Traditional Communion
Traditionalist Communion was the political organization of the Carlist movement, legally established in 1869. It also received other names, such as traditionalist party, Catholic Communion -Monarchist (usual during the Revolutionary Sexennium), Carlist party (until 1909), Jaimista party (between 1909 and 1931) or Legitimist Communion —among others— that fell into disuse in the 1930s. From then on, it was also sometimes known as the Carlist Traditionalist Communion, a name given by Alfonso Carlos de Borbón y Austria-Este.
Some authors use the expression "Traditionalist Communion" to refer to the party that emerged in the early 1930s as a result of the merger of the three branches of traditionalism: Jaimista, Mellista, and Fundamentalist, although the The name had already been used regularly to define Carlism since the last third of the XIX century, when it was established as a parliamentary force, also being used during the Restoration, and the almost exclusive name of the organization of Carlism during the Second Republic and the Franco regime until the 1970s, when the ideological change of a sector of the movement took place.
Since the XIX century, traditionalism defended what it considered the political tradition of Spain synthesized in its motto: «God, Patria, Rey». He obtained parliamentary representation in almost all electoral calls at the end of the XIX century and beginning of the century XX and was one of the forces that led the coup in Spain in July 1936 and gave rise to the Traditionalist Spanish Falange and the JONS, later acting in a semi-clandestine situation during the Franco regime, with periods of opposition and collaboration with the regime.
With the name of "Traditionalist Communion" the Carlist organization in favor of Prince Sixto Enrique de Borbón and the classic ideology of Carlism was reconstituted in the 1970s, legalized as a political party in 1977, although other political groups would also declare themselves heiresses of the historic organization of Carlism.
Concept of communion
In the XIX century, the word «communion» was commonly used in Spanish to define a party of a political nature In this sense of the term, already in 1844 reference was made to Carlism as "a communion no less numerous than respectable" that had been excluded from the bosom of the nation, according to what could be read in the first lines of the prospectus of La Esperanza, the first Carlist newspaper to exist in Madrid. Its editor, Pedro de la Hoz, would sometimes refer to Carlism as "Carlist communion", "monarchic communion" or even "Catholic Spain".
Before the Revolution of 1868, Carlists and Nocedalistas would already use the names "Monarchical-religious Communion" and "Catholic-Monarchical Communion". And after the fall of Isabel II, both would unite in the same party which would bear the latter name, although it would also be known as the "Carlist party".
The subsequent preferential use among the Carlists of the term «communion» instead of «partido», could have been due to the rejection of the parliamentary system of political parties. The Carlist José María Codón, for example, postulated in 1961 that the Traditionalist Communion had never been a party, but rather an "anti-party, the germ of the structure of society without parties".
Since at least the Revolutionary Sexennium, the Catholic-monarchist press repeatedly stated that Carlism was not really a party. For example, in the columns of La Esperanza it was said in 1871 that the Carlists formed "a political group to which the name of the party does not correspond" and in those of El Pensamiento Español It was stated around those same dates that "our principles being national, we Carlists do not properly form a party". Likewise, in the Third Carlist War the Carlist general in chief of Catalonia, Rafael Tristany, alluded to Carlism in a proclamation as "our great national communion, eternal symbol and perpetual personification of the loyal and true Spanish people" and the Carlists as "the defenders of the institutions, whose group is vulgarly and badly described as party".
During the Restoration regime, the Carlists frequently reiterated their opposition to the parties, and even on occasions to talk about Carlism as such. In an article from 1905 entitled «The partialities, the parties and the Carlist Communion», Eneas went so far as to affirm in the newspaper El Correo Español (a Carlism press organ):
Let it be calculated, therefore, if it will not be contempted by the capital and extraordinary improperity to baptize with the party mote to ancient Spain, to a communion of men, to an army of soldiers who carry by motto the destruction of the parties, the condemnation, not only of the parties, but until the beginning in which the parties are founded.The parties are the evil—we say the Carlists,—and that's why we have to protest against that name. —Our flag is that of Spain —we said, — and within Spain, not only fits, but it imposes as necessary the union of all Catholics, of all men of good, of all patriots [... ]
I believe that I have shown that the Carlists neither are we nor want to be party, and that the word party is a mote that feels good to the liberals, but which carries within itself something antagonistic, something repulsive to the way of being, to faith, to charity, to the heart of the Catholics.
