Journal of Cognitive Semiotics, IV (2): 57-74. http://www.cognitivesemiotics.com .

Per Aage Brandt

Case Western Reserve University : The Structure of a Dream

The text proposes a structural narrative reading of José Antonio Primo de Rivera’s falangist discourse and shows how its thinking is based on spatial and dynamic imagination and a particularly strong sacrificial nationalist motif. It further suggests that the symbolic dimension in its constitutes a driving emotional force to be found in all . was a religious version of , famous for becoming the official ideology of Francoist ; but it shared with all militant national political forms of thinking the emotionally compelling mystique : the feeling of a spiritual essence and force emanating from a beloved land and conveying existential identity and value to its subjects, thus justifying and calling for committed violent and sacrificial acts that override ordinary systems of lawful behavior.

Keywords : falangism, fascism, narratology, nationalism, social cognition, sacrifice, death.

We may believe that political thinking is an argumentative genre that calculates truths within a quasi-axiomatic system of propositions. However, its readiness to animate polemical discourse and emotional rhetoric in general shows that this genre of social cognition, interpretation, and imagination comes with built-in agentive roles and identity-stimulating subjective appeals that rather would suggest a story structure – a narrative constitution – from which arguments can be extracted as episodic elements. If so, the challenging task is to surpass mere intuitive and

Address for correspondence: College of Arts & Sciences, 10900 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, OH 44106-7068 USA. Email: [email protected] . LA FALANGE | 58 emotional apperception of each case and determine the articulations and connections that could shape a given political attitude into a narrative. 1 In this short essay, I will discuss the case of Spanish fascist discourse and propose an analysis of its semantics, using certain key ideas developed in a study of narrative dynamics as manifested by literary texts. 2 Spanish fascist thought and discourse was essentially developed in the period immediately preceding the Civil War (1936-39): i.e. during the Second Republic (1931-36). Its central figure was a young lawyer, José Antonio Primo de Rivera, born in 1903, son of the dictator who died in 1930, and heir of his father’s nobleman title and estate. José Antonio founded the militant group Falange Española in 1933 and became a member of parliament the same year. This Falange , which was extended into Falange Española de la Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional Sindicalista (F.E. de las J.O.N.S.) in 1934 after fusion with another group, gave rise to the term ‘falangism’, also called national : a doctrine that – after José Antonio’s death in 1936 3 – was formally

1 Hogan (2009) offers a ground-breaking and inspirational work on nationalism: its narratives and its cognitive underpinnings. It is a major contribution to the field of studies in social cognition currently developing; and it is a relevant and refreshing contribution to critical political theory and to building a meta-history of nationalism across historical specificities while respecting these as crucial data. Nationalism, one of the driving forces of international and national politics in the ‘globalized’ world today, is discussed as a cross-cultural and transtemporal phenomenon of social cognition: which is to say, it takes many forms but remains a prominent general fact of human beings and, therefore, can be studied and elucidated by research on the mind and brain. As Hogan sees it, it comes with a short list of standard stories – narratives – that constitute the underlying discourse structure of nationalism: a heroic narrative, a sacrificial narrative, and a romantic narrative. These narratives each contribute a line of argument serving the way people talk and reason about nations and the collective and individual identification with such entities. In Hogan’s view, identity exists in two remarkably distinct versions: practical and categorical. The former has to do with dominant material and immaterial features of cultural behavior; the latter is a matter of labeling but nevertheless extremely forceful in motivation and emotion. Though the national labels can be entirely void of content on the cultural level, they can still generate pride and feelings of dignity. As mentioned in the present essay, I would further re-phrase the opposition and see the categorical identity form as symbolic , in the semiotic sense of the term: there is a huge semiotic difference to explore between categorization sealed by a common noun and categorization locked into a proper name; proper names have privileged connections to persons and to the cognitive concept of personhood that underpins subjectivity. Hogan combines identity analysis with the narrative issue to show how the combination works, giving rise to a variety of nationalisms, from the ‘worst’ to the ‘best’: from Hitler to Gandhi, etc. Besides the American data, Indian and several European models are handled expertly, which makes this enterprise an unusual comparative and interdisciplinary eye opener. 2 Brandt (2010). 3 José Antonio Primo de Rivera was executed 20 November 1936 in the state prison of Alicante. died 20 November 1975. It has been suggested that Franco was deliberately kept alive despite a more than critical physical condition to match symbolically the martyrdom of de Rivera. Both are buried in the monumental Valle de los Caídos in . The cult of sacrificial death thus persisted throughout the four decades of falangism, though softened into Francoism. LA FALANGE | 59 adopted by the fascist regime of the generalissimo Francisco Franco; the founder of the Falange thus became the all-dominant and celebrated martyr of the new Spanish regime. 4 José Antonio explains – over and over, through his thousand pages of articles, speeches, and other verbal manifestations that became the standard reading of the Francoist ideologues – how his beloved country is in a sorry state and must be saved from dissolution by a spiritual awakening: on the one hand from left-wing socialism and its Marxist theory, pouring in from the barbarian Asian steppes; and on the other from the ruthlessness of and its liberal theory, invading from the West. Instead of adopting one of these antagonistic positions, Spanish youth are invited to join the ranks of this new movement: a totalitarian, corporatist, ‘vertical’ organisation of life – national and personal – that will make real the country’s ‘destiny in the universal’ ( destino en lo universal ): i.e., its vocation to save Western civilization altogether from current barbarity and dismemberment. The nation must save itself from political dissolution, parliamentary inanity, democratic pettiness, internationalism and separatism by unifying its people ( el pueblo : a concept inspired by the vitalist German notion of Volk – of course) in one total and unbreakable block under the leadership of its militant and armed vanguard, ready to die for this goal, ready for service and sacrifice. Moreover, the nation must save the rest of the civilized world: hence the universal theme, from Asian barbarians to American financial- capitalist money mongers. This is a sort of ecstatically transcendental nationalism: Spain must become the empire it once was, because it represents – or rather is the incarnation of – the very religious and military faith and discipline that built the empire in the past. José Antonio incessantly appeals to these two religious/military principles of life and politics: service and sacrifice ( servicio y sacrificio ). In the 26 points of the falangist program (see Appendix 1), these ideas are lined up and presented as a political plan, including agrarian reform: agriculture must be rationalized and made profitable; it must be removed from barren soil; land properties that are too large ( latifundios ) must be divided; parcels too small ( minifundios ) must be merged – all without modifying private property. The argument is confusing and must have been rather unconvincing. José Antonio thinks that Spain is mainly agrarian (as is his own family background); Spanish industry is so small and unimportant, he estimates, that it does not even need a plan. Precisely because the country is predominantly agrarian, it incarnates the values of the land and soil from which the

