Ramiro Ledesma
Personal details
Born(1905-05-23)23 May 1905
Alfaraz de Sayago, Kingdom of Spain
Died29 October 1936(1936-10-29) (aged 31)
Aravaca, Spain
Political partyJONS (1931–1934)
FE de las JONS (1934–1935)
ProfessionPhilosopher, politician, writer, essayist, and journalist
Signature
Philosophy career
Notable work
Era20th-century philosophy
RegionWestern philosophy
Notable ideas
National syndicalism

Ramiro Ledesma Ramos (23 May 1905 – 29 October 1936) was a Spanish philosopher, politician, writer, essayist, and journalist, known as one of the pioneers in the introduction of Fascism in Spain.

Early life

Born in Alfaraz de Sayago (province of Zamora), he was raised in Torrefrades, where his father worked as school teacher.[1] After studying Arts and Sciences at the Central University of Madrid, where he was a disciple of José Ortega y Gasset, and contributing to La Gaceta Literaria, El Sol and Revista de Occidente,[2] Ledesma Ramos began studying the works of Martin Heidegger. He also wrote a novel for the youth, entitled El sello de la muerte ("The Seal of Death").

Attracted to both Benito Mussolini's Corporatism, and the developing Nazi movement of Adolf Hitler in Germany, he strove to overcome his "middle class roots," which he saw as an obstacle in reaching out to the revolutionary milieu of Spanish politics in the 1920s. In 1931, Ledesma Ramos began publishing the periodical La Conquista del Estado, named in tribute to Curzio Malaparte's Italian Fascist magazine La Conquista dello Stato—one of the first publications of the Spanish National-Syndicalism. It attempted to bridge the gap between nationalism and the anarcho-syndicalist of the dominant trade union, the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT), by revising syndicalism altogether.

His admiration for Nazism brought him to imitate Adolf Hitler's hairstyle.[3]

La Conquista del Estado and the Falange

In the very first issue of the La Conquista del Estado (The Conquest of the State), Ledesma published a syncretic program, which promoted statism, a political role for universities, a system of regionalisation, and a syndicalist structure for the national economy. The program's paper was in publication throughout the year, and, although a subject of debate in a CNT assembly, it did not have the intended impact.

He subsequently led his group into an October 1931 merger with Onésimo Redondo's Junta Castellana de Actuación Hispánica, creating the Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional-Sindicalista, and its magazine JONS. The group became the Falange Española de las Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional-Sindicalista (FE-JONS), after it fused with José Antonio Primo de Rivera's group in 1934; he personally designed the movement's badge, the yoke, and the arrows, while he also coined the mottos Arriba España and Una, Grande y Libre,both of which were keptin use in Francoist Spain.

Death and legacy

The group remained stable, despite the fact that Ledesma left over disagreements with Primo de Rivera. He formed the group La Patria Libre, which, displaying the same favorable attitude to the left-wing trade unions, stood in disagreement with the Falange.

The outbreak of the Spanish Civil War caught Ledesma in Republican Madrid, far from the forces of Francisco Franco. Imprisoned by the Popular Front government because of suspected espionage throughout the summer and early autumn of 1936, he was soon executed by the Republican militia.

Ledesma remained a key figure of Francoist propaganda.[4] Though he'd issued invitations to the Catholic Church to participate in the task of the "national revolution,"[5] Ramiro Ledesma was nonetheless viewed with suspicion by the Roman Catholic Church—which had even threatened to censor his works through the Index Librorum Prohibitorum.

Quotes

Works

  • Discurso a las juventudes de España (Speech to the Youth of Spain)
  • ¿Fascismo en España? (Fascism in Spain?)
  • La Conquista del Estado (The Conquest of the State)
  • Escritos filosóficos, &c. (Philosophical Writings, etc.)

See also

References

  1. ↑ Mainer, José-Carlos (2015). "Ramiro Ledesma Ramos: años de literatura (1924–1930)". Cahiers de civilisation espagnole contemporaine (2). doi:10.4000/ccec.5574. ISSN 1957-7761.
  2. ↑ Stanley G. Payne (1999). Fascism in Spain, 1923–1977. Madison, WI; London: University of Wisconsin Press. p. 56. ISBN 978-0-299-16564-2.
  3. ↑ Hugh Thomas (1976); Historia de la Guerra Civil Española. Círculo de Lectores, Barcelona. ISBN 84-226-0874-X p. 194
  4. ↑ Ferrán Gallego, (2005). Ramiro Ledesma Ramos y el fascismo español. Madrid: Editorial Síntesis. ISBN 9788497563130
  5. ↑ Ledesma, Ramiro (2009) [1938]. "Discurso A Las Juventudes de Espana" [Speech to the Spanish youth]. Scribd (in Spanish). Retrieved 23 December 2023. The enterprise of building a national doctrine, a plan of historical resurgence, a strategy of struggle, effective political institutions, etc., is something that can be carried out without appealing to the Catholic sign of the Spanish, and not only that, but the Catholics must and can collaborate in it, serve it, in the name of their national dimension, in the name of their patriotism, and not in the name of anything else.
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