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Franco, the Spanish Falange and the

Institutionalisation of MissionStanley G. Payne

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Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions,Vol. 7, No. 2, 191201, June 2006

ISSN 1469-0764 Print/ISSN 1743-9647 Online/06/020191-11 2006 Taylor & FrancisDOI: 10.1080/14690760600642206

Franco, the Spanish Falange and the Institutionalisation

of Mission

STANLEY G. PAYNE

University of Wisconsin-MadisonTaylorandFrancisLtdFTMP_A_164199.sgm10.1080/14690760600642206TotalitarianMovements andPolitic alReligions1469-0764 (print)/1743-9647 (online)OriginalArticle2006Taylor&Francis72000000June 2006StanleyPaynesgpayne@wisc.edu

The original fascist movement in Spain never enjoyed very effective leadership,

even though its chief became the object of a major charismatic cult after hisviolent, premature death. Despite this weakness, after it had been subsumedwithin the Franco regime, Falangism became the longest-lived of all fascist-typemovements.1The Franco regime, in turn, was one of the longest non-communistauthoritarian regimes, and also the most successful, judged not simply in terms ofits longevity but also in terms of factors such as ultimate economic development.

Leadership was clearly a major factor in its longevity and success, though therole of charisma in that leadership was complex and difficult to assess. Francowas never a classic charismatic leader of the Mussolini type, but he and theFalange did come to embody an important sense of the mission to define a new

role for Spain in the world.

Jos Antonio and Early Spanish Fascism

The founder of Spanish fascism, Ramiro Ledesma Ramos, was unable to lead itbecause of his lack of personality traits normally associated with leadership. Aphilosophical essayist and low-level civil servant, Ledesma was purely an intel-lectual, with minimal social contacts and no political background or experience.Only 25-years of age when he entered the world of politics in 1930, he faced amassive challenge, above all because, as I have analysed elsewhere, there was lessopportunity for a fascist movement in Spain than in a number of other Europeancountries.

Of average height and physical appearance, Ledesma had little gift forpersonal relations and lacked financial resources. He was considered harsh anddoctrinaire, was slightly hard of hearing and without oratorical ability, thelatter compounded by a slight speech defect which prevented him frompronouncing properly the Spanish r. He was not deficient in written propa-ganda, and thus, in addition to providing most of the original doctrines of themovement, he also coined most of its basic slogans, some of which were usedfor years. Given this combination of ability and profound limitations, Ledesmawas able to function only as an ideological precursor: he could never develop or

lead a mass movement.2

Correspondence Address: Department of History, University of Wisconsin-Madison 3211 MosseHumanities Building, 455 N Park St, Madison, WI 53706, USA. Email: sgpayne@wisc.edu

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The leader would be, of course, Jos Antonio the only public figure of modernSpain known primarily by his first names. Jos Antonio Primo de Rivera willalways present something of a historiographical problem. A national cult figureunder the Franco regime for many years after his death, the amount of publishedliterature about him became immense, and has never ceased, for admirers

continue to bring out new books even in the twenty-first century. Yet in thismountain of literature there will be found only one serious biography.3

The problematic character of Jos Antonios leadership has to do with hispersonality, his political ambivalence, his doctrines and ideas, his role within themyriad political forces of Spain, and finally his relationship to the Spanish CivilWar and the Franco regime. Though Jos Antonios personal charm and sinceritywon him many friends and admirers during his lifetime, many colleagues andmore distant observers commented on the incongruous and contradictory aspectsof his career. Whilst not a truly great public speaker, he was capable of more thana little eloquence and enjoyed a degree of literary talent. He did exert a certain

winsome a charisma at least of a sort that attracted young followers, yet heseemed almost the opposite of the fascist type (normally understood as harsh,authoritarian, sectarian, fanatical, and prone to violence). Some commented thathe seemed more cut out for liberal parliamentary politics than for fascistic streetdemagogy.

