Sounds like to me it's out of adjustment.  You shouldn't have to hit it with too much force.  Does it bottom fully before it spaces and you have to put forth an extra effort afterwards?  If so, then you're space bar needs to be pulled in a little as far as the linkage goes.  I'll have to study one of my machines that's similar and get back with you on how to adjust this.

Good.  It's usually the simplest (and the cheapest) things that will almost always be needed first.  I usually like to clean a machine and very sparingly and judiciously oil and see what a certain mechanism will do before I get into loosening nuts and bolts and changing up whatever would have been more easily fixed with just a little love and attention with a bit of cleaning and oiling.  You do have a unique typewriter though.  I once had an older one that succumbed to the tinworm (It was a 1933 model.  I wish I still had that one).

Wow, this is a beautiful machine! It looks *just* like my Remington Quiet-Riter from 1953 or so. I wonder what the difference is

Uwe wrote:

It seems odd - to me - that the Monarch name isn't centered under the Remington name as you would find with all the other models such as the Quiet- and Letter-Riter.

I found this very odd too, and if you google "Remington Monarch" you'll find a vastly different looking machine. Hmmmm....

This is getting interesting. Uwe, behind the paper it say "Tabulator."