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The Cañada Blanch Centre for Contemporary
Spanish Studies
Series Editor’s Preface
Acknowledgements
Glossary and Abbreviations
List of Illustrations
Introduction: ‘Immense shame, physical repugnance’:
Responding to the Republic
The Spanish Right and the JAP after 1931
I ‘The youth of the new Spain’: The Crusade to Save
the Fatherland
The JAP until October 1934
II ‘An iron fist against the anti-Spain’: Bringing
in the New State
The JAP from October 1934 to December 1935
III ‘To win or to die’: The General Elections
The JAP from December 1935 to February 1936
IV ‘We’ll become Nazis if we have to’: The
Ominous Spring
The JAP from February to July 1936
V ‘Selfless auxiliaries, enthusiastic servants’:
Joining the Rising
The JAP from July to December 1936
VI ‘Militias of sacrifice’: The Crusade for God,
Spain and
the New State
The JAP at war until April 1937
Conclusion: ‘A magnificent harvest’: The Destruction
of
Democracy in Spain
The JAP, the Right and Fascism from 1931 to 1937
Notes
Bibliography
Index
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| “Dr Lowe fuses social
and political analysis to demonstrate how, at the grass roots
of Spanish society, the political culture of the long-lived
Franco dictatorship was crucially instigated by the radical,
mass Catholic youth movement, JAP. Lowe’s originality
lies in the fact that his analysis pinpoints the moment and
demonstrates the mechanism by which radical Catholics
in Spain became fascists. In doing this he has cut the
gordian knot that inhibits much of the conventional historiography
on the Spanish Catholic right during the 1930s.” Helen
Graham, Dept. of History, Royal Holloway University of London
“This study of the genesis, evolution and activities
of the largest mass movement of the right in 1930s Spain,
the Juventud de Acción Popular, is a remarkably sophisticated
piece of work. It is based, in the first instance, on an impressive
array of primary sources which have been assembled from virtually
every one of Spain’s fifty provinces. Assembling this
entirely new material has, in itself, been an altogether significant
achievement involving painstaking detective work. The author’s
work has thereby filled the gap left by the destruction of
the organisation’s records during the Spanish Civil
War. The book is also invaluable for its exhaustive examination
of the extensive secondary literature on the subject of the
political right before and during the Spanish Civil War. The
scholarly credentials of the author are thus impeccable. The
originality of the documentation unearthed gives the book
considerable freshness. However, even more striking is the
intelligence and maturity with which this hard-earned material
is handled.
… The youth movement of the mass Catholic party, Acción
Popular (which later in 1933 was expanded to become the Confederación
Española de Derechas Autónomas or CEDA), was
one of the most crucial protagonists of the breakdown of political
co-existence in the Second Republic and went on to play a
major role in the coalition of right-wing forces that won
the war. The book clearly analyses the development of the
Juventud de Acción Popular, its fascist-like cult of
personality around the CEDA leader, José María
Gil Robles, the internal contradictions between advocates
of moderation and enthusiasts for violence, the relations
between the JAP and other sections of the Spanish Right and
its eventual fusion with the fascist Falange. This fusion
was the prelude to JAP members playing a crucial role on the
Francoist side in the Spanish Civil War, as front-line militias,
in the ‘dirty work’ of the repression of liberals
and leftists and also in the articulation of the future Francoist
dictatorship.
… The social and political analysis underlying Sid Lowe’s
work demonstrates how much of the mass support and the political
culture which permitted the long-term survival of a dictatorship
imposed by military action derived from this radical, mass
Catholic youth movement. What is striking is that the author
effectively demonstrates why many on the left in Spain believed
that both the CEDA and the JAP were fascist movements. In
reconstructing the mass mobilisation of Catholic Youth, Dr
Lowe locates Spain’s ‘fascist moment’, showing
how the dynamic introduced by the JAP changed the politics
of the right beyond recognition. In demonstrating how radical
Catholics in Spain became fascists, Dr Lowe undermines the
conventional wisdom of much of the historiography on Spain
in the 1930s which has limited analysis of Spanish fascism
to the initially marginal and subsequently subordinate party,
the Falange.
… Rather, Sid Lowe conclusively demonstrates that Spain’s
Catholic youths flooded the JAP because they were attracted
by its fascist rhetoric and its rejections of ‘old’
politics. In that sense, the JAP played a key role in the
polarization of politics during the Second Republic and thus
also in fomenting civil war. Moreover, his account of the
fusion with the Falange is startling original showing how
the latter benefitted from the JAP’s masses and thus
acquired the radical mobilisation of which it had been incapable.
Moreover, what Dr Lowe contributes on youth politics in 1930s
Spain links not only with recent Spanish work on anarchist,
Socialist and Communist youth politics but also with European
research which is similarly exploring the often violent role
of youth movements in the 1930s. In telling this story, perceptively
and, indeed, with real narrative verve, Sid Lowe explains
as never before the transition from apparent moderation to
explicit violence that took place in the wake of the right’s
defeat in the elections of February 1936. The result is a
beautifully written work which is a major original contribution
to the historiography of the causes, the course and the consequences
of the Spanish Civil War.” From the Series Editor's
Preface by Paul Preston
“When it comes to civil war, it takes two to tango.
In the latest addition to Sussex University’s fine series
on contemporary Spanish politics, Sid Lowe fills something
of an historical void by offering a fresh examination of the
right in the years leading up to the Spanish Civil War, providing
a major reinterpretation of the basis of Spanish Fascism.
… Ambitious in scope yet sophisticated in argument,
he examines the influence of two previously ignored organisations
on the Spanish right: the Juventud de Acción Popular,
the fascist youth movement, and its parent political party,
the Confederación Española de Derechas Autónomas.