In the case of Jos Antonio, family, rather than personality, was destiny. It isvery doubtful that his life would have ever followed the course that it did were itnot for his fathers earlier role as dictator of Spain from 1923 to 1930, and for the

bankruptcy and failure of his fathers regime. Amid the growing conflict andpolarisation of the Second Republic, Jos Antonio developed an overwhelmingsense of hereditary political responsibility to take up his fathers burden andcomplete the latters attempt to transform Spain through authoritarian andnationalist means. Whereas the senior Primo de Rivera had never developed aneffective ideology and programme, by 1933 Jos Antonio believed that the appro-priate formula had become available through applying what he understood to bethe programme and strategy of Italian Fascism to Spain. In retrospect, thisappears naive, and yet Jos Antonio was a man of superior intelligence, with a

better education and broader personal culture than the majority of those active inSpanish politics at that time. He did not understand fascism as clearly as did, forexample, Ramiro Ledesma, but was captive to the myth of Mussolini, whom heseems to have identified with an idealised version of his father. Moreover, his

fathers own benevolent if authoritarian family relationship, and the relative calmand absence of violence under the dictatorship, led him to assume that an author-itarian nationalism of the fascist sort might be established in Spain with only themost limited violence.

By autumn 1934 Jos Antonios personal qualities (a more commanding physi-cal presence, charm, and a capacity for public speaking), combined with his moreextensive political and financial contacts, had enabled him to becomeJefe Nacionalof a movement based largely on Italian Fascism. However, the enterprise wasproving to be a political failure. By the middle of the following year, this clear-cutfailure was leading the Falange to abandon the political tactics that had led the

Fascist and National Socialist movements to power, turning instead to the kind ofinsurrectionary tactics attempted on four different occasions by Spanish anar-chists and Socialists during 1932-34. All the leftist attempts at insurrection hadfailed, even though each went further than Hitlers Bierhallputsch, and the Falange

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Franco and the Institutionalisation of Mission 193

proved to be so weak that it had to abandon plans to initiate such action. ByMarch 1936 the movement was simply outlawed by a republican government thatwas in transition to its own ad hocauthoritarianism, and did not hesitate to takethe kind of action used against fascist movements by the Horthy, Carolist, andSalazar regimes. Though as a clandestine organisation the Party finally began to

gain membership rapidly during the climactic Spanish crisis, as a regular politicalforce it had failed completely. The Falange had to rely on the initiative and leader-ship of military forces to carry out the insurrection which would provide its onlychance of survival. Even before the death of Jos Antonio, the movement had

been forced to surrender its full autonomy. Independence once lost would neverbe regained.

The long-standing myth of Jos Antonio is based above all on the concept ofmartyrdom the messianic leader sacrificed by the enmity of rivals and enemies.Certainly the death cult of Jos Antonio during the generation after the Civil War,which began with a 500-kilometre funeral procession in which his coffin was

borne by hand from Alicante to San Lorenzo de El Escorial (the pantheon ofSpanish kings), where it was interred in front of the high altar, was almost unpar-alleled. Reaching extremes never witnessed in the modern history of westernEurope, it was rivalled only by the Lenin cult in the Soviet Union.

His actual political leadership had left a great deal to be desired. Jos Antonioscareer revealed inadequate analysis of key aspects of the Spanish political situa-tion, combined with ideological uncertainty and ambivalence. Jos Antonio alsoencountered considerable difficulty in the leadership and structuring of his move-ment, partly because of the small number and uncertain quality of his followers.He showed an inability to form effective linkages and alliances that might haveallowed the movement to grow, and at the end embraced a desperate Flucht nachvorn into a completely uncertain insurrection which had virtually apocalypticconsequences. His small band of followers did indeed respond to a kind ofcharisma, but the scope of that charisma was so limited that Jos Antonio does not

bear comparison with major charismatic figures.A sceptic might respond that such issues are rather beside the point, since

fascism simply had little possibility of developing as a political force in Spain, forreasons which I have analysed elsewhere.4These objective circumstances woulddoubtless have severely constrained the most expert leadership. Jos Antoniooriginally seems to have reasoned by comparison with Italy and therefore failedto come to grips with the limited appeal of nationalism in Spain. In this regard he

overestimated the extent of secularisation in the Spanish middle classes andunderestimated the force of political Catholicism. The latter had been officiallyalmost non-existent before 1933 but then developed rapidly, occupying most ofthe space in the middle-class reaction against the left. This gave Spanish national-ism a much more rightist and counterrevolutionary cast. Similarly, by compari-son with all the countries in which fascism developed, the Spanish working classproved impervious to the fascist appeal to nationalistic worker revolutionism.

