Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera
José Antonio Primo de Rivera y Sáenz de Heredia (Madrid, April 24, 1903-Alicante, November 20, 1936) was a Spanish Falangist lawyer and politician, eldest son of the dictator Miguel Primo de Rivera and founder of the Spanish Falange, a formation with aspirations to become the representation of fascism in Spain. Primo de Rivera would imbue his party with a language "between mystical, poetic and military". progressively from being a far-right to fascism and finally becoming a true fascist. He would design specifically Falangist coups d'état, aspiring to establish a New Fascist State in which he would be the new führer or duce". As Ismael Saz has pointed out, fascism of José Antonio Primo de Rivera "was, of course, full fascism".
While imprisoned in the Alicante jail on the dates of the coup, he was tried for conspiracy and military rebellion against the Government of the Second Republic, sentenced to death and executed by firing squad during the first months of the war Spanish civilian.
His idealized image was honored during the war by the Franco regime, which turned him into an icon and a martyr at the service of the propaganda of the established National Movement. After his death, silenced, he was on the rebel side, he became known in the rebel zone as "the Absent One". !» it could be found in many Spanish churches. Ismael Saz warns that his followers and the Franco regime turned him into a myth "overlapping himself on the character himself to the point of making him unrecognizable on occasions. " He held the noble title of III Marquis of Estella, with Greatness of Spain.
Biography
Childhood and education
He was the eldest son of General Miguel Primo de Rivera y Orbaneja, who ruled Spain as a dictator between 1923 and 1930. Orphaned at the age of five, he was educated, along with his four siblings, by a paternal aunt. His upbringing was infused with the military leanings of his father and the Catholic leanings of his mother and his aunts. He joined the Explorers of Spain together with his brothers, by the will of his father as part of his militaristic ideology and coastal regenerationism, who from its beginnings was a founding member of the National Council of the youth patriotic institution. He attended high school from his home, without attending classes, instructed by private teachers who also taught him French and some English. Discouraged by his father as regards pursuing a military career, he decided to study Law in Madrid, following some family background (one of his grandfathers was a magistrate) and influenced by the eldest son of the Primo de Rivera doctor, Raimundo Fernández-Cuesta, who had just to graduate in Law.
He studied his first year of university, like his baccalaureate, from his own home assisted by private teachers. The second year he joined the life of the university, where he became friends with Ramón Serrano Suñer. This and Raimundo Fernández-Cuesta would become his testamentary executors.
After the university autonomy decree of 1919, which allowed student associations, he was part of the leadership of the recently created Association of Law Students, directed by his friend Serrano Súñer, antagonistic to the Association of Catholic Students, led by by Ángel Herrera Oria.
In 1922 he finished his degree brilliantly. Later he did military service in the Dragones de Santiago. In June 1925 he crossed over to Santiago, diligently fulfilling all the duties of the religious and military order.As a university student, he chose the modality of "one-year volunteer" and finished his service with the rank of second lieutenant. José Antonio Primo de Rivera lived closely the coup d'état that, in 1923, placed his father at the head of a dictatorial government established with the consent of King Alfonso XIII. After finishing his military service, he would spend several months expanding his law studies and, in April 1925, he registered with the Madrid Bar Association and opened his own firm. Shortly after, he was named a great gentleman of Spain with the exercise and servitude of King Alfonso XIII.
The dictatorship and its political vocation
In 1930 he participated in the political project of the National Monarchical Union. On May 2 of that year, he accepted the position of deputy general secretary of the party, with the purpose of vindicating the memory of his father, attacked both at the fall of his dictatorship, at the end of the monarchy, and during the Second Republic (1931).. In this period he collaborates in the newspaper La Nación (co-owner of the same by family inheritance) with articles of a political nature, mainly vindicating the dictatorship of his father. In December 1931, in the prologue to the book The Dictatorship of Primo de Rivera judged abroad, he carried out a harsh attack against the intellectuals, whom he accused of being under "the predominance of the mass”, considering them “unqualified, unqualified and disqualified pseudo-intellectuals”.
Primo de Rivera failed in his attempt to obtain a seat as deputy for Madrid in the 1931 elections, being defeated by Manuel Bartolomé Cossío. He was arrested in 1932 on suspicion of having collaborated with the uprising organized by General Sanjurjo, a fact that he always denied, to finally be released from jail without charges. In 1933, at the height of the Fascist movements in Italy and the Nazi movement in Germany, he collaborated in the launch of the magazine El Fascio, publishing an article entitled "Orientations towards a new State", an attack on political liberalism. which begins like this: «The liberal state believes in nothing, not even in itself. The liberal State allows everything to be questioned, even the convenience of its own existence»; and in which one can also read: «Freedom cannot live without the protection of a strong, permanent principle. When the principles change with the fluctuations of opinion, there is only freedom for the chords with the majority. Minorities are called to suffer and shut up.
We could say that our character began his political life in the ranks of the reactionary and counterrevolutionary monarchic right—in the National Monarchical Union—that grouped many of the men of which he had been the regime of his father, the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera. A reactionary and counterrevolutionary right that would generally accompany and kneel in its fascistization process until the very foundation of Falange Española in October 1933 and the first steps of the formation.Saz Campos (2004, «José Antonio Primo de Rivera y el Fascismo Español», p. 67)
El Fascio only released one number, which was collected by the police, although many copies were distributed in the provinces. Shortly after, he met José María de Areilza in his Madrid law office, where he was struck by the fact that he had framed and hung the famous poem If by Rudyard Kipling in English.
The Falange and its political activity
José Antonio Primo de Rivera created, together with Julio Ruiz de Alda, the Spanish Syndicalist Movement, the embryo of the future Spanish Falange, a fascist political movement that, as such, was born mistrusting democratic methods and tried to impose a New State of a totalitarian and corporative character (expressed in the slogan of vertical unionism). At its initial points, the concepts that Primo de Rivera would handle throughout his short political life were already present: a Spain united by a universal destiny that overcomes class struggle and nationalism, the conception of a new man bearer of eternal values and a social justice that provides man with a dignified and humane life; all this, with a sense of catholicity.
The Spanish Falange was founded at the Teatro de la Comedia in Madrid, on October 29, 1933. This act began with the words of Primo de Rivera «Comrades, nothing of a paragraph of thanks. Briefly thank you, as befits the military laconicism of our style»; Defining himself, immediately afterwards, as opposed to the liberal parliamentary State and criticizing Jean-Jacques Rousseau and his Social Contract:
When, in March 1762, a nefarious man, named John James Rousseau, published The social contract, ceased to be the political truth a permanent entity. Before, at other deeper times, the States, which were executors of historical missions, had written on their fronts, and even on the stars, justice and truth. John James Rousseau came to tell us that justice and truth were not permanent categories of reason, but were, at every moment, decisions of will. [...] As the liberal state was a servant of that doctrine, it was to be constituted not already in the determined executioner of the patriotic destinies, but in the spectator of the electoral struggles. For the liberal state, it was only important that a certain number of lords had been sitting at the voting tables; that the elections would begin at eight o'clock and end at four o'clock; that the polls should not be broken. When the broken being is the noblest destiny of all polls. Then, to respect quietly what came out of the polls, as if he cares nothing.Speech by the Theatre of Comedy, October 29, 1933.
And legitimize the exercise of violence, «the dialectic of fists and guns», to propitiate an authoritarian State:
The Homeland is a transcendent synthesis, an indivisible synthesis, for its own purposes to fulfill; and we what we want is that the movement of this day, and the State that believes, is the effective, authoritarian instrument, at the service of an indisputable unity, of that permanent unity, of that irrevocable unity that is called the Homeland.Speech by the Theatre of Comedy, October 29, 1933.
