Sebastian Balfour

Spanish Military Cultures and the Moroccan Wars 1909-36

Four main military cultures existed within the Army of Africa: Africanist, Juntero, peninsular and political. Although they coexisted, each enjoyed a period of hegemony within the Army as a result of the course of military action in Morocco or the colonial strategy of the Spanish government. Africanist culture, divided over colonial strategy, was united around authoritarianism and a right-wing mythology of patriotism. Juntero culture focused at first mainly on professional military structure and not on strategy or mission. Peninsular culture was the replication in the colonial army of practices and mentalities characteristic of the peninsular army. Political culture derived from the appointments made by the Second Republic to ensure the colonial army’s loyalty. The Army of Africa was not therefore a united, homogenous bloc. But the last years of the colonial campaign saw the hegemony of the Africanist culture among colonial officers and it was this politically interventionist caste that played a fundamental role in overthrowing the Republic.

“Revueltas lógicas: el ciclo de movilización del 15M y la práctica de la democracia radical” by Pablo La Parra-Pérez

This is a bold and thought-provoking essay seeking to conceptualise the new forms of social and political protest that have arisen in Spain in response to the economic and institutional crisis of the last few years. Based on the critical conceptual framework outlined by the French Marxist philosopher Jacques Rancière, it examines the emergence of social movements in Spain known collectively at the 15M movement (from the mass protest that arose on 15 May 2011), which adopt discourses and forms of struggle similar to those of the 1968 movement across Europe and the popular movements of protest in the last years of the dictatorship of Franco. The traditional Left across Europe had brought the cycle of radical protest to an end in the years following 1968 by channelling it into liberal parliamentary democracy and trade unionism and subordinating it to the consolidation of a reformist social democratic model. The essay argues correctly, I think, that these new movements in Spain represent a challenge to the 1978 political settlement of the Spanish transition, articulating repertoires of popular participation similar to those constructed during the anti-authoritarian struggles of the 1960s and 1970s, based on concepts of democracy radically different to those of the parliamentary Left. This is an area that has hardly been explored in academic literature and one largely overlooked by the media and ignored by orthodox economics and political science. Yet, the 15M movement is a daily reality in a country wracked by social and economic crisis in which the political system and the institutions of the state have lost legitimacy among increasing numbers of citizens. I have some reservations about the author’s terminology. I remain unconvinced about the use of the term Régimen de 1978 to denote the post-transitional state and the Constitution. In its common usage, regime refers to authoritarian governments of one sort or another. I would suggest that the characterisation of Spain’s liberal or social democracy in its present form as “regime” needs to be more nuanced. Also its usage here suggests that deficiencies of Spanish parliamentary democracy are peculiar to Spain. Of course, Spanish democracy has its own constitutional distinctness but surely its deficiencies are part of a wider, global crisis of both liberal democracy and social democracy, however intense the contradictions might be in Spain. I would argue also that the term “oligarchy,” used by Rancière in the first place to denote elites controlling states within a framework of parliamentary democracy, is too rigid, as it underestimates the diversity of elites whose interests do not always coincide, whether financial, business or political. This is particularly the case if we consider the example of the Catalan political and business elites and their different responses to the “national question”. Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies, 2014 Vol. 15, Nos. 1–2, 59–60, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14636204.2014.938433

The Making of an Interventionist Army, 1898–1923

In the light of the repeated intervention in politics of the Spanish military over two centuries, the title of this chapter might seem somewhat inappropriate. In a sense, the army was already interventionist in the early 19th century. But the term is used here in a much more restricted sense to denote government by the military, that is, the intervention of the military to replace democratic regimes, or at least civilian regimes such as that of the Restoration of 1876–1923, by a state controlled by the military or by a bureaucratic coalition in which the military play a hegemonic role.1 In the case of Spain, the term refers therefore to those considerable sections of the Spanish military that supported the 1923 coup and the dictatorship of General Miguel Primo de Rivera, and those that rose in revolt in 1936 against the Second Republic and supported the Franco Dictatorship. In making a qualification about different elements within the military, what is being stressed is the fact that there were progressive minority tendencies within the military in the first quarter of the 20th century and, in particular, the fact that in 1936, many sections of the military supported the Popular Front government against the military revolt eventually led by General Francisco Franco. But the main purpose of this chapter is to argue that within the authoritarian coalition of the Primo de Rivera Dictatorship (and indeed among the Nationalists under Franco) a key role was played by colonial officers, whose sense of identity and relationship with the peninsular Spain was very different to those of their peninsular counterparts. This is a distinction largely ignored in the literature.2