Paradoxes of Stasis: Literature, Politics, and Thought in Francoist Spain by Tatjana Gajić (review)

Drawing on the philosophy of Carl Schmitt and on historical and theoretical work produced by Nicole Loraux, Giorgio Agamben, and Dimitris Vardoulakis, Tatjana Gajić applies the notion of stasis (which means, in ancient Greek, civil strife and movement, as well as stagnation and immobility) in this book to analyze two sets of problems. One is of a general nature: in the introduction and chapter one, the author studies, by means of a skillful use of that concept, the political structure and legislative activity of Franco’s dictatorship, the Francoist leaders and ideologues’ concerns about the future of the regime, and the pervasiveness of Francoism well beyond the dictator’s death in 1975. The second set of problems, hermeneutic in nature but related to stasis as well, are addressed in excellent close readings of works by Dionisio Ridruejo (chapter two), Miguel Espinosa (chapter three), and María Zambrano (chapter four). Written with great precision and clarity, Paradoxes of Stasis makes several claims on Francoism: 1) while its leaders were quite concerned with the survival of the authoritarian regime beyond Franco’s death, Francoist ideology and attitudes have persisted into the present democratic polity; 2) Franco’s dictatorship comprehended different ideological families (such as Falangism, the Catholic Church, Carlism, Opus Dei, conservatism, pro-Bourbon positions) that often fought each other in order to gain more power within the government and the ranks of the National Movement, in a series of struggles stirred and arbitrated by Franco to keep himself more solidly entrenched in his uncontested leadership; 3) the regime was keen on establishing its own legality, but it always did so in a fragmentary and non-systematic way throughout the years; and 4) its legality was dissociated from the legitimacy derived from winning the Civil War. As shown by Gajić, at the legal and political levels, the Franco regime was ruled by the paradoxes of stasis, that is to say, by the tension between infighting, movement, and improvisation on the one hand, and stagnation and unity on the other.

In order to prove her theses on the pivotal importance of stasis in Franco’s Spain, Gajić analyzes in chapter one the paradoxes of the regime by centering on a moment in the establishment of a stable legality for the dictatorship. First, she focuses on the attempt made by José Luis Arrese in the mid-1950s to reform the regime. Arrese’s failure to make the National Movement the legal cornerstone of the regime brought out into the open the relative pluralism of Franco’s dictatorship and the existing tensions between the different ideological families that were part of it, paradoxically marking the starting point of the close association between the authoritarian polity ruled by General Franco and the pragmatic neoliberal policies developed by his technocratic ministers at the end of the 1950s. Second, Gajić studies the significance of the Law of Fundamental Principles of the National Movement proclaimed in 1958, a constitution of sorts that consolidated the legal framework of the regime. She pays particular attention to the opinion voiced by legal experts such as Manuel Fraga Iribarne—the rising star of the dictatorship in the 1950s and 1960s. Finally, the author examines the legal thought of Jesús Fueyo and the tensions, within the dictatorship, between a precarious legality and a questionable legitimacy. Gajić concludes the first chapter by arguing that, in spite of the many differences between these Francoist leaders, all of them shared one common feature: the seemingly paralyzing thought of the regime’s end, that is to say, the concern that the dictatorship might be little more than a historical hiatus that, after Franco’s death, would be followed by a much-feared democratic regime, paradoxically propelled movement, namely legislative and political activity. The chapters on Dionisio Ridruejo, Miguel Espinosa, and María Zambrano are interesting and valuable in themselves. By taking stasis as a master trope, they offer new, elegant, and nuanced views of the authors’ literary...