Irrational Triumph: Cultural Despair, Military Nationalism, and the Ideological Origins of Franco's Spain

by R. Geoffrey Jensen

In this meticulously researched and brilliantly argued study, historian Geoffrey Jensen examines the complex origins of Francoist nationalism.A nationalist vision strongly rooted in Spanish Catholicism and military culture was one of the most powerful ideological tools of the Franco regime until its demise in 1975. Although nationalist movements in Spain's Basque and Catalan provinces have been closely studied, hitherto little attention has been given to the origins and evolution of nationalism in Spain itself.

In the years following defeat in the Spanish-American War, Spain's leading intellectual figures struggled to explain the reasons for their country's decline and to argue over possible means to regenerate the nation. Among these figures were members of Spain's Restoration officer corps. The diversity of this military culture gradually narrowed as events in early twentieth-century Spain seemed to encourage ever more radical solutions to the social, political, and economic unrest of the period.

Focusing on the intellectual world of Spain's military elite—its education, values, and the writings of some of its leading intellectual figures— Irrational Triumph reveals the evolution of a military culture that ultimately became a principal bulwark for Franco's fascist regime.

248 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 2001