What is Spanish Falangism?

Julius Evola


Published as Che cosa vuole il Falangismo spagnolo in 1937.

While the phases of the Spanish Civil War are followed by all with keen interest, less attention is
paid to the exact ideas that inspire the revolt of the Spanish national forces against communism:
perhaps because many believe that the positive ideological phase, in revolutions, always
develops at a later date.

We are not of this opinion. We believe that the best soldier is one who fights with a precise
knowledge of his cause and that ideas even if they are only intimated, or vaguely grasped,
more than clearly formulated are the essential reality in every genuinely important historical
upheaval. We are therefore grateful to Alberto Luchini for informing us of the doctrinal program
of one of the primary Spanish nationalist movements, the so-called Spanish Falange, rendering
its terms lively with resources and a truly astonishing style of translation and we would say
almost necromantic, through vigour, precision and pleasing improvisation (I Falangistsi
spagnoli, Beltrami, Florence, 1936). It deals with a general profession of political faith, whose
formulation appears to be due to Jos Antonio Primo de Rivera or to the writer Gimnez
Caballero. The program, through the richness of spiritual content, has almost surprised us, in so
far as we believe it opportune to report it to the Italian public by expressing, in brief, its meaning.

First Point. Neither linguistic nor ethnic or territorial unity is considered sufficient to give the
idea of nation its true content. A nation is a predestined, cosmic unity. Such, it claims, is also
the case in Spain: a unity, a destiny, an entity subsisting beyond every person, class or
community in which it is actualized, not only, but moreover above the total quantity resulting
from their aggregation. That is, it is about the spiritual and transcendent idea of the nation, as
opposed to every community of the right or left and every mechanism. A true entity of its
perfect truth, a living and sovereign reality, Spain tends, consequently, towards its own definite
destination. In this regard, they not only speak of a return in full to worldwide spiritual
cooperation, but also of a universal mission of Spain, of a creation by the solar unity that it
represents, of a new world. Of course, this latter proposition, good intentions aside, remains a
question mark.

What can Spain today, and even tomorrow, say in regard to the universal idea, is in fact unclear.
But the reality is that here we have the effect of a precise logic. One cannot in fact assert
spiritually the idea of nation without being instinctively brought to surpass its particularism, to
conceive it as the principle of a supranational spiritual organization, with a value therefore of
universality: even when it has little disposition to give concrete and effective form to such a
need. And vice versa: every particularistic restriction of a national idea is going always to accuse
it of a latent materialism and collectivism.

Moving on to more specifically political part of the program. The Falangists say no to the
agnostic State, a passive spectator of national public life, or, at most, a police officer in a grand
style (night watchman state). The State of all, total and totalitarian, justifying itself, however,
in this form, always with reference to the ideal and perpetual notion of Spain, independent of any
interest whatever merely of class or party.

The eradication of parties and of the associated parliament follows naturally from this view. But
the Falangists, under the force of the secular traditions of their homeland, also seem to be on
guard against those excesses of totalitarianism, which, in their work of leveling and
uniformitization, threaten to make some nationalist tendencies, despite everything, similar to the
nationalizations by Bolshevism. It is so that the Falangists insist on the necessity that organic
human groups, alive and vital, articulate the true state and are its solid foundation; so they intend
to defend the integrity of the family, the cell of social unity; local autonomy, the cell of territorial
unity; and finally, corporate and professional unity, the cells of a new national organization of
work and organs to overcome the class struggle.

In the latter respect, adherence of the Falangists to the fascist corporate idea is complete. The
union and corporate groups, so far unable to participate in national public life, will have to rise,
knocking down the artificial barriers of parliament and political parties, with the direct organs of
the State. The community of producers as an organic whole will be conceived as totally co-
interested and involved in the only and highest common enterprise: an enterprise in which the
leadership must always be secured to the general national interest.

It is perhaps no coincidence that the chapter that immediately follows this is about the human
personality, and that it denounces the danger that a whole nation will turn into a kind of test
laboratory, as in the the logical consequences of Bolshevism and of mechanism. The
prominence given to the dignity of the human personality, by distinguishing it clearly from the
individualistic will, seems to us indeed as one of the most salient and characteristic of the
Spanish Falangist program and the effect of a healthy traditional vision. We quote the passage
that, in this respect, is the most significant: The Spanish Falange discerns in the human
personality, beyond the physical individual and physiological individuality, the spiritual monad,
the soul ordered to eternal life, the instrument of absolute values, an absolute value in himself.
Hence, the justification of a fundamental respect for the dignity of the human spirit, for the
wholeness and freedom of the person: freedom legitimized from above, of a profound nature;
that no one can ever transpose into the freedom to conspire against civil society and to
undermine its foundations. With this statement, one of the greatest dangers of the anti-Marxist
counter-revolution is decisively overcome: the danger, that is, of infringing the spiritual values of
the personality in the moment of rightly striking the liberalistic and individualistic error in
political and social life.

With this premise, every materialistic interpretation of history is rejected by the Falangists; its
spirit is conceived by them as the source of every truly decisive force it is worth pointing it out.
And a profession of Catholic faith is likewise natural; the Catholic interpretation of life is,
historically speaking, the only one that is Spanish and every work of national reconstruction
must pertain to it. This will not mean a Spain, which would once more have to submit to the
interference, intrigues and the hegemony of ecclesiastical power, but a new Spain, animated by
the universal Catholic sense that already guides her, against the alliance of the ocean and
barbarism, to the conquest of unknown continents: a Spain permeated by the religious forces of
the spirit.

So the Falangists fight for these ideas, as a volunteer warrior meant to conquer Spain for
Spain. These are ideas that, in their general outlines, seem to us perfectly in order, they
already present a precise aspect and may have the value of solid points of reference. If the
Spanish national movement will really be penetrated by them, we have a double reason to
sincerely wish them a complete, rapid, and decisive victory: not only for the negative anti-
Communist and anti-Bolshevik facet, but also for what in its positive aspects will be able to
follow from it in the whole of a new hierarchical Europe, of nations and of personality.