In the November 1933 elections, he won a seat in the Cortes for the Cádiz constituency, —where his family had great influence—, integrated into a conservative monarchist coalition. In 1934 he merged the Spanish Falange with the Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional-Sindicalista de Onésimo Redondo and Ramiro Ledesma Ramos, giving rise to FE de las JONS, incorporating the national-sindicalism of the JONS into the Falange. At first, a triumvirate was formed for the leadership of the party made up of José Antonio Primo de Rivera himself, Ramiro Ledesma and Julio Ruiz de Alda. A year later, and after a close vote, Primo de Rivera ended up being proclaimed sole leader of the party. From this moment on, the figure of José Antonio Primo de Rivera would become the official icon of the party.
Primo de Rivera, in the first phase of the Falange, did not disassociate himself from monarchical circles. As the Falange was a marginal group, with scarce financial resources, Primo de Rivera found funding from these groups, which considered it a shock force to combat left-wing organizations and destabilize the Second Republic. Later, he would seek the support of Fascist Italy, obtaining in the summer of 1935 a monthly salary of 50,000 lire as a foreign agent of the Fascist Italian government.
In 1935, Primo de Rivera dedicated himself to traveling around Spain giving meetings, which would be commented on in the pages of the Falangist weekly Arriba, and in Haz, an organ of the SEU. In this year Ledesma was expelled from the Falange.
«The Falange will take time to embark on the path towards the systematic use of violence, but the Falange was one of the main parties that practiced it during the second two years. From the beginning he used violent language that could easily lead to provocation and murder. In turn, the leftist militancy reacted, and the first deaths among Falangist readers and press distributors occurred in January 1934." Once the first deaths in the ranks of the Falange had occurred, Primo de Rivera was the Falangist leader who was more reticent when faced with the expectation of using violence in a systematic way. Payne (1997, Cap. The eruption of violence) The first Falangist victim of violence was the student Matías Montero. This was followed by other murders in Valladolid, Gijón and Madrid; the Falangists murdered the former Director General of Security and founder of the National Committee for Republican Action, Manuel Andrés Casaus, one of the promoters of the proclamation of the Republic in Éibar; also to the Santander journalist Luciano Malumbres. On the right, the first murder committed was that of Juanita Rico, a seamstress member of the Socialist Youth, in retaliation for the death of Falangist Juan Cuéllar. Rico's assassins accused her of having taken part in the brawl and having urinated on the body of the still dying Falangist.
In the 1936 elections, the left and the right came together in the Popular Front and the National Front, respectively, and La Falange, which did not reach agreements, ran alone. Primo de Rivera, regardless of his desire to preserve the parliamentary act, thought that it would not be understood that the Falange went to the elections unrelated to the National Front, being himself in favor of reaching an agreement; but he outweighed the pressure from the leadership of the Falange contrary to the principle of agreement already reached, either because they considered the guaranteed seats to be scarce, or because of their reluctance to reach electoral agreements with other forces. Gil Pecharromán (1996, pp. 411-420) These elections revealed the scarce support that the Falange had, obtaining 44,000 votes throughout the national territory, which meant 0.7% of the useful votes. José Antonio, who presented his candidacy to eight constituencies, did not obtain any parliamentary seat, nor did his political formation in all of Spain.
Arrest, prosecution and imprisonment
After the victory of the Popular Front in the February 1936 elections, the Spanish Falange of the JONS, "nurtured by new militants and new funds and in close relationship with the military conspirators", developed the "tension strategy" that "justify" a "coup de force". Thus, "the violent incidents carried out by Falangists continued without interruption until the outbreak of the civil war." The first violent act with great media and political repercussions was the assassination attempt on the prominent socialist professor Luis Jiménez de Asúa on March 11 perpetrated by members of the SEU in retaliation for the murder of a colleague the day before. Jiménez de Asúa was unharmed but the policeman who was escorting him, Inspector Jesús Gisbert, died. Three days later, on March 14, the police arrested José Antonio Primo de Rivera at his own home, who had lost his parliamentary immunity by not being elected deputy in the February elections. He was charged with illegal possession of weapons. The rest of the members of the Falange Political Board and a large part of the century chiefs and the First Line squad members from all over Spain were also arrested. In total some two thousand Falangists were arrested. On March 17, a court declared Falange an illegal organization, for illegal possession of weapons and violent activities. However, the party quickly adapted to hiding, under the virtual leadership of Fernando Primo de Rivera, José Antonio's brother, and following the guidelines and instructions that he gave them from prison. José Antonio's attempt to get his brother Fernando to meet with Mussolini to explain the Falange's insurrectional plans was thwarted by the Italian ambassador in Madrid who was convinced that a coup d'état had little chance of success. For his part, the Italian air attaché informed his government that the Falange "has been provided with abundant financial means by the right-wing parties."
José Antonio Primo de Rivera was taken into custody from his home to the headquarters of the General Directorate of Security (DGS) where he was interrogated by the director general José Alonso Mallol himself, whom José Antonio insulted, which would end up complicating his court situation. While in the dungeons of the DGS, he wrote a manifesto entitled "The voice of the Chief from the dungeon", the dissemination of which earned him the first judicial process, for violation of the printing law, which began two days later and which concluded on April 3, being sentenced to two months in prison, although the sentence was revoked by the Supreme Court on May 19. The conviction of the second trial, which was held between March 16 and 28, for the insults inflicted on Mallol, was once again annulled by the Supreme Court, also on May 19. A third process against the members of the Falange Political Board, headed by José Antonio, began on March 17 for illegal association, and they were acquitted on April 30 when the court considered that the statutes and the 27 Falange Points were legal.. On May 28, the oral trial of a fourth trial for illegal possession of weapons began after the police discovered three pistols at his home on April 27. He was sentenced to five months in prison, which angered José Antonio, who insulted and threatened the judges and attacked an officer in the courtroom. Thus, on June 18, a fifth trial for contempt and attack on authority began. This time the sentence was much harsher: five years in prison. Fearing an escape, he was transferred from the Modelo prison in Madrid to the Alicante prison in the early morning of June 5-6.
In the manifesto written on March 14 in the dungeons of the DGS, José Antonio Primo de Rivera affirmed that Russia was the one that had won the February elections because «communism rules the streets; these days the communist action groups have set fire to hundreds of houses, factories and churches in Spain, they have murdered at close range, they have dismissed and appointed authorities». For this reason, the Falange summoned all "students, intellectuals, workers, Spanish soldiers, for a new dangerous and joyous company of reconquest".
Conspiracies against the Second Spanish Republic
Since its beginnings, the Second Spanish Republic was threatened by insurrectionary plots. In August 1932 the first attempt to overthrow the Republic failed. Since then, two insurrectionary currents were underlying on the right: One of a civil nature encouraged mainly by the Spanish Renovation and Traditionalist Communion parties, with support within the army, which sought to restore the monarchy. And another, more purely military that sought, through a military coup, to restore the social order supposedly deteriorated with the promulgation of the Republic. In 1934, the Spanish Falange would be added to these plots, which was born with a markedly insurrectionary character. Unlike these plots that saw the possibility of a strong government as the means to restore the lost order, the Spanish Falange sees an end in itself in that strong government, proposing a new order of a totalitarian nature.
Primo de Rivera aspired for the Falange to be the motor of the insurrection. On several occasions, he maintained contacts with the military so that they would support an insurrection led by the Falange. In the secret report on the Spanish political situation that José Antonio Primo de Rivera wrote and sent to the Italian government in the summer of 1935, he lamented that at the time of the Asturian revolution of October 1934, the Falange did not have enough forces to have responded with a counterrevolution; and, overestimating the capacity of the Falange, he reported that "if events precipitated, the Falange could perhaps soon attempt the conquest of power, no matter how implausible that sounds now"; that given similar circumstances, it was prepared to start the uprising. In any case, "for the moment, the task of the organizers of the Falange is to work tirelessly to strengthen all the organs: it will be in the month of October when it will be possible to talk about a comprehensive plan and calculate the elements of the that must be arranged to comply with it".
