RECENSÃO

Dittature mediterranee. Sovversioni fasciste e colpi di Stato in Italia, Spagna e Portogallo, de Giulia Albanese, por Romain Bonnet

Análise Social, 223, lii (2.º), 2017 issn online 2182-2999

edição e propriedade Instituto de Ciências Sociais da Universidade de Lisboa. Av. Professor Aníbal de Bettencourt, 9 1600-189 Lisboa Portugal — [email protected] albanese, Giulia Dittature mediterranee. Sovversioni fasciste e colpi di Stato in Italia, Spagna e Portogallo, -Bari, Laterza, 2016, 225 pp. isbn 9788858119617

Romain Bonnet

There exists a great problématique that Bloch’s pioneering pleas for comparative is acutely observable: the Southern history, it remains “a contested method” European Question, that includes at as Heinz-Gerhard Haupt noted in an the very least Portugal, Spain, and , eponymously-named article. It is in this and that is vital in understanding mod- context that we welcome Giulia Alba- ern European history. However, almost nese’s Mediterranean dictatorship (title), nobody has dared to use a comparative which compares the 1920s fascist subver- method to grasp its multiple complexi- sions and coups d’États in Italy, Spain and ties. Almost a century after Pirenne and Portugal (subtitle). Although, in many 466 recensões

ways, Portugal is more of an “Atlantic” “a fundamental stimulation” to “read and than “Mediterranean” country, geo- reread the Spanish and Italian events” graphically, the “Mediterranean” dimen- (p. xx). sion has to be understood in a persisting The book is divided into four chap- longue durée, through which European ters. They follow a chronological plan: and global scales are necessarily imbri- first, the First World War; second, the cated, while politically the contemporary immediate postwar; third, the Seizure of Revolutions and counter-revolutions Power of anti-democratic movements; have to be thought of in relation to one and finally, the Stabilization of Dictator- another. ships. The last three chapters are shaped One of the author’s main theses pre- in a similar way (which derives from the cisely underlines “the imitative process author’s “parallel observation”): first, the between the three countries (…) the Italian situation is analyzed; second, the impact of the March on Rome on the Spanish reality is observed; third, the Spanish and Portuguese politics, but Portuguese context is evoked; finally, the also the coup d’État of Primo de Rivera three countries are examined compara- on Portugal”, appearing particularly sig- tively. The last chapter includes five pages nificant “the role of Italy as detonator of of conclusions (pp. 209-214). the crisis, but also as an example of a new The book and its conclusions high- political model” (p. xxi). Political and light the role of political violence in rela- organized violence contributed greatly to tion with State institutions and parties the Fascist line-break in Europe, which (p. 210). Indeed, organized and institu- allowed “recasting bourgeois Europe” tionalized violence is indispensable in (p. xvii). Methodologically, a “parallel order to understand this crucial juncture observation, comparative and trans- of a Europe “on horseback” between the national” is proposed, to “increase our long nineteenth and the short twentieth knowledge of each of the three contexts, century. As a “movement”, and as a “politi- and more generally of European history cal strategy”, Italian Fascism “represented during this period” (p. xx). This demon- an element of great innovation within the stration, partly based on secondary lit- European political framework” (p. 210). erature, is completed by original sources Within the latter and at this scale it was (Vatican archives, parliamentary debates, a distinct “catalyst for the attention of and newspaper articles). The author elab- conservative and reactionaries” (p. 211). orates a careful overview of the political However, compared to the Italian case, dimensions (parties, parliaments, poli- the forms of the coups and dictatorships tics, factions, tendencies, waves of pro- differed in “the two Iberian countries” tests, etc.). “A particular attention is paid (p. 211). to Portugal” (p. xx) and Giulia Albanese It would be extremely useful to com- confesses that during her comparative plete this comparative observation, to research this country appeared to her as consider the trans-periodicity of the recensões 467

Iberian Empires built from the fifteenth Italy were not “fully able to govern them- century on. Which role did imperialist selves through liberal institutions”, and to ideology play in the Spanish and Portu- which “their dictatorial experiences, with guese actors who, from the military insti- the ones of central and eastern Europe, tutions, perpetrated the coups d’ États corresponded to justified exceptions due of 1923 and 1926? In turn, the “original to their economic and cultural back- spirit” of the “Statuto albertino” (the wardness” (p. 214). By comparing even 1848 Piedmonts Kingdom Constitu- more carefully the predominant rural tion, that fascists did not need to change worlds of Southern Europe, would it not fundamentally, p. 212) could be histori- be possible to understand even better cized even more carefully. Through more the meaningful link mentioned between comparative histories, the institutional Capital (whose land property is part of) control by national “oligarchy” as “a phe- and symbolic Capital (linked to domi- nomenon more relevant in Portugal, and nant representations within the interna- in general in the Iberian peninsula (…) tional symbolic sphere)? than in Italy” (p. 93) could be under- The exponential increase of rural stood even better. Charles Maier’s the- violence in Southern Spain during the sis on the “restoration to power of the so-called trienio bolchevique of 1918- European bourgeoisie during the 1920s” -1920 (unprecedented until the bienio which is highlighted in the conclusions rojo of 1931-1933) is qualified as “series (p. 214) could be combined with of agrarian conflicts of local character, Mayer’s one on the persistence of the old not very politicized” (p. 65, 66). An even regime. Would it not be possible, within a more detailed comparative-as-European broader European oligarchical and insti- analysis of the said rural violence could tutional framework, to compare the role lead to an empirical enlargement of the played by the King in 1922 Italy and 1923 concept of “political”. The Italian situation Spain, with the one played by the army during the so-called “biennio rosso” of in Portugal in 1926 (p. 176)? In Portugal 1919-1920 offers other elements of com- and Spain a certain “institutional conti- parison. A bottom-up perspective paying nuity” (p. 176) was maintained, although attention to actors’ practices would allow combined with the Italian Fascist “full the reader to better understand the social model” (p. 177). logics involving institutions (parties, Moving from the political to the eco- syndicates) presented as “intercept[ing]” nomic dimensions, until late in the twen- (p. 66, 90) the movements of protest. tieth century Southern Europe remained This institutional dimension is linked to largely rural, and marked by the com- a conceptual one. “The political forces plexities of the great properties that which can be qualified as antisystem” governed these areas. Giulia Albanese (p. 179) above all lead us to question: in evokes the “international consideration” interwar Europe, what did so systemati- according to which Portugal, Spain, and cally appear so systematized? 468 recensões

