Spanish Fascism Research Articles

Rockin’ the Regime: Mormon Missionaries, American Popular Music, and the Fading of Spanish Fascism

ABSTRACT In 1972 a group of Mormon missionaries in Spain formed a band known as Los Salt Lake City. Playing primarily folk and rock music, they toured the country, gave radio and press interviews, and released two albums and an EP. Their experience is recounted and assessed in relation to the musical context of Spain at the time, including the social, religious, and political implications of the musical context.

“Eso Parece Español”. El Patrimonio Conflictivo Compartido de las Dictaduras

The following article is a local case study that examines the shared heritage of German and Spanish fascism in Berlin and its critical artistic reappraisal using the example of historical sites and monuments of art and architecture of the 20th century. The text is based on the experiences and controversial discussions of the heritage conservation andrestoration in the German capital after the opening of the Berlin Wall (1989/90) and the fall of the Iron Curtain in Europe (1989/1991). Characteristic differences in the reception of history and heritage between the western sectors of Berlin and East Berlin after 1945 also became apparent. The text owes essential impulses to the recent Action Group ‘Integrated and Comprehensive Approaches for Dissonant Heritage in Europe’ of the ‘Partnership Culture and Cultural Heritage’ within the framework of the ‘Urban Agenda of the EU’ and is intended as a contribution to the current discussion at the II International PAMEFRAN Conference “Heritege and conflict Debate on the management and treatment of a multifaceted object”. The article opposes a politically motivated iconoclasm of symbols and monuments of autocratic systems of the past and advocates for their critical reappraisal and commentaryin situ.

‘The Falange Changed Our Way of Being Completely’: Women and Gender Identity in Spanish Fascism

Women's and gender history has broadened our knowledge of the Franco dictatorship by incorporating new perspectives and categories of analysis. The Women's Section of the Falange, a topic that has attracted progressively greater attention since the 1990s, has been analyzed mainly as a mechanism of female subordination and as a differentiated sphere for women's agency. This dual approach follows to a great extent the ground rules established in ongoing debates on other European experiences of fascism. This article intends to offer ways of surmounting some dichotomies (e.g., subordinated/emancipated, victims/perpetrators) that have underpinned the analysis of women during the dictatorship. Accordingly, an attempt will be made to explore how the Falangists constructed a collective subjectivity from their own notions of their political culture – Spanish fascism – and a specific war experience that had shaped them as subjects. And, from this perspective, the article offers an understanding of their agency in a context in which the ‘victory’ of the military uprising had led to a process of reconstructing political and social power.

“Martyrs for God and Spain”. National Martyrdom in Spain from the Civil War to the Historical Memory Law

The article considers the ideology of national martyrdom in 20th century Spain, especially the cult of “martyrs for God and Spain” spread during the period of Spanish Civil War (1939–1939) and the reign of caudillo Francisco Franco (1939–1975). The author reasons that, as a mechanism for legitimization and mobilization, the idea of martyrdom for the nation was one of the integral parts of Francoist regime. The origins of this idea are traced back to several sources: “old” national martyrdom of 19th century Spain, associated with its struggle for independence from France, the sacrificial culture of local groups such as the Carlist and Jesuits, the ideology of the fascist Spanish Phalanx and some theological concepts put forward by distinguished Roman Catholic bishops in Spain. Particular attention is given to the discourse of José Antonio Primo de Rivera, the founder of Spanish fascism, who cultivated a “spirit of sacrifice” and promoted the veneration of dead Falangists as martyrs. Theory and practice of martyrdom in the Civil War are examined in relation to its conceptualization as a “Crusade”, which contributed to the junction between the images of military hero and martyr. After the end of war, this militaristic ideology became routinized and more peaceful, although preserving its unifying force. The article's final section examines the issues associated with the Valley of the Fallen memorial and the recent politics of “demartyrization” as part of overcoming the legacy of dictatorial rule. The author concludes that as long as José Antonio's body remain at the center of the Valley, state policy on “historical memory” and the cult of martyrs would remain conceptually incomplete.