At the end of 1934 or beginning of 1935, Primo de Rivera drew up the composition of the possible government that would come out of the insurrection. Formed mainly by Falangists, Franco, Mola and Serrano Suñer also appeared as Ministers of National Defense, Interior and Justice respectively. Primo de Rivera would name himself head of that government.In 1935 he drew up several plans. In June, the Falangist leadership met with the territorial leaders in the Gredos hostel to prepare an insurrection that would originate in Fuentes de Oñoro, a town in the province of Salamanca, close to the Portuguese border, to enable the incorporation of General Sanjurjo. (at that time exiled in Portugal) and, also, facilitate flight in case of failure. And in November, another plan provided that the insurrection would begin in Toledo, with the collaboration of Colonel Moscardó. None of these plans found sufficient support. Later, he would go directly to Franco, then chief of the General Staff, to get him to support an insurrection. Franco limited himself to diverting the conversation.
With the victory of the Popular Front in the February 1936 elections, the plots to overthrow the Republic were strengthened. For several days the country experienced the risk of a military intervention to annul the elections. From then on, meetings of generals followed one another to promote a pronouncement. On March 8, at one of those meetings held at the home of a CEDA member, a plan was finalized to carry out a coup d'état on April 20, from which a military junta headed by General Sanjurjo, still in power, would emerge. exile. The insurrectionary plots were coming together and the Falange was ignored, being left out of them.
On March 14, Primo de Rivera was arrested in the Modelo prison in Madrid for illegal possession of weapons and later, on June 5, he was transferred to the Alicante prison. From prison, favored by a relaxed regime of visits, he led the Falange trying to take the initiative in the insurrection. At the end of April he drafted a letter addressed to army officers that was distributed on May 4. In it a call to revolt was made:
Spain can cease to exist. Simply: if by an adherence to the form of duty you remain neutral in the pugilato of these hours, you will be able to find you overnight with that the substantive, the permanent of Spain you served, has disappeared. [...] When the permanent one sins, you no longer have the right to be neutral. Then it is time for your weapons to come into play to save the fundamental values, without those who are vain to simulate discipline. And it has always been like this: the last game is always the departure of weapons. Last minute — Spengler said — it has always been a platoon of soldiers who have saved civilization.Letter to the Spanish military.
From May 1936, he maintained correspondence with General Mola. In a letter that Primo de Rivera sent him to Pamplona, he did not give him his full support and spoke of conditions, offering him 4,000 Falangists available from the first day of the uprising. The conspiracy continued its march and Primo de Rivera could not make the Falange his inspiring political movement. The military were also in contact with the monarchists, the Cedistas and the Carlists; and from the National Bloc, Calvo Sotelo seemed to want to take away the Falange's label of fascist. it is not considered "as a total body of doctrine, nor as a force on the way to fully assume the direction of the State" but rather as a mere "auxiliary element of shock".
Just five days later, on June 29, Primo de Rivera sent new circulars, now supporting the insurrection. One, destined for the front line in Madrid, called for training to be prepared for the decisive moment: «Your enthusiasm prefers combat to preparation; but what is approaching is too large for us to attack without preparing it." And another, destined for the Territorial Headquarters, so that they are made available to the military commanders in the uprising. "Each territorial chief will deal exclusively with the superior chief of the military movement in the territory or province", with the Falangists intervening in their own units with their own chiefs and their own uniforms. In Gil-Robles' opinion, this change could be related with the trip of the Carlist Rodezno to Alicante or due to a conversation between his brother Fernando (his liaison with the conspirators) and General Mola, where the latter was annoyed by the tone of the previous circular of the 24th.
On July 13, he sent another letter to Mola asking him to speed up the uprising. «It has the character of supreme appeal. I am convinced that every minute of inaction translates into an appreciable advantage for the Government. This came across the communication that Mola sent him, through an officer, informing him of the day of the uprising. José Antonio Primo de Rivera, on July 17, wrote a manifesto in which he expressed the unreserved participation of the Falange in the rebellion.
A group of Spaniards, soldiers and other civilian men do not want to attend the total dissolution of the Homeland. It rises today against the treacherous, inept, cruel and unjust government that leads it to ruin. [...] Workers, husbandmen, intellectuals, soldiers, sailors, guardians of the homeland: shake the resignation before the painting of his sinking and come with us by Spain one, large and free. God help us!José Antonio Primo de Rivera. 17 July 1936.
Execution and repercussion
When the insurrection took place on July 18, 1936, José Antonio Primo de Rivera was still imprisoned in the Alicante jail. The day before, he and his brother had been collecting their belongings, which suggests that they took their departure from Alicante for granted. Prior to that date there were various plans to enable his escape. Among them, one that would take him in a small plane to the city of Oran, Algeria, and another to Mallorca in a boat. They all failed before they started. There was also an offer, very close to the 18th, from a group of officers from Alicante who would use an Assault Guard truck to take him away from Alicante; offer that was rejected by Primo de Rivera.
On July 13, he transmitted an order to coordinate the action of Falangists and sympathetic soldiers in Valencia, Alicante, Alcoy and Cartagena. Several soldiers were gathered at the Victoria hotel in Alicante where her sister Pilar and her sister-in-law were staying. On the 17th, her sister and her sister-in-law went to Alcoy to ask the Falangists to quarter with the military; upon their return they were arrested with the order to remain under arrest in their own hotel (on August 1 they would be imprisoned in the Alicante Adult Reformatory). The uprising failed in Valencia and Alicante and this frustrated the attempt to free her. Groups of Falangists left on the 19th from various towns in Valencia in the direction of Alicante. One of the groups, the largest, that had left Rafal was stopped with shots by the Assault Guard. Aware of this fact, the other groups gave up.
In the four months until his death, Primo de Rivera softened his speech. A few months earlier, he would have expressed in number 5 of the publication entitled "La Voz: Izquierdas, Centro, Derechas", where he tried to integrate all parties, including the female vote, in a reasoned dialogue, that in reference to the nature of "War" -in this context it can be understood as the internal struggle of each human being with himself- is inalienable to man. It does not evade nor will it evade. It exists since the world is world, and it will exist. It is an element of progress... It is absolutely necessary! […]. If you believe it to be evil, because they need evil. From the eternal battle against evil comes the triumph of good as San Francisco says. Faced with his inability to avoid it, he even goes so far as to affirm "War is absolutely precise and inevitable. The man with an intuitive, ancestral empire feels it, and it will be in the future what it was in the past". In these months he would speak of the end of hostilities and of reconciliation. Over the next four months it would give rise to the idea, later very widespread, that it could have been the great missed opportunity to reconcile both sides in the Spanish civil war." In August he proposed a plan to end the war. On the 14th, José Antonio would say to Martín Echeverría (Secretary of the Delegate Board for Levante): «Spain is falling apart. The absolute triumph of one side, not supervised by anyone, can bring the Carlist wars back: a setback where all the conquests of a social, political and economic order will perish, the entry into a period of darkness and clumsiness. "Diego Martínez Barrio, who accompanied Echeverría, narrates the interview thus:
I learned that Mr. Primo de Rivera had proposed to Mr. Martín Echeverría, in turn, to transfer him to the Government, to allow him to leave prison, where he would return after a certain time, for which he gave his word of honour, in order to carry out a management in the rebel camp aimed at the end of the civil war and the subjugation of the rebel military and civilians against the Republic, to the legitimate government. He also spoke of intermediate solutions that could be the basis of that negotiation; but he stressed, insisted, on the need to put an end to the contest that had begun, because he believed, as Spanish, that the contest would sink into chaos and ruin to the homeland.Lecture by Martínez Barrio in Mexico in 1941.