4 My main source is the official compilation of textos de doctrina política edited by Agustín del Río Cisneros (1974). LA FALANGE | 60 authentic, stout, and brave Spaniards grow. 5 Cities, by contrast, are superficial and unessential: like the new parliament. 6 Authentic values grow in free air, where the soldiers of the new order enjoy life under the sun or stars, while serving the nation and sacrificing their lives for it (see appendices 3 – italicized section – and 4). Death is a main theme in this discourse. The blue shirts appear in the same sentences as death; and, surprisingly, in either the glorious or shameful version (1935 speech in Oviedo; Cisneros 1974: 582): ‘La revolución nacional la haremos nosotros, sólo nosotros, camaradas de las camisas azules, y la haremos por un móvil espiritual, que es por lo que se muere’. (‘The national revolution will be made by us, only by us, comrades in blue shirts, and we will do it for a spiritual cause, which is what human beings die for’.) ‘Pues bien: si os engañamos, alguna soga hallaréis en vuestros desvanes y algún árbol quedará en vuestra llanura; ahorcadnos sin misericordia; la última orden que yo daré a mis camisas azules será que nos tiren de los pies, para justicia y escarmiento’. (Grandes aplausos.) (‘but if we deceive you, you will find some rope in your attics, and there will be some trees in your plains; hang us without mercy; the last order I will give my blue shirts will be to let people hang us by the feet, as a punishment and a deterrent’) (1935 speech in Ciudad Real; Cisneros 1974: 584). Death and styles of dying are important arguments everywhere in the discourse. This motif makes it tempting to classify the narrative spaces involved, and to determine their temporal order. First, there is a view of Spain as agonizing from a general loss of vital force. 7 It is conceptualized