There was some sense among second-rank Falangist leaders that his politicalstyle was initially lacking in assertiveness and aggressiveness. Certainly duringthe first year of the Falange Jos Antonio had difficulty coming to terms with the

degree of violence involved in radical fascist politics and more particularly, inthe peculiarly aggressive Spanish case, the degree of leftist anti-fascist violence while the weakness of the movement rendered problematic its own employmentof violence. And certainly he was also guilty of the common Spanish political

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Franco and the Institutionalisation of Mission 195

If Franco was not a charismatic fascist leader, he was undeniably an effectiveleader of his regime, as evidenced by the fact that he eventually died in bed at anadvanced age, his political authority little diminished. Francos own political

beliefs were typical of those of many right radical authoritarian regimes of theinterwar period. He was a strong nationalist, believed in undivided authoritarian

rule, traditional Catholic religion and culture, an economy based on private prop-erty but highly regulated and controlled by a system of state corporatism, and theimperative justice of empire as exercised by superior peoples.7One feature of histhought that was similar to the development of Jos Antonios was the influenceof the Primo de Rivera dictatorship, Francos first and primary experience with anauthoritarian nationalist regime. This seems to have had a major impact on histhinking, and he endorsed most of its basic concepts and values, even as hegrasped its basic inadequacies. Becoming a more successful dictator than Primode Rivera and avoiding his mistakes would be a fundamental concern for Francoafter becoming head of state.

Of course, Franco of course first gained fame and prestige as an army officer,becoming the youngest new brigadier general in Europe in 1926. This was a statusobjectively achieved through a traditional form of legitimacy, although in an eraof increasing media coverage it also involved a significant dimension of publicityand public relations. The Spanish army had long been known for political gener-als, but Franco was not among them, becoming the most decorated and rapidlypromoted young officer in service as a result of his battlefield exploits. Though hewas known to be a right-wing monarchist, his professionalism and respect fordiscipline and authority were proverbial, so that he suffered less professionaldiscrimination at the hands of the Second Republic than most other senior officersof similar persuasion. He soon rose to even greater prominence as Chief of theGeneral Staff under the centre-right government of 1935.

Relieved of that post by the new Popular Front government of 1936, he was notone of those officers who eagerly engaged in conspiracy against the left. Thoughhe kept in touch with the conspirators, a political insurrection by the militarywas foreign to his background and temperament, so that he only committedhimself irretrievably to the conspiracy in its final stage, after the climactic crisis ofRepublican affairs. In effect, he only committed himself fully to insurgency whenit seemed that it would be more dangerous not to rebel than to rebel.

There is no question that Franco had come to enjoy a certain charisma becauseof the spectacular success of his military career, but this was charisma of a rela-

tively traditional and limited sort without political definition. Once the revolution-ary process in Spanish politics became strongly developed in 1934, the search forrightist alternatives was accentuated. Franco apparently took to reading books oncontemporary politics and economics, and even to studying English haphazardly,in preparation for a more important role in this process, but it is not clear if thisnascent sense of mission went beyond being a major military, not political, leaderof the right. He was easily discouraged in his first attempt to enter politics througha by-election in May 1936, and withdrew prior to the balloting. Nonetheless,whereas prior to 1934 he had basically followed his professional star like mostambitious young officers, during 1934-36 he developed a broader, if not fully

defined, sense of mission.Once the Civil War began, Francos leadership became crucial, because he

commanded the only fully combat-ready military force, based in the MoroccanProtectorate. Once the question of a new commander-in-chief and political leader

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of the insurgents was raised in September 1936, Franco encountered no rival andlittle opposition among his fellow military commanders. His professional reputa-tion towered over the others, though ironically some of his most zealous promot-ers were the monarchists, who calculated that a military government led byFranco would be the kind most likely to promote an early restoration of the

monarchy, even though there has never been any evidence that he made a pledgeto that effect. The outbreak of the Civil War stimulated a process of mutual politi-cal radicalisation on both sides of the barricades. In the Republican zone itencouraged a full-scale left-collectivist revolution, arguably the broadest, deepestand, in some respects, most spontaneous worker rising in modern history.Among the insurgent nationalists, the war and opposing revolution quickly radi-calised the political agenda of much of the military leadership.

