The renowned Hispanist Stanley Payne (Denton, Texas, 1934) has unpacked as no other the events that marked the 20th century in Spain. in more than twenty books and hundreds of articles. Once acclaimed by the left for his progressive theses (his passion for Spain was instilled in him by Republican exiles), in recent years he has been accused of being a ‘revisionist’ for his critical view of the Second Republic.
At the age of 90, the American historian has just published a reissue of his great essay on the history of fascism in Spain, Franco and José Antonio. The strange case of Spanish fascism (Editorial Espasa), a title in which he explores the contradictions of the Second Republic, the origins of the Civil War and the long years of the dictatorship.
With just three days to go before 20-N, a date loaded with symbolism as it is the joint anniversary of the death of Franco (1975) and José Antonio (1936).Professor Payne analyzes the past and the present of Spanish politics in a talk with 20minutos from his home in New York.
Is fascism making a comeback in Europe?No, what we are seeing now is populism, an important political force in several countries at the moment, but which has nothing to do with the fascism that emerged in Italy at the beginning of the 20th century. Historical fascism was an ‘epochal’ force, with its cultural and philosophical characteristics, and also with its tendency to violence, something we don’t really see today. There is no political doctrine and no fighting in the streets.
But the victory of Le Pen in France or the rise of Alternative for Germany do evidence a resurgence of the far right.Far-right is a political qualification and the left calls anything that is to its right or that it does not like far-right. Sometimes, the living reality is fascist for the left, but it is only political jargon, there is no objective analysis behind it. In the case of France, Marine Le Pen has changed a lot her own party, which is now much broader, more moderate and constitutionalist, it is something other than her father’s National Front. Any neo-fascist movement is doomed to failure in today’s times.
In your book you say that “the socialist leaders of the Second Republic said that their goal was to turn around the fascist tendency in Europe”, a speech very similar to that of Pedro Sanchez when he talks about “stopping the ultra-right”, don’t you think? Yes, it is clearly the same speech. What happens is that for today’s politicians it is very difficult to interpret reality and they always refer to the past. They resort a lot to fascism and especially to Nazism, which has been the most unpleasant political force of all, to denigrate the enemy because they are two great historical references, but there is no objective analysis behind it. This is something that happens in almost every country. The world changes rapidly and it is much easier to fall back on the past and repeat the same old phrases than to analyze what is happening now. It is mental laziness.
The world changes rapidly and it is much easier to turn to the past and repeat the same old phrases than to analyze what is happening now. It’s mental laziness.”
Is Vox a far-right party or an heir of Francoism, as is often said from the left?Francoism was a very long-lasting dictatorship and I do not see Vox as going outside the sphere of the Constitution. It is a constitutionalist party that does not use violence and does not have an authoritarian creed. How is it similar to Francoism?
Donald Trump is also accused in the US of embodying the ultra-right.Trump is a populist and demagogue, as there were in the past, especially in the southern states of the United States, but he has neither ideology nor a consistent program, which are two fundamental pillars of the fascist movement. No one can seriously say that a gentleman as emotional, erratic and incoherent as Trump is a fascist. What they do say is that he poses a danger to democracy and, well, there are many dangers to democracy, but at least that is a consideration more applicable to current times.
A danger to democracy, but who suffered two assassination attempts in the middle of an election campaign?When fascism emerged in Spain, the first attacks were committed by the left against the fascists: they killed ten or twelve before the first great reprisal by the fascists. And it must be remembered that Fascist-type violence was not originally created by them, but by the Communists in Russia before 1917. They were the ones who created mass political violence in the contemporary world, so Trump’s is not so surprising. There are plenty of precedents.
Which is more dangerous to democracy, right-wing populism or left-wing populism?Latin America is the place in the world where left-wing ideological populism, which has ruined countries such as Venezuela, is most frequently seen, but there are dangers to democracy on both the left and the right. The classic analyst of democracy in the United States, Alexis de Tocqueville, said that in the long run the greatest danger to democracy would arise from within egalitarian democracy. And probably the greatest danger to Western democracies today lies in their very existence and in the corruption of their political parties.
The greatest danger to Western democracies today lies in their very existence and in the corruption of their political parties.”