He wrote a script that occupied a page on both sides in which the political situation was analyzed and a series of agreements were defined to end the conflict. On another separate sheet was the list of names that would form the reconciliation government. The plan contemplated compliance with the legality of the Republic and an amnesty for the rebels. The reconciliation government was formed, mainly, by moderate republicans and there was no military figure. The plan was not taken into account by the Government and, according to the opinion of Martínez Barrio, the rebels would not have laid down their arms in the face of such a proposal, concluding that "there was no possibility of extorting the person of the head of the Spanish Falange from justice."
His situation in prison worsened when, after protests from other inmates about the privileges enjoyed by the brothers, and once the prison director changed, two pistols and one hundred cartridges were discovered in his cell. Since then, they have remained incommunicado with the outside world, prohibiting them from receiving mail, the press and listening to the radio, as had been the case until then.
From the rebel side there were several liberation attempts. The Government of the Republic received several offers from the rebels to exchange it. Perhaps the one that had the best chance of reaching an agreement would be the one that proposed the exchange of the son of Largo Caballero (then President of the Government). The Governing Council met, Largo Caballero refrained from intervening and, finally, the Council dismissed it. After the exchange attempts failed, several command type operations were carried out with Franco's knowledge and approval. Two of these operations were carried out with the collaboration of the German Third Reich. They had the support of the German diplomatic delegation in Alicante, they had money to bribe those who guarded it and German torpedo boats intervened to bring them closer to the port of Alicante. These operations failed, as did a third one involving a ship from the Ybarra shipping company.
On October 3, the investigation began against the two brothers, the sister-in-law (Margarita Larios, Miguel's wife) and several jailers. The accusation was that of conspiracy and military rebellion, which carried the death penalty. The Supreme Court appointed Eduardo Iglesias Portal, magistrate of the Madrid Court, to take the case and on October 11, the interrogations of defendants and witnesses began. José Antonio Primo de Rivera first appeared in court on November 3, denying all charges. The oral hearing took place on November 16 and 17. Primo de Rivera answered the prosecutor's questions evasively. He denied having had contacts with elements opposed to the Republic, denied having contributed to the preparation of the insurrection and denied having intervened in the Falange uprising in Alicante, alleging that he was incommunicado in his cell, something that contradicted the flexible regime of visits that he enjoyed in those days. The jury, made up of fourteen members, retired to deliberate and after four hours, at half past two in the morning, they came out with the guilty verdict. José Antonio Primo de Rivera was sentenced to death for conspiracy, his brother Miguel to life imprisonment for the same crime and Margarita Larios to six years and one day as a collaborator. In the same trial, the three jailers accused of complicity were acquitted.
The sentence was confirmed by the Supreme Court. The civil governor Francisco Valdés Casas would have tried to avoid the execution. The local Public Order Committee ordered the execution of the sentence for the morning of the 20th. The sentence was carried out, according to versions, without waiting for the information from the Government.
In his will, he recorded his wish: «Let mine be the last Spanish blood spilled in civil discord». Another of his best-known phrases is: "That all the peoples of Spain, however diverse they may be, feel harmonized in an irrevocable unity of destiny." The news of his death soon reached the national zone and he was silenced for the next two years, becoming known as "the absentee". The figure of the martyr, widely exploited in the following years, would perhaps be more useful and less uncomfortable than that of the political leader. Furthermore, as long as Primo de Rivera remained alive but 'absent', the Falange leaders would not attempt to provide themselves with a new leader, thus being more manageable by Franco's willingness to concentrate all power in their hands. «After his execution he became a symbolic martyr, and the fulfillment of his alleged plans for Spain provided a false justification for practically every act of the Caudillo.»
There has been speculation about whether or not enough was done by the rebels to preserve his life. Primo de Rivera and Franco's relations were never good. Primo de Rivera refused to have Franco appear alongside him on the list of candidates in the elections for Cuenca and Franco, possibly, did not forgive him for that attitude. The truth is that the death of Primo de Rivera made it easier for Franco to later use of the Falange. Ramón Serrano Suñer recounts in his memoirs: «Regarding José Antonio himself, it will not be a great surprise, for the well-informed, to say that Franco did not like him. There was reciprocity in it because José Antonio did not feel respect for Franco either and more than once I had felt mortified - as a friend of both - by the harshness of his criticism ».
After the end of the war, the body was exhumed and carried on shoulders from Alicante to El Escorial. And once the Basilica of the Valley of the Fallen was finished, Francisco Franco ordered that his corpse be transferred and buried there.
José Antonio Primo de Rivera did not reach a significant political influence while he lived; he only contributed negatively to accelerating and increasing the Spanish disaster. His fame and apotheosis only came posthumously and probably never would have done so otherwise. [...] However, dead he became the subject of the most extraordinary worship of the martyr of all contemporary Europe, which, in the long run, has guaranteed him a position, status, and a role that he could never have consummated in real life.Payne (1997, pp. 372-373)
In 2019, after the exhumation of the remains of Franco from Valle de los Caídos, the government clarified that José Antonio can remain "discreetly" in the place because he is a victim of the civil conflict.
Ideology and thought
The fundamental influence of Primo de Rivera can be found in his father. José Antonio Primo de Rivera began his political career to defend his political memory and considered his dictatorship a missed opportunity: "Perhaps Spain will not return for a long time due to a more favorable situation." A missed opportunity due to "little things": "They let the moment pass. They did not perceive its decisive depth. They began to be fussy in case the dictatorship disregarded such or such little rituals.” In his career at the head of the Falange we will see him, on several occasions, conspiring against the parliamentary regime of the Second Republic to propitiate a totalitarian government; and in his writings there are frequent references to a hierarchical and totalitarian system:
No revolution produces stable results if it does not light its Caesar. Only he is able to guess the course so buried under the ephemeral clamor of the mass.The leader does not obey the people: he must serve it, for it is another good thing; to serve it is to order the exercise of command toward the good of the people, seeking the good of the people, although the people themselves do not know what is their good.
The chiefs may be wrong because they are human; for the same reason the calls to obey can be wrong when they judge that the chiefs are wrong. With the difference that, in this case, personal error, as possible as in the boss and much more likely, is added the disorder that represents the refusal or resistance to obey.
It's time to end the electoral idolatry. The crowds are lacking as individuals, and they will generally be more. The truth is the truth (although I have a hundred votes). What is necessary is to seek out the truth, to believe in it and to impose it, against the less or against the more.Up4 July 1935.
Despite the defense he made of the «revolutionary fact of the Dictatorship», he found the lack of ideological substratum that would maintain it: «If the intellectuals had understood that man! [...] The intellectuals could have organized that magnificent birth of enthusiasm around what the Dictatorship lacked: a great central idea, an elegant and strong doctrine." His entire political career was determined by the fact that a nationalism An effective authoritarian would have to be far more programmatic, ideological, and organized than the simple system of his father.
It was in 1933 when Primo de Rivera, encouraged by the success of Hitler, approached fascism. Preston (1998, p. 110) Primo de Rivera found in fascism the ideological support he was looking for:
Those who, referring to Italy, believe that fascism is linked to Mussolini's life, do not know what fascism is or have bothered to find out what the corporate organization is. The fascist state, which owes so much to the firm will of the Duce, will survive its inspiring, because it constitutes an unmovable and robust organization. What happened in the Spanish Dictatorship is that she herself constantly limited her life and always appeared, by her own will, as a temporary government cautery. There is therefore no need to believe, it is not even necessary to think that we pursue the implantation of a new dictatorial essay, despite the excellence of which we met. What we seek is the full and definitive conquest of the State, not for a few years, but forever. [...] We do not advocate a dictatorship that will accomplish the calafateo of the sinking ship, that will remedie the evil of a season and suppose only a solution of continuity in the systems and practices of ruinous liberalism. On the contrary, we go to a permanent national organization; to a strong, recite Spanish state, with an executive branch that governs and a corporate chamber that embodies the true national realities. That we do not advocate the transientness of a dictatorship, but the establishment and permanence of a system.The Fascio16 March 1933
It is also undeniable the influence on him of the generation of 98 with its pessimistic vision of Spanish society, and the special influence of Ortega y Gasset; finding in this the reference to his "Unity of destiny in the universal". A constant in his thought was the longing for Imperial Spain, disillusioned by a Spain that he thought was heading towards a "barbarian invasion", as he described socialism and especially communism. Despite this, he tried to bring politicians such as Azaña, Prieto or Negrín closer to his cause at various times in his political career, without success.
