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Biblioteca de la Historia #5
Falange. historia del fascismo espaÑol.
Falange Historia Del Fascismo Español de Payne Stanley G.. , 1965.
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First published January 1, 1961
About the author
Stanley G. Payne
74 books120 followersStanley G. Payne is a historian of modern Spain and European Fascism at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He retired from full time teaching in 2004 and is currently Professor Emeritus at its Department of History.
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September 12, 2026
Nobody except a total halfwit maintains that the great Francisco Franco was any type of fascist, even aside from the notorious difficulty of defining fascism, exacerbated by the Left’s constant use of it to label any effective movement right of center. Yet it is certainly true that Spain, before and during its successful suppression of Left terror and tyranny in the 1930s, had a bona fide fascist political party, which was not electorally successful, but was influential. That party was the Falange Española, the “Spanish Phalanx.” This 1961 book from Stanley Payne, the leading English-language expert on Spain in this period, as well as an expert on fascism itself, precisely explicates the Spanish fascist phenomenon.
Of particular interest, and this is often of underrated importance in modern history writing, Payne wrote this book when it was still possible to talk in depth to many significant figures involved. (He was only twenty-seven when this book was published; he is now ninety-two.) We often think that more recent history writing is more accurate history; very often, the opposite is the case, as contemporaneous knowledge disappears and ideologically driven authors instead insert their own version of events. Thus, this book remains an essential work on the Falange. And the Falange will be our focus today; I have earlier written both on Franco and the Spanish Civil War, so I will not repeat what I said earlier.
Payne begins by noting that fascism, a short-lived phenomenon of the 1930s (we will return to whether it has a future), was a notably varied phenomenon. “It has been obvious for many years that the fascist movements of the thirties were not cut of whole cloth, and that the various fascist parties differed considerably in character and composition; the Spanish essay in fascism is here viewed as a particularly Spanish phenomenon, the product of Spanish conditions and Spanish feeling. Its ideological content was usually less definitive than its emotional tone. . . .”
Despite this variability, much has been written in the past hundred years attempting to define fascism, a good deal of it mendacious, given that “fascist” has become an all-purpose epithet of the Left, used as a type of linguistic kill shot, in the term of the late Scott Adams, thereby avoiding the need for any discussion or debate, and also used to dehumanize and mark political opponents for extermination. Thus, my children were forced in school this week to watch a stupid video full of lies, from a “historian” on YouTube, whose computer displayed a prominent sticker, “This machine kills fascists.” That phrase is, of course, what the Communist singer Woody Guthrie wrote on his guitars, which only goes to prove that political killing is and always has been an essential component of all Left political action. Forgetting this, or pretending it is not true, is a grave mistake.
The illustrious Paul Gottfried a few years back wrote an excellent exploration, Fascism: The Career of a Concept. (Payne also wrote a broader work on fascism, in 2000, as well as a second book on Spanish fascism, in 1983, but I have not read either yet.) When examining this definitional question, Gottfried largely endorses Payne’s typology, worked out in detail later in his career, which describes characteristics common to all fascist systems, typically arising from, but heavily modifying, existing “traditional,” “conservative” opposition to Left destruction of national traditions. These include “a permanent nationalistic one-party authoritarianism”; “the search for a synthetic ethnicist ideology”; a charismatic leader; a corporatist political economy; and “a philosophical principle of voluntarist activism unbounded by any philosophical determinism.” Gottfried accurately summarizes this as a “grab bag of ideas,” and as we will see in Spain, only some of these elements were involved in the Falange.
Fascism in all countries, however, despite its high variability and vague parameters, was always a combination of nationalism and a type of corporatist socialism or syndicalism, sometimes more of the former, sometimes more of the latter, which also advocated an authoritarian overlay, seen as necessary to cut the Gordian Knot. It was never aristocratic or monarchical, and was always opposed in principle to those political currents, if sometimes willing to ally with them, especially to the extent nationalism was the prime emphasis in a given country’s fascist movement. Neither, however, was it lower class or proletarian, though its economic program often appealed to portions of the working classes. Instead, it was always a movement primarily of the middle classes, the result of wholly-justified fear of Left proletarian rebellion and violence, combined with economic struggle and uncertainty.
Fascism came late to Spain. The country was mostly sleepy and poor in the early years of the twentieth century (and remained poor until the 1950s, in large part due to the Left-dominated West’s isolation of Spain for more than a decade after Franco’s defeat of the Left). The middle classes were “lethargic” and not politically organized; political changes, such as they were, revolved around the financial oligarchs and the monarchy. Nor was nationalism a powerful political or cultural force; for the most part, an inactive backward-looking traditionalism ruled Spain, though under the surface the Left was growing in power and ferocity, as international leftist movements infiltrated their poison into Spain. Even the rightist Carlists (whom Payne characterizes as “clerical reactionaries and monarchical corporatists”) were not nationalist in the modern sense; they had no interest in “welding the nation into an instrument for new glory and accomplishment.”
In 1923, General Miguel Primo de Rivera seized power in a military coup, after a period of political sclerosis alternating with chaos. He ruled for seven years in a completely non-ideological way, combining a fuzzy patriotism and false claims to competency with, for himself, wine, women, and song. Still, for a while, only the anarchists continued to cause trouble, and not much at all happened for the seven years of Primo de Rivera’s rule. But this period was just kicking the can down the road—the economy stagnated, while the parties of the Left grew increasingly restless at no progress toward their desired social changes, though they retreated a little from their default demand, violent revolution. In other words, nobody in Spain was satisfied, except perhaps the dictator.
In time, in 1930, Primo de Rivera resigned. His health was failing and the King, theoretically still in charge, was growing discontented at being effectively sidelined. The dictator vaguely hoped for a restored constitutional monarchy. But the King, Alfonso XIII, had unsurprisingly lost the confidence of nearly everyone across the entire political spectrum, and so in 1931 he left the country, in favor of a new thing in Spanish history, a republic. Thus, the doors opened to entirely new political opportunities in Spain—always a dangerous position for any country. “Behold, I make all things new” is not a good political program.
