Counterrevolution Theory and Practice in Authoritarian Monarchism during the Second Spanish Republic

Abstract

This paper studies the justifications of violence provided during the Second Republic by the various sectors of pro-Alphonse monarchism –the far-right wing, which encouraged with greater insistence a theoretical reflection on the counterrevolution and the means to promote it in fact. All that arose a genuine insurrectional utopia which was supported by the radical sectors of the Church and the Army. Taking as an example the reflections on militarism of Ramiro de Maeztu and José Calvo Sotelo, we analyze the rhetorical construction of subversive action which, in principle, was not likely to be immediate, but whose thorough and tenacious formulation opened the way to a space of political opportunity that finally materialized in the July 1936 military coup d’État.