Rethinking Atlantic Empire: Christopher Schmidt-Nowara's Histories of Nineteenth-Century Spain and the Antilles

Though his life was tragically cut short, Christopher Schmidt-Nowara (1966–2015) was a trailblazer in the fields of Spanish imperial and Atlantic histories. His numerous monographs, chapters, and articles combined to demonstrate that “Spain's nineteenth-century empire was intertwined with similar empires in the age of abolition, free trade, proconsular despotism, and second slavery” (pp. 4–5). This volume evolved out of two initially unrelated conference panels organized to celebrate Schmidt-Nowara's life and scholarship. Editors Scott Eastman and Stephen Jacobson have collated 11 chapters that each engage different aspects of Schmidt-Nowara's work and legacy.Eastman and Jacobson organize the collection into four sections. The first consists of a single chapter by Jacobson that charts Schmidt-Nowara's intellectual biography. Therein, Jacobson explains how, as a product of the reinvigorating studying of imperialism at the University of Michigan in the 1990s, Schmidt-Nowara was influenced by “smasher[s] of paradigms” including Rebecca Scott, Geoff Eley, Seymour Drescher, Josep Maria Fradera, and Dale Tomich (p. 22).The second section explores the scholarly effect of these influences. It is comprised of three chapters that examine Schmidt-Nowara's major publications. Chapter 2, by Adrian Shubert, concentrates on Schmidt-Nowara's first monograph, Empire and Antislavery: Spain, Cuba, and Puerto Rico, 1833–1874 (1999). Shubert explains the pathbreaking nature of the book, as Schmidt-Nowara revealed “empire and metropolis as acting upon each other reciprocally,” a momentous thing in 1999 (p. 46). Joshua Goode's chapter explains how Schmidt-Nowara's reading of sources “against the grain” allowed him to develop his revolutionary and widely circulated theses (p. 53). In chapter 4, Dalia Antonia Caraballo Muller furthers the analysis of Shubert and Goode, explaining that Schmidt-Nowara's scholarship “proved that the colonies were not only economically, strategically, and administratively important to Spain, but were politically and intellectually significant as well” (p. 68). Ultimately, Schmidt-Nowara told “a richly complicated story of domination, resistance, and engagement that is anything but straightforward” (p. 78).The third section of Rethinking Atlantic Empire is made up of five chronological chapters inspired by Schmidt-Nowara's multifaceted contributions to Spanish imperial and Atlantic historiographies. Emily Berquist Soule's chapter concentrates on the intersection of slaveholding and Catholicism in New Spain, using Schmidt-Nowara's thoughts on transatlantic reciprocity to explain how “the Church failed to live up to its own official program for African slaves” (p. 98). In chapter 6, Elena Schneider examines how Schmidt-Nowara influenced approaches to the Hispanic Atlantic with regard to scale, while in chapter 7 Anne Eller looks to the ways that Schmidt-Nowara influenced study of independence by analyzing Spanish colonial ideologies through the lens of the Dominican Republic. Chapter 8 engages with Schmidt-Nowara's effect on the historiography of antislavery, with author Lisa Surwillo exploring the Spanish translation of Harriet Beecher Stowe's A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin (1853). Surwillo explains that “the discourse around the transatlantic slave trade shared important similarities” (p. 161). In the final chapter of the third section, Louie Dean Valencia-García examines “the impact of the Spanish colonial project” on the rise of Spanish fascism in the twentieth century (p. 167). Valencia-García argues that Schmidt-Nowara “provided a methodological model to consider power relations more generally amongst marginalized groups” that proves useful to scholars outside his own nineteenth-century focus (p. 179).The fourth section of the anthology consists of two chapters that explore Schmidt-Nowara's posthumous and unfinished works. In chapter 10, Joselyn Almeida looks to Schmidt-Nowara's translation of Fernando Blanco White's Flight to Freedom (1815). Schmidt-Nowara's sensitivity to transnational connections “illuminate[d] how the interimperial relations of European states that vied for power across the Atlantic exacted a violent cost from Indigenous and African peoples” (p. 183). Juan Luis Simal's chapter theorizes about how Schmidt-Nowara's previous works might have shaped his unfinished project on the nature of captivity and experiences of prisoners of war in Napoleonic Europe. The volume ends with an epilogue presenting the transcription of an interview that Schmidt-Nowara gave to the Spanish radio program Hablemos de historia (Let's talk about history). The interview hints at Schmidt-Nowara's outlook on historical study as he engages in “how identities were generated in the metropolis and in the colonies, and how they have conditioned the future of these societies in the contemporary world” (p. 220).Overall, Eastman and Jacobson have organized a powerful reminder of Schmidt-Nowara's titanic contribution to Spanish imperial and Atlantic histories. The contributors write with great emotion, leading to compelling narratives and insightful arguments. This is a volume that should be read widely both for its synthetic treatment of Schmidt-Nowara's work and as a blueprint for how historiographical ideas can shape disciplines and scholarship beyond their own fields.