Yet this was not the common feeling, for the common feeling, foolish in retrospect, was that Spain was experiencing a new dawn. Politics was still dominated by the usual political parties. On the Left, the revolutionary Left, meaning nearly all the Left parties, in the Pact of San Sebastián, agreed to ally and give themselves collectively the name “Republican.” Confusingly, that name, often used for the Left during the Civil War and since, was explicitly meant to identify the revolutionary Left, rather than to identify a group devoted to republican government. The latter was something the Republicans were most definitely not interested in, if it meant any possible success by any party right of center. These Left parties dominated the early Republic. The first government of the new Republic, as Payne wrote in a later work, under Prime Minister Manuel Azaña, “held that the Republic must be a completely leftist regime under which no conservative party or coalition could be accepted as a legitimate government, even in the remote possibility that one were democratically elected. . . . Such an attitude made the development of a genuinely liberal democratic regime almost impossible.” On the Right, the only significant group was the Carlists, who wanted a restoration of the older monarchical line, the Bourbons, and who despised the Left but “were content to drill their militia and await developments.” And in the center, there was no party of significant power.
New parties of the Right soon arose, however, the first being a tiny Spanish Nationalist Party, led by a “fat, leather-lunged neurologist” named José María Albiñana. Non-party movements also arose, and one such was a new newspaper, La Conquista del Estado, edited by an atheist “penniless postal clerk,” Ramiro Ledesma Ramos, which for six months in 1931 published somewhat confused propaganda pushing “National Syndicalism,” praising Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, and Joseph Stalin, trying to “appeal to every non-Marxist revolutionary force in Spain.” This publishing effort soon fell apart for lack of money. Still, Ledesma’s efforts, Payne says, were the origin of Spanish fascism.
It was syndicalism which always characterized Spanish fascism. Syndicalism was very much in the air from the late nineteenth century until around 1950, although it has now died away entirely as a relevant political philosophy. Like fascism, it had many variants, but at its core it advocated organizing industrial workers into unions which held political power. Usually it was a movement of the Left, sometimes the extreme Left, but fascism adopted syndicalism in part to oppose excessive concentrations of oligarchic economic power, and as a tool to strengthen the nation. Syndicalism was, in some variants, compatible with corporatism, the idea that all important groups in society should be represented as groups in the political system (an organizing principle which came to its fullest fruition in Portugal under António Salazar).
Also in 1931, Onésimo Redondo Ortega founded another right-leaning political party based on three goals, combining “national unity, the primacy of traditional ‘Spanish values,’ and social justice with vigorous Roman Catholicism.” Redondo and Ledesma knew of each other; they didn’t like each other, but Ledesma needed money, which Redondo had some of, and Redondo needed a network, which Ledesma had. And they both realized their political programs had much in common, including contempt for the wealthy oligarchs and admiration for the small farmer and tradesman. Thus, the last issue of Ledesma’s newspaper announced a new political party, fusing their two groups into one: the Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional Sindicalista (Councils of National-Syndicalist Offensiv”), or the JONS, whose members were “Jonsistas.” Their symbol was the “yoked arrows of the Catholic kings . . . a fitting symbol for those who dreamed of reviving Spain’s imperial grandeur”—later the symbol of the Falange, and the universal symbol of Spanish fascism (displayed on the cover of this book). For colors, they adopted the red-black-red banner of the Anarchists, “to demonstrate their radical aims.”
The JONS fusion was not an immediate success. Redondo supported the abortive military coup of 1932, and briefly fled to Portugal when it failed. “During its first two years of existence Spanish national syndicalism accomplished nothing more than a certain airing of ideas, which might better be described as noisy suggestions. Redondo and Ledesma rarely agreed and still more rarely made sense. In effect, there was neither a national syndicalist movement nor a national syndicalist program at the beginning of 1933. . . . No theory of syndical organization was worked out, and no one had the vaguest idea what national syndicalism would really mean in practice.” Payne quotes another scholar’s acid judgment, “One cannot well ascertain if [Redondo] dreamed in order to act or longed for action in order to dream. Nor could he himself.”
Yet there remained a crying need for a nationalist party that would fight the Left’s rabid hatred of Christianity and the Church, combined with violent demands for an economic Year Zero; such a party was “what most of the Spanish bourgeoisie wanted.” To some extent this need was fulfilled by the growth of the CEDA (the Spanish Confederation of Autonomous Rightist Groups), a center-right party supported by the Church and led by José María Gil Robles. CEDA had no interest in destroying the new Republic; in many ways like today’s American catamite Right of National Review, Rod Dreher, and the Babylon Bee, they merely wanted to slow down the worst excesses of the Left while keeping their distance from the effective Right. The Left in turn viewed Gil Robles as the Devil. It is, after all, in the nature of the Left that any opposition that threatens in any way to slow the permanent revolution must be destroyed. Regardless, the CEDA quickly captured much of the support of the middle class, which it retained until the Civil War began in 1936. Despite the ink spilled on it and its prominence in Left propaganda, fascism was never a majority movement in Spain—in fact, it was never more than a small minority movement, but ultimately influential, as we will see.
What brought the more aggressive Spanish right to the fore was one man: José Antonio Primo de Rivera, eldest son of the dictator (who had died in 1930, within a few months of giving up power). José Antonio in 1933 was barely thirty years old and extremely energetic. “It was he who eventually brought together the divergent currents of Spanish fascism during the Republic.” An intense autodidact, he had realized after reading everyone from Vladimir Lenin to Oswald Spengler to José Ortega y Gasset (one of his teachers, from whom he took that elite rule was important) that both conservatism and liberalism held nothing for modern Spain. Almost alone among prominent Spaniards, he honored the memory of his father, yet saw he had not gone far enough in, or even attempted, reconstructing Spain. And, naturally, José Antonio occupied a prominent place in the mind of the nation, given his parentage.
Thus, he began to search both for a program and platform to implement his vision for Spain. He corresponded with scores of prominent and not-so-prominent men, and he had valuable contacts with rich businessmen looking to fund a new party to advance bourgeois interests (although many of those were very skeptical of anything seeming too radical). He also had to deal with the increasing hostility of the more and more openly radical Left government (which as promised refused to allow the CEDA any share of actual power, despite election results, in another standard Left tactic, insisting that any Right victory is ipso facto illegitimate—as one sees today in the German regime’s treatment of the increasingly popular Alternative für Deutschland). The government, in fact, often arrested those suspected of organizing in a fascist direction (especially after Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933, making the Left fear a contagion of Right success).
