The usual thing is to say that Spain in the 20th century suffered from two dictators, Miguel Primo de Rivera and Francisco Franco. But the historians Xavier Casals and Enric Ucelay-Da Cal come forward with a new innovative thesis in El fascio de las Ramblas (Past
For the authors, the mandate of these soldiers goes far beyond a local issue, because both aspired to redesign the State as a whole, in a post-liberal sense. Thus, both contributed decisively to the configuration of the Spanish fascist movement, which would have decisive importance after the Civil War.
“I will act as if I were in a campaign,” Martínez Anido even said. His thing was brute force, not the art of politics. That is why he dedicated himself to executions outside the law with the so-called “escape law.” From the perspective of El fascio de las Ramblas, his garrison management represented a rehearsal for what would be the Primorriverista dictatorship.
A newspaper of the time, El Sol, did not hesitate to compare him with Mussolini: “Apart from the diversity of proportions of the conflict, Martínez Anido operated in a manner analogous to the directors of fascism. And just as conservative Italy hailed its liberator in Mussolini, the Barcelona elements of order sang in chorus the excellence of the desired new regime.”
No one would be surprised if we looked for the roots of Francoism in the dictatorships of interwar Europe. Casals and Ucelay-Da Cal go further and trace them back to 19th century Cuba, when the captain general of the island exercised absolute power. So much so that the liberal politician Segismundo Moret said that “every captain of Havana is a proconsul who acts as he pleases and ends up making a fortune.”
The staunch defenders of Spanish rule were then distinguished by their antidemocratic and violent ideology, based on extremist nationalism. The “volunteers”, a paramilitary force, systematically boycotted any reform project. They stated that if the island did not continue to be Spanish they would abandon it reduced to ashes.
In the end, this exalted patriotism only served to precipitate the loss of the colony. The mutiny of the volunteers in 1898 prompted the United States to send one of its cruisers, the Maine. The blowing up of it served as an excuse for Washington to conduct a military intervention that ended in an overwhelming victory.
After the humiliating defeat, the Cuban Spaniards continued to operate on the peninsula and turned the city of Barcelona into their fiefdom. For them, the Catalanists were the new Cuban independentists. “In Barcelona, separatism emerged in a very similar way to how it appeared in Cuba,” we read in an 1899 issue of the newspaper La Correspondencia Militar.
To the threat to the status quo that the Catalanists represented, we had to add that of the labor movement, synonymous with social revolution. The ultraconservatives were willing to defeat these enemies regardless of the harshness of the procedures.
To justify their policy, they created a mythology with their own version of the “stab in the back.” Cuba, according to them, had not been lost due to the incapacity of the Army, but rather due to a conspiracy of pacifists and revolutionaries. Years later, in Germany, the Nazis would explain the collapse of their country in the First World War in a very similar way.
Casals and Ucelay-Da Cal provide some very significant data on the connections between Cuba and the fascism that was taking shape in Spain in the 1920s. Ramiro de Maeztu, the well-known theorist of Hispanidad, had been one of the Hispanic volunteers in Havana during his youth stay in the Caribbean city. Casilda Sáenz de Heredia, wife of Miguel Primo de Rivera and mother of José Antonio, the leader of Falange, was part of a family with large economic interests on the island.
The first Spanish fascism would have been born in Barcelona due to its peculiar social situation, converted into a true powder keg that degenerated to the uncontrolled violence of the era of gunmanism, with continuous attacks by forces of the right and left.
The similarities with Milan were evident, a capital that was basic in the development of Italian fascism. Both cities constituted the economic heart of their respective countries and felt left out compared to Madrid and Rome.
The fascio de las Ramblas is not only a very well-documented study of contemporary Spain. At a conceptual level, it provides a brilliant and provocative reflection on what the extreme right has represented in our country. While other investigations are characterized by an excessive attachment to terminology, here we do not reflect so much on doctrines as on facts. Fascism constitutes, above all, a praxis. From this perspective, it makes sense to talk about its existence before Mussolini if a similar action is detected, inspired by militarism, illiberalism and exacerbated nationalism.