AmericCamus 1959: Albert Camus en Amérique maccarthyste par Alek Baylee Toumi

Reviewed by: AmericCamus 1959: Albert Camus en Amérique maccarthyste par Alek Baylee Toumi E. Nicole Meyer Toumi, Alek Baylee. AmericCamus 1959: Albert Camus en Amérique maccarthyste. L'Harmattan, 2020. ISBN 978-2-343-20398-0. Pp. 102. Given Toumi's five previous plays featuring Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Albert Camus, the latter being the topic of the author's research, the reader understands this play is imaginary, albeit containing factual links to Camus. Toumi sets up the play's action through three constructs. First, several quotes orient our reading of the play. This highlights Camus's appreciation of humour as well as his distaste for contemporary intellectual society "où le réflexe a remplacé la réflexion, où l'on pense à coup de slogan et où la méchanceté essaie de se faire passer trop souvent pour l'intelligence" (7). Second, the cast list includes well-known scholar, Germaine [End Page 266] Brée, and Camus, as well as Gerry and Judy, two former colleagues of the author. Inconsistencies appear. For instance, Toumi mentions that Brée arrives in 1960 to the University of Wisconsin-Madison, his alma mater. However, the action of the play occurs there in November 1959. Third, the "présentateur" sets up the premise of the return of La peste "Trumpism" as a parallel to McCarthyism of the era represented in the play. Toumi argues that Camus's joy, sense of humor, and passion for life remain the ultimate form of pacifist Resistance. Constructed in four "Tableaux," the first and by far the longest, is composed of four scenes, the others each of two. The first Tableau shares Camus arrival, banal exchanges, and quotidian details (sandwich, shower, unseasonably warm weather). Certain recognizable details add veracity—the location of a now defunct train station, the Italian deli where Brée buys her bread. Within a few pages, the character Camus and Brée chat. Camus critiques mediocre, mean intellectuals. An interesting, albeit wide ranging discussion ensues; topics include Algeria, Spanish fascism, his Nobel Prize, and various authors they have read. The rapid jumps in subjects might appear more an exercise in namedropping to some. Clever wordplay will appeal to others. Central themes include Camus's passion for writing, family (especially his former and now current partner, Maria), and his love for Algeria despite his prediction that in becoming an "Algérie arabe, d'exclusions et de haines" (42), it will autodestruct. Lacking transition, scene 4 commences with Camus singing Georges Brassens's songs to Brée, who criticizes American conservatism and their lack of appreciation. The second Tableau brings both to campus. Scène 2 introduces Gerry and Judy who dine with the duo that evening. They barely speak—Gerry tells several "Frenchie jokes," while Judy comes off as silly. Of all of the named characters, she is the only one still living, and in November 1959, was a high school freshman. One wonders why these characters are named at all. The last two Tableaux leave politics aside and are the most successful. A conversation with students and professors in the penultimate is followed by a job interview in which Camus hides his identity. Toumi's affinity for Camus, and their mutual love of Algiers and Algeria come through well, helping the reader to understand an era of the past, as well as its link to our current times. E. Nicole Meyer Augusta University (GA) Copyright © 2021 American Association of Teachers of French

