This erudite and substantial volume, whose title indicates precisely the book’s content, bolsters the author’s reputation as one of the most distinguished scholars of the Spanish right. Its subject, the conservative politician and intellectual, Gonzalo Fernández de la Mora, may be interpreted as a sort of Spanish Max Weber. In his
The reinforcement of the work ethic was accompanied by a growing secularization during late
Unlike most Spanish conservatives, Fernández de la Mora «siempre buscó la conciliación entre la tradición y la razón científica» (p. 16). He attempted to renew the political project of Acción Española by rejecting religious (Catholic)
His cosmopolitanism, which his biographer documents closely, rejected the postwar autarchy and like one of his most important mentors, José Ortega y Gasset, pushed for the «Europeanization» of Spain. Yet «el patriotismo orteguiano era entrañable y verdadero. Su consigna europeizadora no suponía extranjerización, sino españolización de la ciencia y elevación de nuestro nivel cultural hasta el de los pueblos que marchaban en la vanguardia de la civilización» (p. 148). In this context, don Gonzalo’s definition of the perfect disciple remains valuable: «no es el que rinde culto al maestro, sino aquel que le admira y vence» (p. 143). His vitalist enthusiasm for the
Although González Cuevas convincingly demonstrates the astuteness of his subject, the biographer might have been more critical. It hard for this American reviewer to imagine how a thinker supposedly devoted to a «Aufklärung conservadora» and to reason could write that Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo, who never distinguished himself in the hard sciences, was «el más relevante ejemplo español de hombre de ciencia en la transición del siglo
Don Gonzalo’s defense of Franco’s «no beligerancia» during World War II was seriously flawed. Franco’s position supposedly maintained Spain «fuera del conflicto; algo permitió la mediación tras el armisticio franco-alemán, la protección de las minorías sefarditas en los Balcanes, la salvación de millares de fugitivos centroeuropeos» (p. 154). Neglected in this list of the virtues of Spanish «neutrality» is the regime’s military, diplomatic, and political commitment, participation, and contributions to a future Axis victory; its reluctance to help Jews until the last year of the conflict when it saw–quite tardily–an Allied victory as inevitable; finally, the «millares de fugitivos» which Spain saved were often Nazis and their close collaborators. As late as 1961 Fernández de la Mora continued to trust his regime’s own propaganda and its victimist excuses. He therefore attributed the isolation of his country after the Second World War not to its leadership’s errors and miscalculations but rather to the «antiespañolismo un poco legendario que desde la Contrarreforma [que] ha prevalecido en las minorías dirigentes de Occidente» (p. 154). He ignored the many services to Nazism and the anti-Semitism of Martin Heidegger and don Gonzalo’s own friend, Carl Schmitt. Indeed, in 1979 to celebrate Schmitt’s ninetieth birthday, don Gonzalo called him «el más importante teórico del Estado del siglo
Repeating the faulty analyses of fascists, extreme rightists, and the Caudillo himself, Fernández de la Mora overestimated the benefits of authoritarian rule and consistently underestimated democratic regimes of Western Europe and North America. Thus, after the birth of the Fifth Republic in 1958 he wrongly predicted that liberal democracy was in decline, if not disappearing. Ironically, like the protesting students in Paris in 1968, whom he compared to the Russian nihilists of the late nineteenth century, he identified the Gaullist state as a soft variety of fascism or, at a minimum, authoritarian rule. His centralism prevented any sympathy for regional autonomies. In fact, he blamed in part the federalist Francisco Pi y Margall for the «atraso intelectual de la izquierda española» and preferred the more statist–at least in his reading–Karl Marx. As Minister of Public Works, in 1972 in a speech celebrating the XXXV anniversary of the «Liberación» of Bilbao, he triumphantly affirmed: «Todo lo conseguido es fruto de la unidad, clave de la paz interior y el trabajo fértil. Hemos superado los regionalismos suicida» (p. 286).
His centralist position would have prevented democracy from taking root in contemporary Spain. In that sense, he remained committed to the regime that «nace de aquel acto decisivo del 18 de julio» (p. 261) which eventually «coincidía en la superación dialéctica tanto del liberalismo como del socialismo marxista, ya que aunaba el logro de las libertades concretas, reales, con el de la justicia social más estricta» (p. 305). His
During the early years of the Transición don Gonzalo predicted that Spain would follow the paths of the more backward Portuguese and Chilean revolutions, and it was no accident that he became a counterrevolutionary mentor for the regime of Augusto Pinochet. In 1976 he saw revolutionary Popular Fronts arising in France, Italy, and, of course, Spain. Yet Santiago Carrillo had made it clear for years that the PCE had abandoned any revolutionary pretentions. Ultimately, don Gonzalo failed to assess precisely the changes produced by the modernization that he had done so much to advocate and accomplish. His analysis focused too much on the state and not enough on society. Thus he could write in 1971: «Si ahora se debilita la coherencia del Sistema, lo más probable es que al cumplirse las previsiones sucesorias se desembocara en el estado demoliberal, que nos llevó a la penosa situación del julio de 1936» (p. 293). To the contrary, most Spaniards, including the military, were convinced that a Western-European variety of constitutional monarchy could continue the economic growth and social stability to which they were accustomed. They rejected his authoritarian direction, and he eventually but reluctantly accepted the new liberal democracy. Indeed, its virtue was that–under the guise of popular consent–elites in the monarchy, political parties, trade unions, media, and Church continued to lead it from above. The PSOE governments of the 1980s invalidated Fernández de la Mora’s fears that this party would behave as it had during the Second Republic. Indeed, as Ramón Tamames observed, it continued «el Estado de obras» (p. 412).
Despite his analytical and political missteps during Transición, Fernández de la Mora acutely examined the advent of certain new problems. Integration into the European Economic Community increased prosperity but weakened Spanish national identity. Secularization encouraged birth control, and Spain’s birth rate plummeted to among the lowest in the world: «Se enfrentaba a inmigraciones masivas, con el agravante de que los emigrantes del origen musulmán no podían ser culturalmente asimilados» (p. 416). While containing a good deal of truth, this last statement contradicted don Gonzalo’s increasing commitment to economic liberalism and, by implication, immigration in the 1980s and 1990s. Finally, his critique of «partitocracia» was far-sighted: «La actual experiencia española demuestra que un régimen de partidos sin crítica, ni alternativas viables, degenera automáticamente no ya en partitocracia, sino en, lo que es peor, cleptocracia» (20).
This stimulating work is based on a deep reading of primary and secondary sources and will prove indispensable for the study of politics and culture in post-Civil War Spain.
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