Anti-parliamentarianism
On several occasions, José Antonio Primo de Rivera referred to Parliament in a derogatory tone. He defined it as "a cloudy atmosphere, already tired, like a tavern at the end of a crapulous night"; despising it mainly for the following reasons:
- I didn't think the right wings in their parliamentary exercise could stop an inevitable socialist revolution:
The right ones are in their parliament as children with a new toy...Enclosed in their parliament they believe in the possession of the children of Spain. But outside there is a Spain that has despised the toy. [...] That misunderstood Spain unleashed a revolution. A revolution is always, in principle, an anti-classic thing. Every revolution breaks through, just as it is, many harmonious units. But a revolution set in motion has only two exits: either it overwhelms everything or leads it. What cannot be done is to elude her; to do as if she was ignored.F.E. No1, 7 December 1933.
- It considered the citizens competent to decide on "municipal and administrative tasks", but "incible" to decide on the destiny of the nation:
Evidently, in order to acquire the will of the masses, we must put in circulation very coarse and affordable ideas; for difficult ideas do not reach the crowd; and as then it will happen that the best gifted men will not want to go through the streets narrowing the hand of the honest elector and telling him majaderias, they will end up succeeding those to whom the majaderias come out as a natural and peculiar thing.Lecture delivered at the Commercial Circle of Madrid on April 9, 1935.
I don't trust the woman's vote. But I don't trust the man's vote either. Ineptitude for suffrage is the same for her as for him. And it is that universal suffrage is useless and harmful to the peoples who want to decide their politics and their history with the vote. I do not believe, for example, that in the desirability or inconvenience of an international alliance or to know the maritime policy to continue can have the mass opinion, or at most, more than very few of its representatives.Interview about the female vote The VoiceFebruary 14, 1936.
- Nor did he admit that a majority could decide on what he considered absolute truths or eternal values, or discuss the leadership of the boss:
When, in March 1762, a nefarious man named Juan Jacobo Rousseau published The social contract the political truth ceased to be a permanent entity.[...] He assumed that the whole of us who live in a people has a superior soul, of hierarchy different from each of our souls, and that that Me. different is endowed with infallible, capable of defining in an instant the just and the unjust, the good and the evil. [...] From there came the democratic system, which is, first of all, the most noisy system of energy waste. A man endowed for the very high function of governing, which is perhaps the most noble of human functions, had to carry out eighty or ninety percent of his energy to carry out formulaic claims, to make electoral propaganda, to sleep in the seats of the Congress, to adjure the voters, to endure their impertinences, because of the electors he was to receive power; to support humiliations and vexations of precisely.Address of the founding of the Spanish Falange (Teatro de la Comedia, October 29, 1933)
The State and the Individual
Primo de Rivera advocated an authoritarian State in which man would supposedly achieve his true freedom; since this would only be true "if it is conjugated in a system of authority and order". A system reminiscent of enlightened absolutism:
The homeland is a unity of destiny in the universal. [...] The State cannot be a traitor to its task, nor can the individual stop collaborating with his in the perfect order of the life of his nation. [...] The idea of destination, justifying the existence of a construction (state or system), filled the highest epoch that Europe has enjoyed: the thirteenth century, the century of Saint Thomas. And he was born of friar minds. The friars faced the power of the kings and denied them that power as long as it was not justified by the fulfillment of a great end: the good of their subjects.Lecture in a FE course of the JONS. March 28, 1935.
He insisted on numerous occasions on that paternalistic vision of the authoritarian system: «All the organization, all the new revolution, all the establishment of the State and all the organization of the economy, will be aimed at incorporating those benefits into the enjoyment of those enormous masses uprooted by the liberal economy and by the communist attempt".
The authority of the State would be justified by a superior mission to fulfill. Spain, as a civilized nation, would have the duty to impose its culture and political power outside its borders. Also, the State, and its leader, would be at the service of the person.
For Primo de Rivera, "human dignity, the integrity of man and his freedom are eternal and intangible values"; considering that man, he only acquired his human quality by dedicating his life to a great collective enterprise; the State would be that great company.
Left and Right
For Primo de Rivera, the main danger facing Spain was the socialist revolution and in his writings and in the violent action of the Falange, the left were the declared enemies. As for the right, he considered it "lack of faith and drive". », unable to erase the memory of the enemy (Manuel Azaña) with a «deep and strong» work. In his opinion: «The right-wing, the right-wing parties, want to preserve the Homeland, they want to preserve authority; but they ignore this anguish of man, of the individual, of the fellow man who does not have to eat ».
Primo de Rivera's position vis-à-vis political parties coincides with third positionism and transversalism: a totalitarian system that overcomes the division of left and right.
Spain and Catholicism
«Many times you will have seen propagandists from different parties; everyone will tell you that they are right compared to the others, but no one tells you about the one that is right above all: Spain." Spain is the concept that appears most repeatedly in the speeches of José Antonio Primo de Rivera. Perhaps the most repeated phrase in his speeches was: «Spain, unity of destiny in the universal». That destiny would be the one that would make it possible to end the class struggle and the one that would avoid the disintegrating action of nationalisms. Spain had an imperial destiny to fulfill and this destiny would unite all the Spaniards in that common enterprise.
Spain is not justified by having a language, or by being a race, or by being an acquis of customs, but that Spain is justified by its imperial vocation to unite languages, to unite races, to unite peoples and to unite customs in a universal destiny; that Spain is much more than a race and much more than a language, because it is something that is expressed in a way that I am increasingly satisfied, because it is a unity of destiny in the universal.Speech in parliament, 30 November 1934.
Catholicism is present in the concepts most used by Primo de Rivera. In the Initial Points of F.E. It can be read: «The Catholic interpretation of life is, first of all, the true one; but it is also, historically, the Spanish "; uniting in this phrase religion and tradition. It is also present in his concept of the universality of Spain: "What can the exaltation of the genuine national lead to if not to find the Catholic constants of our mission in the world?" In his concept of "militant life and sacrifice", mixes his military and catholic sense; and his influence on his sense of social justice and his political paternalism is undoubted. In such a way that he maintained that "every construction of Spain must have a Catholic sense."
Primo de Rivera contemplates a spiritual conception of History and Man within a Catholic worldview, opposed to the materialist interpretation of Marxism, seeking to merge tradition and revolution. The recovery of the Catholic tradition of Spain in its fundamental aspects combined with a revolutionary zeal that rivals Marxist socialism in those situations where intolerable injustice made socialism appear justifiable. The political scientist Arnaud Imatz considers him a revolutionary traditionalist and some Carlist thinkers such as Francisco Elías de Tejada include him as a traditionalist thinker. On the other hand, Rafael Gambra Ciudad accuses him of imitating tradition.
Economy and trade unions
Contrary to capitalism (understood as the concentration of wealth and the means of production) and economic liberalism (criticism of Adam Smith), he believed in a totalitarian economic system, adhering to the national-syndicalism of Ramiro Ledesma Ramos. A system beyond Italian corporatism in which a union would bring together all the employers, all the workers and all the means of production. The purpose of this union would be to achieve the social justice that Primo de Rivera enunciated with: "Patria, pan y justicia". José Antonio Primo de Rivera considered that "the social is an interesting aspiration even for elementary mentalities".