After much consideration, and having rejected a union with the JONS because he wanted to be the sole leader, at the end of October, 1933, José Antonio launched both his new party, the Falange Española, and his political career, at a meeting of two thousand people in Madrid. Technically it was the fifth party launched by the radical Right during the Republic, but it quickly surpassed the others, immediately gaining thousands of members. For the first few months, José Antonio spent his time working on the political theory of the Falange. In Payne’s words, this revolved around his view that “Great enterprises were formed only by the free and enthusiastic union of individuals. Individuals bound together by historic tradition, material cooperation, and mutual destiny formed a nation.” This was all very vague, but José Antonio was certain of two things: Western liberalism was dying, and violence could not be ruled out as necessary to achieve national renewal, especially given the Left’s open devotion to violence as the chief tool of achieving their aims.
In early 1934, in part due to the Falange’s greater success gaining members, and in part due to the CEDA’s victory in parliamentary elections draining support for the radical Right (though the government tried to cancel the elections because of the CEDA’s success), the JONS voted to merge with the Falange. Ledesma and Redondo formed a triumvirate with José Antonio to head of the new party (still generally called the Falange, though technically it had a longer, unwieldy name). Yet José Antonio was a poet and aesthete at heart, who dearly wished to gain the support of Spain’s intellectuals such as Ortega (he didn’t get it). Nonetheless, his poetic bent “provided the Falange with a vocabulary of mystical exaltation, sacrifice and violence, national mission and emotional revolution, a mixture that proved intoxicating to the young.” In particular, university students flocked to the Falange (disproving the Woodstock-obsessed Boomer myth that the young are inherently leftist, a ludicrous claim belied by all of history).
The Left immediately began a campaign of violence against the Falange (not helped by the Falange’s own frequent, but rhetorical in practice, talk of violence). At the end of 1933 and beginning of 1934, several Falangists were murdered by the Left. The Falangists failed to respond, and wits began to call the party the “Funeraria Española,” the Spanish Funeral Parlor, and “to declare that the new party looked more like Franciscanism than Fascism.” Still, and despite his rhetoric, José Antonio opposed actual violence. But the rank and file did not, and they were tired of being a punching bag. Finally, in June of 1934, the Falange organized their own death squads to respond to the Left’s, and a seemingly endless series of reprisal killings began, which continued until the war started.
The government, with the support of the CEDA . . . [Review continues as first comment.]
Of particular interest, and this is often of underrated importance in modern history writing, Payne wrote this book when it was still possible to talk in depth to many significant figures involved. (He was only twenty-seven when this book was published; he is now ninety-two.) We often think that more recent history writing is more accurate history; very often, the opposite is the case, as contemporaneous knowledge disappears and ideologically driven authors instead insert their own version of events. Thus, this book remains an essential work on the Falange. And the Falange will be our focus today; I have earlier written both on Franco and the Spanish Civil War, so I will not repeat what I said earlier.
Payne begins by noting that fascism, a short-lived phenomenon of the 1930s (we will return to whether it has a future), was a notably varied phenomenon. “It has been obvious for many years that the fascist movements of the thirties were not cut of whole cloth, and that the various fascist parties differed considerably in character and composition; the Spanish essay in fascism is here viewed as a particularly Spanish phenomenon, the product of Spanish conditions and Spanish feeling. Its ideological content was usually less definitive than its emotional tone. . . .”
Despite this variability, much has been written in the past hundred years attempting to define fascism, a good deal of it mendacious, given that “fascist” has become an all-purpose epithet of the Left, used as a type of linguistic kill shot, in the term of the late Scott Adams, thereby avoiding the need for any discussion or debate, and also used to dehumanize and mark political opponents for extermination. Thus, my children were forced in school this week to watch a stupid video full of lies, from a “historian” on YouTube, whose computer displayed a prominent sticker, “This machine kills fascists.” That phrase is, of course, what the Communist singer Woody Guthrie wrote on his guitars, which only goes to prove that political killing is and always has been an essential component of all Left political action. Forgetting this, or pretending it is not true, is a grave mistake.
The illustrious Paul Gottfried a few years back wrote an excellent exploration, Fascism: The Career of a Concept. (Payne also wrote a broader work on fascism, in 2000, as well as a second book on Spanish fascism, in 1983, but I have not read either yet.) When examining this definitional question, Gottfried largely endorses Payne’s typology, worked out in detail later in his career, which describes characteristics common to all fascist systems, typically arising from, but heavily modifying, existing “traditional,” “conservative” opposition to Left destruction of national traditions. These include “a permanent nationalistic one-party authoritarianism”; “the search for a synthetic ethnicist ideology”; a charismatic leader; a corporatist political economy; and “a philosophical principle of voluntarist activism unbounded by any philosophical determinism.” Gottfried accurately summarizes this as a “grab bag of ideas,” and as we will see in Spain, only some of these elements were involved in the Falange.
Fascism in all countries, however, despite its high variability and vague parameters, was always a combination of nationalism and a type of corporatist socialism or syndicalism, sometimes more of the former, sometimes more of the latter, which also advocated an authoritarian overlay, seen as necessary to cut the Gordian Knot. It was never aristocratic or monarchical, and was always opposed in principle to those political currents, if sometimes willing to ally with them, especially to the extent nationalism was the prime emphasis in a given country’s fascist movement. Neither, however, was it lower class or proletarian, though its economic program often appealed to portions of the working classes. Instead, it was always a movement primarily of the middle classes, the result of wholly-justified fear of Left proletarian rebellion and violence, combined with economic struggle and uncertainty.
Fascism came late to Spain. The country was mostly sleepy and poor in the early years of the twentieth century (and remained poor until the 1950s, in large part due to the Left-dominated West’s isolation of Spain for more than a decade after Franco’s defeat of the Left). The middle classes were “lethargic” and not politically organized; political changes, such as they were, revolved around the financial oligarchs and the monarchy. Nor was nationalism a powerful political or cultural force; for the most part, an inactive backward-looking traditionalism ruled Spain, though under the surface the Left was growing in power and ferocity, as international leftist movements infiltrated their poison into Spain. Even the rightist Carlists (whom Payne characterizes as “clerical reactionaries and monarchical corporatists”) were not nationalist in the modern sense; they had no interest in “welding the nation into an instrument for new glory and accomplishment.”