The author rightly stresses (p. 67, 90) redistributive agrarian reform as a cause the concomitance between the emer- that paved the way to Fascism in Italy, gence of labor rights and the rise of Germany, and Spain. Thus, from this political violence within the national comparative point of view, the Southern frameworks. Seen especially in the Por- European dimension echoes the Eastern tuguese case (p. 94, 103, 145), the resis- one. It involves the Iberian, Italic, and tances to the first post-World War legal Balkan peninsulas. The European mezzo- emergence of a progressive tax system giorno (and not only the Italian one) was (more redistributive and democratic, “mainly latifundist” (p. 52), as the Danu- breaking with the principle favoring the bian plains were too. How did recrudes- social reproduction, and the patrimonial cent violence and radicalizations happen dynasties) could probably be observed in these European areas? in a broader European scale. Besides, at Liberal ideologies and institutions are least from the late nineteenth century sometimes presented in excessive rupture on, an “element of continuity between with the Fascist phenomenon “antiliberal the three countries” lies in the “political more than reactionary” (p. 209). Tasca’s corruption to guarantee the stability for analytical definition rather underlined the groups of power at the governments” their continuities. Of course, due to the (p. 10), before the post wwi crisis “of polysemy of these concepts, the difficulty system” (p. 11). It would be extremely could hardly be reduced through a vivid interesting to analyze from the bottom and pleasant historiographic narrative, up the local-as-national and suprana- such as the one proposed. The “heteroge- tional clientelistic practices (Portuguese neous liberal galaxy” (p. 60) mentioned rotativismo, Spanish turno, Italian tras- for the Italian case evokes the liberal con- formismo, p. 10-11), not only within tinuity and complexity at the European the political and electoral centralized scales. In front of 1926 events, from the spheres, but also within the networks and heart of the Liberal Empire The Times sociabilities of the economic one. noticed that “Portugal followed Italy, In the conclusions, Angelo Tasca’s Spain, Greece, and Poland” to “bring a famous definition is quoted: “to define regime ‘which does the things’” (p. 171). fascism means grasping it while it is Furthermore, the 1921 apparently low becoming” (p. 211). In the epilogue of his impact of fascism in the mezzogiorno La naissance du fascisme. L’Italie de 1918 à (p. 60) seems to echo the liberal per- 1922 (Paris, Gallimard, 1938), ­Gramsci’s sistence. In 1919, contrary to a northern collaborator at the Ordine Nuovo also Italy marked by the unprecedented vote explicitly noticed the determinant role in favor of socialists, the parliamentary played by rural oligarchy in the interwar hegemony of liberal forces was largely Romanian, Bulgarian, and Yugoslavian maintained in Southern Italy. The lib- shifts to the extreme right. Furthermore, eral (and southern) politician Antonio he clearly mentioned the absence of a Salandra, who engaged Italy in the Great recensões 469

War, accepted early negotiation with fas- of the comparative method. However, if cists (p. 118). Their actions were initially many researchers arrive at the eui with “supported and funded by sectors of the a comparative project, fewer ultimately liberal conservative ruling class, land- achieve a comparative history; and even owners and entrepreneurs, who hoped fewer still pursue this scientific curios- to use this movement and to control it ity as a long-term endeavor. Indeed, the politically” (p. 61). Besides, “a part of the increasing production and reproduction liberal world” (p. 133) also supported of fashionable short-term turns logically the General Primo de Rivera coup, only tend to reinforce the commodity of the eight months after the March on Rome dominant, exclusively national, and/or in which Italian fascists also benefited specific historiographic frameworks. from the King’s mediation (p. 128). As we For example, and as the author rightly have tried to show in this review, another noticed, certain current historiographic merit of this comparative history on productions are still based on the repro- Southern Europe is that it leads to other duction underestimating the attention comparative histories involving several dedicated to “European countries con- historiographic districts (social, political, sidered as peripheral” (p. 3). This is one cultural, conceptual, etc.). more reason to greet and recommend With Dittature mediterranee Giulia Giulia Albanese’s pertinent comparative Albanese provides an innovative his- history of European societies. toriographic contribution. In the first sentence of her acknowledgements, the author confesses that “the idea of this bonnet, R. (2017), Book Review “Dittature mediter- book was born ten years ago while I ranee. Sovversioni fasciste e colpi di Stato in Italia, was writing my Ph. D dissertation at the Spagna e Portogallo, Rome-Bari, Laterza, 2016”. Análise Social, 223, lii (2.º), pp. 465-469. European University Institute” (p. 215). Unique in our global academic world, this Romain Bonnet » [email protected] » Depart­ European institution, funded mainly by ment of History and Civilization, European Univer- European states and citizens, necessarily sity Institute » Via della Badia dei Roccettini, 9 — 50014 San Domenico, fi, Italy. encourages the historiographic practice