WORLD WORLDWIDE EUROPE ITALY - news journal UPDATE - (en) Italy, FdCA, IL CANTIERE #37 - War and Revolution in Spain 1936/39: Religious Tradition and the Economic and Political Influence of the Catholic Church in Iberian History Since Its Formation. Daniele Ratti (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translat...

The purpose of this article is to provide a unique account of the
Spanish Revolution, unlike traditional historiographical accounts, in
order to highlight the cultural and historical elements that profoundly
influenced the July Revolution of 1936 and the nationalist
counterrevolution. To this end, it is necessary to highlight the
historical origins and subsequent, unique path of a nation, Spain,
which, formed in the late 1400s through a crusade-a unique case in
Europe-has found its inspiration over the centuries in the most
strenuous defense of Catholic tradition, becoming the most extreme and
radical symbol of religious conservatism, or rather, anti-modernism.
Spain entered the new era completely unprepared, lacking adequate
cultural tools or economic and social structures, but above all with a
population divided by unbridgeable economic differences. Politically,
Spain's two age-old problems remained: backwardness and the domination
of the Church, in a world among the poorest in Europe.
Poverty was the country's hallmark, and its main consequence was
emigration, which involved at least 500,000 people out of a population
of 18.5 million. Indicators of economic and social backwardness were all
upward: illiteracy stood at 64%, and agriculture, whose yield did not
exceed a minimum level of consumption, employed approximately two-thirds
of the workers.
Two secular powers reigned: the army and the Catholic Church. The Church
was a medieval remnant, with 80,000 priests, monks, and nuns. There were
2,919 convents and 763 monasteries, housing 44,965 people, of whom
36,509 were monks and 8,396 were nuns. The Church, in fact, was the
largest capitalist entity in the country, it owned 11,000 rural
properties, 7,828 urban properties (1). The Church also had strong
interests in urban real estate, in industry, in banking, in finance. In
a country where half of the inhabitants were illiterate, the Catholic
school performed an essential social service. The backwardness of the
clergy was proverbial, suffice it to say that Cardinal Segura,
considered the most authoritative incarnation of the Faith, considered
the bathroom an instrument of the devil and liberalism a danger to the
faith. A large portion of the population had reached the point of
tolerance for the intolerable abuses and injustices, and some had even,
over time, assimilated the practice of rebellion and self-management for
social redemption. This was the spark for the series of revolts that,
from the beginning of the last century, exploded in July 1936.
If this picture is already quite anomalous in the European landscape,
the historical narrative of the Spanish Revolution is even more so. The
very name "Spanish Civil War," used in the singular, is misleading, as
it was a true civil war, the bloodiest in history. Officially, five
hundred thousand victims, probably double that. Everyone uses the
singular for the event, but it was the fourth civil conflict. The three
previous ones, the Carlist Wars, fought during the 19th century, had
pitted the two ever-present fronts in modern Iberian affairs: the
clerical and anticlerical. But it is above all the current
historiographical view and the common perception of the event that has
produced the greatest mystification of contemporary history. The most
radical class conflict and the most profound revolutionary attempt ever
experienced in human history was instead narrated as the first
confrontation between anti-fascism and fascism in Europe, a
foreshadowing of what would happen a few years later through the
national resistance movements against the Nazi-Fascist regimes.
The International Brigades that came to the Republic's aid were
considered a tangible sign of this foreshadowing of the struggle for
freedom and democracy. In short, the image of the internalization of the
conflict prevailed, to the detriment of all the specific premises and
motivations intrinsic to the Spanish events, focusing solely on the
ideological aspect of the conflict or on the external support both sides
received. It is important to immediately clarify the political rationale
for this historiographical construction.
