Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-tf8b9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-29T10:48:09.129Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Francisco Cambo and the Modernization of Spain: The Technocratic Possibilities of Fascism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Philip V. Cannistraro  and
James W. Cortada
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Spain entered the twentieth century as a relatively underdeveloped nation still deeply rooted in her traditional past. Spanish life had barely begun to experience the stresses of social and economic transformation that recent scholars have identified with the modernization process. Toward the end of the last century, Spanish industry grew at a rapid pace, particularly in the Basque and Catalan regions, but the nation as a whole continued to lag behind the rest of Western Europe in the years before 1914. Although the recently formed trade union movements expanded in response to the new complex of urban-industrial problems, their organizational and political strength remained ineffective until World War I. In the other regions of Spain an agrarian economy, replete with strong anarchist movements, dominated and determined a social order in which provincialism, widespread subsistence living standards, and extensive illiteracy persisted.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 37 , Issue 1 , January 1975 , pp. 66 - 82
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1975

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Black, G. E., The Dynamics of Modernization: A Study in Comparative History (New York, 1966), pp. 85, 116Google Scholar.

* See Clark's, John P. review of Sam Dolgoff's The Anarchist Collectives: Workers' Self-management in the Spanish Revolution (1936–1939) in this issue, p. 114Google Scholar.

2 See, for example, Clanel, Vincente, El fascismo (Barcelona, 1923)Google Scholar; Gorgolini, Pedro, El fascismo en la vida italiana (Madrid, 1924)Google Scholar; Marcelino, Domingo, Una dictadura en la europa del siglo XX (Alcalá, 1929)Google Scholar; Nin, Abdrés, Les dictadures dels vostres dies (Barcelona, 1930)Google Scholar. For further examples see Confederazione Nazionale di Sindicati Fascisti dei Professionisti e degli Artisti, Bibliografia generale del fascismo, 2 vols. (Rome, 1932), I: 114–116Google Scholar. On the “classical interpretation” of fascism see De Felice, Renzo, Le interpretazioni del fascismo (Bari, 1969), p. 29–41Google Scholar.

3 Cambó's more important books include Elementos para el estudio del problema ferrovaria en España (Madrid, 1918)Google Scholar; Viut meses al ministeri de foment (Barcelona, 1919)Google Scholar; En torno del fascismo itatiano (Madrid, 1924)Google Scholar; Las dictaduras (Madrid, 1929)Google Scholar; Per la concòrdia (Barcelona, 1930)Google Scholar. The best biography of Cambó is by Pabón, Jesús, Cambó, 3 vols. (Barcelona, 1952–1969)Google Scholar, but even this author scarcely deals with Cambó's ideas on fascism.

4 Carr, Raymond, Spain, 1808–1939 (Oxford, 1966), pp. 434–435Google Scholar.

5 Pabón, , Cambó, I: pp. 175–176Google Scholar.

6 Virgili, Antonio Rovira Y, El nacionalismo Catalan (Barcelona, 1917), p. 123Google Scholar.

7 Quoted in Brenan, Gerald, The Spanish Labyrinth (Oxford, 1943), p. 82Google Scholar.

8 Carr, , Spain, p. 553Google Scholar.

9 Details on the assassination are in Ullman, Joan Connally, The Tragic Week: A Study in Anticlericalism in Spain, 1875–1912 (Cambridge, Mass., 1968), p. 90CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Some historians, however, feel that the regime had nothing to do with it and attribute the attempt to an extreme left-wing Catalan agitator; cf. Oliveira, Antonio Ramos, Politics, Economics and Men of Modern Spain, 1808–1946 (London, 1946), pp. 384–391Google Scholar.

10 Payne, Stanley G., “Catalan and Basque Nationalism,” Journal of Contemporary History, VI, no. 1 (1971), 21–22Google Scholar.

11 Oliveira, Ramos, Politics, Economics and Men of Modern Spain, p. 395Google Scholar.

12 Brenan, , Spanish Labyrinth, p. 57Google Scholar; New York Times, 12 22, 1918, III, p. 6Google Scholar.

13 On the military and the Catalans, Marquez, B., Las juntas militares de defensa (Madrid, 1923), pp. 46, 70ff.Google Scholar The socialists called Cambó the “mouthpiece of industrial capitalism”; for details see Oliveira, Ramos, Politics, Economics and Men of Modern Spain, pp. 167–174Google Scholar.

14 Quoted in Carr, , Spain, p. 504Google Scholar.

115 The left denounced him as the “murderer of the revolution,” Solidaridad Obrera, July 19, 1917, p. 1, while the conservatives saw him as a political innocent appealing to those Spaniards, mainly Castilians, who would destroy him; cf. Carr, , Spain, p. 504Google Scholar; de Burgos y Mazo, M., Paginas hisóricas (Madrid, n.d.), pp. 106ff, 139Google Scholar.

16 Pabón, , Cambó, I, passimGoogle Scholar.

17 Quoted in Carr, , Spain, pp. 506–507Google Scholar.

18 For details see Cambós, book, Vuit meses al ministeri de foment, pp. ix–lxxv, 5–322Google Scholar.

19 Brenan, , Spanish Labyrinth, p. 64Google Scholar.

20 On Catalan industrial attitudes see Sunyer, C. Pi, L'Aptitut económica de Cataluña, 2 vols. (Barcelona, 1927)Google Scholar; on general economics, Vives, Jaime Vicens, Els Catalans en el segle XIX (Barcelona, 1958)Google Scholar and Tallada, J. M., Barcelona económica y financiera (Barcelona, 1944)Google Scholar. Socialist economic ideas may be found in Oliveira, Antonio Ramos, El capitalismo español al desnudo (Madrid, n.d.)Google Scholar and Linares, C. Munoz, El monopolio en la industria eléctrica (Madrid, 1954)Google Scholar. On the general trend toward technocracy see Burnham, James, The Managerial Revolution (New York, 1941)Google Scholar.

