| Spanish Phalanx of the Assemblies of the National Syndicalist Offensive Falange Española de las Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional Sindicalista |
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| Founder | José Antonio Primo de Rivera |
| President | Diego Márquez Horrillo |
| Founded | October 29, 1933 |
| Newspaper | Patria Sindicalista, Arriba (historical) |
| Student wing | Sindicato Español Universitario |
| Youth wing | Frente de Juventudes |
| Paramilitary wing | Camisas Azules |
| Ideology | Falangism |
| Political position | Syncretic (official)[1] Far-right (in practice) |
| Official colors | Black, Red (flag of the Falange); Blue |
| Website | |
| http://www.falange.es/ | |
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The Spanish Phalanx of the Assemblies of the National Syndicalist Offensive (Spanish: Falange Española de las Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional Sindicalista, FE de las JONS), known simply as the Falange, is the name assigned to several Spanish political movements and parties dating from the 1930s, and dovetailed with the Fascist movement in Italy. The word Falange in Spanish refers to a Phalanx formation or front a political metaphor commonly adopted by modern radicalized movements in the early-to-middle 20th century such as: Popular front, National Front or Vanguard . Members of the party were called Falangists (Spanish: Falangistas). Since 1975, Falangists have split into several different political movements that have continued into the 21st century. The main political movement that retained its Falangist heritage and is the continuation of the party is the FE JONS.
In Spain, the Falange was a political organization founded by José Antonio Primo de Rivera in 1933, during the Second Spanish Republic. Primo de Rivera was a Madrid lawyer, son of General Miguel Primo de Rivera, who governed Spain as Prime Minister with dictatorial power under King Alfonso XIII in the 1920s. General Primo de Rivera believed in state planning and government intervention in the economy. His son and the Falangists he led expressed regret for the demise of the elder Primo de Rivera's regime, and proposed to revive his policies and a program of national-syndicalist social organization.
Falangism was originally similar to Italian fascism in certain respects. It shared its contempt for Bolshevism and other forms of socialism and a distaste for democracy. Like the Italian Fascist Blackshirts, the Falange had its own party militia, the Blueshirts. However, the Falange's National Syndicalism was a political theory very different from the fascist idea of corporatism, inspired by Integralism and the Action Française (for a French parallel, see Cercle Proudhon). It was first formulated in Spain by Ramiro Ledesma Ramos in a manifesto published in his periodical La Conquista del Estado on 14 March 1931. National Syndicalism attempted to bridge the gap between nationalism and the anarcho-syndicalism of the dominant trade union, the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT), by revising syndicalism altogether. While the Falange embraced the Catholic emphasis of Integralism it also borrowed elements from fascism.
Unlike other members of the Spanish right, the Falange was republican, avant-gardist and modernist (see Early History below), in a manner similar to the original spirit of Italian Fascism. Its uniform and aesthetic was similar to contemporary European fascist and national socialist movements. After the party was coopted by Francisco Franco and consolidated with the Carlists, it ceased to have a fascist character (which sought a revolutionary transformation of society whereas Franco was conservative), although it retained many of the external trappings of fascism.[2][3][4][5][6]
During the Spanish Civil War the doctrine of the Falange was used by General Franco, who virtually took possession of its ideology, while José Antonio Primo de Rivera was arrested and executed by the Spanish Republican Government. During the war, and after its founder's death, the Falange was combined by decree (Unification Decree) with the Carlist party, under the sole command of Franco, forming the core of the sole official political organization in Spain, the Falange Española Tradicionalista y de las Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional-Sindicalista, or "Spanish Traditionalist Phalanx of the Assemblies of National-Syndicalist Offensive" (FET y de las JONS). This organization, also known as the National Movement (Movimiento Nacional) after 1945, continued until Franco's death in 1975.
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The year after its founding, the Falange united with the Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional-Sindicalista of Onésimo Redondo, Ramiro Ledesma, and others, becoming Falange Española de las Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional-Sindicalista.
The Falange was not an archetypal party of the right. Ronald Hilton has argued that Spanish leftists spoke of José Antonio with respect.[7] The party attracted a considerable number of prominent intellectuals, including Pedro Mourlane Michelena, Rafael Sánchez Mazas, Ernesto Giménez Caballero, Eugenio Montes, José María Alfaro, Agustín de Foxa, Luys Santa Marina, Samuel Ros, Jacinto Miquelarena and Dionisio Ridruejo.[8] The party was republican, modernist, championed the lower classes and opposed both oligarchy and communism.[9] For these reasons the Falange was shunned by other right-leaning parties in the 1936 election, where it performed dismally. It only surpassed one percent of the vote in five provinces, performing best in Valladolid and Cadiz, where it received between four and five percent.[10] Having likely never exceeded ten thousand members in the early 1930s, the Falange lost supporters in the run-up to the Civil War, leaving a core of young, dedicated activists, many in the organization's student organization, the SEU (Sindicato Español Universitario).[11]
Following the elections the left-wing Popular Front government persecuted the Falange and imprisoned Primo de Rivera on July 6, 1936. In turn, the Falange joined the conspiracy to overthrow the Republic, supporting the military revolt ultimately led by Francisco Franco and continuing to do so throughout the ensuing Civil War.