5 In his speech of 17 November 1935, he summarizes the program again, and adds (Cisneros 1974: 717): ‘” España est casi toda campo. El campo es España …”, and from the fields come the claims of religion and morality. No way of being tolerant, liberal and pacifist, throwing out the priest’s gown and the uniform – “¡La sotana y el uniforme! ¡El sentido religioso y militar! ¡Cuando lo religioso y lo militar son los dos únicos modos enteros y serios de entender la vida!”’ (‘The gown and the uniform! The religious and military meaning! When the religious and the military are the two only honest and serious ways of understanding life!’). 6 ‘Aquello [el Congreso de los Diputados] se cae a pedazos, se muere de tristeza, todo es aire de pantano insalubre, todo es barrunto de una muerte próxima y sin gloria… Esa es una atmósfera turbia, cansada, como de taberna al final de una noche crapulosa. No está ahí nuestro sitio’ . (Cisneros 1974.: 705-706) (‘It [the Congress] falls apart, it is dying of sadness, all of it is unhealthy and swampy air, all is presentiment of imminent and infamous death… It is a turbid, weary atmosphere of a pub at the end of a night of debauchery. This place it not for us’). 7 Acerca de la Revolución 1935 (Cisneros 1974: 661): ‘la revolución es necesaria, no precisamente cuando el pueblo está corrompido, sino cuando sus instituciones, sus ideas, sus gustos, han llegado a la esterilidad o están próximos a alcanzarla. En estos momentos se produce la degeneración histórica. No la muerte por catástrofe, sino el encharcamiento en una existencia sin gracia ni esperanza. Todas las actitudes colectivas nacen enclenques, como producto de parejas reproductivas casi agotadas. La vida de la comunidad se achata, se entorpece, se hunde en mal gusto y mediocridad. Aquello no tiene remedio sino mediante un corte y un nuevo principio. Los surcos necesitan simiente nueva, simiente histórica, porque la antigua ya LA FALANGE | 61 as an exterior agrarian space: a sterile field of death. It represents the initial conditions of the narrative, the given circumstances that motivate the narration. This is the initial conditional space in the sequence of narrative spaces I am going to identify. Second, there is a space of impotent parliamentary action, a portrait of the visualized as an interior: a stinking, dirty tavern on the end of a night of excesses, as described in Note 5. Death happens by depression; political volition is numbed by insoluble ideological conflict. This ‘tavern’ of ordinary politics is a space of crisis, where the representative democratic system is seen as passively awaiting its definite decay, as if from debauchery; it constitutes, as I mentioned, a second, critical space in the narrative series. José Antonio often stages himself as an agent: a political representative reluctantly moving from the first to this second space, since he became a delegate in 1934 and could describe the experience from the inside, which he does dysphorically. Third, there is an euphoric, open-space vision of the starry night and of the young, strong, handsome soldiers of a new order standing under the stars in their blue shirts; then facing the sun (cara al sol )8, throwing themselves heroically into a deadly fight for the nation. These willful, sacrificial militants are not elected but are, of course, falangist volunteers grown from the soil of the nation and bound for a regime acting by violence instead of negotiation, in the name of the sublime destiny they incarnate. A mystical space of total reversal or catastrophe that must cost blood – a lot of blood, presumably, to nourish the depleted furrows of the patriotic field. 9 Mystically, it causes the salvation of country and global civilization for the blue-shirts to die in combat. The sacrificial value of such dying and death will justify a new political world of total identification with the state – whereas a lack of such identification leads to justified execution. This third, catastrophic space is thus – in the imaginary of a falangist – the setting where the ha apurado su fecundidad ’ ('The revolution is necessary, not exactly when the people is demoralized but when its institutions, its ideas, its tastes, have reached sterility or are close to reaching it. In those moments, historical degeneration occurs. Not a death by catastrophe, but a state of stagnation in an existence without any light or hope. All collective actions are born infirm, as progeny of almost exhausted reproductive couples. The life of the community is hackneyed, paralyzed, sinking down in vulgarity and mediocrity. This situation can only be changed by a cut and a new beginning. The furrows need new seed corn, historically new seed, because the old one has exhausted its fertility’). The metaphor of the furrows recalls a standard identity trope; cf . (Hogan 2009: 10): ‘one of the most common types of nationalist metaphor parallels the citizen’s relation to the national territory with a plant’s relation to earth – for example, through the image of roots’. As Lakoff stresses (1991), conceptual metaphor – especially the structural version, which is highly emotional – is a main ingredient in political discourse in general; the most efficient of these metaphors may be those that spring from the spatial framing of a political model’s constitutive narrative (see below). 8 For the text of the falangist hymn bearing this title, see Appendix 4. The hymn stresses the meaning of the stars ( los luceros ): namely, to represent the dead falangist comrades and also the bright future of the singing subjects themselves. 9 Recalling and reversing the Marseillaise: ‘… que le sang impur/ abreuve nos sillons’. In José Antonio’s dream, it is the pure, spiritually informed blood of the militants that revitalizes the nation. LA FALANGE | 62 supernatural forces of the universe enter the human world and unify divine grace, military luck, the energy of the people, and the sacrificial volition of the blue-shirt vanguard: molding them into one force achieving the all-reversing change. Spain has been selected by Destiny, a volitional force of the universe, to save civilization through a sort of Ragnarök or Armageddon or Apocalypse: an eschatological event that will lead to a post-catastrophic world, a fourth and final space of unity and happiness. In this conclusive space, Spain is enlarged into an empire: strong, elevated, magnified; a spiritual axis of the Hispanic, the European, and the planetary world. The change of space induces a change of force; this is, I think, 10 the dynamic trick of all narratives: by moving the relevant agents from a given space with its specific immanent physical, social, individual, or transcendent metaphysical 11 forces to a differently invested dynamic space, different states, events, and acts are made possible. In the case of falangist imagination, the contrast between the second and third space – the ‘tavern of the impotents’ – and the open landscape of the heroic militants illustrates this change. Destiny can only be fulfilled by these militants’ total existential commitment. Such spiritual attitudes and the style of dying they imply attract the metaphysical, sacrificial force (F) that is needed for the metamorphosis of the nation from a miserable swamp (first and second space) to a glorious empire (third and fourth space: Figure 1).

