God has Preserved Us from a Sotelo Moment

All praise

Spain in the 1920s and 30s was a chaotic place. The corruption and liberalism of the French Revolution had metastasized into the country even before Napoleon’s invasion, and his overthrow of Spain’s lawful monarch had introduced a degree of destabilization that the country never quite recovered from in the subsequent century. There were coups and revolutions, and bloodshed on a wide scale. The empire collapsed and the people suffered.

There were some who saw that the way forward was to reclaim Spain’s traditional life, to return to the faith and to the king that protected it. Naturally, for however strong this movement became, the forces of evil countered it in turn. Spain was a nation that was at once reverently Christian and the scene of some of the most atrocious and violent blasphemies of the 20th century, which is saying something. Various liberals, socialists, communists, and anarchists murdered clergy, burned churches, and desecrated the symbols of the faith in the name of a ‘liberation’ that was merely the wide road to perdition.

Of those committed to the restoration of Spain, none was more dedicated and charismatic than Jose Calvo Sotelo, 1st Duke of Calvo Sotelo. A true aristocrat of the spirit, born in brocade, he dedicated his life to saving his country from the chaos and evil into which it had fallen. He was willing to work within the structures of republican government, dictatorship, or monarchy as the situation demanded, but his course was always fixed on the ultimate goal of the restoration of a true monarchy that could save Spain from the ravages of the political chaos that was consuming the rest of Europe. His was the vision articulated by his countryman Juan Donoso Cortes, of the French Bonald and the Savoyard De Maistre- a true king as the remedy to a false age.

Sotelo

One could argue with this vision. To Americans, accustomed as we are to liberalism, it seems alien and off-putting. It won’t always, but that is beside the point. Sotelo was not a world-spanning revolutionary pitching a universal ideology. He was recalling Spain to its own particular glory. He wanted to make Spain great again.

By the mid-1930s, his was among a number of futures proposed for Spain, and in a continent where political violence was becoming increasingly normalized, everyone knew in some sense that it was always going to come to blood to settle between them. The government of the Second Spanish Republic was then dominated by the left wing Popular Front, but despite their control had no overwhelming mandate for the radical changes they wished to implement. There were competitors on the right as well as the left. Some of the former, the fascistic Falange, responding to prior outrages, assassinated Jose Castillo, leader of the Assault Guards, the state leftist paramilitary police force. In response, the personal bodyguards of Idelecio Prieto, head of the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party, came to Sotelo’s home, kidnapped him, and murdered him in cold blood. He had had nothing to do with the death of Castillo and had never himself urged violence.

The date was July 13th, 1936.

The aftermath was war. The army, already alarmed at the leftist excesses, revolted. Coalescing under the authority of General Francisco Franco, the Nationalist Rebellion took up arms under the banner of the restoration of Spain’s traditional culture and political norms against the plague of radicalism that had infected it. It was a three-year bloodbath from which no one emerged with clean hands. In the end, the left was (temporarily) removed from public life for several generations, although they’ve sadly now returned.

El Caudillo

On our own July 13th, God spared us from devolving into such chaos. There are no risings, and the man the left wants dead still lives. Memes race across the internet rather than retaliatory bullets through the air. The vile and demonically evil wretches who hoped- and continue to hope- for Trump’s death are condemned by all decent people. Let us continue to do so. Mock them wherever you find them. Drive them from discourse with words. Pray for their miserable souls. And thank God that there is still the prospect of a peaceful redress for our legitimate grievances.