With the eruption of the Civil War in July 1936, the Falange fought on the Nationalist side against the Spanish Second Republic. Expanding rapidly from several thousand to several hundred thousand[12], the Falange's male membership was accompanied by a female auxiliary, the Sección Feminina. Led by José Antonio's sister Pilar, this latter subsidiary organization claimed more than a half million members by the end of the war and provided nursing and support services for the Nationalist forces.[13]
The command of the party rested upon Manuel Hedilla, as many of the first generation leaders were dead or incarcerated by the Republicans. Among them was Primo de Rivera, who was a Government prisoner. As a result, he was referred to among the leadership as el Ausente, (the Absent One). On 20 November 1936 (a date since known as 20-N in Spain), Primo de Rivera was sentenced to death by the Spanish Government in a Republican prison, giving him martyr status among the Falangists. This conviction and sentence was possible because he had lost his Parliamentary immunity, after his party did not have enough votes during the last elections.
After Franco seized power on 19 April 1937, he united under his command the Falange with the Carlist Comunión Tradicionalista, forming Falange Española Tradicionalista y de las JONS (FET y de las JONS), whose official ideology was the Falangists' 27 puntos. Despite this, the party was in fact a wide-ranging nationalist coalition, closely controlled by Franco. Parts of the original Falange (including Hedilla) and many Carlists did not join the unified party. Franco had sought to control the Falange after a clash between Hedilla and his main critics within the group, the legitimistas of Agustín Aznar and Sancho Dávila y Fernández de Celis, that threatened to derail the Nationalist war effort.[14]
None of the vanquished parties in the war suffered such a toll of deaths among their leaders as did the Falange. Sixty per cent of the pre-war Falange membership lost their lives in the war.[15]
Most of the property of all other parties and trade unions were assigned to the party. In 1938, all trade unions were unified under Falangist command.
After the war, the party was charged with developing an ideology for Franco's regime. This job became a cursus honorum for ambitious politicians—new converts, who were called camisas nuevas ("new shirts") in opposition to the more overtly populist and ideological "old shirts" from before the war.
Membership in the Falange/FET reached a peak of 932,000 in 1942.[16] Despite the official unification of the various Nationalist factions within the party in 1937, tensions continued between dedicated Falangists and other groups, particularly Carlists. Such tensions erupted in violence with the Begoña Incident of August 1942, when hardline Falangist activists attacked a Carlist religious gathering in Bilbao with grenades. The attack and the response of Carlist government ministers (most notably Varela and Galarza) led to a government crisis and caused Franco to dismiss several ministers. Ultimately, six Falangists were convicted of the attack and one, Juan Domínguez, was executed.[17]
By the middle of the Second World War, Franco and leading Falangists, while distancing themselves from the faltering European fascists, stressed the unique "Spanish Catholic authoritarianism" of the regime and the Falange. Instructions were issued in September 1943 that henceforth the Falange/FET would be referred to exclusively as a "movement" and not a "party".[18]
The Falange also developed youth organizations, with members known as Flechas and Pelayos.
With improving relations with the United States, economic development, and the rise of a group of relatively young technocrats within the government, the Falange continued to decline. In 1965 the SEU, the movement's student organization, was officially disbanded.[19] At the same time, the membership of the Falange as a whole was both shrinking and aging. (In 1974 the average age of Falangists in Madrid was at least 55 years). The organization's relatively few new members came mostly from the conservative and devoutly Catholic areas of northern Spain.[20]
After Franco's death (20 November 1975, also known as "20-N") the Spanish Crown was restored to the House of Borbón in the person of King Juan Carlos, and a move towards democratization begun under Adolfo Suárez, a former chief of the Movimiento. The new situation splintered the Falange. In the first elections in 1977, three different groups fought in court for the right to the Falangist name. Today, decades after the fall of the Francoist regime, Spain still has a minor Falangist element, represented by a number of tiny political parties. Chief among these are the Falange Española de las JONS (which takes its name from the historical party), Falange Auténtica, Falange Española Independiente (which later merged with the FE de las JONS), and FE - La Falange. Vastly reduced in size and power today, these Falangist-inspired parties are rarely seen publicly except on ballot papers, in State-funded TV election advertisements, and during demonstrations on historic dates, like 20 November (death of Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera and General Francisco Franco). These three parties received 27,166 votes amongst them in the 2004 legislative election.
In 2009, police arrested five members of a Falangist splinter group calling itself Falange y Tradición. They alleged that this group which was unknown to mainstream Falangist groups, had been involved in a raft of violent attacks in the Navarre region. These attacks were primarily targeted at Basque separatist terrorist group ETA and at ETA sympathisers.[21]