Franco had initially accepted the political goals of the insurgency, which was toterminate leftist government and establish a conservative and authoritarianRepublican regime, though maintaining some of the Republican reforms. By the

time that he took over as head of state on 1 October, however, he increasinglyaccepted what seemed to Franco an evident fact: he must construct a completelyalternative political system with a much more radical structure and agenda.Whereas up to the first phase of the Civil War he would apparently have settledfor something like the Austrian regime of Engelbert Dollfuss or Antonio SalazarsEstado Novo in Portugal, after becoming head of state of a violent new regimelocked in the most extreme revolutionary/counterrevolutionary civil war, hesoon came to the conclusion that only a more forceful, categorical, and mobilisednew regime could succeed. For this the most useful model was Fascist Italy,though he was aware of the danger of imitation and never proposed merely tocopy the Italian system.

It was especially important to overcome el error Primo de Rivera the failure todevelop structure, organisation or ideology, and this was where the acephalousFalangist movement was most useful. When Franco took over the Party in April1937 to make it the official state organisation, he merged it with the Carlists,altering its name to the most complex and absurd of all the fascist-type move-ments Falange Espaola Tradicionalista y de las Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional-Sindicalista(FET-JONS). He also made it clear that, even as the state adopted theofficial Falangist programme, the new organisation was to become something of acatch-all party that members of all other political groups in the Nationalist zonecould join.

It has never been clear how much Franco understood of fascist politics andideology. He appreciated its capacity for helping to build a firmly structuredauthoritarian system and for achieving a more modern form of mass mobilisation,even though in later years he would deride aspects of Falangist ideology, jokingthat he had never been able to figure out the meaning of the Falangist dogma ofthe vertical syndicate. Nonetheless, Javier Tusell, the most penetrating studentof Franco during the civil war years, has concluded that he became increasinglyinterested in approximating a fuller fascistic style and structure by the end of theconflict.8

Even though Falangist ideology became official doctrine, Franco made it clear

from the beginning that this should not be considered a fixed and final dogma,but that it might be subject to considerable alteration or elaboration in the future.His regime was not founded or based upon the Falange, but on military powerand victory in the Civil War, so that the Falange was simply the first servant of an

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eclectic new regime. The latters other main ideological pole was neo-traditional-ist Catholicism, to a much greater degree than had ever been proposed by JosAntonio, producing a potentially unstable and fractious symbiosis.

Franco did not so much lead the new party as dominate and control it. TheParty would be led by its successive secretary-generals, who would not succeed

in completely disciplining the organisation until the later phases of the SecondWorld War. Though many party veterans resented Francos domination and hisrightist policies, they had little alternative. Only the Civil War had finally giventhe movement strength, but even that had limited meaning, for the Civil War wasled by the military, not the Party. The level and quality of party leadership duringthe Civil War had not been very high, and conditions of total civil war gave theParty little room to manoeuvre. Any determined attempt by the Falange toimpose itself would have led to the most destructive internal conflict, bringing thedefeat of the Party and/or the Nationalist cause, or very likely both.

Franco was extremely successful in extending his leadership not merely over

the Party, but over the entire Nationalist war effort and society. The propagandaorgans built the mystique of the Caudillo(the old Spanish term for a military orpolitical leader). Franco thus reversed the terms, for example, of the Russian CivilWar. There, the White military had been disunited while Lenin established fullunity and discipline on the Red side. In Spain, Franco became the leader of aunified, victorious movement, while the Left struggled perpetually with disunity.

There seems little question that a kind of charisma surrounded Franco by theend of the Civil War. This had nothing to do with his physical appearance orpersonal manner, and envoys reported back to his allies in Rome and Berlin thatthe Spanish Generalissimoat first created a poor impression, with little of the greatleader about him. Even his tailoring was poor at first, as was common at thattime in the Spanish Army, though it would later improve. Francos charismastemmed above all from the mystique of total victory. It was not that his militarysubordinates considered him a Napoleonic genius, which he clearly was not, buta firm, confident commander of solid professional skills who avoided defeats andhad led them to final triumph. This feeling was strongest among the military butwas felt to some extent elsewhere as well.

In 1939 the official organs fomented a fascist style of leader adulation, withphotos on hand everywhere and ritual invocations of Franco, Franco, Franco,drawn from Duce, Duce, Duce. By that time there was no thought of restoring themonarchy. Franco clearly intended to lead a new type national authoritarian

regime that would be part of the New Order dawning in Europe. This did notmean necessarily a complete Falangisation of the regime, but it did mean anopportunity for it to play a more important role.