In the same vein, in 1923, the former manager of El Correo Español Gustavo Sánchez Márquez stated:
Precisely the traditionalists, as we advocated the division of the country into parties, we have always been precious of being the only Spaniards who were not party: representatives of the old Spain, we were grouped under our beliefs as "traditionalist communion".
Likewise, Luis Hernando de Larramendi, general secretary of the pretender Don Jaime, proclaimed in 1919 that «Spanish traditionalism has never been, by its original nature, a party», but added that «with disgust, before the irremediable force of the circumstances, together with the existence of so many, born of the prevailing opinion regime, has come, in a certain way, to resign itself to being so". In fact, until the 1930s the expressions "Carlist party", "traditionalist party" and "jaimista party" were common, even among the Carlists themselves. During the Second Republic, the chief Carlist delegate, Manuel Fal Conde, would put even more effort into affirming that the traditionalist organization he led was "a Communion and not a party"..
History
Revolutionary Six-Year Period
The Carlist movement did not become a political party until the Revolution of 1868, since until then the Carlists had preferred warlike procedures, leaving the defense of their ideas in parliamentary politics during the reign of Isabel II to the called neo-Catholics, although these did not pose a dynastic conflict.
For this reason, the leadership of the Carlist party was subordinated to the needs of the military organization. After Juan III ceded his dynastic rights to his son, Carlos VII, he foresaw that a new war would take place, for which reason he created the Royal Commissariats of Regions and Provinces, under the unified command of Ramón Cabrera, captain general of the Royals. Carlist armies, who lived in London and was well known in Spain for his military performance in the First Carlist War. Cabrera tried to initiate the legal political activity of the party and, encouraged by the result of the elections for the Constituent Cortes of 1869, arranged to organize the electoral campaign in the first partial elections but, due to lack of organization, the Carlists suffered a strong setback.
Ramón Cabrera considered that it was difficult to lead the party from abroad in its legal life, so the Central Catholic-Monarchical Board was born, which was very important in that period. The differences with respect to Carlos VII made Cabrera present his resignation, which was accepted after the candidate for the throne rejected his draft parliamentary constitution.
In the 1871 elections, the Carlists went from 20 to 51 seats, thanks to the activity and propaganda of the Central Board chaired by Francisco Javier Fernández de Henestrosa y Santisteban, Marquis of Villadarias. By order of Don Carlos, he was to provisionally lead this Carlist minority in Cortes Matías de Vall, as he was the oldest Carlist representative. However, according to the newspaper La Correspondencia, the Catholic deputies The monarchists immediately unanimously agreed to designate Cándido Nocedal as their chief, while the senators chose Gabino Tejado to direct them. The pretender then intervened, arranging that the Count of Orgaz be the common head of the minorities in Congress and the Senate. According to Melchor Ferrer, Nocedal carried out skilful work in Congress in defense of the interests of the Church and came to make a proposition parliamentarian inviting Amadeo de Saboya to leave Spain.
In January 1872, Don Carlos named Nocedal president of the Central Catholic-Monarchical Board, replacing the Marquis of Villadarias, thanks to the mediation of Emilio de Arjona, the pretender's secretary. This motivated Antonio Aparisi y Guijarro to withdraw from active political life, dying shortly after, and generated disagreements and divisions among the Carlists that would have repercussions 9 years later, due to the creation of the Catholic Union of Pidal.
Thanks to the zeal of the Junta and the secretary of the Electoral Section, the playwright Manuel Tamayo y Baus, the Carlists obtained good results in the 1872 elections, although somewhat less favourable. But although the Central Board was in charge of political organization and electoral plans, it also participated in the warlike preparations for the insurrection that gave rise to the Third Carlist War, with which the Carlists had threatened since the election of Amadeo de Saboya.
Alphonsine Restoration
After the war ended in 1876 with a military defeat for the Carlists and one of its main leaders, Ramón Cabrera, abandoning the Carlist cause and having recognized Alfonso XII as king the previous year, Don Carlos tried to recover the morale of the Carlist from exile. his forces. To do this, he appointed Cándido Nocedal, former Minister of the Interior of Isabel II and former head of the Carlist minority in 1871, as his General Delegate in Spain. Nocedal's work consisted of reorganizing the party and preserving his political doctrine in the face of the advances of liberal Catholicism and the Catholic Union of Alejandro Pidal y Mon, whose leaders tempted the Carlist masses, as they were men from Carlism whom they had followed and admired.
