‘Everybody’s Favourite Fascist’: an examination of the figure of José Antonio Primo de Rivera within the historiography of Spanish fascism

Abstract

As the founder and leader of the Falange Española (Spanish Phalanx), José Antonio Primo de Rivera has been almost universally held by historians specialising in fascist studies as the only important figure of Spanish fascism. Primo de Rivera’s movement, a paramilitary organisation that publicly endorsed the toppling of the democratic Spanish Republic, was noted for its inflammatory rhetoric and violent actions. Yet, Primo de Rivera has recently been described by eminent American historian of fascism Stanley Payne as ‘everybody’s favourite fascist’. This thesis argues that historians of twentieth century Spanish politics have overwhelmingly idealised Primo de Rivera in a manner incongruent with the long-standing mainstream academic hostility towards fascism. He has been depoliticised and reified into an upstanding ‘gentleman’, yet still understood as the only ‘important’ fascist in Spanish history. His violent rhetoric has been classed as ‘poetic’, and his violent actions as heroic in spite of their alignment with traditional understandings of fascism. This image has been reinforced by the centrality of Francisco Franco, long-held by most mainstream historians to be non-fascist in character, to acrimonious historical polemic over the nature and legacy of Spanish fascism. This thesis demonstrates that the confused and misleading nature of this historical assessment of Primo de Rivera has not been adequately addressed by historians. With Primo de Rivera upheld as an aberration from ‘normal’ fascism, deeper critical inquiry into the role fascism played during the Second Spanish Republic, and subsequent Franco dictatorship, has been unnecessarily stymied.