The Comintern (the Moscow-led Third International) had long since
developed a precise strategy for the future European scenario, based on
a political division of Europe into two areas of influence, the Soviet
one and the American one. The national resistance movements operating in
their respective geopolitical quadrants had to create a front with
politically allied forces. From this perspective, the defense of the
Spanish Republic and the alliance of communist and socialist forces with
bourgeois republican and democratic forces fulfilled this plan, while
the revolutionary achievements of the anarchists and their allies in the
POUM, through self-management, land and factory requisitions, and
collectivization, represented the opposite of the strategic political
plan of the Third International. From this perspective, the tragic weeks
of May 1937 in Barcelona, with the clashes between anarchists and
communists, must be understood. But above all, the construction of the
narrative of Spanish events, such as the defense of the Republic and the
"democratic" rather than revolutionary choice, is well understood. But
the greatest historical fault was and is that of having erased from
historiographical memory the decisive weight of culture, religious
tradition, and the economic and political influence that the Catholic
Church had on Iberian society and history since its formation. Without
starting from this fact, it is impossible to understand what happened
starting in the summer of 1936. Franco's rebellion was the epilogue of a
long march that began in 1492 and led to the unification of Spain a few
decades later. Spain's continental power in the 16th and 17th centuries
was formed and accompanied by the foundation and development of the Holy
Inquisition, and by the most powerful Catholic order, the Jesuits. The
idea of nationhood finally merged definitively with the Catholic faith
in the anti-Napoleonic revolt (the only war that saw Napoleon defeated
before Waterloo). The epic battle against the French was not simply a
polar revolt experienced like the war of independence, one of the many
that inflamed the European continent during the 19th century, but it was
the revolt of the Catholic Faith against atheism and modernism, against
those who had dared to replace reason with God. The anti-Napoleonic
resistance played a decisive role in shaping the modernity of National
Catholicism. A preponderant segment of the Spanish clergy, those with a
traditionalist worldview, have always viewed any change as political and
religious heresy. A crucial moment in Spanish history and the Iberian
Church was the Napoleonic invasion, which brought modernity with French
troops. It was the moment when the Spanish ruling class, the Church, and
the aristocracy had to choose: either to move toward new European
horizons yet to be discovered or to remain anchored to the certainties
of privilege.
The reactionary choice, based on the concept of a crusade, a holy war of
religious mobilization, a struggle in which Catholics must mobilize for
the salvation of the faith and the unity of Spain, arose from the
clergy's patriotic mystique that had developed in 1808 with the
anti-Napoleonic guerrilla warfare and the clergy's active participation
in the armed struggle. The beginning of the clergy's active
participation in the Spanish conflicts can be traced back to the 1808
uprising, which was commonly historiographically considered a sort of
Holy War, in which the clergy assumed an undisputed vanguard role in
military operations.
The bishop of Belbastro, Augustin, declared in the Aragonese town of
Casteion de la Puente: "Let us unite, then, my children, for the common
cause in this war. We must all be soldiers, first and foremost. Among
you, your unworthy shepherd will be the one who, placed before your
face, will raise his left hand to encourage you, with the sacred sign of
the victory over sin, and will brandish steel with his right hand to
sanctify it with a kind of anointing, immersing it in the blood of his
enemies" (2). The Francoist uprising and its success were the apotheosis
and the end of this centuries-old journey; this was the long march of
Spanish National Catholicism. The difference between Franco's regime and
other European fascisms lies in the different ways in which they
"sacralized politics." Fascism and Nazism had created the cult of the
nation of the people, seeking to forge a unifying bond between the two
concepts. The use of symbols, liturgies, and ceremonies was aimed at
celebrating a new cult that was intended to give the people the illusion
of actively participating, as protagonists, in a national liturgy.
Traditional politics thus took on a new dimension, a wholly religious
character; in other words, it reached the sacralization of politics. In
the Spanish context, more specifically under Francoism, another
experience took shape: politics appropriated the experiences of fascism
and Nazism, but with a significant difference: in celebrations and
parades, it assumed only the external aspect, but at the same time, and
herein lies the difference, it also appropriated, above all, the
religious content. It was not just a mixture of terms but a
"concelebration" of increasingly overlapping civil and religious rites.
It was precisely the ecclesiastical world that "invaded" the civil
sphere, being the first to describe the war as a crusade. The symbol of
Francoism and National Catholicism is encapsulated in the most famous
Francoist poster, which dominated behind Franco's private study and
depicted a cross resulting from the intersection of the number one and
the word cruzada with the shadow of this first crusade, whose center is
Spain embracing the world. This symbolic concept is accompanied by the
inscription "ESPANA orientora spiritual del mundo": there could be no
more explicit declaration of a universal and divine mission. (3)
Notes
(1) Libertarian Spain Pier Francesco Zarcone    Massari Editore
(2) Clergy and Spanish Wars in the Contemporary Age (1808 - 1939) edited
by A. Botti Rubattino Editore
(3) Catholic Church and the Spanish Civil War in 1936 edited by A.
Tedeschi Guida Editori
This is the link to the Francoist manifesto mentioned in the article.
https://catalogo.beniculturali.it/detail/HistoricOrArtisticProperty/0500660295

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