At their peak in the mid-1930s both attracted a membership
of millions under their charismatic leader Gil Robles: “He
who never makes mistakes!”
… Though the JAP was only in existence for five years,
it played a key role in radicalising the right, eventually
providing the core of Franco’s fascist regime. Starting
in the shadows of the old Spain, with the JAP’s Nuremburg-like
rally at Phillip II’s El Escorial, Lowe vividly describes
the soaring military rhetoric and political dealing of what
was more than just a youth movement. Lowe argues it was a
uniquely Spanish fusion of conservative Catholicism and fascism.
While many members had concerns over the totalitarian nature
of Nazi Germany, seeking to preserve their own Catholic liberties,
their expressed aim of using the state to annihilate socialism
showed there was little fear of state power.
… Lowe places both movements in the context of a Manichean
battle between Spain and anti-Spain. Looking closely at contemporary
publications, speeches and extensive primary literature, he
argues that the JAP provided a drive and purity to the politics
of its amorphous political parent. Thanks to this, CEDA’s
policy of accidentalism – working with the Republic
– was nothing more than a political tactic. When faced
with electoral defeat in early 1936, many japistas were more
than willing to join the military conspiracy against the Republic.
Lowe highlights their importance – rather than the Falange
– as auxiliaries linking the populace to the army. This
is a fascinating and illuminating analysis of how the Spanish
Civil War came about.” Tribune
“The Juventud de Acción Popular (JAP), youth wing of one of
the parties comprising CEDA [Confederación Española de Derechas
Autónomas], and, from summer 1934, under the ‘supreme leadership’
of Gil Robles, has never been the object of a full-length
study before. It was important for this historiographical
shortfall to be addressed because the JAP was a crucial part
of the mass mobilization, and, Lowe argues, the fascistization
of the Catholic right in the 1930s. Nevertheless, formidable
obstacles await any historian of the movement. The decline
and ignominy that followed CEDA’s defeat in the February 1936
elections entailed for the JAP a greater subsequent eclipse
in terms of popular remembrance, Nationalist mythologizing
and academic historiography than for other forces later subsumed
within Franco’s Movimiento in 1937: there are no JAP ‘veterans’
associations; Lowe canvassed for ex-JAP interviewees without
great success; and the absence of an official CEDA archive,
let alone a JAP one, makes the task yet harder and slower.
Lowe has painstakingly drawn on a wide range of local and
national archives, and a vast amount of reading and research,
to reconstruct the political complexion and vicissitudes of
the JAP from its formation in 1932 to its dissolution in 1937.
His work makes a substantial original contribution to our
understanding of 1930s Spain, and particularly to analysis
of the development of fascism over the course of the Second
Republic.
… The first chapter charts the emergence and trajectory
of the JAP until the October 1934 revolution, in which the
JAP played a significant strike-breaking role by keeping vital
services operating. Lowe focuses sharply and in a nuanced
way on the issues lying at the heart of JAP’s programme: youth,
discipline, history, raza and empire, nationalism and masculinity.
His analysis shows beyond doubt that previous (shorter or
partial) studies of the JAP seeking to distance it from fascism
are simply not tenable. This and the following chapter, which
follows the JAP’s continued growth and increasing political
presence after its success as an civilian auxiliary force
in October 1934, demonstrate carefully how the values of Spanish
Catholicism became interwoven with a palingenetic, imperialist
ultranationalism and new mass mobilization techniques to produce
a deeply fascistized Catholicism that Gil Robles (whose CEDA
was hobbled by its alliance with more traditional conservative
parties) was able to instrumentalize with great effectiveness.
The JAP acted as a political vanguard for Gil Robles: unhindered
by the legalism and compromise of parliamentary coalition,
the JAP’s rhetoric, the political theatre of its rallies and
its pre-election campaigning were all able to give a good
indication of Gil Robles’ intended destination had CEDA been
able to capture decisive state power legally. Lowe’s careful
analysis of the JAP’s development before 1936 here allows
him to argue persuasively in subsequent chapters that one
of the reasons the Falange Española did not take off before
the July rising was not, as Payne has argued, that there had
been no previous real constituency for such a movement, but
instead that the JAP had already occupied the Falange’s political
space and enlisted its potential supporters.
As the final chapters show, JAP members served, to use the
organization’s own words, as ‘selfless auxiliaries’ in the
rising and ensuing war. As Lowe makes clear, the problem with
such selflessness was that it created the conditions for JAP’s
own political (but not ideological) obliteration; unlike the
Falange, which fought to retain its political identity – for
all that it was later eviscerated under Franco – JAP’s very
willingness to serve allowed it to be subsumed completely
within other forces leading the rebellion. Lowe argues convincingly
that the JAP’s biggest hindrance to political survival was
not its ideology but its tactics. As he notes, ‘The New State
was largely what the JAP had always wanted; the price it paid
was its own disappearance’ (p. 231).
… Lowe makes a persuasive case for the importance of
the role that the JAP’s fascistized Catholicism played in
the breakdown of the Republic, fomenting the domestic conditions
that would allow a right-wing military rising to stand a feasible
chance of success in the age of mass mobilization; as the
Sanjurjada had shown, such conditions did not exist just four
years beforehand, and the JAP was a decisive catalyst in the
exhaustion of pluralist coexistence within the Republic. This
carefully researched, well-organized and penetratingly-argued
study expands our understanding of the political and social
bases of fascism in Spain: study of these issues rarely ventures
far beyond the Falange Española. Lowe’s excellent study will
be essential reading for any scholar of the Republic or the
Civil War.” International Journal of Iberian Studies
Reviewed in the European History Quarterly under
books dealing with “Spain from the First World War to
the Civil War”
Reviewed in Spanish by
the Bulletin for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies
(Journal of the Association for
Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies)
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