The union attributes the special mission of articulating the Nation. I would share that mission with the family and the municipality.
José Antonio Primo de Rivera and fascism
Primo de Rivera began to be interested in fascist ideas at the beginning of 1933. A defender of his father's dictatorship, he considered that it failed because it lacked an ideological basis. He believes he finds in fascism the ideological basis on which to sustain a system similar to the dictatorship of his father.
In October 1933, ten days before officially founding the Spanish Falange at the Teatro de la Comedia, he traveled to Italy and met Mussolini. The reasons for the trip, as he told the Italian authorities, were "to obtain information material on Italian fascism and on the achievements of the regime", as well as "advice for organizing a similar movement in Spain". In Italy he visited different headquarters of the National Fascist Party. Moments before his visit to Mussolini, he would tell the journalist who accompanied him: "I am like the disciple who goes to see the master." On his return to Spain he would write: "I have seen Mussolini up close, one afternoon in October 1933, in the Venice Palace, in Rome. That interview gave me a better glimpse of fascism in Italy than reading many books." Mussolini gave him a large dedicated photo that José Antonio Primo de Rivera hung in his office next to his father's portrait. He embraced "a fascism full, based on the mystical conception of the regenerative, populist and ultra-nationalist revolution, oriented towards the construction of a totalitarian State as the base and foundation of an orderly and enthusiastic, hierarchical and conquering national community. This is the lowest common denominator of all fascisms, and Primo de Rivera's covered it more than sufficiently."
During the months that followed the founding of the Falange, declarations in favor of fascism followed one another. In February 1934, his adherence to fascism can be considered total, considering it "a new way of conceiving all the phenomena of our time and interpreting them with their own meaning."Primo de Rivera finds in fascism the most used concepts in his speeches:
Fascism is not just an Italian movement: it is a total, universal, meaning of life. Italy was the first to apply it. But is it not worth the conception of the State outside Italy as an instrument in the service of a permanent historical mission? Not the vision of work and capital as part of the national commitment to production? Not the will of discipline and empire? Not the overcoming of party discords in a tight, fervorous, national unanimity? Who can say that those aspirations are only of interest to Italians?La NaciónOctober 23, 1933.
Including his vision of man, the hero: «Man is the system, and this is one of the profound human truths that fascism has revalued. [...] from the origin of the world, is the only apparatus capable of directing men: man. I mean, the boss. The hero".
Falange Española was created four months ago when it merged with the JONS. In Payne's opinion, the twenty-seven points of the program hardly differ from the generic fascist ideology. Primo de Rivera thinks that the Italian experience can be exported to Spain. It draws from or coincides with fascism in its nationalist vision and its vision of social justice:
"The conviction that fascism cannot root in Spain is quite widespread. What do you have to oppose this conviction?- I think it will. Spain has done wonderful works of discipline. What happens is that this need takes us 'after a century of decadence. At this time, our virtues of discipline and organization may be very enervaged, but no one tells us that we will not be able to find the means of awakening them. Fascism is a universal attitude back to oneself. They tell us we imitate Italy. Yeah, we do it in looking for our intimate reason to be in our own guts. But that attitude, copied, if you want, even if it is eternal, gives the most authentic results. Italy has met Italy. We, turning towards us, will find Spain.
Fascism is essentially nationalistic. What is the nationalism that you want to stimulate?
—The Homeland is a mission. If we place the idea of Homeland in a territorial or ethnic concern, we expose ourselves to being lost in unfettering particularism or regionalism. The Homeland has to be a mission. There are no continents already to conquer, it is true, and there can be no illusions of conquest. But the democratic idea given by the League of Nations is now falling into the international arena. The world again tends to be led by three or four racial entities. Spain can be one of these three or four. It is located in a very important geographical key, and has a spiritual content that can make you aspire to one of those command posts. And that's what you can advocate. Not to be a middle country; for it is either an immense country that fulfills a universal mission, or it is a degraded and meaningless people. Spain must be returned with the ambition of being a country director of the world.
—Not all citizens are able to conceive the great nationalist ideals. To the simple man of the people, what can lead to fascism?
—For which the great national ideal is not affordable, the engine of the social ideal remains. Undoubtedly, the next content of the movement is in social justice, in an uplifting of the kind of life. Fascism aspires to national greatness; but one of the steps of this greatness is the material improvement of the people. Social is an interesting aspiration even for elementary mentalities; but, moreover, the national is affordable to many more people than they believe. Every Spanish socialist has a nationalist inside.NowFebruary 16, 1934.
In the following months, the Falange was criticized as an imitation of fascism: «They tell us that we are imitators. […] After all, in fascism, as in the movements of all times, there are, beneath the local characteristics, some constants, which are the heritage of every human spirit and which are the same everywhere». Faced with these criticisms, (according to Payne, influenced by Ramiro Ledesma), he publicly distanced himself from fascism. In December 1934 he declared: «The Spanish Falange of the J.O.N.S. It is not a fascist movement, it has some coincidences with fascism in essential points of universal value; but it is taking shape every day with peculiar characters and it is certain that it will find its most fruitful possibilities precisely along this path.” After 1935, he did not publicly associate the Falange with fascism again. However, in the secret report that he sent to the Italian Government, in the summer of 1935, on the situation of Spanish politics, it can be read: «The Spanish Falange de las JONS has managed to become the only fascist movement in Spain, which it was difficult, given the individualistic nature of the people"; and, in February 1936, the portrait Mussolini dedicated to him is still present in his office.
The only concept that Primo de Rivera modified during the period of his political activity was corporatism, since from his first full adherence he passed to an adherence with nuances: «This corporate State is another fritter of wind. Mussolini, who has some idea of what the corporate state is, when he installed the twenty-two corporations, a few months ago, gave a speech in which he said: "This is only a starting point, but it is not an ending point. ”». In April he would answer Miguel Maura in these terms:
If Miguel Maura had the kindness to read some of my speeches—from the one in Comedy, on October 29, 1933, to the Sunday before the last elections—; if he had read the papers published in Arriba, humbly anonymous more than the time, by my comrades of clearer head, I would notice that our movement is the only Spanish political movement where he has taken care intransigently of starting things. We started by asking what is Spain. [...] Fascism has never been called [the Falange] in the forgotten paragraph of the least important official document or in the most humble propaganda leaf.
The Fascist International
Primo de Rivera had a close relationship with fascism and with the projects of the fascist International. In 1933, the Comitati d'Azione per l'Universalitá di Roma (CAUR) were created, offices, in theory of a cultural nature, opened in numerous cities around the world and dependent on a headquarters in Rome. Primo de Rivera was a founding member of the Spanish section. The CAUR organized various meetings. The first in Montreux (Switzerland), in December 1934. José Antonio did not attend this congress; although it seems that one of the first ideologues of Spanish fascism, Ernesto Giménez Caballero, then part of the Falange, attended (there is no documentary evidence). The Italian press reported that he attended on behalf of Primo de Rivera, something that he denied: «The head of the Falange was requested to attend. But he flatly refused the invitation because he understood that the genuine national character of the movement that he leads is repugnant even to the appearance of an international leadership ».
