Franco by Enrique Moradiellos

Author:Enrique Moradiellos [Moradiellos, Enrique]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography
ISBN: 9781786733009
Publisher: I.B.Tauris
Published: 2018-01-30T09:34:53+00:00

The Political Culture of the Spanish Anti-Liberal Right on the Eve of War

As recalled in a classic work by Manuel García-Pelayo, all societies in history have developed various political orders which rest on ‘ideas and belief systems intended to maintain the values that supported them, to consolidate the structure in which they operated and to provide guidelines (to their members) for orientation and action’.49 This set of ideals, values and guiding principles of all human political society, however much integrated, respected or violated, forms the basis of the different conceptual categories that attempt to describe its essence, role and functioning: ‘forms of political power’ (understanding ‘power’ as the ability of men to force the conduct of others according to his will, in the words of Hans Gerth and Charles Wright Mills); ‘types of legitimate authority’ (‘authority’ being a power considered ‘legitimate’ because its ‘strength’ becomes ‘right’ and ‘obedience’ becomes a ‘duty’, according to Max Weber); ‘forms of social and institutional domination’ (which presuppose ‘relations of interaction’ between rulers and ruled that demand at the very least prestige for the superior and subordination of the inferior, in the argument of Georg Simmel); or underlying patterns of ‘political culture’ (considered as a system of ideas that have effects on the socio-political dynamics, according to Gabriel Almond, Sidney Verba or Lucien Pye).50

The diverse forces and socio-political trends that in Spain organized and executed the July 1936 military uprising, fought and won the Civil War and established a victorious institutional regime that lasted almost 40 years, of course had their own ‘political cultures’ that sustained different types of legitimate authority and supported ‘forms of political power and domination’ that are well outlined and known. Further, as clearly demonstrated in several recent works (in particular the comprehensive studies of Ferran Gallego on the formation of the political culture of the Franco regime and Ismael Saz on Francoist Nationalism), the war led to a rapid convergence of interests and principles among all those political cultures of the anti-liberal Spanish right, for the simple reason that it imposed the need to remain strongly united against the enemy to overcome the challenges of war, achieve victory and survive without any subsequent risk of regression.51

On the eve of the Civil War, the socio-political culture of the Spanish anti-liberal right (also called ‘Spanish reactionary thinking’ or ‘counter-revolutionary front’) registered at least four operational currents that were well established but unevenly rooted amongst the Spanish population. Of course, as several analysts have stressed, each of these currents had their respective repertoire of doctrines refined by years of tradition, prestigious names, ancient or modern organizations and formulas of socio-political action of varying effectiveness, with their own groups of followers, loyal militants and activists.52

First, the immense weight of political Catholicism should be highlighted, heir of the veteran ‘Augustinian politics’ promoted by the Church hierarchy and its intellectual spokesmen in multiple forms, responding to the ancient and essential theological premise that ‘all authority comes from God’ – with its corollary of the subordination of the human order to the superior and prior divine order.

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