10 In Brandt (2010), I provide some literary examples and tentatively classify the narratively active forces: a discussion I cannot develop here. 11 Metaphysical forces include magic of all kinds, divine intervention, satanic spells and maledictions, acts of the unconscious, etc. Story logic is generous as to possible inventories of dynamic categories. LA FALANGE | 63

Figure 1: The falangist story in four spaces.

The political stagnation ( St .) in the critical space aggravates the agony ( A) in the conditional space. The initial logic is circular, which is why the saltus toward the catastrophic space is felt as a decisive movement. Here, the sacrificial warfare is believed to attract the transcendent force (F), which will lead to the happiness ( H) and conclusive, unenclosed version of the nation- empire. In the propangandistic discourse that follows, addressees should hear the enunciative call to join the agents who are determined to achieve the better destiny and death ( Ag2 → D2 ) and to despise those agents who are doomed to pitiable and meaningless waning into nothingness ( Ag1 → D1 ). This narrative model – almost a mental cartoon in four frames – is immediately intelligible as a format for elementary storytelling, whether realistic, fantastic, or both. It offers a ready tool for persuasion under suitable circumstances. 12 One must wonder, of course, about the status of such a structure in the context of less extreme forms of political thinking. Is this a particular, pseudo-poetic, rather pathological way of

12 In (Brandt 2010) I propose a classification of narrative genres into the marvelous, the fantastic, the realistic, the grotesque, and the absurd: distinctions based on the type and density of forces invested in their spaces. The falangist narrative can be classified as fantastic, insofar as its catastrophic space involves a non-agentive and fatal force: a sort of magic, induced by sacrifice, motivating the mystique of a reversal predetermined by Destiny. LA FALANGE | 64 cognizing a political situation and its possibilities; or is it a model of motives appearing in regular problem-solving reflection and rumination? The idea that violence (death-oriented behavior) and happiness (life-oriented behavior) can work together harmoniously and that a harmony of this sort will overrule ordinary claims of freedom and self-determination is a cognitive challenge, since it was and probably still is shared by adult human beings in good mental shape. I think the falangist is saying: I am sacrificing my life for this cause, so you must respect both me and my cause. The value of the cause – its truth – is proven by my very sacrifice . Death is a justifying argument. I can justly threaten others with death because I am prepared to die myself. The cause justifies the violence, because paradoxically, the violence justifies the cause! The triumphant cause will, by definition, create happiness; since that is the goal of political activity, as already Aristotle stated. The militant falangist is entitled to be happy in anticipation, in the justified belief that he contributes to creating general happiness. If one is not happy with this thinking, it is – for the falangist – due to a failure to commit oneself sacrificially to creating happiness in this way. To explain the paradox, I would venture the hypothesis that there is, in the human mind, an inherent emotional link between sacrifice and happiness, perhaps involving pride: opposite of the shame that follows a failure of commitment. There is a generalizable regularity behind the discursive motif driving the falangist and imagination: a regularity that is countered by other motifs in more complex forms of reflection but which is likely never the less to emerge in intersubjective situations of stress and distress. The metaphysical aspect of this motif – namely, that transcendent powers will assist the committed militant and help achieve the realization of a goal-causing sacrifice – is probably a universal existential element of ritual magic that resides in the human emotional system. The element is controlled and curbed by other experiences of causation that are active in ordinary situations of problem solving; in the falangist mystique of the nation, however, it seems instead to be reinforced by the all-dominant proper name of Spain: España . Proper names are always appealing in human cognition. As elementary units of symbolization, they are revered, feared, worshipped, and profiled in personal identification: ‘I am a Spaniard’ ; names of nations are essentialistic and not only locative! One knows from any review of social stereotypes that national identifiers are among the most active essentializers: Scots are like this , French are like that . The mechanism is as strong as racist stereotypes and most often expressed under comparable conditions, by angry, upset subjects. When emotions are strongly stressed, or people need to share a joke, they easily return to these strong categorical, stereotypical identifiers of nationality , race, and gender . Quite naturally, one has nationalists everywhere: people identifying, more or less LA FALANGE | 65 emphatically, with the country of which they are citizens. In nationalism, the subject spontaneously identifies something essential in his self with something essential stemming from and given by the nation – even if, as in Spain, the nation is a patchwork of regions speaking different languages and living different kinds of life. 13 Human beings have names that reflect their nationality; most of these names can only be pronounced correctly in the language of the corresponding nation. The emotional tie from individual proper name to country name is strong and direct. There is a correspondingly direct relation from a person’s feeling of self to his love for his country of origin. The symbolic sign naming that country signifies, for him, an identifying force. Therefore, proper names should be part of the field of cognitive-affective science. 14 Many individuals get emotional and piloerectile reactions (‘goose bumps’) by the sound – musical and, in particular, vocal – of their country’s national hymn. I doubt that this function can be erased by any acquired, more intellectual and ‘internationalist’ path of thinking; it is known that stereotypes are not erased by counter-argumentative information, even if that information is accepted and believed. When the schema of what one may call sacrificial magic is reinforced by an identity- stimulating symbolic call of this kind, it is likely that a narrative of the falangist type emerges, at least for some time, in the troubled mind of any person who has strong reasons to be upset by an alarming social situation. It may be less likely that it will stay in charge, spread, solidify, and become an explicit political doctrine capable of resounding for forty years in the discourse of a fascist regime. However, once violence is released, it triggers a logic of its own: of fear and fascination.

