What happened between Francisco Franco and José Antonio Primo de Rivera was a bad relationship between political opponents. An evil eye that began and did not end during the Second Republic, when the Falange leader appeared before the firing squad in Alicante prison after being sentenced to death for military rebellion. From then on, and although the future dictator tried to exploit the ideological pillars of his group, there was always a small resistance that wanted to stop his rise to power.
Origin of everything
Primo de Rivera was shot, Franco’s attack on his organization was massive. Although it was on April 20th that the then Generalissimo further fanned the flames by decreeing that the main political organizations fighting alongside him against the Republic – Falangists and Carlists – would be united into a single party Traditionalist Spanish Falange and the National Unionist Offensive Boards (FAITH and JONS). His goal, he argued, was to end the internal struggles of these currents and, in turn, to centralize power under his person.
This union soon gave him a headache. From Falange, for example, conflicting voices were raised when it was considered that the merger of both parties would destroy the original essence of the organization. One of the biggest opponents was Manuel Hedilla, practical successor to José Antonio Primo de Rivera. At least officially, because currently there are many historians who claim, albeit with some reservations, that this leader was in favor of Franco’s decree. Some like the hispanist Herbert Rutledge Southworth.
Leaving aside later interpretations, the truth is that the Falange leadership and Hedilla herself were outraged at Franco when he disregarded them in decision-making. And instead of relying on prudence, they boldly challenged the caudillo.
“The immediate reaction of the FE management […] was to send a telegram to the provincial chiefs of the FE on the 22nd, which, although showing Franco’s compliance, in reality violated his orders. The hierarchical channel of FE was reaffirmed to transmit the orders of the Generalissimo himself. “The telegram in question was sent with the signature of Hedilla, although his signature was apparently not present in the original sent to Telégrafos,” explains Joan María Thomas in her work “The Great Coup”. The Hedilla case or how Franco stayed with the Falange.
The telegram, Hedilla’s criticism of the association and his refusal to accept a lesser position offered by Ferrol were the perfect excuses for Franco. He ordered the Falange leader to be arrested and prosecuted along with 600 of his followers. So his plan to stay in the party became reality. As the Hispanic scholar Paul Preston in his extensive work “Franco. Caudillo of Spain, Hedilla was eventually sentenced to death for military rebellion, although his sentence was eventually commuted to life imprisonment. At the same time, a secret phalanx emerged Autonomous Falange, destined to fight against the future head of state.
Murder of Franco?
Two members of this secret phalanx, the same group that considered themselves “uncontaminated” by the ideas of a dictator who had “betrayed” the principles for which they had stood up in the Civil War, came together in late March 1941 to plot assassination to work out Franco’s.
As the writer and journalist Antoni Batista explains in his book “Killing Franco: The attacks against the dictator”, the cornerstones of this mission were built by Emilio Rodríguez Tarduchy – map number 4 of the Autonomous Falange – and Patricio González de Canales. They met at the hermitage of San Antonio de la Florida in Madrid with the aim of finding the most effective way to end the life of the man from Ferrol.
After a conversation, they came to the conclusion that it would be ideal to kill him at the Victory Day celebration. That was April 1st. “The plan devised by González de Canales was to do this on the street, to take with him the Moorish guard trained to shoot before he asked, and with the cruel inner courage to mislead the bodyguards while a “Man shot Franco at close range with a short 9 revolver, Lincoln inspiration,” Batista states in his work. Simple but effective. Furthermore, Franco found himself in the middle of the street and was surrounded by characters who saw with their own eyes how he left for the other district. It was an ideal coup de effect.
With this idea, the members of this secret phalanx organized a meeting in the house of one of them at Alberto Aguilera Street 40. There they voted: kill Franco with one shot or not? “They voted by four votes and one abstention not to kill him. For fear of the Nazi invasion and the material liquidation of Falange Auténtica,” the author adds. Without knowing it, the man from Ferrol won his last fight against Primo de Rivera and his idea of what the Spanish Falange should be.
Spied on
In practice, the dictator never fully trusted the Falange. And this became clear when he ordered that the organization be closely monitored by the APIS information network – a polite euphemism for espionage; the same group that constantly provided him with reports from the main Masonic lodges present in Spain.
In fact, Franco always boasted that he was “well-informed about everything that goes on in the lodges” and that he had “direct information from the Masonic lodges.” The majority of these reports reached the dictator in the 1940s to 1960s. This is explained by the historian Javier Domínguez Arribas in his work “The Jewish-Masonic Enemy in Franco’s Propaganda, 1936-1945”. In it, the expert points out that this group of spies was made up of women and, among many other missions, closely followed the Falangists: “The most serious accusations against the Falangists were found in the documents that the APIS network attributed to the sect”.
In them, certain political attitudes common among Falangists emerged as the result of Masonic slogans. Some of them are considered so serious that they “cause the Freemasons to join any demonstrations that might arise and flood them with ‘cheers and cheers’ for the ‘Fuhrer’ and Germany.” This is how this sector became for years investigated, as well as anyone of some political importance who declared himself a follower of King Don Juan. In fact, APIS also forwarded reports from “Juanista” organizations, as they called themselves, to the dictator so that he could keep abreast of their developments.
José María Zavala collects these ideas in his books and in turn points out that one of the people most studied by Franco and the APIS group was Pilar Primo de Rivera: José Antonio’s sister. The reports read about her: “Back to Pilar. Another thing that made her angry is that, as she says, yesterday the university militias paraded in front of the Caudilo shouting “Long live Spain” and she cannot swallow the word “Long live.”
