Spain: A Unique History (39 page)

Since the rebel regime in Spain had begun as a rightist military regime, the Falangists were in fact fortunate that Franco had become semi-"fascistized" and decided to incorporate them rather than to suppress them. Spain was unique in providing the only instance, aside from Romania, in which a rightist nonfascist regime incorporated a large fascist movement. In every other case — Salazar (Portugal), Dollfuss (Austria), Horthy (Hungary), Smetona (Lithuania), King Alexander (Yugoslavia) — the rightist regime eventually suppressed the principal fascist movement altogether. Nonetheless, it took the Falangists five years and more before they began to understand their good fortune. The decisive factor had simply been the Civil War, which so radicalized the situation in Spain.

As it was, there existed a kind of crude pecking order in the attitude of fascists in various countries toward each other. Nazis looked down on Fascist Italy as not being truly "revolutionary" in the way Hitler's Germany was, while both Nazis and Italian Fascists regarded Franco's Spain as alarmingly "reactionary" and not fully fascist. Spanish Falangists, in turn, looked down on Salazar's Portugal, Vichy France, and other rightist authoritarian systems as "hollow" rightist regimes, lacking positive fascist political content.

The Franco regime, like that of Mussolini, called itself "totalitarian," though the limitations of the system were hinted at by the Franco himself on various occasions when he likened it to the united monarchy of the Catholic Monarchs — a monarchy in fact severely limited by multiple legal jurisdictions. Franco was much more "absolute" than so-called absolute monarchy in Spain (or anywhere else) ever was, but his concept of the counterrevolution also contained limits. He obviously had no intention of handing any significant degree of power to the party or anyone else, but, rather than constructing a truly totalitarian system, he respected private property and provided limited recognition to the diverse sectors of the original National Movement of 1936 — what would later be termed the various politico-ideological "families" of the regime.

Even though in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War the FET had distinctly more politico-administrative influence than any other "family" except the military, the limitations of this situation quickly became evident to some of the most radical Falangists. Hence the idea that began to develop from the autumn of 1939 that Franco had betrayed the ideals of José Antonio, a conviction that would only grow in the future among hard-core Falangists. The history of the FET-Movimiento Nacional would become the history, among other things, of semi-constant dissidence, even though the dissidence was of limited importance and always confined to small minorities.
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It became a permanent feature of the movement, tolerated by Franco because it was not normally threatening and because the nontotalitarian character of the regime did not require complete destruction of all dissidence. The most menacing single aspect of the dissidence developed in the first year after the Civil War, when some of the ultras formed a secret junta to plan the possible assassination of Franco. So far as we know, this junta had no counterpart in any other fascist movement participating in power, but after some months it decided to cancel its activities. The major problem was that there was no one to replace Franco, and given the special place of the military, combined with the latter's anti-Falangist attitude, it seemed clear that the military would ruthlessly suppress independent violence by the Falangists, something that the latter grasped even before the abortive revolt of the Iron Guard in Romania in January 1941.

The abortive plans to convert Spain into a major military power, to follow a curiously "Soviet" strategy of intervening in a European war only at the decisive moment, were a strictly military enterprise. There was no major input by any part of the party, as in Italy and Germany, and in fact the party's very limited paramilitary resources were fully terminated by the army command in 1941.

Franco had great ambitions by the close of the Civil War, suffering from a certain megalomaniac vertigo of victory, and wanted to keep both his domestic and diplomatic options open. Leaders of the FET hoped that the course of events would favor them, and for two years after the end of the Civil War that seemed to be the case. The increasing power and influence of the Axis encouraged further fascistization in Spain and, if Hitler had scored such decisive victories in 1941 as in 1940, that indeed might have been the way that it worked out.

The most important leader of the FET was not any of its secretary generals, but Ramón Serrano Súñer. He has claimed that he sincerely sought to develop a system that would carry out the doctrine of José Antonio and also to develop a firmly structured regime with a system of law to ratify this outcome. Serrano was the first president of the FET's Junta Politíca, but he also understood that in Franco's regime the state was more important than the party, so that his most important roles were first as minister of the interior and then as foreign minister.

His most important attempt to transform the structure of the state was the initiative of the Junta Política in the summer of 1940 to prepare a draft for a new institutional system, though care was taken not to reduce the personal power of Franco. The text of this Law for the Organization of the State was composed of five sections: Article 1 echoed the Falangist program, declaring the state "a totalitarian instrument in the service of the integrity of the Fatherland. All its power and institutions are dedicated to this service and are bound by law and by the political and moral principles of the National Movement." Twenty of the thirty-seven articles of this project were devoted to defining the authority and structure of a new corporative Cortes that would be quite similar to the Chamber of Fasces and Corporations of the Italian regime. The most controversial aspect was Article 28: "The Junta Política is the supreme political council of the regime and the collegial organ of coordination between the state and the Movement." Article 31 continued: "The Junta Política must be heard in full session on matters that affect the constitutive power and the Fundamental Laws of the State, on international treaties and concordats, on the declaration of war and the conclusion of peace. The competence of the Junta Política in those matters defined by the statutes of the Movement remains unaltered."
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This alarmed non-Falangists because it proposed to give the highest organ of the party a constitutive role at the highest level of the state structure. Esteban Bilbao, one of the few representatives of Carlism in the government, wrote a letter of protest against the "systematic interference of the party" in the highest organs of state.
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This was not the first plan or draft for a set of laws for his regime that Franco had received, for more than a year earlier both the regular monarchists and the Carlists had presented their own proposals. During those years, however, Franco sought to avoid any political structure that might tie his hands, and the project of the Junta Política, like the earlier proposals of the monarchist movements, was simply filed away.