REFERENCES

Brandt, P.A.(2010). Forces and spaces – Maupassant, Borges, Hemingway. Toward a semio-cognitive narratology, Social Science Research Network .

13 As Lakoff states in his classic article ‘Metaphor and war’ (1991, this volume ), one finds a state-as-person metaphor or, rather, a nation-as-parent-body metaphor. It calls for integration of physical parts as of a bodily whole. The country one is from can, metaphorically, be one’s mother or father or both. Therefore – if metaphor can drive passion, which is far from proven – one loves that country, finds it beautiful, and is willing to protect it and fight for its life and welfare. Separatism appears as a psychotic experience of disjecta membra : body parts striving to live their own life. The enemies of one’s country will be seen as illnesses of its body; violent or just unwanted invaders will be seen as rapists, etc. The metaphor may be driven by an emotional-relevance schema based in the symbolic function I propose to consider. All structural metaphors are schema driven, which explains their emotional meaning and inferences. However, I am not convinced that metaphor is enough to explain causally the phenomenon of nationalism; it could be the other way around: once national feelings are in place, metaphors express it. 14 One could call this cognitive principle an emotional nominalism . LA FALANGE | 66

Cisneros, A.D.R. (ed.) (1974). Obras de José Antonio Primo de Rivera . Madrid: Editorial Almena. Hogan, P. Colm (2009). Understanding Nationalism. On Narrative, Cognitive Science, and Identity. Columbus, OH, USA: The Ohio State University Press. Lakoff, G. (1991). Metaphor and war: The metaphor system used to justify war in the Gulf. Viet Nam Generation Journal & Newsletter 3(3) and this volume . LA FALANGE | 67

Appendix I: The Falangist Program ( Norma programática de la Falange )15

In November, 1934, the Falange adopted a Twenty-Seven-Point Program that was drawn up by [] and given a laconic style by José Antonio. As had often been the case in Mussolini’s , doctrines were devised to rationalize what already had been developed in practice. The manifesto set forth principles regarding national unity and empire, the latter point being left rather vague. Some Falangists implied that “empire” meant only cultural influence and diplomatic leadership, while others (including José Antonio in private conversations) expressed the hope of annexing . Point 6 proclaimed the State as the “totalitarian instrument to defend the integrity of the fatherland.” The ninth paragraph called for “vertical” national syndicalism. 16 Other points set forth the need for agrarian and industrial reforms, social justice and education. The most controversial item was Point 25 pertaining to the Church. Most of the Falangists of this period hoped to prevent the Church from encroaching upon the state’s prerogatives. Point 27 forbade any further modification of the movement’s label; but in the summer of 1937, as will be seen, Generalissimo Francisco Franco was to insist that the movement merge with the reactionary Carlist militia forces and add the word “Tradicionalista” to the title in Point 26, so that it would read: Falange Espanola Tradicionalista y de las Juntas Ofensivas Nacional- Sindicalistas. Point 27 thereupon was dropped. This revised version of 1937 is printed below.

