Paradoxes of history, paradoxes of historiography: The peripety of Spanish fascism

Abstract

The author argues here the importance of avoiding the paradigm of backwardness in analyzing the evolution and vicissitudes of Spanish fascism. Like in other European countries, the fin-de-siècle cultural crisis saw the emergence of a new nationalist political culture, which would deeply influence Spanish fascism in the future. After the failure of the fascist movement during the Second Republic, explicable fundamentally in political terms, there followed its conversion into a mass party during the Civil War and its immediate subordination to the State, to which it nonetheless represented a fundamental support. Franco's regime, as a fascistic - not fascist - dictatorship, may be seen as a peculiar synthesis of the two great currents of the European anti-liberal nationalism in the 20th century, i.e. the reactionary nationalist current, which was ideologically preeminent, and the fascist movement.