The Republican government which came to power in Spain in 1931, as the country embraced constitutional democracy, following the fall of Miguel Primo de Rivera and the exit of the King, Alfonso XIII, seemed to signal that Spain was breaking with elements of its past. The Republican alliance took 45 of Spain's 52 provincial capitals. The Republican alliance perceived the religious question at this time as a matter of trying to define a new, subordinate place of the Catholic Church. Many of the constitutional articles were modeled on the Portuguese Constitution of 1911 – separation of church and state; freedom of worship became a fundamental civic right; civil marriage and divorce were introduced; schools and cemeteries were secularized. Catholic schools continued, but outside the state system, and in 1933 further legislation banned all religious sisters and male congregations from teaching. "State education would be secular, obligatory, free of charge, and available to all." Also, the Jesuits were expelled from Spain.