The twenty-six point program of the Falange (revised, 1937): NATION – UNITY – EMPIRE 1. We believe in the supreme reality of Spain. The strengthening, elevating, and magnifying of this reality is the urgent collective goal of all Spaniards. Individual, group, and class interests must inexorably give way in order to achieve this goal. 2. Spain has a single destiny in the world. Every conspiracy against this common unity is repulsive. Any kind of separatism is a crime which we shall not pardon. The existing

15 From http://ironmarch.org/index.php?/topic/315-a-melange-of-falange/ . 16 In a speech at the Circulo Mercantil in Madrid on 9 April 1935, José Antonio made it clear that a single system of ‘vertical’ national syndicates was preferable to Mussolini’s ‘parallel’ syndicates of employers and workers. ‘Vertical’ syndicates will not require so bureaucratic a structure, he declared, and ‘will be able to function organically - in the way the Army does, for example - without any need for forming parallel committees of soldiers and officers....’ The unions of present-day Spain [1970] continue to be organised as ‘vertical syndicates’. LA FALANGE | 68

Constitution, to the degree that it encourages disintegration, weakens this common destiny of Spain. Therefore we demand its annulment in a thundering voice. 3. We have the determination to build an Empire. We affirm that Spain’s historic fulfillment lies in Empire. We claim for Spain a pre-eminent position in Europe. We can tolerate neither international isolation nor foreign interference. As regards the countries of Hispanic America, we favor unification of their culture, economic interests and power. Spain will continue to act as the spiritual axis of the Hispanic world as a sign of her pre- eminence in worldwide enterprises. 4. Our armed forces - on land, sea, and in the air - must be kept trained and sufficiently large to assure to Spain at all times its complete independence and a status in the world that befits it. We shall bestow upon our Armed Forces of land, sea, and air all the dignity they merit, and we shall cause their military conception of life to infuse every aspect of Spanish life. 5. Spain shall once more seek her glory and her wealth on the sea lanes. Spain must aspire to become a great maritime power, for reasons of both defense and commerce. We demand for the fatherland equal status with others in maritime power and aerial routes. STATE – INDIVIDUAL – LIBERTY 6. Our State will be a totalitarian instrument to defend the integrity of the fatherland. All Spaniards will participate in this through their various family, municipal, and syndical roles. There shall be no participation in it by political parties. We shall implacably abolish the system of political parties and all of their consequences - inorganic suffrage, representation of clashing groups, and a Parliament of the type that is all too well known. 7. Human dignity, integrity, and freedom are eternal, intangible values. But one is not really free unless he is a part of a strong and free nation. No one will be permitted to use his freedom against the nation, which is the bulwark of the fatherland’s freedom. Rigorous discipline will prevent any attempt to envenom and disunite the Spanish people or to incite them against the destiny of the fatherland. 8. The National-Syndicalist State will permit all kinds of private initiative that are compatible with the collective interest, and it will also protect and encourage the profitable ones. ECONOMY – LABOR – CLASS STRUGGLE 9. Our conception of Spain in the economic realm is that of a gigantic syndicate of producers. We shall organize Spanish society corporatively through a system of vertical syndicates for the various field of production, all working toward national economic unity. 10. We repudiate the capitalistic system which shows no understanding of the needs of the people, dehumanizes private property, and causes workers to be lumped together in a shapeless, miserable mass of people who are filled with desperation. Our spiritual and national conception of life also repudiates Marxism. We shall redirect the impetuousness of those working classes who today are led astray by Marxism, and we shall seek to bring them into direct participation in fulfilling the great task of the national state. 11. The National-Syndicalist State will not cruelly stand apart from man’s economic struggles, nor watch impassively while the strongest class dominates the weakest. Our regime will eliminate the very roots of class struggle, because all who work together in production shall comprise one single organic entity. We reject and we shall prevent at all LA FALANGE | 69