The Importance of Morocco in the Spanish Civil War

This paper addresses the pivotal yet forgotten role that Morocco played in the Spanish Civil War. Other histories and analyses of the Civil War limit discussion to the Spanish side of the conflict without recognizing the colonialist holdings that Spain had and the ways that those lands and people impacted the war. This leads to an incomplete history that denies the Civil War its full historical context and the foundational context for the Nationalist side of the conflict. This paper analyzes the war as well as the ideological creations behind Spanish Fascism and the ways in which Morocco was tied to the creation of the Spanish Civil War, how it was important to the fighting of the conflict, and how it was pivotal to the war's eventual outcome. This will be argued by looking at the racist and eurocentric views of the Spanish Republic and how those views lead directly to its failure in the Civil War. This article will analyze first hand accounts of people directly involved in the war and the factors that led to the involvement of Moroccans on the Nationalist side.

Kaleidoscopic Antifascism: María Teresa León and the Refraction of Socialist Realism to Argentina

In this article I reenact the transitional nature defining the antifascist movement during the 1930s and 1940s, and I do so by using as the scenario for my reflections the novel Contra viento y marea (1941) by the Spanish writer María Teresa León. This novel was launched by the principal publishing imprint of the largest antifascist association in Argentina soon after the arrival in Buenos Aires of its author. Considering the fluid nature of a political movement whose orientations took shape according to the historical evolution and the geographical location of the struggle against fascism, Contra viento y marea illuminates new convergences and divergences in the refraction of this movement across Hispanic cartographies. The novel, written by a communist card-carrier, diverges from the author’s political position during the Spanish Civil War and from the Soviet-encouraged literary model, Socialist Realism. Despite this heterodoxy, the text received attention from Argentinian antifascism, which was dominated at that time by local communism and interested in the testimonial value of a work authored by an intellectual who played a prominent role in the fight against Spanish fascism.

The Concept of Totalitarianism in the Bulgarian Public Discourses

The aim of this paper is to discuss the use of the concept of totalitarianism in Bulgarian public discourse since the 1980s. The main focus lies on academic and political discourses, started with Zhelyu Zhelev’s book published in 1982, "Fascism. A documentary study on the German, Italian and Spanish fascism", and developed after the fall of the Communist regime (1989). The content of the concept, dynamics and criticism of it are analyzed. It is concluded, that the disputes for and against totalitarianism divide the academic field and public memory. The proponents of the theory of totalitarianism insist on remembering the terror, the camps, deportations, suppression, and non-freedom under Communism. On the other hand, the supporters of the left are reluctant to use the term totalitarianism or relate it only to the period of Stalinism.

Entre el nacionalcatolicismo y el fascismo. Las religiones del franquismo

It is considered here, in the first place, that the Francoist was not a fascist dictatorship but fascistized, precisely because of the hegemonic character of National Catholicism. Secondly, that this does not mean that there was no fascist political religion in Spain, which was logically based on the fascist culture of Spanish fascism. Third, that the fact that National Catholicism ended up being hegemonic in Francoism over fascism, must be considered as the result of a complex series of processes, transversalities and conflicts, and not as something that was determined from the beginning.

Unearthing gendered repression: an analysis of the violence suffered by women during the civil war and Franco’s dictatorship in Southwestern Spain

ABSTRACT The Francoist repressive strategy unleashed after the coup d’état of 17 July 1936 developed complex mechanisms of physical and psychological punishment. Within Franco’s repressive system there was a specific procedure applied to Republican women. In this article, I provide an analysis of the repression suffered by women during the Spanish Civil War and Franco’s dictatorship in southwest Spain. For that purpose, I draw on stories of female victims, who suffered physical and psychological humiliation, and on mass graves with bodies of women. The research is based on a holistic study of material, oral and written sources from a historical, archaeological and forensic anthropological perspective. It is argued that the different repressive strategies used against the female population by Spanish fascism was motivated by the perception of women as second-class citizens and therefore inferior to men. Their punishment followed criteria of exemplarity.