Behind the scenes, however, there was more than a little political contestation.Before the war, Spain had a fully mobilised and diversified political society.Franco had led forces drawn from the centre and all the right-wing of the politicalspectrum, with the latter predominating. All these had accepted the need fordiscipline and unity so long as the war lasted, but many of them expected somekind of political change after victory had been achieved. Pressure came from

both kinds of monarchists, the mainline alfonsinosand the Carlist traditionalists.

More important in the short run, however, was the growing rivalry between theFalangists and the military. These diverse sectors of Falangists, military men,monarchists, Carlists, and political Catholics would later be termed the politicalfamilies of the regime. Their weakness lay in their mutual rivalry, cleverly

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exploited by the Caudillo. None of them, of course, was in a position to challengeFranco directly, and the military, above all, had little interest in doing so.

Nonetheless, only during these early phases of the regime did Francos govern-ment contain a figure who might in any way be considered a potential rivalleader. The eminence griseof the regime for its first six years was the prematurely

silver-haired Ramn Serrano Suer, brother-in-law of the Caudillos wife. Serranowas extraordinarily well situated for this role as, first, a trusted close relative ofthe Generalissimoand, second, as one of the very closest personal friends of thelate Jos Antonio, making it at least somewhat plausible to construct a Falangistpedigree for him, though he had never been more than a fiancheggiatore of theParty.

Serrano, not Franco, supervised (and, in fact, negotiated) the incorporation ofFalangists into the new system, and there is some indication that Franco initiallypreferred to have him serve as the first Secretary General of the state party.Serrano himself rejected this role, however, and subsequently held the more

important posts of Minister of the Interior (1938-40), in charge of domestic affairs,and then, at the height of the Second World War, of Foreign Minister (1940-42). Bycomparison, the Party secretary generals were figures of limited authority. It wasto Serrano, rather than to them, that the most determined Falangists looked forleadership in enabling the Party to gain a more important place within theregime.

No figure in recent Spanish history has enjoyed as many opportunities torecount and to distort his own political biography as did the remarkably long-lived Serrano Suer.9He insisted that his two basic goals were to structure thetotally arbitrary Francoist state as an institutionalised juridical regime and toincorporate within it as much as possible of the doctrine of Jos Antonio Primo deRivera. This implied a regime more firmly organised like Fascist Italy, basicallythe goal of most true Falangists. Here the principal obstacle was, first of all, thechief of state himself, who preferred a much more eclectic system of divide-and-rule, balancing the military, the Church, the Falangists, the monarchists, theCarlists, pragmatic conservative economic interests, and so on.

The outbreak of the Second World War soon after conclusion of the Civil Waronly increased Francos reluctance to make decisive new political commitments.Complete victory by the Axis would have produced a more genuine and consis-tent fascistisation, but from 1942 the course of the war moved in the oppositedirection, encouraging Francos continued eclecticism and indefinition while

increasingly compromising the role of Serrano Suer. The arrogance of Serranoled the German ambassador to describe him as the most hated man in Spain,while elsewhere he would be known with some exaggeration as the ministerof the Axis. His expulsion from government in September 1942 was, however,determined less by foreign pressures than by internal political rivalries. The fall ofMussolini less than a year later then produced the beginning of a formal de-fascistisation of the regime that began in August 1943, eventually leading to adrastic downgrading of the Party itself.10 It would be an exaggeration to callSerrano a true rival of his brother-in-law, but he was the only figure in the historyof the regime who constituted an alternative centre of power. No subsequent

minister, not even Francos alter ego, Admiral Carrero Blanco, occupied such aposition.

However, Serrano Suer was never the official leader of the Falange, andwas much resented by some sectors of the Party (which in fact encouraged his

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Franco and the Institutionalisation of Mission 199

eventual political elimination), but he did stand as the principal representative ofthe fascist tendency in Spanish government during the first half of the SecondWorld War. In post-fascist Europe, the Party leadership would become increas-ingly bureaucratised and of diminishing significance. Between 1945 and 1948, forexample, there was not even an official secretary general. The Party would never

be much more than an administrative convenience of Franco, its longevitydirectly proportionate to its subordination and pliability. The longest-livedfascist party in Europe survived by becoming the least fascist of all its majorcounterparts.