costs selfish interests from abusing others, and we shall halt anarchy in the field of labor relations. 12. The first duty of wealth - and our State shall so affirm - is to better the conditions of the people. It is intolerable that enormous masses of people should live wretchedly while a small number enjoy all kinds of luxuries. 13. The State will recognize private property as a legitimate means for achieving individual, family, and social goals, and will protect it against the abuses of large-scale finance capital, speculators, and money lenders. 14. We shall support the trend toward nationalization of banking services and, through a system of Corporations, the great public utilities. 15. All Spaniards have the right to work. Public agencies must of necessity provide support for those who find themselves in desperate straits. As we proceed toward a totally new structure, we shall maintain and strengthen all the advantages that existing social legislation gives to workers. 16. Unless they are disabled, all Spaniards have the duty to work. The National-Syndicalist State will not give the slightest consideration to those who fail to perform some useful function and who try to live as drones at the expense of the labor of the majority of people. LAND 17. We must, at all costs, raise the standard of living in the countryside, which is Spain’s permanent source of food. To this end, we demand agreement that will bring to culmination without further delay the economic and social reforms of the agricultural sector. 18. Our program of economic reforms will enrich agricultural production by means of the following: • By assuring a minimum remuneration to all agricultural producers. • By demanding that there be restored to the countryside, in order to provide it with an adequate endowment, a portion of that which the rural population is paying to the cities for intellectual and commercial services. • By organizing a truly national system of agricultural credit which will lend money to farmers at low interest against the guarantee of their property and crops, and redeem them from usury and local tyrants. • By spreading education with respect to better methods of farming and sheep raising. • By ordering the rational utilization of lands in accordance with their suitability and with marketing possibilities. • By adjusting tariff policy in such a way as to protect agriculture and the livestock industry. • By accelerating reclamation projects. By rationalizing the units of cultivation, so as to eliminate wasted latifundia and uneconomic, miniscule plots. 19. Our program of social reforms in the field of agriculture will be achieved: By redistributing arable land in such a way as to revive family farms and give energetic encouragement to the syndicalization of farm laborers. LA FALANGE | 70

By redeeming from misery those masses of people who presently are barely eking out a living on sterile land, and by transferring such people to new and arable lands. 20. We shall undertake a relentless campaign of reforestation and livestock breeding, and we shall punish severely those who resist it. We shall support the compulsory, temporary mobilization of all Spanish youth for this historic goal of rebuilding the national commonwealth. 21. The State may expropriate without indemnity lands of those owners who either acquired them or exploited them illegally. 22. It will be the primary goal of the National-Syndicalist State to rebuild the communal patrimonies of the towns. NATIONAL EDUCATION – RELIGION 23. It shall be the essential mission of the State to attain by means of rigorous disciplining of education a strong, united national spirit, and to instil in the souls of future generations a sense of rejoicing and pride in the fatherland. All men shall receive pre-military training to prepare them for the honor of being enlisted in the National and Popular Army of Spain. 24. Cultural life shall be organized so that no talent will be undeveloped because of insufficient economic means. All who merit it shall be assured ready access to a higher education. 25. Our Movement incorporates the Catholic meaning - of glorious tradition, and especially in Spain - of national reconstruction. The Church and the State will co-ordinate their respective powers so as to permit no interference or activity that may impair the dignity of the State or national integrity. NATIONAL REVOLUTION 26. The Falange Espanola Tradicionalista y de las JONS demands a new order, as set forth in the foregoing principles. In the face of the resistance from the present order, it calls for a revolution to implant this new order. Its method of procedure will be direct, bold, and combative. Life signifies the art and science of warfare ( milicia ) and must be lived with a spirit that is purified by service and sacrifice. LA FALANGE | 71

Appendix II: The Falangist Oath 17

In Madrid on February 11, 1934, Ledesma’s Jonsistas, who at this stage numbered some 300 and were composed chiefly of students and taxi drivers, decided to merge with José Antonio’s 2000 Falangists. For the next three years the movement was called the Falange Espanola de las Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional-Sindicalista, and each local unit was termed a Jons. The emblems, slogans, and national syndicalist ideology of the Jonsistas were taken over in toto. Leadership came from a jealous triumvirate composed of Ledesma, José Antonio, and the world-renowned aviator . José Antonio momentarily contented himself with supplying the enlarged movement with its literary and aesthetic overtones, but by October his group managed by a one- vote margin over the Ledesma faction in the National Council to elevate him to the position of Jefe Nacional (national leader). Thus, in a ‘democratic’ way, a single leader was recognized. All the Falangists were required to take the following oath.

The Falangist Oath I swear to give myself always to the service of Spain. I swear to have no pride other than that of the fatherland and of the Falange and to live under the Falange in obedience and joy, impetuousness and patience, gallantry and silence. I swear fidelity and submission to our leaders, honor to the memory of our dead, and imperturbable perseverance amid all vicissitudes. I swear, wherever I may be, in order to obey or in order to command that I shall respect our Hierarchy from the first to the last rank. I swear to reject and give no ear to any voice of either friend or foe who might weaken the spirit of the Falange. I swear to preserve above all the idea of unity: unity among the lands of Spain, unity among the classes of Spain, unity within the individual man and among the men of Spain. I swear to live in holy brotherhood with all members of the Falange and to lend every assistance and eliminate every difference whenever this holy brotherhood requests that I do so.