In September 1935, the CAUR would organize a second meeting that José Antonio Primo de Rivera did attend. Falange was not attached to the movement and in his speech he offered the reasons:
Spain is not yet prepared to join, through my mediation, a movement of a non-international character, but supranational, universal. And this not only because the Spanish character is too individualistic, but also because Spain has suffered much for the International. [...] If we appeared before the Spanish public as united to another movement, and this without a slow, deep and difficult preparation, the Spanish public consciousness would protest. It is therefore necessary to prepare spirits in view of these supranational works. [...] I promise all of you to do what you can in that regard and to awaken a national conscience.Address by José Antonio Primo de Rivera at the 2nd Congress of the CAUR in Montreux. Gil Pecharromán (1996, p. 371)
In April 1935 Primo de Rivera traveled to Italy and, as a result of this trip, he obtained a grant from the Italian government of fifty thousand lire a month. Subsidy that remained secret even among the ranks of the Falange and that Primo de Rivera himself was in charge of collecting, traveling every two months to the Italian embassy in Paris. In the summer of 1935, perhaps as compensation for this subsidy, to At the request of the Italian Government, Primo de Rivera sent him a secret report on the political situation in Spain.
José Antonio Primo de Rivera also traveled to Germany in May 1934 to seek the support of the Third Reich. The petition to the German ambassador states his interest in the new Germany and especially in the organization of the SA and SS. On this trip he visits Hitler; although the interview and the trip were discouraging for him, since they were arranged by a minor member of the Nazi Party. Not the slightest importance was given to his stay in Berlin, and the visit to Hitler was merely formal.
José Antonio Primo de Rivera and violence
Primo de Rivera, personally, was involved in numerous acts of violence. With a pleasant character and courteous treatment, he fell into fits of anger when the memory of his father was offended. In her student days she ended numerous arguments with her fists and later that violence took her to the courts, the Bar Association and the cafes. to speak disparagingly about the dictator Primo de Rivera (father of José Antonio). When José Antonio found out about any of those comments, he appeared in the company of one of his brothers and his friends at the cafe where Queipo de Llano was attending a gathering, caught his attention and without giving him time to react, Queipo de Llano being seated, told him dealt a blow. Queipo de Llano suffered a wound to his forehead that left scars and José Antonio Primo de Rivera, who was a second lieutenant, was expelled from the Army by a military court.
In his parliamentary activity, on two occasions he attacked two deputies with his fists. In one of the cases, the deputy's criticism of his father's dictatorship served as a trigger. When he was tried for possession of weapons, at the moment the sentence that sentenced him to five months of arrest was read, he had a fit of rage, he insulted and threatened the magistrates; he acted as his own advocate for him and tore his gown and flung his cap to the ground. A court official commented: "As cool as his father," to which Primo de Rivera responded by punching him, which he responded by throwing an inkwell that hit him on the forehead. In the Modelo prison in Madrid, when he was told that he was being transferred to Alicante prison, while he was locked up in his cell, he became so enraged that other Falangists were alarmed and, believing that they were subjecting their leader to ill-treatment, staged an attempt of mutiny.
Primo de Rivera accepted violence as something normal in social and political relations. He was educated in a militaristic environment and lived through a time when violence was part of political activity. He was influenced by the work of Georges Sorel Reflections on Violence, a reference to the European extreme right of that time, and was an admirer of Mussolini and his methods to fight the left and gain power through violent actions.
Primo de Rivera suffered several attempts on his life. One is documented in which, on April 10, 1934, his car was shot at and the driver and his companion came out behind the gunmen, having a shootout with them. The attack against a parliamentarian was an infrequent event and had a great repercussion. Also, on another occasion, they mistook a car for his and threw a firecracker at it.
He founded the Falange Española, a fascist political party that, as such, contemplated access to power through violent methods; and the practice of the Falange corroborated these methods, reaching pistoleros. However, among the Spanish fascist leaders, he was the least prone to the systematic practice of violence and murder. For Primo de Rivera, the use of violence was lawful if it was exercised to achieve a higher end. The Falange's access to power to establish a totalitarian regime that would guarantee the unity of a Spain that he saw as threatened was that higher end that justified violence: «We had to show that we were not a band of mercenaries dedicated to eliminating their adversaries. I spoke in the Theater of the Comedy of the dialectic of the fists and the guns without thinking about the ambushes in which the best boys of the first hour died, but thinking about the conquest of the State and the defense of the Fatherland». This would be a violence that would not conflict with their religious convictions, since "violence is not systematically reprehensible. It is when used against justice. But even Santo Tomás, in extreme cases, admitted rebellion against the tyrant." Accepting his own words, to assume the violence that the Falange came to exert, he would have had to overcome his religious conviction: "When the blood of these young people, I understood that it was necessary to defend ourselves. My moral and religious scruples became cramps and, after a long internal struggle, faith in our ideal defeated all disappointment and all remorse.
He was undecided when the Falange considered moving from raids in the streets and the university to the systematic use of violence to intimidate the left; but at last he took that step. There is no doubt that the numerous riots and assassinations that the Falange carried out after the Popular Front claimed victory in the elections were done with his knowledge and under his direction. However, in April 1936, when he found out about the plan to attack Largo Caballero, he disavowed his authorization, it could be concluded that he did not accept violence for violence's sake; but, «if there were no other means than violence, what does it matter? Every system has been violently implanted, even soft liberalism."
The mythification of José Antonio Primo de Rivera by the Franco regime
As Zira Box has highlighted, "if there was one who fell par excellence within the New Francoist State, it was undoubtedly José Antonio". «His portrait of him, always placed next to that of the Caudillo, looked unparalleled in schools and public offices, in shop windows and on private balconies at every parade, party or demonstration. His name caught on in the Spanish churches, inaugurating the lists of fallen and he presided over a good part of the winning speech in the postwar period ». «For the Falangists, he would be exalted in his condition of prophet and Founder to the emulation of Christ himself, shedding his young blood for the redemption of Spain».
According to Stanley G. Payne, José Antonio Primo de Rivera "became the object of the most extraordinary martyr cult in all of contemporary Europe, which, in the long run, has guaranteed him a position, a status, and a role that could never have consummated in real life".
According to Zira Box, the "exploitation" that Francoism made of the figure of the "fallen" José Antonio Primo Rivera was due to three reasons. The first, because he was "an important element to turn to within the heterogeneous legitimizing discourse of the victors", especially during the first years when fascism triumphed in Europe. Secondly, because he ensured the conformity of the Falangists with the Franco regime. And thirdly, "because it redounded to the benefit of Franco himself who, presenting himself as the defender, guarantor and continuator of the Joseantonian doctrine, obtained a good dose of legitimacy as the new national leader of the unified party and as the natural successor of the deceased Founder".
The myth of "The Absent One"
A first appropriation of his figure by the Franco regime was to hide for two years that he had been shot in Alicante at dawn on November 20, 1936, which fueled the hope among the Falangists that he was still alive. This is how the myth of the "Absent" José Antonio arose, which contributed "to the subsequent process of sacralization that his texts and his sayings would experience," according to Zira Box. More than a year after becoming the new head of the unified FET and JONS party in April 1937, General Franco considered that the time had come to break the news of José Antonio's death. From then on the myth of the "Absent" gave way to the myth of José Antonio, the prophet and founder who died in sacrifice and service of Spain.
The first step was the promulgation of the decree of November 16, 1938, on the second anniversary of his death, in which, after proclaiming José Antonio Primo de Rivera as a "national hero" and "symbol of the sacrifice of the youth of our times", November 20 of each year was instituted as a day of national mourning and, among other commemorative measures, it was announced that a monument "of appropriate importance to the honors of the commemorate" would be erected. In addition, the use of the black tie over the blue shirt for all members of the Falange was established, as a symbol of mourning. The decree was accompanied by an order from the Political Board of FET and the JONS signed by Dionisio Ridruejo for the one that all the churches had to exhibit on their walls some commemorative plaques with the list of the "fallen" of each locality that had to be headed with the name of José Antonio Primo de Rivera.
