José Antonio

Who was Jose Antonio? Few figures of the Spanish 20th century have been as profusely mythologized as that of José Antonio Primo de Rivera. The Franco regime dedicated a great cult to him, describing him as a fallen man and the main martyr of the Crusade, and the biographies written during the dictatorship by Falangists who knew and dealt with the National Head of the Spanish Falange de las JONS are praiseworthy and uncritical to such an extent that they are mostly unusable. Finally, 80 years after his death, Joan Maria Thomàs, a specialist in the history of the Falange, offers us a new and essential biography that explains the character in light of his personality traits, his thought and his political actions defining, questioning the interested myth and cult that were dedicated to him. Thomàs draws, with rigor and objectivity, the profile of a fascist leader willing to achieve the establishment of a political regime of this type in Spain, at the head of which he aspired to be himself, while distinguishing between what José Antonio intended and what were the Francoist Falange and the Franco Regime.