El fascismo español y su sombra en Colombia

El objetivo principal de esta investigación es realizar un estudio histórico, correlacional y descriptivo, entre la violencia bipartidista vivida en Colombia durante la mitad del siglo XX y el fascismo español de la década de los 30 para establecer un nexo causal entre estos dos fenómenos, aclarando que éste no sería el único factor detonante de la violencia bipartidista en Colombia, pero sí uno de ellos, originado en las políticas coloniales y el proceso independentista, hasta llegar a la adopción de la ideología del fascismo español del General Franco en Colombia.

The fight against the ‘anti-nation’ as a historical mission: the delegitimization of the enemy in Italian Fascism and Spanish Fascism

For the Italian Partito Nazionale Fascista (Pnf) and the Falange Española (Fe), the political community coincided with the nation, conceived not as an undifferentiated conglomeration of citizens but as a community of believers in a ‘religion of the Fatherland’. The common goal of the Italian and the Spanish fascists, since their appearance on the political scene of their respective countries, was the defence of national values. But the claim to being the only and exclusive representatives of those values denied any effective freedom of dissent, even to those who respected national values but intended them in a different way. This article will analyse how the ideologues of the Pnf and the Fe articulated their respective campaigns against the anti-national enemies in order to legitimise their own parties and pave the way to the effective realization of their own nations: nations that had to be clearly and totally fascist.

El fracaso del diálogo migratorio transatlántico en Vientos de agua

Este artículo analiza las connotaciones afectivas del diálogo transatlántico que propone la serie hispano-argentina Vientos de agua en su proyecto de instaurar una comunidad de significado común para todos los sujetos víctimas de estructuras de dominación, ya sean políticas o económicas. A través de las historias paralelas de Argentina y España, se establece una conexión entre el poder disruptivo del fascismo español a principios del siglo XX con el del capitalismo en Argentina a principios del siglo XXI, proponiendo la deconstrucción de una serie de estructuras binarias herederas del discurso colonial al establecerse las categorías universales de víctima e inmigrante. Consideramos este proyecto fallido dado el tratamiento de ciertos personajes que en última instancia quedan excluidos del circuito afectivo. Concluimos que estas estrategias se resuelven en la preponderancia del espacio peninsular, así como en la exclusión del elemento indígena y africano de la supuesta nueva comunidad de significado, resultando en el fracaso del dialogo migratorio transatlántico.

Franco's Hajj: Moroccan Pilgrims, Spanish Fascism, and the Unexpected Journeys of Modern Arabic Literature

Journey to Mecca(;al-Rihla al-Makkiyya; 1941), by the distinguished Moroccan historian and legal scholar Ahmad al-Rahuni, recounts a hajj, or pilgrimage to Mecca, sponsored by the fascist Spanish dictator Francisco Franco in 1937. Franco's support for the hajj was part of a vast propaganda effort to cast Franco's Spain as a friend of Islam and a defender of the cultural heritage of al-Andalus (medieval Muslim Iberia). Al-Rahuni's travel narrative blurs the line between Mecca and Spain by casting Spain's Islamic heritage sites as a metaphoric Mecca to which Muslims should make pilgrimage. The account thus highlights the collaboration between Spanish fascists and Moroccan elites. It also complicates the dominant scholarly narratives about modern Arabic literature, which have tended to focus on Egypt, the novel, and secular epistemologies. Al-Rahuni's text speaks, instead, to the persistence of Arabic prose genres that do not conform to a Eurocentric notion of literature.

Did Catalonia endure a (cultural) genocide?

AbstractDuring the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), Spanish fascism developed its own repressive tools and resources against their enemies (Republicans, Socialists, Communists and Anarchists among others) in the same way other European fascisms did. The depth of the Spanish nationalism brought Franco’s repression against the Catalan society to the height of the processes of cultural and linguistic persecution in the same way that Nazism or Italian fascism had done in the territories they occupied during the years of World War II.

