Consecrating the fatherland: catholicism, nationalism and fascism in Spain (1919–1939)

Abstract

The chapter explores the emergence, consolidation and eventual victory of the far Right in Spain in the period 1919–1939. Similar to most European countries, Spanish conservatives became increasingly authoritarian and nationalistic after the First World War. Since the early 1920s, different groups of the Spanish Right developed a new nationalist thought placing Catholicism and militarism at its core. The dictatorship of general Miguel Primo de Rivera (1923–1930) represented the first attempt to put into practice an authoritarian regime under military, nationalist and Catholic principles in the midst of the counterrevolutionary European tide. The establishment of the democratic Second Republic (1931–1936) led to the fragmentation of a Spanish Right that, nonetheless, maintained Catholicism as a central ideological and mobilising feature while going through a significant process of fascistisation mainly led by the Spanish fascist party, Falange Española de las Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional Sindicalista. The Civil War (1936–1939) aggregated the most radical sectors of Spanish conservatives under the leadership of General Francisco Franco and accelerated the process of hybridisation between fascists and reactionary nationalists. The conflict not only demonstrated the strength of Catholicism as a mobilising force in the nationalist camp, but it also brought out a certain compatibility of Christian principles with the fascist values and political practices of Falange.