Franco, Fascism and the Falange – Not One and the Same Thing

by Norman Berdichevsky (Sept. 2008)
 

various so called “Right Wing” authoritarian regimes of the conservative, traditional, national and religious type (always considered by the Left to be “proto-Fascist”) in Ethiopia (Emperor Haile Selassi),  Austria (the “Clerical-Fascist” regime of Engelbert Dollfus and Kurt Schuschnigg), Poland (General Jozef Pilsudski and his successors), Yugoslavia (General Simovic and his supporters in the armed forces) and Greece (Ionnas Metaxas), all stood up and opposed Hitler and the Axis forces that threatened to blackmail, intimidate and subjugate their nations. All these leaders were labeled as “Fascist” by Soviet and Left-Wing propaganda up until the German invasion of the USSR in 1941.

 is the ultimate epithet bandied about and frequently hung around the neck of those who value constitutional safeguards, parliamentary traditions, have deep seated religious convictions or believe in a strong military stance to defend the United States or RESOLUTELY opposed Communism.  

dictator who ruled the country following World War I), wanted a republic, modeled after Mussolini’s Fascist Italy, and claimed to be the hero of Spain’s poor and dispossessed. He appealed to the working class and stressed that they had his full sympathy and understanding of the oppressive role played by the monarchy and landed aristocracy.

 The moderate conservative right, monarchist and centrist parties that opposed the Leftist “Popular Front” in the elections in 1936 refused to enter into an electoral alliance with the Falange which stood isolated.

Jose Antonio had stepped on too many toes by his justifiable criticism of scandal and corruption among parties of all shades. His calls for social justice for the Spanish working class, small farmers and agricultural workers led to charges by the Catholic and conservative Right Wing Press that he was a “Bolshevik” to which he responded that all those wealthy Spaniards who valued luxuries and their petty whims more than the hunger of the people were the real Bolsheviks –“the Bolshevism of the Privileged” and added oil to the fire by proclaiming “In the depths of our souls there vibrates a sympathy toward many people of the Left who have arrived at hatred by the same path which has led us to love – criticism of a sad mediocre, miserable and melancholy Spain.” 

Mussolini had been a Socialist in his youth and shown anti-Catholic sentiments during the first ten years of Fascist rule. Similarly in Spain, the Catholic Church was suspicious of the Falange and its street violence and the populist appeals of Jose Antonio. The ultra-reactionary Carlist movement that was still popular in much of the Basque Country, Aragon and elsewhere in the Northern part of the country and had supported a return to an absolute monarchy, ridiculed the Falange, its ultra-modernism and its “intellectuals”, notably Jose Antonio. The Carlists were opposed to all liberal or “modern” reforms, supported a rival wing of the Bourbon dynasty, opposed female succession to the throne and maintained its own militia known as the Requetés and a political party, the Comunion Tradicionalista. During the war, the Requetés mocked the amateurish and undisciplined nature of the Falange which they viewed with contempt. Their view was supported by the Army general staff under Franco who generally assigned the Falange units to the rear guard sectors.

Galicia. Franco tiptoed among the elements of the National Movement, assigning them influence and posts in his cabinet according to his mood at the time, with the intention of balancing them so as to have everyone in doubt where he stood on a successor to the regime.

Al Paso Alegre de la Paz, (On the Happy Road Of Peace), is a satirical tragic-comical look at the pedagogical “truths” and heroic, almost supernatural, virtues and austere morality of General Franco and Jose Antonio, inculcated by the Falangist youth movement.

Economic realities, continued urbanization, a growing realization that a Fascist Spain would be totally out of place in Western Europe and that Spain would benefit enormously from membership in NATO and the European Community, led Franco to further moderation of his tight political, economic and social controls. Real prosperity resulting from amazing economic growth throughout the 1960s and 1970s led to increasing unrest and further pressure to remove Spain from its self-imposed isolation and to change the unreal view of itself as a great power with a noble imperial past.

Britain to Spain.

To comment on this article, please click here.

here.