Later, the Carlist press reappeared, some of its most enduring newspapers being El Siglo Futuro, founded by Ramón Nocedal (later split) and El Correo Catalán, by Manuel Mila of the Rock In the second Restoration elections, in 1879, Ramón Altarriba y Villanueva, Baron de Sangarren, will represent the traditional Carlist district of Azpeitia.
After the death of Cándido Nocedal, Don Carlos decided to personally assume the direction of the Traditionalist Communion and appointed the journalist and novelist Francisco Navarro Villoslada as his representative. At this stage the traditionalist press developed a lot and the internal confrontation with the fundamentalists took place. The conflict ended the unity of the Communion, which would end up being reflected in 1888 in "El Pensamiento del Duque de Madrid", by Luis María de Llauder, by those loyal to Don Carlos, and in the "Burgos Manifesto", by the fundamentalists, led by Ramón Nocedal.
Don Carlos endowed the party with a new, more decentralized and also more military organization, due to the nature of the delegates. Between 1887 and 1890, the leadership of Carlism in Spain was divided into four zones. The first, which corresponded to the region of León, Asturias and Galicia, had as Delegate León Martínez de Fortún, Count of San León and Field Marshal. The second region, corresponding to Andalusia and Extremadura, was entrusted to Juan María Maestre, general of artillery. The third was delegated to Francisco Cavero y Álvarez de Toledo, Marquis of Lácar, and included the former Crown of Aragon (Catalonia, Valencia, the Balearic Islands and Aragon), Murcia and Castilla la Nueva. The last area, which included Old Castile, the Basque Provinces and Navarre, was assigned to Lieutenant General Juan Nepomuceno de Orbe y Mariaca, Marquis of Valde-Espina.
This division into four zones lasted until 1890, when Carlos VII arranged for the four delegations to meet in a single person, Enrique de Aguilera y Gamboa, Marquis of Cerralbo, who managed to heal the wounds opened by the fundamentalist split and organized the participation in the general elections of 1891 (the first to be held with universal male suffrage) achieving a parliamentary minority that was not equaled until 1907. He toured Spain making propaganda and knew how to give a good organization to the movement. Following the loss of Cuba and the Philippines in 1898, there were attempts at an armed uprising that failed due to the defection of General Weyler, and in 1899 the Marquis of Cerralbo had to resign and expatriate.
Don Carlos then appointed Matías Barrio y Mier, professor at the Central University and deputy for Cervera de Pisuerga, as delegate. When his management as delegate began, in October 1900 there was an assault on the Badalona Civil Guard barracks by the Carlist party led by José Torrens and José Grandia raised another important party in Gironella with workers from the factories in the area, maintaining for half a month in the mountains of Berga, an action that was defended by the deputy Víctor Pradera in the Cortes. Barrio preferred political tact and achieved the reconciliation of the Marquis of Cerralbo and Juan Vázquez de Mella with Don Carlos, which materialized in the candidacy of Vázquez de Mella for Barcelona, and a movement for the revival of the Traditionalist Communion that culminated in the general elections. of 1907.
From then on the Carlist aplecs began, which mobilized large masses, and many new traditionalist press titles that propagated the doctrine of the movement. There also began to be good relations between the leader of the Integrist Party, Ramón Nocedal, and Vázquez de Mella, disappearing the confrontation between the two traditionalist formations.
Carlos VII died on July 18, 1909, and his son Don Jaime took over the leadership of the movement. That same year, the delegate Barrio y Mier had also died, who was replaced by the Navarrese deputy Bartolomé Feliu, whom Don Jaime kept in office.
The revitalization of Carlism (known from then on as Jaimism) started in the previous period was further accelerated. In 1910 Joaquín Llorens y Fernández de Córdoba was appointed head of the Requeté, a Carlist paramilitary organization created three years earlier as the movement's youth organization.
In 1913 a new organization was established for the leadership of the Traditionalist Communion, creating the National Board, of which the Marquis of Cerralbo was appointed president, who had to act during the period of the First World War. The differences between the National Board (Germanophile) and Jaime III (alliadophile), were the cause of the new schism of Vázquez de Mella. In 1919 the Aragonese Pascual Comín y Moya was appointed representative of Don Jaime with the title of secretary.
Although Comín's prestige prevented the party from completely falling apart and that strong nuclei remained faithful, he held office for a short time. Don Jaime needed someone younger for the arduous work of reorganization, so in 1919 Luis Hernando de Larramendi, a lawyer, writer and speaker who had stood out in the Traditionalist Youth of Madrid, was appointed secretary general.
