From pronunciamiento to Civil War
These preliminary observations about pronunciamientos will help us to demystify the origins of the Spanish Civil War. Franco revealed a mentality characteristic of a military officer who has just 'pronounced' when, a week after the uprising and possessing a curious idea of what civilized countries are, protested, without embarrassment, to a journalist that it was the Republic that, by refusing to surrender, was obliging him to wage war In all civilized countries, when the army has risen against...
The day of the Pope in Pamplona
Pamplona was, throughout the whole of the Civil War, the ecclesiastical capital of Spain. Navarra was the great fief of traditionalism and, for that reason, where the leaders of the most confessional sector of the conglomerate that formed the Movement were to be found. This was the sector that the Church was trying to make use of in order to check the growth of certain lay and, one could even say, anti-clerical tendencies within the new regime. Cardinal Goma, who was always attempting to confer...
Catholics against the Republic
One sector of the Catholics, inspired by don Ai ngel Herrera and led by Josei M. Gil Robles, appeared to follow the peaceable and legal way pointed to by the instructions of the Holy See, but in the end its behaviour resembled that of a card-player who breaks up the pack because he is losing. After the victory of the Popular Front in February 1936, Gil Robles, who, as Minister of War, had reversed Azana's military reforms and placed in key posts only officers from his trusted circle, the most...
In defence of religion
As for religion, we have already said that not one of the edicts of the pronunciamiento mentions it. Mola's communique from Burgos on 23 July -which announced that the Junta de Defensa Nacional de Espa a, presided over by Miguel Cabanellas, the oldest general, was to be constituted that same afternoon - invokes the propositions of reconstruction, order and discipline against the savagery of the mob, but says nothing about religion. Nor, the next day, did the declaration of the Junta de Defensa...
The Easter of the three encyclicals
The 'third way' policy of the Vatican, that is to say one that supported neither Communism nor Fascism, was shown in distinct relief by the almost simultaneous publication in March 1937 of one encyclical against Communism and another against Nazism, which were accompanied by a third concerning the persecution in Mexico. The encyclical Divini Redemptoris, against Communism, is dated 19 March 1937 and appears in Acta Aposto-licae Sedis on 31st of the same month. The Mit brennender Sorge 'With...
The consecration of the pronunciamiento
During the tourist boom of the 1950s and 1960s under the ministry of Fraga Iribarne, a propagandistic slogan, ' Spain is different', was adopted in the hope of attracting foreigners. It referred, quite obviously, to the peculiarities of landscape and typical' customs of Spain. The phrase, however, had not been invented then but had first appeared, I believe, in an allusion to the religious dimension acquired by the Civil War as perceived through the astonished eyes of a group of tourists....
Antiseparatism
Besides the influential but not explicit motivations, such as the already-mentioned self-interest of the military establishment, the first point upon which all the conspirators seem to have been in agreement is the repression of all the nationalisms on the Peninsula, above all in Catalonia, which with great difficulty had managed to gain a moderate autonomy. 'Yet,' as Carr has pointed out, it was this political success that began a process of alienation that was to gather momentum. It did not...