17 From http://ironmarch.org/index.php?/topic/315-a-melange-of-falange/ . LA FALANGE | 72

Appendix III: Foundational Speech by José Antonio Primo de Rivera The Falange was founded Sunday 29 October 1933 in the theater La Comedia in Madrid. Here are some excerpts from José Antonio’s speech:

La Patria es una unidad total en que se integran todos los individuos y todas las clases; la Patria no puede estar en manos de la clase más fuerte ni del partido mejor organizado. La Patria es una síntesis trascendente, una síntesis indivisible, con fines propios que cumplir; y nosotros lo que queremos es que el movimiento de este día, y el Estado que cree, sea el instrumento eficaz, autoritario, al servicio de esa unidad irrevocable que se llama Patria.... Que desaparezcan los partidos políticos. Nadie ha nacido nunca miembro de un partido político; en cambio nacemos todos miembros de una familia; somos todos vecinos de un Municipio; nos afanamos todos en el ejercicio de un trabajo.… Queremos que España recobre resueltamente el sentido universal de su cultura y de su Historia. Y queremos, por último, que si esto ha de lograrse en algún caso por la violencia, no nos detengamos ante la violencia… . Bien está, sí, la dialéctica como primer instrumento de comunicación. Pero no hay más dialéctica admisible que la dialéctica de los puños y de las pistolas cuando se ofende a la justicia o a la Patria. .… [Closing words:] Nuestro sitio está al aire libre, bajo la noche clara, arma al brazo, y en lo alto, las estrellas. Que sigan los demás con sus festines. Nosotros fuera, en vigilancia tensa, fervorosa y segura, ya presentimos el amanecer en la alegría de nuestras entrañas.

‘The Fatherland is a total unity that integrates all individuals and all classes; the Fatherland cannot be left in the hands of the strongest class or of the best organized party. The Fatherland is a transcendent synthesis, an indivisible synthesis, with goals of its own to fulfill; and what we want is that the movement born on this day, and the State it will create, be the efficient, authoritarian instrument that will serve this irrevocable unity called Fatherland…. ‘Let the political parties disappear. Nobody is ever born as member of a political party; instead we are all born as members of a family; we are all neighbors of a town council; we all toil in the practice of some profession…. ‘We want Spain to resolutely recover the universal meaning of its culture and its history. And finally it is our wish, if this has to be achieved by violence, then not to detain ourselves from using violence.… Admittedly, dialectics is good enough as a first instrument of communication. But there is no other admissible dialectics than the dialectics of the fists and of guns, when justice or the Fatherland is being offended.… ‘Our place is in the free air, under the clear night sky, weapon in hand, and above us the stars. Let others continue with their partying. We, who mount guard in the open, diligently, devotedly, and confidently, already anticipate the daybreak in the joy of our guts.’(Cisneros 1974: 66-69). LA FALANGE | 73

Appendix IV: Cara al Sol , the Falangist Hymn 18

Original lyrics

Cara al Sol con la camisa nueva, que tú bordaste en rojo ayer, me hallará la muerte si me lleva y no te vuelvo a ver. Formaré junto a mis compañeros que hacen guardia sobre los luceros, impasible el ademán, y están presentes en nuestro afán. Si te dicen que caí, me fui al puesto que tengo allí. Volverán banderas victoriosas al paso alegre de la paz y traerán prendidas cinco rosas, las flechas de mi haz. Volverá a reír la primavera, que por cielo, tierra y mar se espera. ¡, escuadras, a vencer, que en España empieza a amanecer! ¡España una! ¡España grande! ¡España libre! ¡Arriba España!

Translation

Facing the sun in my new shirt that you embroidered in red yesterday, that's how death will find me if it takes me and I won't see you again. I'll take my place alongside my companions who stand on guard in the heavens, with a hard countenance, they are alive in our effort. If they say to you that I fell, know that I'm gone to my post up there. Victorious flags will return at the merry step of Peace and they'll bring five roses: the arrows of my quiver. Spring will laugh again, which we await by air, land and sea.

18 Written by a group of falangist intellectuals including José Antonio; the music is a march. LA FALANGE | 74

Onwards, squadrons, to victory, that a new day dawns on Spain! Spain united! Spain (the) great! Spain (the) free! Onwards Spain!