Boletín 98 - The death of Franco, José Antonio Primo de Rivera and 20N.
Boletín 98 - The death of Franco, José Antonio Primo de Rivera and 20N.
It is claimed that the memory of José Antonio Primo de Rivera was harnessed by the Francoist state to imbue the regime with poetic, intellectual and ideological attractiveness. This week we’ll demystify the relationship between Franco and Antonio Primo de Rivera.
👋Welcome to Boletín #98, an English-language newsletter covering historical, cultural and topical stories related to the A Level Spanish course. These newsletters accompany a student worksheet which can be downloaded here. This week:
Edition 98 (the three texts).
Grammar search.
Franco and Antonio Primo de Rivera.
The link between Francoism and Falangism.
Download link.
📌Edition 98
This week students will learn of the moments leading up to Franco’s death, the main ideas of the Falange Española and 20N (this means 20th November). Hopefully a thread running from 1934 to 2022 via 1975 will become evident.
Source text 1 is about la muerte de Franco.
Source text 2 is about el falangismo.
Source text 3 is about 20N.
The exam style question this week is a translation into Spanish from English with a breakdown of how the translation is marked according to WJEC.
Franco and Antonio Primo de Rivera
As of Sunday 20th November 2023 Franco has been dead for 48 years but despite recently being exhumed and moved from his monumental mausoleum, The Valley of the Fallen, his presence is still felt as he lives on in the minds of a minority of Far Right activists and sympathisers.
Hundreds of fascists gathered in Madrid on the weekend of 20th November 2022 to pay homage to José Antonio Primo de Rivera and Franco. You may have heard of the latter but who was the former?
José Antonio Primo de Rivera was the chief ideologue behind the Falange Española which he started in 29th October 1933 after a short career as a lawyer. He was executed in Alicante on 20th November 1936 by firing squad. His remains were exhumed and re-interred in the The Valley of the Fallen in 1959.
39 years after the death of José Antonio Primo de Rivera, in 1975, the announcement of Franco’s death would, some say, be delayed by one day so that it coincided with the anniversary of the death of José Antonio. Franco would then be buried next to him.
So, what is the link between José Antonio Primo de Rivera and Franco?
How much of the dictatorship was built upon Falangist principals?
What on earth would lead somebody to do this?
What is the link between Francoism and falangism?
To answer the questions above I’ve done some reading on Falangism and José Antonio Primo de Rivera. I also had the opportunity in April 2023 to speak to Giles Tremlett who authored Ghosts of Spain.
For my own modest resarch a book called The Foundations of the Spanish Phalanx has been most interesting, but it is clearly a very flattering account of El Ausente (The Absent One) as José Antonio was referred to. For example, the author describes his physical courage, personal charm, vigor, eloquence, sense of family honour, modesty, seriousness, and his penchant for intellectual pursuits. (Greger, 2018).1
What is the link between Primo de Rivera and Francisco Franco and how much of the dictatorship was built upon Falangist principals?
After the death of José Antonio, the founder of the Falange Española (FE) and a household name in Spain whose portrait was apparently exhibited everywhere in the country, the general confusion of the times combined with the weakness of José Antonio’s replacement as leader of the FE led to the weakening of Falange independence and identity. The year was 1936.
On April 19th 1937, the Falange and Carlist parties were merged by Franco and Ramón Serrano Suñer (his brother-in-law) in what is known as the Unification Decree. Upon doing this all other parties were dissolved and the new, and only legal, political party in Spain was the Falange Española Tradicionalista y de las Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional-Sindicalista. Franco was now Jefe Nacional of the country and National Chief of that party. More principled and authentic falangists resisted this but the newly formed Francoist party would be the one official political organisation of Spain.
The Falange didn’t always have this much of a say in things though, as Ian Gibson recounts in The Assassination of Federico García Lorca:
The Falange has been numerically unimportant up to the 1936 elections, and its violent tactics has alienated Catholic support. But the Popular Front victory in February terrified the Catholic middle class which, disillusioned by the CEDA’s ineffectiveness, increasingly threw in its lot with the extremists. Accordingly, there was a considerable swelling of the Falangist ranks in these months and the party rapidly became the most efficient and ruthless right-wing organisation operating in Spain.
Back to Franco, who the author of The Foundations of the Spanish Phalanx claims, betrayed the ideas, goals and legacy of José Antonio. Falangism as a political force or movement was now dead despite forming the backbone of the new Spain. Franco, it is further claimed, established the cult of José Antonio by declaring the 20th November as a day of national mourning and re-interring José Antonio’s remains in the mausoleum built for Franco himself named The Valley of the Fallen. The author claims that the memory of José Antonio Primo de Rivera was harnessed by the Francoist state to imbue the regime with poetic, intellectual and ideological attractiveness.
Here is the Falange’s 1934 manifesto helpfully colour-coded with their nationalist/catholic proposals in blue, socialist elements in red and fascist in green.
For Boletín #111 I asked Giles Tremlett to demystify the Franco/Primo de Rivera/Falange relationship. His answer was:
Okay, so there was basically a right-wing military uprising which was led by the military and one of those leaders was Franco and they needed to bring in everybody else on the far-right. They also needed some kind of ideology because they didn't have one. They were just reactionaries in the sense that they were reacting against a left-wing democratic government that they didn't like and which they thought would bring Marxism to Spain. So, looking for a sort of ideological underpinning of their new regime they turned to the Catholic church largely, to nationalism and to the Falange which was the Spanish version of fascism.
🔍Grammar to look out for:
The present perfect regulars and irregulars
The imperfect tense
Adjectives
Subjunctive trigger para que
The passive voice
The preterite tense
The conditional tense
Para where para can mean in order to
📁Download edition 98 here.
I wrote this post during the first half of the Wales vs USA game so apologies for any errors. As ever with Spanish historical politics I’m always learning so if you think I have got something grossly wrong or want to share your thoughts then get in touch.
Thanks,
Ollie
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👉Student voice Microsoft form.
Nick W. Sinan Greger. (2018). The Foundations of the Spanish Phalanx. London: KDP Publishers.