Four days after the promulgation of the Decree, on the day of the second anniversary of his death, solemn funerals for José Antonio were held in Burgos, the capital of the revolt, ―the following day they were held at the rest of the main cities of the insurgent area―. Speeches were made by General Franco, the Minister of the Interior Ramón Serrano Suñer and the general secretary of FET and JONS, Raimundo Fernández Cuesta, a close friend of José Antonio. In his speech, Fernández Cuesta insisted on the exemplary nature of his death, "sufficient to give his doctrine, his work, characteristics of purity and strength." General Franco then placed a wreath under the newly carved plaque in the cathedral with the names of the fallen headed by José Antonio, as established in the order of the Political Board of the single party.
For its part, Radio Nacional offered a series of talks exalting José Antonio as part of its Commemorative Week. In one of them it was said that, as a prophet creator of a new era and a new movement, he had "left marked out the paths to follow and the infallible norms with his imperative verb." In those conferences, and later, a "fully devotional" language was used, in which José Antonio was presented, according to Zira Box, as "the Messiah, the long-awaited man, the one who had offered himself to all the sacrifices, suffering in his flesh Passion and Death. He was the Chosen One who on October 29, 1933 had spoken to the Spanish for the first time to reveal a new doctrine of redemption. Even, in some cases, the voice of José Antonio was compared to the voice of God, as Ridruejo did in his radio conference on November 15. José Antonio became "the prophet of the Falangist political religion".
Transfer of the corpse from Alicante to the Monastery of El Escorial (1939)
A few days after the end of the civil war, on April 1, 1939, the body of José Antonio was «reconquered», as the Falangist Agustín de Foxá had claimed ―«one day your comrades will pass behind the victorious sword from Franco to reconquer your body”, he had written in November 1938. His body was exhumed and buried in a niche in the Alicante cemetery in a ceremony that ended with the fascist salute and the ritual cry of "Present!" pronounced by his brother Miguel Primo de Rivera. On November 9, 1939, on the third anniversary of his death, Franco ordered the transfer of José Antonio's remains to El Escorial. The transfer of the coffin from Alicante was carried out on foot on the shoulders of Falangists who took turns day and night ―each time a relay was carried out, the ritual cry of "José Antonio Primo de Rivera, Present!" accompanied by cannon salutes and ringing of bells; at night the procession was accompanied by Falangists carrying torches. It began on November 20 and it took ten full days to cover the almost five hundred kilometers that separate Alicante from El Escorial. The coffin was received at the gates of El Escorial by Generalissimo Franco himself, accompanied by the entire government and military hierarchy, amidst drum rolls, artillery salutes and military music. Next to the tomb were the wreaths sent by Hitler and Mussolini. Finally, General Franco pronounced the same words that José Antonio had said during Matías Montero's funeral in 1934. José Antonio's coffin was buried at the foot of the main altar of the Chapel of the Kings. The National Department of Cinematography filmed a documentary about the funeral entitled ¡Presente!. As Zira Box has pointed out, "the choice of El Escorial for the burial ―a historic site reserved for the great kings of the Spanish past― helped to make clear to the monarchical sectors who was the indisputable martyr of the dictatorship".
The articles published in those days by the Falangist press, especially the newspaper Arriba, helped to strengthen the myth of José Antonio, who was once again compared to Christ. This is what Rafael Sánchez Mazas did in an article published on December 1 and that would be reproduced in successive years by the Francoist Propaganda Department:
He who preaches the future redemption of a people and is willing to die for the spirit against the flesh ends up imitating Christ without wanting. [...] So he died—not in vain it is worth repeating it—death condemned to death at the thirty-three years of his age, after having suffered the Gethsemane, having been surrounded by few disciples, having scandalized Pharisees and energized us and having dedicated three years of public life to the redemption of his people.
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As Ismael Saz has pointed out, «the gigantic and formidable spectacle of the transfer of his mortal remains from Alicante to Escorial in November 1939 brought together almost all the facets of the myth: the properly mystical of the religious component and cult of the fallen of all the fascisms; the, at the same time, mobilizing and legitimizing of a Falange that still hoped to see the dream of the totalitarian State come true; the proper legitimizer of a regime, the Francoist one, and its maximum exponent, Franco, quite distant from Falangist revolutionism».
"From then on, an effective publicity fever flooded the country fresh out of the war with biographies, reminders and tributes aimed at perpetuating the glory of the deceased." In Recordación de José Antonio de Eugenio Suárez published in 1939 was called simultaneously Profeta, Absent, Chosen, César, Comrade and Forerunner. «When you listen to our fiery supplications, think that they are a constant expression of our memory. But also think that they are expressions of faith. Faith in Your mission at the service of Spain", Eugenio Suárez wrote.
Zira Box concludes: "There is no doubt that José Antonio was an omnipresent dead man opportunely used by the leader of New Spain that emerged from the same war that had killed the commemorated man."
Transfer from El Escorial to the Valley of the Fallen (1959)
When the Valley of the Fallen was about to be inaugurated, General Franco sent a letter on March 7, 1959 to the brothers of José Antonio Primo de Rivera, Miguel and Pilar, asking them to give permission to bury him in the valley. In the letter he told them: «Once the great basilica of the Valley of the Fallen has been completed, built to house the heroes and martyrs of our Crusade, it is offered to us as the most suitable place for the remains of your brother José Antonio to be buried there., in the preferential place that corresponds to it among our glorious fallen. Although his lady and transcendent figure already belongs to History and the Movement, to which he gave himself so generously, his two brothers being his closest relatives, it is natural that you be the ones who give your consent for the transfer of the remains, which will rest there in the same form and disposition that until today they have had in the Monastery of El Escorial». The brothers responded four days later, accepting the offer and thanking Franco for the letter, "which shows us to what extent you have sincere and deep affection and respect for the person and work of our brother José Antonio." «We also believe that this is how we interpret José Antonio's desire to rest together with his comrades, and that this is the same feeling of the Falange, which under the leadership of Your Excellency continues to be so loyal to his memory and to his idea. We would like the transfer from the Monastery of El Escorial to the Basilica of the Valley of the Fallen to have, as much as possible, an intimate and collected character", they added.
The decision to transfer José Antonio de El Escorial to the Valley of the Fallen was not well received by certain Falangist sectors who considered that it was done to please the monarchists who already criticized at the time that the Falange leader was buried in the pantheon of the kings of Spain. On the other hand, the wishes of the brothers were respected and the transfer that began at dusk on Sunday, March 29, was attended by only twenty-four people, in addition to Miguel and Pilar Primo de Rivera. Among them were prominent Falangists such as Raimundo Fernández Cuesta, José Antonio Girón de Velasco or José Solís Ruiz, along with former ministers such as Joaquín Ruiz Giménez. Franco did not attend and the undersecretary of the Presidency Luis Carrero Blanco took his place. The Minister of Justice Antonio Iturmendi drew up the act as a senior notary. The coffin was placed on the same litter on which it had been transferred from Alicante twenty years earlier and carried on the shoulders of members of the Old Guard and Franco's Guard who took turns along the thirteen kilometers that separate El Escorial from Valle of the Fallen Upon reaching its destination, Abbot Fray Justo Pérez de Urbel took charge of the coffin. Some Falangists gathered there whistled and booed the entourage. Finally, the coffin was deposited at the foot of the main altar of the basilica under a granite slab, with the same simple inscription of "José Antonio" that had already been used in El Escorial.
Titles
He was twice grandee of Spain —once, by granting such a distinction to the Marquesado de Estella in 1921, and another, posthumously, by being granted the dukedom of Primo de Rivera. He was, therefore, III Marquis of Estella and, in 1948, posthumously, I Duke of Primo de Rivera (who continue to have his heirs in 2019). Likewise, he held the title of gentleman of the chamber with exercise and servitude, knight of the Order of Santiago and complement lieutenant of the cavalry weapon of the Spanish Army.
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