In 1923, General Miguel Primo de Rivera seized power in a military coup, after a period of political sclerosis alternating with chaos. He ruled for seven years in a completely non-ideological way, combining a fuzzy patriotism and false claims to competency with, for himself, wine, women, and song. Still, for a while, only the anarchists continued to cause trouble, and not much at all happened for the seven years of Primo de Rivera’s rule. But this period was just kicking the can down the road—the economy stagnated, while the parties of the Left grew increasingly restless at no progress toward their desired social changes, though they retreated a little from their default demand, violent revolution. In other words, nobody in Spain was satisfied, except perhaps the dictator.
In time, in 1930, Primo de Rivera resigned. His health was failing and the King, theoretically still in charge, was growing discontented at being effectively sidelined. The dictator vaguely hoped for a restored constitutional monarchy. But the King, Alfonso XIII, had unsurprisingly lost the confidence of nearly everyone across the entire political spectrum, and so in 1931 he left the country, in favor of a new thing in Spanish history, a republic. Thus, the doors opened to entirely new political opportunities in Spain—always a dangerous position for any country. “Behold, I make all things new” is not a good political program.
Yet this was not the common feeling, for the common feeling, foolish in retrospect, was that Spain was experiencing a new dawn. Politics was still dominated by the usual political parties. On the Left, the revolutionary Left, meaning nearly all the Left parties, in the Pact of San Sebastián, agreed to ally and give themselves collectively the name “Republican.” Confusingly, that name, often used for the Left during the Civil War and since, was explicitly meant to identify the revolutionary Left, rather than to identify a group devoted to republican government. The latter was something the Republicans were most definitely not interested in, if it meant any possible success by any party right of center. These Left parties dominated the early Republic. The first government of the new Republic, as Payne wrote in a later work, under Prime Minister Manuel Azaña, “held that the Republic must be a completely leftist regime under which no conservative party or coalition could be accepted as a legitimate government, even in the remote possibility that one were democratically elected. . . . Such an attitude made the development of a genuinely liberal democratic regime almost impossible.” On the Right, the only significant group was the Carlists, who wanted a restoration of the older monarchical line, the Bourbons, and who despised the Left but “were content to drill their militia and await developments.” And in the center, there was no party of significant power.
New parties of the Right soon arose, however, the first being a tiny Spanish Nationalist Party, led by a “fat, leather-lunged neurologist” named José María Albiñana. Non-party movements also arose, and one such was a new newspaper, La Conquista del Estado, edited by an atheist “penniless postal clerk,” Ramiro Ledesma Ramos, which for six months in 1931 published somewhat confused propaganda pushing “National Syndicalism,” praising Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, and Joseph Stalin, trying to “appeal to every non-Marxist revolutionary force in Spain.” This publishing effort soon fell apart for lack of money. Still, Ledesma’s efforts, Payne says, were the origin of Spanish fascism.
It was syndicalism which always characterized Spanish fascism. Syndicalism was very much in the air from the late nineteenth century until around 1950, although it has now died away entirely as a relevant political philosophy. Like fascism, it had many variants, but at its core it advocated organizing industrial workers into unions which held political power. Usually it was a movement of the Left, sometimes the extreme Left, but fascism adopted syndicalism in part to oppose excessive concentrations of oligarchic economic power, and as a tool to strengthen the nation. Syndicalism was, in some variants, compatible with corporatism, the idea that all important groups in society should be represented as groups in the political system (an organizing principle which came to its fullest fruition in Portugal under António Salazar).
Also in 1931, Onésimo Redondo Ortega founded another right-leaning political party based on three goals, combining “national unity, the primacy of traditional ‘Spanish values,’ and social justice with vigorous Roman Catholicism.” Redondo and Ledesma knew of each other; they didn’t like each other, but Ledesma needed money, which Redondo had some of, and Redondo needed a network, which Ledesma had. And they both realized their political programs had much in common, including contempt for the wealthy oligarchs and admiration for the small farmer and tradesman. Thus, the last issue of Ledesma’s newspaper announced a new political party, fusing their two groups into one: the Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional Sindicalista (Councils of National-Syndicalist Offensiv”), or the JONS, whose members were “Jonsistas.” Their symbol was the “yoked arrows of the Catholic kings . . . a fitting symbol for those who dreamed of reviving Spain’s imperial grandeur”—later the symbol of the Falange, and the universal symbol of Spanish fascism (displayed on the cover of this book). For colors, they adopted the red-black-red banner of the Anarchists, “to demonstrate their radical aims.”
The JONS fusion was not an immediate success. Redondo supported the abortive military coup of 1932, and briefly fled to Portugal when it failed. “During its first two years of existence Spanish national syndicalism accomplished nothing more than a certain airing of ideas, which might better be described as noisy suggestions. Redondo and Ledesma rarely agreed and still more rarely made sense. In effect, there was neither a national syndicalist movement nor a national syndicalist program at the beginning of 1933. . . . No theory of syndical organization was worked out, and no one had the vaguest idea what national syndicalism would really mean in practice.” Payne quotes another scholar’s acid judgment, “One cannot well ascertain if [Redondo] dreamed in order to act or longed for action in order to dream. Nor could he himself.”
Yet there remained a crying need for a nationalist party that would fight the Left’s rabid hatred of Christianity and the Church, combined with violent demands for an economic Year Zero; such a party was “what most of the Spanish bourgeoisie wanted.” To some extent this need was fulfilled by the growth of the CEDA (the Spanish Confederation of Autonomous Rightist Groups), a center-right party supported by the Church and led by José María Gil Robles. CEDA had no interest in destroying the new Republic; in many ways like today’s American catamite Right of National Review, Rod Dreher, and the Babylon Bee, they merely wanted to slow down the worst excesses of the Left while keeping their distance from the effective Right. The Left in turn viewed Gil Robles as the Devil. It is, after all, in the nature of the Left that any opposition that threatens in any way to slow the permanent revolution must be destroyed. Regardless, the CEDA quickly captured much of the support of the middle class, which it retained until the Civil War began in 1936. Despite the ink spilled on it and its prominence in Left propaganda, fascism was never a majority movement in Spain—in fact, it was never more than a small minority movement, but ultimately influential, as we will see.
What brought the more aggressive Spanish right to the fore was one man: José Antonio Primo de Rivera, eldest son of the dictator (who had died in 1930, within a few months of giving up power). José Antonio in 1933 was barely thirty years old and extremely energetic. “It was he who eventually brought together the divergent currents of Spanish fascism during the Republic.” An intense autodidact, he had realized after reading everyone from Vladimir Lenin to Oswald Spengler to José Ortega y Gasset (one of his teachers, from whom he took that elite rule was important) that both conservatism and liberalism held nothing for modern Spain. Almost alone among prominent Spaniards, he honored the memory of his father, yet saw he had not gone far enough in, or even attempted, reconstructing Spain. And, naturally, José Antonio occupied a prominent place in the mind of the nation, given his parentage.
