2023-11-14 05:33:06
If you are surprised by the tension currently generated by some deputies in Congress, in sessions that could be described as embarrassing, you should go back nine decades to see what is good. Specifically, until the Second Republic, when the founder of Falange, José Antonio Primo de Rivera, came to blows with the centrist deputy José María Álvarez Mendizábal, or when another socialist attacked the president of Congress, in a fit of ferocity, Ramón de Carranza, because he did not want to shout “Long live the Republic!”
The level of violence experienced on that second day was such that, forty years later, the episode was remembered by Wenceslao Fernández Flórez, the journalist who covered the session for ABC. It was held on March 16, 1936 and, at the end, our parliamentary correspondent went to our editorial office impressed by what he had just witnessed, without anything written down in his notebook. Upon seeing him, Juan Ignacio Luca de Tena asked him about his Time.news, to which the famous editor responded: “There is no article.” “But, man, Wenceslao, how is ABC going to come out tomorrow without your ‘Notes’?” the director insisted. “You have to send a news editor there, not me,” he concluded.
Today, however, we are going to focus on a session as angry as those, but much more important as far as the immediate future of Spain is concerned. It took place on June 16 of that same year and was the last one held before the outbreak of the coup d’état and the beginning of the Civil War a month later. To do this we have recovered some interventions and strong accusations between the representatives of the different parties, who anticipated the slaughter that was about to occur with the sad result known to all: half a million dead and another half a million exiled.
The first to speak was José María Gil-Robles, leader of the Spanish Catholic and conservative party CEDA, to describe the crisis that Spain was experiencing in those days with these alarming words: “Disappoint yourself. A country can live in a monarchy or a republic, in a parliamentary system or in a presidential system, in a Soviet system or in fascism, but the only way it does not live is in anarchy. And Spain, today, unfortunately, lives in anarchy […]. “We have to say today that we are witnessing the funeral of democracy.”
Screams
The entire chamber erupted in shouts, some of support, others of criticism and indignation. The situation in Spain was, indeed, as serious as the CEDA leader pointed out, due to the disorders caused by both the left and the right. To the acts of violence we had to add that the political parties on both sides had been preparing their men to fight for weeks, instructing them in military formations. The order from the political leaders was: “Everyone on the streets.” Not even the president of the Council of Ministers, Santiago Casares Quiroga, nor Gil-Robles, visible heads of the most prominent groups, could now control events.
In reality, both remained in the Cortes thanks to the votes of deputies whose objectives were different from theirs. The February elections had been a fight between two great alliances: the Popular Front and the National Front. The first was made up, in addition to the liberals of Casares Quiroga, the PSOE, the PCE and other groups of the working classes and the powerful union of the UGT. In the second, for its part, the CEDA of Gil-Robles, but also the monarchists, the large landowners, other right-wing parties and representatives of the Army, the Church and the bourgeoisie.
When the shouting stopped, the monarchist leader, José Calvo Sotelo, stood up arrogantly. “With his experience and full powers, he spoke as if he believed that the future of Spain was in his hands,” noted Hugh Thomas in a special on the last days of the Republic published years ago in ‘Diario 16’. . In his speech, constantly interrupted by opposition deputies, he assured that the country’s disorder was the result of the Republican Constitution of 1931, since he did not believe that a viable State could be built on it.
Session of Congress a few days after the start of the Civil War José Díaz Casariego
The fascist state
«In the face of this sterile State, I raise the concept of an integrating State, which administers economic justice and which can say with full authority: ‘No more strikes. no more lockouts, no more user interests, no more financial formulas of abusive capitalism, no more starvation wages, no more political salaries not earned with a fortunate performance, no more anarchic freedom, no more criminal destruction against production, because production national is above all classes, all parties and all interests’. Many call this State a fascist State; Well… if that is the fascist State, I, who participate in the idea of that State and who believe in it, declare myself a fascist.
And when the storm of mockery and applause that broke out after these words ceased, he continued: “When people talk about the danger of monarchist soldiers, I smile a little, because I don’t believe it currently exists in the Spanish Army, whatever the ideas may be. individual policies that the Constitution respects, a single military man willing to revolt in favor of the Monarchy and against the Republic. If there were, he would be a madman, I say it very clearly, although I consider that the soldier who, in charge of his destiny, was not willing to revolt in favor of Espada and against anarchy, if it occurred, would also be mad. ».
The president of the Cortes, Diego Martínez Barrio, begged Calvo Sotelo not to make those kinds of statements, because his intentions could be misinterpreted. And then he held him responsible for the coup d’état, if it occurred: “It is legal for me to say that, after what your honor has done today before Parliament, for anything that could happen, which will not happen, I will hold the country to your honor. Mr. Calvo Sotelo comes here today with two purposes: to seek parliamentary disruption, to accuse, once again, Parliament that it is of no use, and to seek the disruption of the Army to once again enjoy the ‘delights ‘of the dictatorship. “Do not dream of achieving success, Mr. Calvo Sotelo.”
The Passionflower
Dolores Ibárruri spoke next. Always dressed in black and with a serious face, displaying the fanaticism of her at 40 years old, she was the only prominent figure in the small, but growing, Communist Party. This formation only had 17 deputies, all of them “unknown and ignorant,” according to the opinion of the socialist deputy Indalecio Prieto, which did not prevent La Pasionaria, as it was known, from charging forcefully and with all the contempt in the world to the Spanish fascists. In fact, she referred to them as simple gangsters.
The following aftershocks increased the tension to unsuspected limits. The Government was accused of capital evasion and the Government preferred not to respond. Next, Joaquín Maurín, head of the Marxist Unification Workers’ Party (POUM), declared that “a pre-fascist situation” already existed in the country. As if it were a pitched battle, although without bombs, only with words, Calvo Sotelo jumped at that moment to attack the head of Government: «My backs are wide. I gladly accept and do not disdain any of the responsibilities that may arise from acts that I carry out. […]. I say the same thing that Saint Dominic of Silos answered to a Castilian King: ‘Lord, you can take my life, but you can’t do anything else.’ It is preferable to die with glory than to live with vilification. But at the same time I invite Mr. Casares Quiroga to measure his responsibilities closely, if not before God, since he is a layman, before his conscience, since he is a man of honor.
As the monarchist leader sat down, the House shouted and applauded at the same time. The echoes of this debate, with its warnings and threats, if not its thinly disguised references to a more than possible coup d’état, reached the ears of all of Spain, which heated the atmosphere even more. It is as if those interventions were pushing the country into the abyss of war. Those words reached the ears of the President of the Republic, Manuel Azaña, who “saddenly contemplated the collapse of his hopes from the luxurious solitude of the Royal Palace of Madrid.
In reality, they reached all Spaniards, generating great controversy. They reached those generals who had been preparing the coup d’état against the Republic for some time, like Emilio Mola and company; They reached Franco, who at that time was debating whether to join the uprising or not; also to the founder of Falange, José Antonio Primo de Rivera, who was in Alicante prison, from which he would never leave until he was executed; to the anarchists, who even renounced this debate, and to the majority of the 24 and a half million inhabitants that Spain had at that time. The die seemed cast.
#fascist #declare #fascist