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4 The Nationalist Opposition The principal opposition to Republican reformism and the possibility of revolution took the form of conservative political Catholicism, the CEDA. Though the CEDA was not merely a conservative party or a loyal opposition to the revolutionaries and the Left Republicans, neither did it represent fascism or the radical right. Its leaders insisted on constitutionalism and legal, parliamentary tactics, eschewing violence, street action , and paramilitary militias. The CEDA represented above all the Catholic middle classes and smallholders of northern Spain. As indicated earlier, it became the largest mass party in the country, and its leaders were fairly confident of winning power by electoral means. Indeed, they increased their vote in 1936 over that of 1933 and remained the most popular single party in Spain only five months before the Civil War. After Catholicism, the most pronounced characteristic of the CEDA was ambiguity, and its ultimate goals remained vague. It espoused Catholic corporatism and a reform of the Republican constitution, which opponents charged would simply convert Spain into an authoritarian corporate state. Before long, many of the ordinary members and followers of the party were looking back with nostalgia on the monarchy, while its youth branch, the Juventudes de Acci6n Popular OAP; Popular Action Youth), adopted some of the outward trappings offaScism, talking of the need for strong leadership and a powerful state. Yet the ambiguity of the JAP was demonstrated by their party salute: the right arm raised only halfWay, then drawn back across the chest. They abhorred the fascist-like squadrism of anarchists, Socialists, and Communists and refused to compete in such endeavors. Moreover, they officially denied that their stress on authority and leadership was to be interpreted as support for a fascist type of authoritarianism. 46 The Nationalist Opposition 47 The Radical Right It was only natural that a moderate right-wing movement like the CEDA would win the backing of the great bulk of middle-class Catholic and conservative opinion in Spain. By definition, the conservative middle classes wanted to avoid trouble, and a moderate legalistic alternative reflected their habits and values fully. Small groups of the Spanish right, however, disagreed with the moderate reaction and propounded a more radical alternative . While most monarchists followed the CEDA, a select group of doctrinaires and activists organized for a new system. The new radical right formed around a journal called Acci6n Espanola that began publication at the close of 1931. The activists of Acci6n Espanola were drawn from three areas: maurista conservatism, social Catholicism , and Carlism. Each of these Spanish sources was quickly superseded in the thinking of the group, for classical mauris11W had been too legalistic and parliamentarian, the nascent Spanish social Catholicism of the early 1920s too heterogeneous,1 squeamish, and even democratic, and Carlism too reactionary and backward-Iooking.2 The group's principal backing came from wealthy conservatives, above all the well-organized Bilbao industrial-financial elite.3 The very title of Acci6n Espanola made the inspiration of the French Maurrasian radical right obvious; Italian Fascism was a more distant secondary source. Chiefforeign collaborators were members ofAction Fran- ~aise, followed by Portuguese Integralists and National Syndicalists and a few Italian Fascists. Acci6n Espanola generally approved of Hitlerism but criticized the German movement for its secularism and demagogy, holding that the Fuehrerprinzip was no substitute for a monarchy. Acci6n Espanola pledged to revive the traditional Spanish ideology, grounded in religion and in strong monarchist institutions. It derived much inspiration from the Primo de Rivera regime, with which nearly all its members had been associated; the critique of the regime's failure4 was a prime goal of the journal. Blame was placed on the lack ofelite support and the absence of a vision of a modern new authoritarian structure. The editor of Acci6n Espanola was Ramiro de Maeztu, formerly a leading noventayochista writer who had converted to the principles of authority and religion at the time of World War I. Maeztu was to give the 1. On the heterogeneity of early Spanish social Catholicism, see Oscar Alzaga, La primera denwcracia cristiana en Espana (Barcelona, 1973). 2. Raul Morodo, Acci6n Espanola: Origenes ideol6gicos del franquismo (Madrid, 1980), is a thorough ideological study, superseding Luis Ma. Anson, Acci6n Espanola (Zaragoza, 1960), briefer and more general. See also Santiago Galindo Herrero, Los parlidos monarquicos bajo la Segundo Republica (Madrid, 1956). 3. An inventory ofbackers is presented in Morodo, Acci6n Espanola, 65-73. 4. As first articulated by Victor Pradera, Al servicio de la Patria: Las ocasiones perdidas...

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