Thus, he began to search both for a program and platform to implement his vision for Spain. He corresponded with scores of prominent and not-so-prominent men, and he had valuable contacts with rich businessmen looking to fund a new party to advance bourgeois interests (although many of those were very skeptical of anything seeming too radical). He also had to deal with the increasing hostility of the more and more openly radical Left government (which as promised refused to allow the CEDA any share of actual power, despite election results, in another standard Left tactic, insisting that any Right victory is ipso facto illegitimate—as one sees today in the German regime’s treatment of the increasingly popular Alternative für Deutschland). The government, in fact, often arrested those suspected of organizing in a fascist direction (especially after Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933, making the Left fear a contagion of Right success).
After much consideration, and having rejected a union with the JONS because he wanted to be the sole leader, at the end of October, 1933, José Antonio launched both his new party, the Falange Española, and his political career, at a meeting of two thousand people in Madrid. Technically it was the fifth party launched by the radical Right during the Republic, but it quickly surpassed the others, immediately gaining thousands of members. For the first few months, José Antonio spent his time working on the political theory of the Falange. In Payne’s words, this revolved around his view that “Great enterprises were formed only by the free and enthusiastic union of individuals. Individuals bound together by historic tradition, material cooperation, and mutual destiny formed a nation.” This was all very vague, but José Antonio was certain of two things: Western liberalism was dying, and violence could not be ruled out as necessary to achieve national renewal, especially given the Left’s open devotion to violence as the chief tool of achieving their aims.
In early 1934, in part due to the Falange’s greater success gaining members, and in part due to the CEDA’s victory in parliamentary elections draining support for the radical Right (though the government tried to cancel the elections because of the CEDA’s success), the JONS voted to merge with the Falange. Ledesma and Redondo formed a triumvirate with José Antonio to head of the new party (still generally called the Falange, though technically it had a longer, unwieldy name). Yet José Antonio was a poet and aesthete at heart, who dearly wished to gain the support of Spain’s intellectuals such as Ortega (he didn’t get it). Nonetheless, his poetic bent “provided the Falange with a vocabulary of mystical exaltation, sacrifice and violence, national mission and emotional revolution, a mixture that proved intoxicating to the young.” In particular, university students flocked to the Falange (disproving the Woodstock-obsessed Boomer myth that the young are inherently leftist, a ludicrous claim belied by all of history).
The Left immediately began a campaign of violence against the Falange (not helped by the Falange’s own frequent, but rhetorical in practice, talk of violence). At the end of 1933 and beginning of 1934, several Falangists were murdered by the Left. The Falangists failed to respond, and wits began to call the party the “Funeraria Española,” the Spanish Funeral Parlor, and “to declare that the new party looked more like Franciscanism than Fascism.” Still, and despite his rhetoric, José Antonio opposed actual violence. But the rank and file did not, and they were tired of being a punching bag. Finally, in June of 1934, the Falange organized their own death squads to respond to the Left’s, and a seemingly endless series of reprisal killings began, which continued until the war started.
The government, with the support of the CEDA . . . [Review continues as first comment.]
July 12, 2011
1/26/2007
Franco vs. Fascism
Primo de Rivera is the great fascist leader of the Spanish Civil War. Captured, judged and sentenced to death by the Republicans in 1936, Franco shrewdly turned him into a martyr for his rebellion. Franco, however, was really only a pragmatic arch-traditionalist. In fact, many thought (or hoped) that, at the conclusion of the Second World War, Spain would fall into another civil war, this time between fascists and traditionalists. Of course, this never happened. But why? Brilliantly, during WWII, Franco sent traditionalist students to the seminary and young fascists to die with the Germans on the eastern front fighting the Soviet Union. Speaking of the Spanish troops fighting in the USSR Payne says, "Here disappointed Falangists could once more shoulder arms against atheistic Bolshevism [...] By no means all members of the Blue Division were enthusiastic Falangists, but a great many of them were [...] and scores of promising young Falange leaders never returned to Spain." (p. 233-234) Thus at the end of WWII there weren't enough Spanish fascists (or, at any rate, fascist leaders) left alive to oppose Franco!
The neutrality of Franco during WWII can also, I think, be nicely explained by his traditionalism. All the contending ideologies (i.e., communism, fascism, nazism, and, to a lesser extent, liberalism) in the Europe of the thirties (and WWII) were self-consciously trying to create a new world. Even in America one had the New Deal. But Franco I think fundamentally wanted to go back; it was of the Reconquista and the Church that he dreamed. Thus the refusal of the alliance with Hitler wasn't merely the result of some shrewd Machiavellian balance of power assessment. (Though it was, of course, in part that.) It was a genuine reflection of Franco's world view. All the contending powers in Europe wanted to go forward - Franco wanted to go back! See the first paragraph of chapter XVII (p. 239) where the author speaks of the change in 1943 and the Spanish insistence on peace with the Anglo-Saxon powers and war on Japan based on Christian principles(!) if there was to be a Spanish-Nazi alliance. Note that Franco also refuses to hand over Jewish refugees on Spanish territory to the Gestapo saying repatriation of refugees could wait until the end of the war. In effect, this of course meant that in order to get his hands on Jews in Spanish territory all Hitler had to do was conquer the world!
Now, were the Nazis, on their part, aware of this disconnect between their Ideology and Franco's traditionalism? This passage in a book by David Irving nicely catches the ideological distance between the Nazis and Franco in the pre-WWII period: "Early in November 1937 Hitler told his staff that an outright Franco victory in Spain was not desirable: `Our interest is in maintaining existing tensions in the Mediterranean.' That Franco was fighting the Communist-backed Republicans was of only secondary importance. In April 1938 Hitler would muse out loud to Reinhard Spitzy, Ribbentrop's private secretary: `We have backed the wrong horse in Spain. We would have done better to back the Republicans. They represent the people. We could always have converted these socialists into good National Socialists later. The people around Franco are all reactionary clerics, aristocrats, and moneybags - they've nothing in common with us Nazis at all!'" (Irving, "Hitler's War", p. 60-61) Of course, Hitler was only kidding himself if he actually thought the Spanish Republicans could be converted to Nazism. From a much later period, Goebbels, in his diaries, writes, "Tokyo is denying most energetically that atrocities have been committed against Spanish citizens in the Philippines as the Spaniards maintain." ("Final Entries", p. 220, March 24, 1945.) "The Spaniards have made a further sharp protest in Japan. The British maintain that the Spaniards intend to sever diplomatic relations with Japan." (March 25, 1945). The state of the war at this time (1945) I think speaks loudly for Franco's shrewdness, although his 'Machiavellianism' can be overdone if it is thought to be the overwhelming character of his regime.