Hernando de Larramendi began to reorganize the movement with great difficulties, since there were clashes among those loyal to Don Jaime. At the Biarritz Junta, he was able to present the reconstituted structure of the Traditionalist Communion and his activity allowed him to bring together dispersed elements, although the party no longer had the strength of previous years. Jaimista parliamentary minorities were reduced to a few deputies and senators. At the end of the leadership of Hernando de Larramendi in 1922, the movement had diminished in volume, but it had youth full of enthusiasm, particularly in the regions where the mellista split had wreaked less havoc, Catalonia and Navarre.
Dictatorship of Primo de Rivera and the Second Republic
José Selva y Mergelina, Marquis de Villores, new secretary of Don Jaime in 1922, centralized the direction of the Communion from Valencia, where he lived. Thanks to his work, he managed to revive the movement in the Valencian Region, but the Dictatorship of Primo de Rivera, together with the pre-revolutionary period that led to the proclamation of the Second Republic in 1931, provided him with new difficulties. However, the great activity of the Marquis de Villores made it possible to reorganize the party in Guipúzcoa, Vizcaya and La Rioja and later presided over the reconciliation of mellistas, integristas and jaimistas, with all the nuances of Traditionalism united in a single program, in a single aspiration and under the leadership of Don Alfonso Carlos, successor of Don Jaime, who had died in 1931.
The Marquis de Villores died in 1932, when the traditionalist propaganda campaigns had spread the vitality of the Communion throughout all the regions of Spain. The deputies of the traditionalist parliamentary minority achieved that year (elected in the constituents of the previous year) were Joaquín Beunza, the Count of Rodezno, José María Lamamié de Clairac, Julio de Urquijo, Ricardo Gómez Rojí, Francisco Estévanez Rodríguez, Marcelino Oreja Elósegui and José Luis Oriol, a minority only comparable to that of 1869.
Before the death of the Marquis de Villores, a Supreme Junta had been created, which was in charge of the leadership of the party upon his death, under the presidency of the Count of Rodezno, who directed the movement with great efforts of propaganda and activity. The persecutions that the rulers of the Azañista biennium undertook against Traditionalism only encouraged the flame, and traditionalist propagandists toured Spain. At that time, organizations, especially the Red Berets and Daisies, flourished everywhere. The nerve center continued to be in Navarra and the Basque Country, as well as in Catalonia. But the novelty was the incorporation of new territories such as Andalusia.
On June 24, 1932, the Cultural Council of the Traditionalist Communion was established. It was chaired by Víctor Pradera and had as advisers relevant figures of traditionalism such as José Roca y Ponsa, the Count of Rodezno, Luis Hernando de Larramendi, Esteban Bilbao, Manuel Senante, Monsignor Pedro Lisbona, Fernando de Contreras, the Count of Castellano, Ricardo Gómez Rojí, Agustín González de Amezua, Miguel Junyent, Emilio Ruiz Muñoz, Eustaquio Echave Sustaeta, the Marquis of Santa Cara, Marcial Solana, Jesús Comín and Domingo Tejera.
The great traditionalist resurgence produced at the beginning of 1933 materialized in the province of Castellón, for example, in the formation of more than 40 local boards, 13 circles, 20 organizations of "Margaritas" and 3 of Requetés. According to Antonio González Sobaco, the Traditionalist Communion —which liked to present itself as an "anti-party" because of its opposition to the liberal democracy regime— went beyond the limits of a political party and had a different character due to the religious formation it imparted to its associates., the paramilitary character of the Requeté, the tension of their actions and their charitable work.
In the legislative elections of 1933, 21 traditionalist deputies sat in the Cortes, led by the Count of Rodezno.
When new far-right formations appeared during the Second Republic, and particularly the fascism of the JONS and the Falange, the traditionalists would claim to be the only anti-liberal party that had existed in Spain for a century, and considered that the new parties anti-liberals and anti-communists were largely inspired by his program. An example of this will be the words of Constantius in 1934:
What has in Spanish the "Fascio" program, like the seventeen points of the youth of Popular Action, as the Spanish Renovation program, has been taken from the traditionalist program. What happens is that we serve him whole and the others in prayers.