The main challenges to Francos leadership from within the regime all occurredduring the first four years after the Civil War, from 1939 to 1943. For three yearsthe main activists were Falangist leaders and Army generals, and Francoshrewdly allowed them to cancel each other out, since the ire of the military wasoverwhelmingly directed at the Falangists and not at the government. Falangistattempts to gain support from Nazi officials came to naught, while the conspiracy

by a small group of Falangists to assassinate Franco proved stillborn. Variousgenerals sought at times to play political roles but none was in a position to chal-lenge Franco. As Tusell says of the generals, they did not conspire so much asmerely talk about conspiring.

Nonetheless, Francos prestige within the regime did decline during theseyears. His failure to give clear definition to his system, its rapidly growingcorruption, the misbehaviour of Falangists, and the growth of dire economicshortages from 1940 on had the cumulative effort of drawing more and more crit-icism from within the regime, inevitably tarnishing the lustre of the victoriousGeneralissimo. He had to reorganise his government significantly both in 1941 and1942 because of the rivalry between the Falangists on the one hand, and the mili-tary and Carlists on the other. By 1942, however, he had used the opportunity todevelop a new cadre of ministers that was both stable and, from the viewpoint ofthe regime, more effective politically.

If Francos internal manoeuvring was adroit, his international diplomacy wasnot as pragmatic and prudent as would be claimed afterward. His policy of non-

belligerence from 1940 to 1943 constituted a basically pro-Axis stance, but he didcarefully avoid taking the final plunge, which would have proved absolutelyfatal. The return to neutrality in 1943 came too late to re-establish the Spanishgovernment as a true neutral in the eyes of the Allies, but it succeeded in retainingthe independence which, together with considerable political tacking, would

enable the regime to survive foreign pressure in the long run.Conversely, as the war swung in favour of the Allies in 1943, pressure from the

mainline monarchists became intense, their argument being above all that Francowas too identified with the Axis to provide stable government for Spain in thefuture. In September 1943, for the one and only time in the history of the regime, amajority of the lieutenant generals sent a very polite, carefully disciplined andworded letter to Franco, asking discreetly if he did not think that the time hadcome to restore the monarchy. No matter how obsequiously this was done, itconstituted the most severe internal challenge to his leadership that Franco wouldever face. He responded to the lieutenant generals with calm and courtesy one or

two at a time, and they never summoned the courage for a collective confronta-tion with him. Franco also quickly promoted several of his unconditionalsupporters to alter the composition of the high command, and the signatories ofthe letter either changed their minds or refused to press the issue.

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When the regime began to face an external challenge in 1944-45, with the begin-ning of a leftist insurgency, the complete triumph of the Allies, and the interna-tional ostracism of the regime, it in fact became more united internally. Thedanger of the return of the Left brought a closing of ranks, and Francos style ofleadership calm, disciplined, completely self-confident, indifferent to criticism

abroad proved very effective. The military rallied firmly behind their leader, theFalangists could not possibly do anything else, and other civilian sectors of theregime largely followed suit. The years between 1944 and 1948 provided the lastmajor test of Francos leadership. He succeeded both in maintaining stability andin carrying out a redefinition of the regime, while co-opting the monarchist issuethrough the referendum of 1947. The latter established the monarchist successionat Francos command and also provided a modicum of traditional legitimacy tohim by affirming him as regent for life. All this taken together placed his leader-ship on such secure footing that there would be no further serious challengesduring his lifetime.

It was no mean feat, accomplished despite certain major mistakes and flawedstrategies. It was not easy to overcome the Axis stigma, which to some degreewould remain with the regime to the very end. Franco nonetheless managed tomaintain a certain basic unity among the forces which he had led to victory in theCivil War, despite their mutual antagonisms, and this was indispensable.

