The Spanish Holocaust by Paul Preston Page A
Authors: Paul Preston
Tags: History, Retail, 20th Century, Non-Fiction, Spain, European History, Military History, Amazon.com, 21st Century
Ads: Link
theocracy. 36
Conservative intellectuals argued that through various subversive devices the Jews had enslaved the Spanish working class. One alleged consequence of this subjugation was that the Spanish workers themselves came to possess oriental qualities. The Spanish radical right began to see the working class as imbued with Jewish and Muslim treachery and barbarism. The most extreme proponent of this view was the late nineteenth-century Carlist ideologue Juan Vázquez de Mella. He argued that Jewish capital had financed the liberal revolutions and was now behind the Communist revolution in order, in union with the Muslim hordes, to destroy Christian civilization and impose Jewish tyranny on the world. Even King Alfonso XIII believed that the rebellion of tribesmen in the Rif was ‘the beginning of a general uprising of the entire Muslim world instigated by Moscow and international Jewry’. 37 Carlist ideologues took these ideas seriously, arguing that ‘the four horsemen of the Apocalypse, Judaism, Communism, Freemasonry and Death’, already controlled Britain, France and Australia and soon Spain would fall under their dominion. 38
The books of Vázquez de Mella and other Carlist ideologues were eagerly devoured by Colonel José Enrique Varela during his imprisonment after the Sanjurjada. Contrasting the success of the Primo de Rivera coup of 1923 and the failure of Sanjurjo in 1932, the dynamic and courageous Varela was convinced that a successful military rising needed substantial civilian support. He was persuaded that this could be found in the fierce Carlist militia, the Requeté. Although he resisted calls to lead an exclusively Carlist uprising on the grounds that this required someone more senior such as Franco, Varela undertook to turn the Requeté into an effective citizen army. Since he was still under police surveillance, on his trips to the Carlists’ northern heartland of Navarre he took the pseudonym ‘Don Pepe’. Day-to-day training was supervised by the National Inspector of the Requeté, the retired Lieutenant Colonel Ricardo de Rada, who also would train the Falangist militia. 39 Similarly, in 1934 another of the officers involved in the Sanjurjada, the CivilGuard Captain Lisardo Doval, would train the paramilitary squads of the Juventud de Acción Popular (the youth movement of Gil Robles’s Catholic party, the CEDA).
Carlists, theologians and Africanista officers were among those who through their writings and speeches fomented an atmosphere of social and racial hatred. Another was Onésimo Redondo. Although hardly a national figure, he merits attention both as one of the founders of Spanish fascism and because it was largely due to his ideas that his home town, Valladolid, experienced greater political violence than other Castilian provincial capitals. As a young lawyer, Onésimo Redondo had been involved in Acción Nacional (as Acción Popular was originally called), the Catholic political group founded on 26 April 1931 by Ángel Herrera Oria and principally supported by Castilian farmers. In early May, he set up its local branch in Valladolid and headed its propaganda campaign for the forthcoming parliamentary elections. On 13 June, Onésimo launched the first number of the fortnightly, and later weekly, anti-Republican newspaper Libertad . After the Republican–Socialist coalition won a huge majority on 28 June, Onésimo rejected democracy, broke with Acción Nacional and, in August, founded a fascist party, the Juntas Castellanas de Actuación Hispánica (the Castilian Hispanic Action Groups). 40
On 10 August, he published a fiery proclamation in Libertad expressing his commitment to the traditional rural values of Old Castile, to social justice and to violence. He wrote: ‘The historic moment, my young countrymen, obliges us to take up weapons. May we know how to use them to defend what is ours and not to serve politicians.’ For him ‘nationalism is a movement of struggle, it must
Conservative intellectuals argued that through various subversive devices the Jews had enslaved the Spanish working class. One alleged consequence of this subjugation was that the Spanish workers themselves came to possess oriental qualities. The Spanish radical right began to see the working class as imbued with Jewish and Muslim treachery and barbarism. The most extreme proponent of this view was the late nineteenth-century Carlist ideologue Juan Vázquez de Mella. He argued that Jewish capital had financed the liberal revolutions and was now behind the Communist revolution in order, in union with the Muslim hordes, to destroy Christian civilization and impose Jewish tyranny on the world. Even King Alfonso XIII believed that the rebellion of tribesmen in the Rif was ‘the beginning of a general uprising of the entire Muslim world instigated by Moscow and international Jewry’. 37 Carlist ideologues took these ideas seriously, arguing that ‘the four horsemen of the Apocalypse, Judaism, Communism, Freemasonry and Death’, already controlled Britain, France and Australia and soon Spain would fall under their dominion. 38
The books of Vázquez de Mella and other Carlist ideologues were eagerly devoured by Colonel José Enrique Varela during his imprisonment after the Sanjurjada. Contrasting the success of the Primo de Rivera coup of 1923 and the failure of Sanjurjo in 1932, the dynamic and courageous Varela was convinced that a successful military rising needed substantial civilian support. He was persuaded that this could be found in the fierce Carlist militia, the Requeté. Although he resisted calls to lead an exclusively Carlist uprising on the grounds that this required someone more senior such as Franco, Varela undertook to turn the Requeté into an effective citizen army. Since he was still under police surveillance, on his trips to the Carlists’ northern heartland of Navarre he took the pseudonym ‘Don Pepe’. Day-to-day training was supervised by the National Inspector of the Requeté, the retired Lieutenant Colonel Ricardo de Rada, who also would train the Falangist militia. 39 Similarly, in 1934 another of the officers involved in the Sanjurjada, the CivilGuard Captain Lisardo Doval, would train the paramilitary squads of the Juventud de Acción Popular (the youth movement of Gil Robles’s Catholic party, the CEDA).
Carlists, theologians and Africanista officers were among those who through their writings and speeches fomented an atmosphere of social and racial hatred. Another was Onésimo Redondo. Although hardly a national figure, he merits attention both as one of the founders of Spanish fascism and because it was largely due to his ideas that his home town, Valladolid, experienced greater political violence than other Castilian provincial capitals. As a young lawyer, Onésimo Redondo had been involved in Acción Nacional (as Acción Popular was originally called), the Catholic political group founded on 26 April 1931 by Ángel Herrera Oria and principally supported by Castilian farmers. In early May, he set up its local branch in Valladolid and headed its propaganda campaign for the forthcoming parliamentary elections. On 13 June, Onésimo launched the first number of the fortnightly, and later weekly, anti-Republican newspaper Libertad . After the Republican–Socialist coalition won a huge majority on 28 June, Onésimo rejected democracy, broke with Acción Nacional and, in August, founded a fascist party, the Juntas Castellanas de Actuación Hispánica (the Castilian Hispanic Action Groups). 40
On 10 August, he published a fiery proclamation in Libertad expressing his commitment to the traditional rural values of Old Castile, to social justice and to violence. He wrote: ‘The historic moment, my young countrymen, obliges us to take up weapons. May we know how to use them to defend what is ours and not to serve politicians.’ For him ‘nationalism is a movement of struggle, it must
Similar Books