On May 3, 1934, Alfonso Carlos appointed Manuel Fal Conde, lawyer and fervent Catholic, royal secretary and general secretary of the Traditionalist Communion, centralizing the organization in his team. That same year, Fal Conde organized the Acto del Quintillo, a demonstration of strength by Andalusian Carlism, against the reviled Republic. Traditionalist newspapers, especially El Siglo Futuro, then compared him to the Navarrese Carlist leader Tomas de Zumalacárregui.
Thanks to the work of Fal Conde, Andalusian Carlism, without a great tradition until then, achieved an enormous boom, Andalusia becoming known as the "Navarra of the South", with four elected traditionalist deputies for the region: Miguel Martínez de Pinillos Sáenz, Juan José Palomino Jiménez, Domingo Tejera de Quesada and the worker Ginés Martínez Rubio.
In March 1934 Antonio Lizarza, representing the Traditionalist Communion, Lieutenant General Barrera, for the Spanish Military Union, and Antonio Goicoechea, for Spanish Renovation, traveled to Rome. After meeting with Benito Mussolini and explaining his plan to overthrow the Republic, the fascist government provided them with money and weapons, also agreeing to send young Requetés to Italy for military training.
Although said trip occurred when the Count of Rodezno was still chief delegate of the Traditionalist Communion, he would not have been very supportive of an uprising. The sending of young people would intensify from the moment he began directing the Manuel Fal Conde Communion, who ordered the military training of the requetés. In groups of 30, requetés from all over Spain, and especially from Navarre, secretly traveled to Italy, where they would stay for about a month. About 500 of them would be instructed in the handling of the most advanced modern weapons.
In the 1936 elections, 15 traditionalist deputies were elected, but they were reduced to 9 after several acts were annulled. The victory of the Popular Front and the subsequent climate of social tension would accelerate the preparations for the uprising against the Republic.
Conspiracy and Civil War
The Traditionalist Communion actively participated in the preparation of the military uprising that would put an end to the Republic along with some elements of Renovación Española and the Falange. At first, General Sanjurjo, who had already staged an attempt in 1932, was to lead the Movement. In the spring of 1936, General Varela, who had traditionalist sympathies, was acting as representative of General Sanjurjo (who was in exile in Portugal). But due to pressure from the police, he was replaced by General Mola, the military governor of Pamplona.
In the name of Alfonso Carlos, supreme head of the Traditionalist Communion, Prince Javier de Borbón Parma met in Lisbon with Sanjurjo, and according to the Carlists themselves, agreed with him that:
The Requetés would cooperate, from the very first moment, to the Movement, if the Army started it; but if it could not, the Requetés would begin, always commanded by General Sanjurjo, and for that, the Lieutenant Colonel of E. M. Baselga formed the plan of the uprising, constituted in principle by two strong groups of Requetés that would appear in the Sierra de Huelva and in the Sierra de Gata, in their obvious reasons.
When attracting government forces, the Navarrese and Basque requetés had to act immediately, along with the Catalans and Aragonese, in a double movement on Madrid. Supposedly General Sanjurjo was not in favor of road warfare, but rather he intended to wage a decisive battle, as soon as he had assembled the elements willing to support him. According to the Buenos Aires magazine El Requeté, although Sanjurjo did not report it, the battle probably took place north of Madrid.
Two passwords had been agreed with General Sanjurjo, one that General Mola had in half and should command, if the Army decided to start the Movement, and another that Fal Conde had, also in half with General Sanjurjo, whose dispatch meant that the requetés began the Movement, to which later, due to the prestige of General Sanjurjo, they assumed that the Army would fold.
The assassination of José Calvo Sotelo would precipitate the Uprising. After long and complicated negotiations with General Mola, Fal Conde compromised the participation of the red berets in the Army uprising. The Requeté joined the military uprising of July 18, 1936 together with the Spanish Falange militias of the JONS, fighting in the Civil War, coming to integrate more than 60,000 volunteer combatants distributed in 67 tercios of Requetés.
A few days after the Uprising began, Alfonso Carlos stated in a letter to Fal Conde: "At times like the present, personal party issues should not be considered, but rather try to save Religion and the Homeland together", so that the voice of the Uprising should be for the Carlists only "for God and for Spain", above their dynastic interests. However, the Carlists who had participated in the conspiracy trusted that Sanjurjo would reestablish a traditional monarchy in Spain, since He was the son of a Carlist captain killed at the head of his squadron in the Third Carlist War, and nephew of General Joaquín Sacanell, who was Secretary of Carlos VII in Venice. José Sanjurjo himself would have also stated that he always wanted to send requetés.However, the accidental death of Sanjurjo on July 20, when he was preparing to go to Spain, would change the direction of the Movement.