The initial point of inflection in Spain came early, however, scarcely more than two years after the close of the Civil War. Throughout the second half of 1940 and the initial months of 1941, both Serrano Súñer and the FET hoped and believed that the tide of events was carrying the Spanish regime to decisive changes in international and domestic affairs. Indeed, had Hitler met Franco's demands at Hendaye, that is the way it might have worked out. As it was, the increasing complexity of the international situation and the disastrous decline of the domestic economy dissuaded Franco from changes; his main concern was foreign and military policy more than domestic politics. What he found after the fall of France was that the FET leaders and militants had become even more rabidly Germanophile than before, and in fact any major concessions to them would have had the effect of forcing his hand in foreign policy, as well. Therefore the high tide of Axis power in 1940-41 did not produce any decisive fascistization of the Spanish regime, as the Falangists hoped, but encouraged Franco simply to manipulate the status quo, without a decisive internal change one way or another. A second key factor was the intense hostility of the military, very critical of any further gesture of fascistization, not so much for ideological reasons but because they considered the Falangists parvenu rivals who lacked competence, integrity, or coherence.

the politics of Spain differ notably from the thought of the person who inspired all the men of the Falange to ardent service.

... Though it is true that the complete fulfillment of the doctrine of José Antonio would be hard to carry out in the present circumstances, ... it is also true that the instrument created to make that doctrine effective some day, that is, the Party Falange Española Tradicionalista y de las JONS, absolutely lacks the means and minimal possibilities of carrying out its difficult mission.
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This was a serious challenge, for in the climate of those days Franco could not simply abandon or suppress the Falangists (even though he had all the power to do that), nor did he want to, for at that point he had no interest in any major alternative model for his regime. Moreover, this was the first and only domestic political crisis in the history of the regime that Franco could not initially control, his first response only seeming to increase the opposition. Nonetheless, in the final phase his maneuvering was masterful, reorganizing political appointments in such a way as to keep the military under control and gain the cooperation of a new set of Falangist leaders such as José Luis de Arrese, who, though they maintained the party's fascist orientation, accepted the inevitability of its permanent marriage to Franco. When this was soon followed by the elimination of the syndical boss Gerardo Salvador Merino, some of the most radical and fully Naziphile had been eliminated, and the party was on its way to final domestication, though this would always depend on the outcome of foreign affairs.

What the Falangist dissidents had sought at the beginning of the crisis was a "compact," primarily Falangist, government, and the only figure who could have led it would probably have been Serrano Súñer. The latter has declared in his memoirs that, with the final outcome, he realized that Franco had managed to divide the Falangists more than ever and to triumph in every respect. As Serrano put it, "The important thing about these developments was that I had ceased to be the mediator between the Chief of State and the authentic leaders of the Falange.... From that moment the FET de las JONS was above all the party of Franco. After the crisis of May 1941 the Falangists who had fought by my side lost faith in our political enterprise."
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This, however, may be an exaggeration made on the basis of hindsight, for the group associated with Serrano may not have fully grasped the extent of their defeat for some time. In fact, Serrano still hoped to retain indirect leadership of the FET, restricting the new secretary general to technical administration, while he remained political leader. Probably neither he nor Franco initially grasped the degree of enmity and rivalry felt by Arrese, but the latter proved more adroit than Serrano anticipated. Franco found that Arrese suited him just fine, and within a few months gave his approval to the new secretary general's full control of the party. Only then did Serrano understand the extent of his defeat.

Moreover, Arrese also sought the role of maximal interpreter of the orthodox doctrine of José Antonio. He had his own intellectual and ideological pretensions, beginning with the book on the Falangist program that he had written in 1936, which was published only after the war. Originally he had sought to emphasize the social program of Falangism, but in his era as secretary general he also stressed more and more its Catholic identity and the neotraditionalist roots of the doctrine of José Antonio. Whereas for the latter neotraditionalism was above all a matter of culture and religion, combined in political matters with at least a limited anticlericalism, it achieved ever greater prominence in the FET of Arrese.

Meanwhile Serrano Súñer — rather like José Antonio before him — failed to develop significant allies, ultimately relying too much on his personal relationship with Franco. After May 1941 he no longer even had the support of most of the Falange, for Arrese and the new party leaders strongly resented him and moved to undercut his power, something which Franco did not oppose. Moreover, Serrano's political personality and deportment were very nearly the opposite of those of José Antonio. Whereas the latter succeeded in charming many of his enemies, the overweening arrogance of Serrano, as leading minister and brother-in-law of the dictator, made him "the most hated man in Spain," as the German ambassador accurately described him in reports to Berlin.

During his final year as foreign minister, Serrano became increasingly frustrated. He saw clearly that the more structured and more fascist regime of which he hoped to be a special leader (possibly the key leader) was not emerging in Spain, and that Franco had once more frozen the domestic political situation, as he had done so successfully during the Civil War. As Serrano said to the representatives of Hitler and Mussolini, only Spain's entry into the war would break open the domestic situation and produce decisive changes in the regime. As much as he wished for both these alternatives to come to pass, most of the time he had to agree with Franco that current circumstances simply made entry into the war impossible. At times he toyed with the idea of resigning to take up the post of ambassador in Rome, by far the most comfortable place for him outside of Spain, indeed leaving the post vacant for a while, probably for that eventuality.