born between the early 1910s and the early 1920s. Ricardo and Francisco Rada Martínez joined the army and served in Nationalist troops during the civil war; the former later specialized as engineer and in the early 1970s he was subdirector general de Montes de España, the latter became a military and then a civilian doctor. Juan was a lawyer and Manuel an official. María died in 1921 at 3 years of age. Among other Rada’s relatives, his brothers José and Rafael became officers; the former died in 1920, the latter in 1924 in Morocco. Two of his sisters also passed away prematurely, Rosario in 1899 and Dolores in 1920. The other four, Francisco, Eduardo, Ramón and Juana, did not become public figures. Some authors claim that Ricardo “was descendant” to a well-known Navarrese Carlist military Teodoro Rada Delgado (1822-1874), but data hardly match; it appears to be an ex-post attempt to enhance Rada’s links to Carlism.