Returning to Spain, in the political debate Franco is mentioned very often almost half a century after his death, is there anything left of Francoism in today’s Spain?Absolutely nothing and it is, moreover, somewhat comical that the Spanish left is always trying to resurrect Franco because it only shows the poverty of their discourse. They cannot come up with new ideas or a program to face the current problems and they choose to resurrect the past, something very typical of the mental laziness of our times.
Franco is so recurrent that even the right wing uses it, the PP has compared the new law of democratic regeneration promoted by the Government with Franco’s laws.Critics of that law are right, but it is not a phenomenon exclusive to Spain, we see it in many countries, including the United States. There is a tendency towards a culture of cancellation, media control, censorship and single discourse. It is perhaps the biggest problem of cultural and political life in the Western world.
How do you assess the Government’s law of historical memory?It is an atrocity because it has nothing to do with history, in fact it wants to eliminate the historical debate to impose a single discourse. It is anti-history because its objective is the elimination of history.
What did you think of the exhumation of Franco from the Valley of the Fallen?Franco was buried in the Valley of the Fallen by a decision of King Juan Carlos and not because the dictator had predisposed it, but
this is a complicated matter. What I do not agree with is that Franco was not allowed to be reburied in the place chosen by his family. Denying freedom of decision to his relatives was probably a violation of the Constitution and an illegal action by the Government.
You have defined the Second Republic as “an undemocratic democracy” and you have said that with the Popular Front “the constitutional Republic ceased to exist”, do you know that you have earned a lot of criticism from the left?You only have to review the political history of Spain since the fraudulent elections of February 1936, with all the violations of the Constitution that took place and the refusal of the Government to apply the law, to see that the facts are so obvious that they speak for themselves. That is why the Government of Sanchez wants to impose the law of historical memory as a form of censorship, because history does not support the thesis of the left, but quite the opposite. There is the myth of the idyllic Second Republic, but that was the propaganda of the Popular Front and the Communist International during the Civil War. The left wants to maintain that civil war propaganda, reconstructing the story of the idyllic Republic and completely distorting the reality of what was happening in the Republican zone during the Civil War.
To say that the coup d’état of 1936 “was not against democracy, but against the loss of democracy” is a bit too much, isn’t it?No, because it was an uprising against the destruction of law and order in Spain. Originally, the intent of the military was not to eliminate the Republic, but to reinstate a more coherent, more stable and also more conservative Republic. Then, seeing the great revolution that arose in the republican zone, driven by socialist and anarchist forces, Franco changed those plans and took a radical decision that resulted in dictatorship. But the military uprising of July 18 was originally republican, by right-wing republicans.
The military uprising of July 18 was originally republican, of right-wing republicans.”
I see him very critical of the left. He talks about their doctrine of single thinking and culture of victimhood.Yes, well, it is part of the cultural revolution that has taken place in the last generation, especially in the United States, but also in Spain and other Western countries. A left has emerged with a new political culture, which follows a doctrine of identity and victimhood, which wants to divide society into two classes, between victimizers and victimizers. It is a culture that wants to impose radical solutions, very destructive for democracy.
He does not seem very satisfied with the Spanish Prime Minister either.Pedro Sánchez is the worst president Spain has had since the restoration of democracy. Felipe González has been the only great Spanish socialist leader and he played a very positive role for the country’s history. But that began to change radically with Zapatero, who was the origin of a process of degeneration, which has reached its peak with Sánchez.
What is your opinion of the Spanish Transition, so much reviled in recent times?I have always said and continue to say that it was a very important civic achievement for Spain and that nothing similar had ever taken place in any other country. It was almost exemplary in many aspects, but it also had a weak point and that is that it did not manage to resolve the question of separatism and the configuration of the country, an enormously complicated issue. Possibly nothing else could have been done at that time. But the political degeneration that has followed has not allowed us to maintain the spirit of the Transition or the political arrangement that existed then. To reject now the idea of the Transition saying that it was a Francoist trap is stupid.
Does Catalan and Basque nationalism have historical reasons to claim independence?A group of people constitute a nation if they believe they are a nation, so we are talking about a very subjective perception and a very complicated political issue. If we talk about historical reasons, it is clear that Catalonia has never been an independent state in all its history, however, there has been in a certain sense a Catalan state dependent on the Crown of Aragon. It had a political entity, although it was not a nation. The Basque Country, on the other hand, has never even been a political entity. All nationalist narratives tend to distort history, it is almost inevitable. In this case, Basque nationalism is more extremist than Catalan nationalism because its historiography is really fantastic.