Encuentros Con El Yanqui: Norteamericanización Y Cambio Cultural En Chile, 1898–1990

Encuentros Con El Yanqui: Norteamericanización Y Cambio Cultural En Chile, 1898–1990

Some Contributions to the Origins of Corporativism in Spain

It’s always been understood that the first corporatism in Spain was the result of the different economic and political forces, besides the different interests of that bourgeoisie. But there were really three ingredients in economic thought that played a main role: neogremialismo, regeneracionista speech and social catholicism. By these means, the first essay of the corporativism in 1923 can be interpreted as an autoctonous process and not as the Spanish version the fascism of our Italian neighbours. The answer to the country’s situation in thought and social reality, coupled with the influence of the prevailing philosophy in the Italian system, facilitated the entry to the first corporatist regime. This brief dictatorial experience helped to cook the broth where Spanish fascism would germinate years later, and to analyze the mean inputs in the gestation of this thought is of great importance. So, we can understand that Spanish corporate organization was the result of joining two principles: state intervention in social problems and regeneration of economic life. Two principles extracted from the Spanish reality of the moment. Il primo corporativismo in Spagna e stato da sempre considerato il risultato delle diverse forze economiche e politiche dell’epoca, oltre che dei differenti interessi della borghesia. Ma, in realta, tre contributi di pensiero economico hanno giocato un ruolo fondamentale: il neogremialismo, il regeneracionismo e il cattolicesimo sociale. Premesse queste considerazioni, il primo tentativo di corporativismo nel 1923 puo essere letto come un processo autoctono e non come la versione spagnola del fascismo dei vicini italiani. La risposta alla situazione del Paese nella teoria economica e nella realta sociale, insieme con l’influenza della filosofia dominante nel sistema italiano, ha facilitato l’accesso al primo regime corporativo. Questa breve esperienza dittatoriale ha contribuito a preparare il terreno in cui il fascismo spagnolo sarebbe germinato anni piu tardi, ed e molto importante analizzare gli i principali input nella gestazione di questo pensiero. Quindi, si puo comprendere che l’organizzazione corporativa spagnola e stato il risultato dell’unione di due dinamiche: l’intervento dello Stato nei problemi sociali e la rigenerazione della vita economica. Due principi desunti dalla realta spagnola del momento.

The “corporealization” of the nation: notions of the unclean and viscosity in the nationalist discourse of Spanish fascism

ABSTRACTThe present article focuses on the particular case of the nationalist discourse of Spanish fascism during the Spanish Civil War and the immediate postwar period (1936–1941), in order to explore one specific aspect of it: the characterization of the enemy Republican nation that was to be fought against as unclean and viscous or sticky. The aim here is to analyse what meanings these references possessed and what they can tell us about the general processes of construction of discourses of identity. For this purpose, use is made of certain propositions developed by sociology and anthropology, as a basis upon which to develop the hypothesis that the use of the aforementioned references has to be understood as part of a broader mechanism of corporealization of the enemy nation, which served to emphasize the absoluteness with which the latter was to be condemned.

A Visual Dionysian: Nietzsche's Aesthetics and Pan's Labyrinth

ABSTRACTThis paper argues that Pan's Labyrinth illustrates the potential for a rebirth of tragedy through the Dionysian. The film exemplifies the healing capacity that Nietzsche saw in Greek tragedy. Tragedy protects us from, and provides a response to, the terror and absurdity of existence. Pan's Labyrinth depicts the horrors of Spanish fascism and the pointless fight against it, represents these, and renders them bearable. The film is a healing image after a glance into the abyss of Spanish fascism. Pan's Labyrinth is a Dionysian film and it is also about the Dionysian. In The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music, Nietzsche shows how the Dionysian elements of Greek tragedy—music and dance—gradually elicited Apollonian features—image and story. Pan's Labyrinth is dazzlingly, resplendently visual, and its narrative is compelling. Nevertheless, it is fundamentally Dionysian. The film provides an Apollonian representation—not a repression—of the Dionysian; furthermore, it remains true to the spirit of music in its portrayal of the non-conceptual.