From beginning to end there was a gulf between Franco's Spain and Nazi Germany that has been all too often papered over. Franco was a sincere traditionalist who understood the grave limitations to Spanish power. The mausoleum that Franco built to honor Primo de Rivera was a stone rolled over his grave to prevent fascism from rising again. This shrewdness allowed his rule to outlast those of Hitler and Mussolini by thirty years.
Franco vs. Fascism
Primo de Rivera is the great fascist leader of the Spanish Civil War. Captured, judged and sentenced to death by the Republicans in 1936, Franco shrewdly turned him into a martyr for his rebellion. Franco, however, was really only a pragmatic arch-traditionalist. In fact, many thought (or hoped) that, at the conclusion of the Second World War, Spain would fall into another civil war, this time between fascists and traditionalists. Of course, this never happened. But why? Brilliantly, during WWII, Franco sent traditionalist students to the seminary and young fascists to die with the Germans on the eastern front fighting the Soviet Union. Speaking of the Spanish troops fighting in the USSR Payne says, "Here disappointed Falangists could once more shoulder arms against atheistic Bolshevism [...] By no means all members of the Blue Division were enthusiastic Falangists, but a great many of them were [...] and scores of promising young Falange leaders never returned to Spain." (p. 233-234) Thus at the end of WWII there weren't enough Spanish fascists (or, at any rate, fascist leaders) left alive to oppose Franco!
The neutrality of Franco during WWII can also, I think, be nicely explained by his traditionalism. All the contending ideologies (i.e., communism, fascism, nazism, and, to a lesser extent, liberalism) in the Europe of the thirties (and WWII) were self-consciously trying to create a new world. Even in America one had the New Deal. But Franco I think fundamentally wanted to go back; it was of the Reconquista and the Church that he dreamed. Thus the refusal of the alliance with Hitler wasn't merely the result of some shrewd Machiavellian balance of power assessment. (Though it was, of course, in part that.) It was a genuine reflection of Franco's world view. All the contending powers in Europe wanted to go forward - Franco wanted to go back! See the first paragraph of chapter XVII (p. 239) where the author speaks of the change in 1943 and the Spanish insistence on peace with the Anglo-Saxon powers and war on Japan based on Christian principles(!) if there was to be a Spanish-Nazi alliance. Note that Franco also refuses to hand over Jewish refugees on Spanish territory to the Gestapo saying repatriation of refugees could wait until the end of the war. In effect, this of course meant that in order to get his hands on Jews in Spanish territory all Hitler had to do was conquer the world!
Now, were the Nazis, on their part, aware of this disconnect between their Ideology and Franco's traditionalism? This passage in a book by David Irving nicely catches the ideological distance between the Nazis and Franco in the pre-WWII period: "Early in November 1937 Hitler told his staff that an outright Franco victory in Spain was not desirable: `Our interest is in maintaining existing tensions in the Mediterranean.' That Franco was fighting the Communist-backed Republicans was of only secondary importance. In April 1938 Hitler would muse out loud to Reinhard Spitzy, Ribbentrop's private secretary: `We have backed the wrong horse in Spain. We would have done better to back the Republicans. They represent the people. We could always have converted these socialists into good National Socialists later. The people around Franco are all reactionary clerics, aristocrats, and moneybags - they've nothing in common with us Nazis at all!'" (Irving, "Hitler's War", p. 60-61) Of course, Hitler was only kidding himself if he actually thought the Spanish Republicans could be converted to Nazism. From a much later period, Goebbels, in his diaries, writes, "Tokyo is denying most energetically that atrocities have been committed against Spanish citizens in the Philippines as the Spaniards maintain." ("Final Entries", p. 220, March 24, 1945.) "The Spaniards have made a further sharp protest in Japan. The British maintain that the Spaniards intend to sever diplomatic relations with Japan." (March 25, 1945). The state of the war at this time (1945) I think speaks loudly for Franco's shrewdness, although his 'Machiavellianism' can be overdone if it is thought to be the overwhelming character of his regime.
From beginning to end there was a gulf between Franco's Spain and Nazi Germany that has been all too often papered over. Franco was a sincere traditionalist who understood the grave limitations to Spanish power. The mausoleum that Franco built to honor Primo de Rivera was a stone rolled over his grave to prevent fascism from rising again. This shrewdness allowed his rule to outlast those of Hitler and Mussolini by thirty years.
March 18, 2026
No me parece una historia de Falange Española muy científica. También me parece que alguna lectura De Fuentes está hecha un poco en pro de la línea conductora del libro. En general, es una lavada de cara del fascismo español, cosa que no me sorprende nada viniendo de Payne. Estoy segura de que hay otras referencias más rigurosas.
April 25, 2019
Stanley Payne is one of the big figures in the historiography of fascism, and he built his career by studying the Spanish example. Spanish fascism is tricky, and gets right into the differences between academic and popular uses of the word “fascism.” In the popular sense, the Franco regime was fascist- violent, authoritarian, right-wing. In the academic sense, most definitions of fascism don’t include Franco or his Portuguese neighbor Salazar, instead defining them as authoritarians. There’s a number of reasons for this, starting with both dictators lack of interest in remaking society or fighting aggressive wars (both of which are more iffy than the model implies- just ask the Angolans). There’s also the differentiation between the Franco regime and the Spanish Falange party, the country’s premier fascist movement. For a brief period during the civil war the Falange played a prominent role in Franco’s coalition, but Payne shows that the general always worked to sideline the noisy and anti-clerical followers of Primo de Rivera, son of a former authoritarian leader. Once Franco consolidated power, he ruled through traditional institutions like the army and the church, and the Falange became something more like a club than a ruling party.
