HISTORICAL DICTIONARY A–Z - Spain and Portugal: A Reference Guide from the Renaissance to the Present - page 180

F

Falange Española
Founded in 1933 by José Antonio Primo de
Rivera, this organization became the pre-
dominant movement within the Nationalist
forces that triumphed in the S PANISH CIVIL
WAR of 1936-39. Primo de Rivera was a 30-

year-old lawyer, possessing considerable
personal charm and political fluency (if not
profound originality of thought). As the son
of General Miguel P RIMO DE R IVERA , dictator
of Spain from 1923 to 1930, he was shaped
in his values and political attitudes by an
exalted image of his father, whose mission
of “saving” Spain from the extremes of
“degenerate liberalism” was the younger
man's prime inspiration. He preached a doc-
trine of national unity, preservation of tra-
ditional values, loyalty to the Catholicism
that had shaped Spanish history, and ulti-
mately to the restoration of the monarchy
that had been replaced by the 1931 procla-
mation of the Second Republic. From the
founding of his party Primo de Rivera, who
avowed himself a fascist, was rivaled by a
number of other activists (mostly of middle-
class bureaucratic and academic back-
ground) who had come under Italian and
German fascist influences as far back as
1928. Their emphasis on socioeconomic
syndicalism whose vertical structure repudi-
ated marxist class-conflict ideology was
fused with the more specifically Spanish
concepts of Primo de Rivera in an amalga-
mation of parties that took place early in
1934. The result was the Falange Española
de las Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional-Sindical-
ista. From the Juntas of National-Syndicalist
Offensive, or JONS, the Falange acquired its

Poster of the Falange Española. It reads, “In Spain it is
dawning: Arise, Spain.” (Library of Congress)

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