Among those who rebelled on July 18, General Barrera was the only general who had had counterrevolutionary activity since 1932, but he was finally satisfied with the presidency of the Supreme Court of War and Navy, and General Franco, of greater prestige than Mola, he would end up imposing himself at the head of the rebels.
After the death of Alfonso Carlos on September 29, 1936, the first order of the regent Javier was the confirmation of the Delegate Board in the person of Fal Conde, and the same organization of the War Commissioners was maintained instead of Regional Heads.
The Traditionalist Communion formally disappeared in 1937 as a consequence of the Unification Decree that merged the Falange and Traditionalist Communion into a single party called the Traditionalist Spanish Falange of the JONS, later known as the National Movement. However, a part of the traditionalists, led by Fal Conde, did not accept the decree, and the so-called Javieristas continued to act and use the name of the Traditionalist Communion in semi-clandestinity during the Franco regime.
Traditionalist Communion Division
Due to both the Unification Decree and the extinction of the Carlist dynasty by way of agnate, there were various fractures in traditionalism. The traditionalists in favor of Carlos Pío de Habsburgo-Borbón (carlooctavistas), of Juan de Borbón and Battenberg (juanistas) and of the so-called National and Carlist Regency of Estella de Mauricio de Sivatte (sivattistas), would separate from the group loyal to Javier de Borbón Parma, who in 1936 had been named successor to Alfonso Carlos as regent until the succession issue was resolved.
Alfonso Carlos was to be succeeded by the prince who had the most rights to the crown of Spain and who at the same time assumed the political principles of traditionalism in order to be considered a legitimate king "of origin and exercise". Encouraged by his supporters, in 1952, on the occasion of the XXXV International Eucharistic Congress in Barcelona, Don Javier would finally claim for himself the rights to the crown, although he would later be ambiguous regarding said claim.
The Javieristas, led by Manuel Fal Conde, maintained for two decades their opposition to the Unification Decree and a strong political and religious intransigence, coming to be qualified by General Franco, in statements to the newspaper Arriba in 1955, as "a tiny group of fundamentalist followers of a foreign prince, separated from the first hour of the Movement".
Given Franco's approach to Don Juan and in the midst of a climate of division in the traditionalist camp, in 1955 Fal Conde resigned as Chief Delegate of the Traditionalist Communion, and in January 1956 Don Javier appointed a National Secretariat made up of by Juan Sáenz-Díez, José María Arauz de Robles and Ignacio Hernando de Larramendi, under the presidency of José María Valiente, who in October 1960 would be elevated to Chief Delegate. The collaboration policy program would deal, in the first place, to achieve the internal unity of the Communion and offer an ideological structure supported by a mass of opinion that, above all personal ties, would guarantee the historical continuity of "the principles of July 18".
Although the Javieristas collected for themselves the name of «Traditionalist Communion», Juanistas, Carlooctavistas and Sivattistas also declared themselves heirs of the historical Traditionalist Communion. According to Antonio María de Oriol (one of the few traditionalist ministers that Franco had), the Traditionalist Communion was made up not only of the Javieristas, but also of all those who agreed with the ideals of traditionalism.
When in 1968 Mariano Robles Romero-Robledo filed a complaint with the Public Order Tribunal, affirming that the Traditionalist Communion —whose new executive officers were openly announced in the press— was an illegal organization outside the Movement, the Tribunal opened the corresponding summary, but finally resolved to refrain from going into the merits of the matter and file the proceedings, stating that:
The Traditionalist Communion, according to the Decree of 19 April 1937, incorporated with Falange Española an entity of a national character, while the other political organizations and parties were declared dissolved, where a legitimacy of origin is obtained and, therefore, an impossibility of subsuming that Communion in the penal provisions on political associations, because it is neither prohibited by the Law nor has it ceased to comply with the requirements or procedures.
In 1975, the traditionalist followers of Sixto Enrique de Borbón and supporters of the classic ideology of Carlism, who did not accept the changes of the Carlist Party established in 1970 nor did they recognize the legitimacy of the exercise of Carlos Hugo de Borbón (in whom Javier had abdicated in 1975), they again constituted an organization with the name of Traditionalist Communion, which claimed to be a continuation of the historical Traditionalist Communion.