Marxists have done themselves few favors in defining the history of fascism by sticking with a few talking points defined by Trotsky, Gramsci, and a few other canonical figures and not going very far past them. Scholars like Enzo Traverso, Arno Mayer, and Domenico Losurdo have done more in that vein lately, but more liberal writers have a substantial head start in the historiography, Payne being one of the major figures writing since the early sixties. So I think we’re in a situation where real and necessary historical nuance comes with a politicization defined by Cold War liberalism. Fascists need to be destroyed; authoritarians can be negotiated with; the former are rare and the latter are easy to be found, including with America’s Cold War allies. What I wonder is if we can keep the nuanced taxonomy of far-right regimes but keep the urgency of anti-fascism. It’s not like right-wing authoritarianism (any authoritarianism) is some picnic we should tolerate. I think calling Franco “fascist” as in “intolerably right-wing” makes sense even if he’s not “fascist” in the academic sense.
Anyway- this is a fine book for what it is but I read it a little while ago and most of the thoughts it provoked were about the historiography. But hey, I don’t see anyone else reviewing the books around here! ****
Marxists have done themselves few favors in defining the history of fascism by sticking with a few talking points defined by Trotsky, Gramsci, and a few other canonical figures and not going very far past them. Scholars like Enzo Traverso, Arno Mayer, and Domenico Losurdo have done more in that vein lately, but more liberal writers have a substantial head start in the historiography, Payne being one of the major figures writing since the early sixties. So I think we’re in a situation where real and necessary historical nuance comes with a politicization defined by Cold War liberalism. Fascists need to be destroyed; authoritarians can be negotiated with; the former are rare and the latter are easy to be found, including with America’s Cold War allies. What I wonder is if we can keep the nuanced taxonomy of far-right regimes but keep the urgency of anti-fascism. It’s not like right-wing authoritarianism (any authoritarianism) is some picnic we should tolerate. I think calling Franco “fascist” as in “intolerably right-wing” makes sense even if he’s not “fascist” in the academic sense.
Anyway- this is a fine book for what it is but I read it a little while ago and most of the thoughts it provoked were about the historiography. But hey, I don’t see anyone else reviewing the books around here! ****
March 7, 2023
Blanquea la figura de Primo de Rivera... Ya se sabe de qué pie cojea Stanley G. Payne... Pero algo positivo que he aprendido del libro es que la Falange original tenía alguna que otra buena idea, como acabar con el latifundismo, antes de convertirse en una caterva de asesinos descerebrados... Resulta ilustrativo que en mi pueblo el único falangista sea el tonto del pueblo, valga la redundancia...
April 24, 2025
Un interesante libro de Stanley Payne sobre la figura de José Antonio Primo de Rivera, y como después de la Guerra Civil el movimiento fue absorbido por el Régimen y persiguiendo a los disidentes que se opusieron a ello.
August 9, 2021
El principal aprendizaje que saqué en claro de su lectura fue el siguiente:
Toda asimilación banal que se haga entre el fascismo y el comunismo por ser ideologías "totalitarias" queda desvanecida si se hila fino. El fascismo (o cualquiera que fuera el nombre que los falangistas o nacional-sindicalistas quisieran darle a lo que era la variante española del fascismo) tiene que ver más con las facciones reaccionarias, pretorianistas, monárquicas en el caso español, y con la derecha política y sociológica en general, antes que con cualquiera de las corrientes izquierdistas de la época (desde el liberalismo azañista hasta el anarco-sindicalismo, pasando por el socialismo y el comunismo). Muy claro queda en el caso español, cuyo fascismo ni siquiera llegó al poder "a la alemana" o "a la italiana".
Toda asimilación banal que se haga entre el fascismo y el comunismo por ser ideologías "totalitarias" queda desvanecida si se hila fino. El fascismo (o cualquiera que fuera el nombre que los falangistas o nacional-sindicalistas quisieran darle a lo que era la variante española del fascismo) tiene que ver más con las facciones reaccionarias, pretorianistas, monárquicas en el caso español, y con la derecha política y sociológica en general, antes que con cualquiera de las corrientes izquierdistas de la época (desde el liberalismo azañista hasta el anarco-sindicalismo, pasando por el socialismo y el comunismo). Muy claro queda en el caso español, cuyo fascismo ni siquiera llegó al poder "a la alemana" o "a la italiana".
April 11, 2024
De las primeras obras académicas que se fijaron como objetivo estudiar lo que había sido el partido fundado por el hijo del dictador Primo de Rivera, aunque realizada por un autor con escasa ambición intelectual y menos científica.
Sin animo de extenderme en demasía, señalar que la obra se puede dividir en dos grandes bloques, divididos por el evento de la Guerra civil española.
En el primer bloque, luego de esbozarnos un excesivamente sintético contexto histórico previo, se nos cuentan las peripecias hasta la creación de Falange, y paralelamente su relación con las JONS de Ramiro Ledesma Ramos. El autor en esta parte centra sus esfuerzos en dilucidar si se podría denominar fascista al nuevo partido, basándose tan solo en ciertas declaraciones del propio Primo de Rivera, sin entender que estas se daban por la particular situación de España en la Europa del momento (lo que no impide situar a la Falange, al igual que a la SA nazi, dentro del ámbito de las fascismos europeos de entreguerras), ya que si señala que lo más lógico era que el fascismo español fuese encabezado por un Indalecio Prieto o por un Ángel Pestaña, pero es incapaz de entender porqué esto no sucedió como en Italia con Mussolini o el caso alemán con la mitad del SPD apoyando los créditos de guerra y sumándose al carro del chovinismo en bloque. Y es que a lo largo de la obra el liberalismo que profesa el autor lo lleva a ser incapaz de dar una visión de conjunto del fenómeno fascista español, de una forma "estructural" (aunque esta sea una palabra por la cual no siento mucha simpatía). En este sentido el autor pretende exculpar a la Falange y su líder de una imagen negativa, y si bien es cierto que la mayoría de historiografía post-75 ha hecho una análisis quizás demasiado simplista de la Falange como una masa amorfa de pistoleros y asesinos represores sin más, lo cierto es que el partido fue sumamente irrelevante, excepto en la guerra cuando a sus filas acudieron en masa precisamente eso, señoritos que añoraban tener una cohartada política para empuñar la pistola y defender sus intereses amenazados.
