Spain's contribution to the varieties of Fascism between the world wars came in the peculiar movement of José Antonio Primo de Rivera (1903-1936) the son of the Spanish general and virtual dictator of the 1920s. Falangism, like other forms of Fascism, identified itself mostly with its opposition: to the radical left, and the corrupt bourgeoisie and capitalist elites that had influenced Spain since the mid-Nineteenth century in a process of "transformismo." Embracing the church, the military and other sources of authoritarian virtue, and adopting a dogma of youthful action, the falangist movement formed in 1933-34 and took to the streets to combat the leftist gangs and monarchists alike. The coming of the Spanish Civil War would likely have swept aside this splinter movement but for the capture and execution of José Antonio by the Republican government, and the Nationalist generals took him as a martyr and gradually adopted the movement to its own needs. They joined it with other right wing groups of Carlists and monarchists in April, 1937 to form the Falange Española Tradicionalista de las Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional Sindicalista (FET de las JONS), which thankfully became in postwar years simply the "Movimiento Nacional," the sole authorized political party of the Franco regime. Removed from its violent interwar credos of action, the Movement settled into a program of cooperation with the Church and Army as the other pillars of the Franco regime and contributed a corporatist political doctrine to the Franco regime until more rational and modern concepts relegated it to insignificance by the time of the dictator's demise in 1975. Displaced by the popular parties since then, it remains alive only in the nostalgic hearts of committed Franquistas as they enter their own twilight. The heyday of the Falangists consisted of the period of the Civil War victory and the first half of World War II, when Franco flirted briefly with the Axis powers.
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