Pasión, muerte y glorificación de José Antonio Primo de Rivera

Abstract

After the francoist victory in the Spanish Civil War, a process of mythification of José Antonio Primo de Rivera as the great martyr of the Patria took place. Through that mythification, José Antonio became the modern reiteration of the archetypical drama of the Christian Passion. The subsequent glorification of the founding leader of Falange through the great ceremony of his burial was a good example of the falangista try to construct a political religion in Spain built around the sacralisation of the Nation. The funeral procession of the great ¿Ausente¿ representing the revived Nation and the totalitarian State was a representation, as well, of the Catholic and traditional Nation celebrating the new restoration of the Spanish Catholic character. This ideological tension showed up the impossibility of a totalitarian and fascist project of a political religion and its necessary coexistence with the powerful Catholic Church.