En la segunda parte el autor también evidencia sus carencias al interpretar la traición de Franco a la Falange como una simple riña entre líneas discordantes, pero todas amables y bien intencionadas, lo que no quita que incluso la parte más izquierdista del propio movimiento fascista en sí sea incapaz de ser fagocitada por el ala más reaccionaria y conservadora de cualquier movimiento derechista. Por no hablar de su legitimación hacia el oxímoron del franco-falangismo...
A parte de estas carencias, se puede intuir de la obra de Payne un velado elogio a la figura de Franco, además que adolece de la misma visión racista y romántica propia de la sobredimensionada pléyade de hispanistas británicos, inaugurada por Gerald Brenan, que lo lleva a ver la Falange de forma absurda como un "movimiento poético". Además que resulta llamativo como Payne parece solo interesarse por fuentes afines al movimiento y por relatos de primera persona de protagonistas de los hechos, negando asi un principio de la historiografía medianamente seria como es el contraste de las fuentes.
Resumiento, obra recomendable quizás para quien quiera conocer el repertorio de nombres y hechos (narrados a medias) que recorrieron la historia de la Falange desde su fundación hasta finales de los 50, pero que no esperen una explicación mínimamente articulada de la existencia de la misma y de su razón de ser política.
Sin animo de extenderme en demasía, señalar que la obra se puede dividir en dos grandes bloques, divididos por el evento de la Guerra civil española.
En el primer bloque, luego de esbozarnos un excesivamente sintético contexto histórico previo, se nos cuentan las peripecias hasta la creación de Falange, y paralelamente su relación con las JONS de Ramiro Ledesma Ramos. El autor en esta parte centra sus esfuerzos en dilucidar si se podría denominar fascista al nuevo partido, basándose tan solo en ciertas declaraciones del propio Primo de Rivera, sin entender que estas se daban por la particular situación de España en la Europa del momento (lo que no impide situar a la Falange, al igual que a la SA nazi, dentro del ámbito de las fascismos europeos de entreguerras), ya que si señala que lo más lógico era que el fascismo español fuese encabezado por un Indalecio Prieto o por un Ángel Pestaña, pero es incapaz de entender porqué esto no sucedió como en Italia con Mussolini o el caso alemán con la mitad del SPD apoyando los créditos de guerra y sumándose al carro del chovinismo en bloque. Y es que a lo largo de la obra el liberalismo que profesa el autor lo lleva a ser incapaz de dar una visión de conjunto del fenómeno fascista español, de una forma "estructural" (aunque esta sea una palabra por la cual no siento mucha simpatía). En este sentido el autor pretende exculpar a la Falange y su líder de una imagen negativa, y si bien es cierto que la mayoría de historiografía post-75 ha hecho una análisis quizás demasiado simplista de la Falange como una masa amorfa de pistoleros y asesinos represores sin más, lo cierto es que el partido fue sumamente irrelevante, excepto en la guerra cuando a sus filas acudieron en masa precisamente eso, señoritos que añoraban tener una cohartada política para empuñar la pistola y defender sus intereses amenazados.
En la segunda parte el autor también evidencia sus carencias al interpretar la traición de Franco a la Falange como una simple riña entre líneas discordantes, pero todas amables y bien intencionadas, lo que no quita que incluso la parte más izquierdista del propio movimiento fascista en sí sea incapaz de ser fagocitada por el ala más reaccionaria y conservadora de cualquier movimiento derechista. Por no hablar de su legitimación hacia el oxímoron del franco-falangismo...
A parte de estas carencias, se puede intuir de la obra de Payne un velado elogio a la figura de Franco, además que adolece de la misma visión racista y romántica propia de la sobredimensionada pléyade de hispanistas británicos, inaugurada por Gerald Brenan, que lo lleva a ver la Falange de forma absurda como un "movimiento poético". Además que resulta llamativo como Payne parece solo interesarse por fuentes afines al movimiento y por relatos de primera persona de protagonistas de los hechos, negando asi un principio de la historiografía medianamente seria como es el contraste de las fuentes.
Resumiento, obra recomendable quizás para quien quiera conocer el repertorio de nombres y hechos (narrados a medias) que recorrieron la historia de la Falange desde su fundación hasta finales de los 50, pero que no esperen una explicación mínimamente articulada de la existencia de la misma y de su razón de ser política.
June 13, 2026
El libro fue la tesis académica del autor, por lo que se nota el rigor con que está escrito, las notas documentales, etc. Es un ensayo más histórico que político, es decir, no se detiene a calificar lo malos que eran unos u otros.
Cuenta la creación de La Falange y su unión con otros grupos fascistas (como la JONS), su participación en los incidentes durante la Segunda República, su papel en la Guerra Civil, y luego durante las distintas fases de la dictadura (hasta 1959). Por poner un pero, sería la falta de fotografías para ilustrar mejor las historias y personajes que cuenta...
Cuenta la creación de La Falange y su unión con otros grupos fascistas (como la JONS), su participación en los incidentes durante la Segunda República, su papel en la Guerra Civil, y luego durante las distintas fases de la dictadura (hasta 1959). Por poner un pero, sería la falta de fotografías para ilustrar mejor las historias y personajes que cuenta...
November 2, 2025
Una obra fundamental para comprender Falange, las JONS y sus fundadores. Payne describe con rigor e imparcialidad cómo se desarrolla el movimiento desde sus orígenes personales hasta su disolución. Analiza con precisión las complicaciones surgidas tras la sublevación, así como la falta de poder con la que se encuentra después de no seguir en manos de sus fundadores y formar parte de una minoría dentro del bando nacional.
October 5, 2022
Probably out-of-date, but very informative about the evolution of the main fascist faction in Spain. It touches many aspects and criticizes all sides.
Willing to read more books from the author.
More detailed review (in Catalan): https://lobloc.net/2022/10/05/falange...
Willing to read more books from the author.
More detailed review (in Catalan): https://lobloc.net/2022/10/05/falange...
March 5, 2024
Un 3 porque no estoy del todo convencido de las categorías que maneja pero un 5 por el pedazo trabajo de investigación que hizo Payne.
July 26, 2024
Una obra de rigor y erudición extraordinarios, la mejor que se ha escrito sobre la historia de la Falange en los años de la Segunda República y la Guerra Civil.
February 2, 2025
Un ensayo muy interesante sobre José Antonio Primo de Rivera y la creación de su partido.
January 3, 2026
Es medio largo y tiene muchos detalles y aun así se lee rápido. Muy bueno.
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