Conclusion

By 1950 Francos prestige within the regime was stronger than it had been for tenyears, and would never be significantly diminished. It was not based on any char-ismatic talents of physical presence or oratory, of which he had none, but on mili-tary and political success. Moreover, though Franco was not a typical charismaticleader, he had the latters sense of mission in his goal of building a new politicalsystem and a new Spain. Franco was personally convinced that his mission had

been fully vindicated by his complete victory in the Civil War and that he waslegitimate ruler of the country by right of conquest. He was sufficiently sophisti-cated, of course, to realise that things could never be stated so boldly, and thuspublicly he emphasised the achievements involved in and produced by thisvictory, as well as the ideal goals that he sought for Spain. This sense of missionwas shared by a minority, while his leadership was merely accepted as an accom-plished fact by many more.

It was, like nearly all other examples of successful leadership, the product of aparticular personality in a particular time and place. During the first half of thetwentieth century, Spain was an underdeveloped but rapidly changing societywhich generated intense conflict. It retained, however, strong elements of socialand cultural conservatism as well as religious tradition, in addition to a strongdesire for national development, upon which Franco was able to build his leader-ship. Franco outlived his own era and the social-cultural structures on which hispower originally rested, which meant that his kind of leadership, as he foresaw,would be unrepeatable. He knew that only the monarchy would have the legiti-macy to maintain such a regime, but just before his death realised that even the

monarchy could not attempt to do so. The great conflict-era of European historyin the age of world wars the key to Francos success had long since come to anend. Any successful leadership of Spain in the future would have to accommo-date the democratic institutions of contemporary Europe.

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Notes

1. On distinctions between fascism and related movements, see S. Payne,A History of Fascism, 1914-1945(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995).

2. There are two uncritically supportive biographical works on Ledesma, J. M. Snchez Diana,Ramiro Ledesma Ramos(Madrid: Editora Nacional, 1975), which is briefer but slightly superior to T.

Borrs, Ramiro Ledesma Ramos(Madrid: Editora Nacional, 1971). See also S. Payne, Fascism in Spain,1923-1977(Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1999), pp.54-65.3. J. Gil Pecharromn, Jos Antonio Primo de Rivera: Retrato de un Visionario (Madrid: Temas de

Hoy, 1996).4. Payne (note 2), pp.469-79.5. M. P. de Rivera y Urquijo (ed.), Papeles Pstumos de Jos Antonio(Barcelona: Plaza y Jans, 1996).6. On the early Falange see also S. Payne, Falange(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1962).7. S. Payne, The Franco Regime (Madison, WI: University of Madison Press, 1987), pp.645-6; P.

Preston, Franco: A Bibliography (London: HarperCollins, 1993); R. de la Cierva, Franco: la historia(Madrid: Fenix, 2001).

8. J. Tusell, Franco en la Guerra Civil: una Biografia Poltica(Barcelona: Tusquets, 1992). Two contrast-ing points of view can be found in C. Blanco Escol, La Incompetencia Militar de Franco (Madrid:Alianza, 1999), and J. Semprn, El Genio Militar de Franco(Madrid: Actas, 2000).

9. See R. Serrano Suer, Entre Hendaya y Gibraltar: Noticia y Reflexion, Frente a una Leyenda, SobreNuestra Politica en dos Guerras(Madrid: Ediciones y Publicaciones Espaoles, 1947), which was hisfirst autobiography. After the death of his brother-in-law, Suer published the much more exten-siveMemorias: Entre el Silencio y la Propaganda, la Historia Como Fue(Barcelona: Planeta, 1977). Seealso H. Saa, El Franquismo sin Mitos: Conversaciones con Serrano Suer(Barcelona: Grijalbo, 1982),which is a useful text. There are two official biographies: R. Garca Lahiguera, Ramn SerranoSuer: Un Documento para la Historia(Madrid: Argos Vergara, 1985), and I. Merino, Serrano Suer:Historia de una Conducta(Barcelona: Planeta, 1996), although the latter of the two is something of atravesty. In addition, there have been other presentations, such as his two genuinely marathonlectures at the University of Madrid Summer School at El Escorial in 1994 and 1995, remarkable fora nonagenarian, since they averaged three and a half hours each, and which have been publishedas Poltica de Espaa, 1936-1975(Madrid: Editorial Complutense, 1995).

10. I have described the process briefly in S. Payne, The Defascistisation of the Franco Regime, 1942-1975, in S. U. Larsen (ed.),Modern Europe after Fascism, 1943-1980s, Volume 2 (Boulder: NY: SocialScience Monographs, 1998), pp.1580-1606, and at greater length in Payne, (note 2), pp.363-468.