21 Berenguer, Dámaso, De la dictadura a la república (Madrid, 1935), pp. 290–291, 312–315Google Scholar; Brenan, , Spanish Labyrinth, p. 83Google Scholar.

22 Quoted in Carr, , Spain, p. 587Google Scholar.

23 Cambó, , Per la concòrdia, p. 36Google Scholar.

24 Payne, Stanley G., Politics and the Military in Modern Spain (Stanford, 1967), pp. 193–194Google Scholar.

25 See preface by Ciarlantini, Franco to the Italian edition of Cambós book on fascism, translated as Il Fascismo Italiano (Milan, 1925), p. xGoogle Scholar. In the 1920's Ciarlantini was a well-known Fascist publicist and party member. For an excellent study of fascism and technocracy in Italy see Aquarone, Alberto, “Aspirazioni technocratiche del primo fascismo,” Nord e Sud (04, 1964)Google Scholar. In 1920 the Italian ambassador in Madrid, Baron Fasciotti, reported to Prime Minister Francesco Nitti that Cambó had spoken with high praise in the Spanish legislature, the Cortes, about Italian fiscal reforms. Cambó, who had previously met Nitti in Paris, suggested that Italian taxation policy should be studied in Spain. Cambó's praise for Nitti was not, however, extended to the Italian parliamentary system. See the telegram by Fasciotti to Nitti, March 10, 1920, No. 101/74 in the Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Roma, Presidenza del Consiglio dei Ministri (1920), fascicolo 15/8, n. 374, “Spagna.” A search of the Italian archives failed to turn up details regarding Cambós;s subsequent visit to Mussolini in 1924.

26 Cambó, , Las dictaduras, pp. 142, 154–155Google Scholar; Cambó, , Per la conòrdia, p. 189Google Scholar; Cambós, observations on nihilism and on the spiritual crisis of Europe in II Fascismo Italiano, pp. 33, 49, 62Google Scholar, were later elaborated by European thinkers in general, see Rauschning, Hermann, The Revolution of Nihilism (New York, 1938)Google Scholar.

27 Cambó, , Las dictaduras, p. 96Google Scholar.

28 Cambó, , Il Fascismo Italiano, p. 6Google Scholar.

29 Cambó, , Las dictaduras, pp. 56, 62–64, 66–68Google Scholar.

30 Ibid., pp. 142, 154–155. For an anthology of Cambós views on these Problems see Centellas, Captain, Las dictaduras y el señor Cambó (Madrid, 1929)Google Scholar.

31 Cambó, , Las dictaduras, pp. 77–80Google Scholar.

32 Ibid., p. 80; Nolte, Ernst, Three Faces of Fascism (London, 1965)Google Scholar.

33 Centellas, , Las dictaduras y el señor Cambó, pp. 24–25Google Scholar.

34 Ibid., p. 16.

35 For quotes, Cambó, , Las dictaduras, pp. 136–138Google Scholar; and Centellas, , Las dictaduras y el señor Cambó, p. 151Google Scholar for comments on the simplistic quality of dictators.

36 Centellas, , Las dictaduras y el señor Combó, pp. 89–96Google Scholar for a dictator's personal qualities and pp. 101–104 for its relevancy to Spain's dictatorship.

37 Cambó, , Las dictaduras, pp. 168–173Google Scholar.

38 Ibid., pp. 175–176.

39 Ibid., pp. 177, 180.

40 Quoted in the New York Times, 12 29, 1929, III: 3Google Scholar; also see Cambó, , Las dictaduras, pp. 139–141Google Scholar.

41 Cambó, , Las dictaduras, pp. 156, 158–159Google Scholar; Centellas, , Las dictaduras y el señor Cambó, p. 135Google Scholar.

42 Cambó, , Las dictaduras, pp. 162–164Google Scholar.

43 Centellas, , Las dictaduras y el señor Cambó, p. 110Google Scholar; Cambo, , Las dictaduras, pp. 161–162Google Scholar.

44 Centellas, , Las dictaduras y el señor Cambó, p. 110Google Scholar. Besides drawing from the Italian model for his conclusions, Cambó had closely studied Primo de Rivera's economic policies. See de la Cierva, Ricardo, Historia de la guerra civil española (Madrid, 1969), I: pp. 104–112Google Scholar.

45 Cambó, , Las dictaduras, p. 102Google Scholar. He devoted a whole chapter to this problem, pp. 193–206, and for discussion of the Italian parliament, pp. 225–233.

46 Ibid., pp. 74, 239.

47 Ibid., pp. 112–120, 122.

48 Ibid., p. 52.

49 Ibid., pp. 79–85; Manuel, Frank E., The Politics of Modern Spain (New York, 1938), pp. 52, 60Google Scholar. For the fascist trappings in Spain in the 1920's see Manuel again, pp. 52–56.

50 See for example, Puga, E. Alvárez, Historia de la Falange (Barcelona, 1969)Google Scholar and Payne, Stanley G., Falange: A History of Spanish Fascism (Stanford, Calif., 1961)Google Scholar.

51 Pike, Fredrick B., Hispanismo, 1898–1936: Spanish Conservatives and Liberals and Their Relations with Spanish America (Notre Dame, 1971), p. 278Google Scholar.