2023-04-20 20:30:10
José Antonio Primo de Rivera will be exhumed next Monday from the Cuelgamuros Valley after a very long controversy over what to do with his remains and with the temple itself. The founder of the Falange did not survive the first year of the Civil War, as he was shot in Alicante jail accused of conspiracy and military rebellion against the Second Republic, but his legacy was used by Francisco Franco to establish the political foundations of his regime, despite the opposition of many Falangists who criticized an interested reading of his figure.
Son of the dictator Miguel Primo de Rivera, José Antonio was a lawyer and politician involved in the creation of the Spanish Falange, the main representation of fascism in Spain. However, his political evolution went from an authoritarian conservatism typical of his father to the national syndicalism that was distilled in countries like Germany or Italy. “He combined seriousness, rigor, shyness, sympathy, and violent outbursts of” biblical anger “, all wrapped up in a well-cared physical appearance,” the historian describes. Joan Maria Thomas in his biography ‘Jose Antonio. reality and myth’ (Debate, 2017) trying to unravel a personality as complex as the time.
The long shadow of his father, who led a dictatorial regime between 1923 and 1930, marked the life of José Antonio. After the death of the general in Paris, in April 1930, abandoned by all, not only did his son inherit the title of Marquis of Estella, with Greatness of Spain, but also the defense of his paternal memory. For this reason he became the target of the new republican authorities, who accused him of apologizing for the dictatorship and participating in various monarchical conspiracies. He was confined for three months in the Model Prison for his supposed participation in the failed coup d’état by General Sanjurjo in August 1932, but there was no way to prove that he had committed any crime. And it wouldn’t be the last time he would be behind bars…
In a few years he went from playing a discreet role in Acción Nacional during the beginning of the Second Republic to creating his own party. In 1932 he came into contact with Mussolini’s fascism, whom he visited in Rome, and changed his conception of politics. With few means and less social support, José Antonio Primo de Rivera created the Falange in the fall of 1933, a national syndicalist political movement that fused Italian fascism with patriotic elements such as the defense of the unity of Spain or the preeminence of Catholicism, but separating Church and State. In 1934, the Falange would merge with the Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional-Sindicalista of Onésimo Redondo and Ramiro Ledesma Ramos, so that in a matter of a year Primo de Rivera rose to the fore as the main leader and icon of this extreme movement with little electoral support but with great presence on the street.
In a few years he went from playing a discreet role in Acción Nacional during the Second Republic to creating his own party
As the leader of fascism in Spain, he briefly met Hitler, but the führer did not make a favorable impression on him. His ideology differed on many points from the Nazi movement, although on others it coincided. Primo de Rivera wanted a “national revolution” based on a totalitarian state, with strong economic interventionism, including the nationalization of the financial system and public services; he also believed that the family, the municipality and the corporation should be the main subjects of politics and he hoped to achieve the separation of Church and State.
street violence
The electoral results never supported José Antonio, but the radicalization of the communist, socialist and anarchist youth placed the Falangist militants in the eye of the street hurricane. Political violence left a trail of blood throughout the republic. Not in vain, as the historian Julio Gil Pecharromán recalls in the biographical entry that he dedicates to Jose Antonio in the RAH, he “personally opposed the exercise of indiscriminate violence, but ended up giving in to the pressures of his environment and, after the murder of one of the youth cadres of the party, Matias Monteroauthorized a harsh policy of reprisals that reached one of its culminating points with the shooting death, in the middle of the street, of the young socialist Juana Rico»
In the February 1936 elections, the FE reaped an electoral disaster (0.4% of the vote) and the Falangist leader was left out of Parliament. However, the Falange grew up in the streets where it had no voice in parliament. After the attack, on March 11, 1936, against the law professor and socialist militant Jimenez de Asua, carried out by a Falangist militant, the municipal judge handling the case was assassinated by Falangist gunmen, causing a great scandal among the authorities. All this forced the illegalization of the party accused of being “responsible for public disorder”. Its leaders, including Primo de Rivera, were imprisoned in Madrid. The Falangist leader was subjected to several criminal proceedings during the spring that preceded the Civil War.
Act of homage to José Antonio Primo de Rivera in San Sebastián (1941).
Primo de Rivera negotiated from prison the entry of his party into the military conspiracy against the Popular Front government in July 1936. However, the Falangist leader refused to give the final order to collaborate in the military uprising by his conservative and monarchist court. . When the Civil War began, the Falange joined the uprising not by decision of its leader, who was imprisoned by the Government first in Madrid and then in Alicante, but by the force of circumstances themselves.
At the outbreak of the conflict, it was suggested to give the Falangist a “walk” to remove him quickly from the scene, but this plan was stopped by politicians not very similar to his ideology, as he explains Joan Maria Thomas in his biography:
«Faced with such a plan, Republican elements telephoned President Azaña, the President of the Council, Giral, and Indalecio Prieto. All of them took steps and managed to stop the operation.
Finally, he was subjected to a popular trial accused of participating in the military rebellion and sentenced to death in the Alicante prison on November 20, 1936. In his will, José Antonio appealed to resolve the political disagreements without using more violence: «I wish it were mine the last Spanish blood that was spilled in civil discords». He wasn’t.
Without a leader and in the midst of bullets, the Spanish Falange, which before the war had fewer than 10,000 members, was forced to accept without question the Unification Decree that, by order of Franco, merged it with the rest of the political forces of the side. national in a single party, Traditionalist Spanish Falange and the JONS. José Antonio, presented as a martyr, became the main ideological referent of the new regime, despite the fact that an important sector of the Falange expressed their discontent for what they correctly interpreted as an attempt to distort their doctrine by the military and the Catholic right.
José Antonio Primo de Rivera rests in the Valley of the Fallen
José Antonio’s corpse was transferred from Alicante to the Monastery of El Escorial, and in 1959, to his tomb in the Valley of the Fallen, from where it will be exhumed in an intimate ceremony next Monday. His figure became a hollow myth for Francoism, ignoring such flagrant facts as that the politician maintained cold personal relations with Franco during his life or that he was hostile, despite being a believer and practitioner, to the Church’s meddling in matters of the State.
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