The Spanish Multitude in the 1920s

I return to ye olde blog with an idea that is not so original: that the Franco regime (1939-1975) had its origins in, and perhaps learned some of its lessons from, the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera (1923-1930). For in 1920's Spain, the repressive policies of the ruling elite (composed primarily of Spanish military and pro-monarchy sympathizers) responded to an emerging fear for the destructive potential of the "unruly" masses. The military "State of Exception" under which King Alfonso XIII legitimized Primo de Rivera's rule, instituted censorship as part of the "national solution" to suppress violence of anarchist-led terrorism and, through its unprecedented reforms of economic policy, to institute a rapid modernization of Spain by authoritarian rule. The Franco regime, years later, would take up a similar project, though more recognizably fascist in its ideology of National-Catholicism, and more notably, "conservative" in its implementation of modernizing reforms. Nevertheless, the social conditions that laid the groundwork for the rise of Spanish fascism seem to have their origins in this emergent "newness" of 1920's Spain: the mobilization, organization and instruction of the masses by a State governance that perceived the multitude with fear.

With much of rural Europe suffering economic hardship in the interwar period, industry in urban areas amassed a new proletariat workforce that would become quickly integrated into labor unions. Needless to say, the socialist, communist and anarchist tendencies of these sindicates (the UGT and CNT, for example), compounded with the Bolshevik revolution in recent memory, was a matter of primary concern for the State, in order to ensure the success of Primo's top-down "modernizing" project. For it was Primo de Rivera's view, shared by many of his advisors, that the masses ought to be ordered by instruction and discipline, less they threaten the stability of authoritarian rule. Toward this end, the regime endorsed the Unión Patriótica (UP), a "grass-roots" organization -complemented by a youth group and a womens' chapter (la sección femenina)- that sought to arm and militarize citizens in defense of the unity of the Spanish Nation. Those readers familiar with the history of the Franco regime will recognize the UP as a proto-fascist mobilization of Spanish citizens that would become full-fledged, at its most violent, in defense of the Spanish Nation during the Civil War (1936-1939).

Nevertheless, the Primo regime's desire to militarize Spanish citizens was motivated in part by control, borne out of fear: that this "new" multitude, amassing in urban centers with unprecedented numbers, should subscribe to the belief that the military State constituted –and thereby would redeem— the legitimacy of the Spanish Nation. What interests me here, in the scope of what the 1920s might have "looked like" in fledgling cosmopolitan centers, such as Madrid, is the emerging novelty of the city, its rhythm, its automotive speed, its bustling multitude. For in the amassing of the crowds, and through the Primo regime's attempts to exercize control over the masses, therein may be observed a "new" sense of time that has, as two sides of the same coin, the chaotic, heterogeneous pulse of the city and -in dialectic opposition- the homogeneous condensation of time for the services of the State to organize these crowds.

The monumental, national spectacles endorsed by mandate of the Primo regime -in an effort to demonstrate the unity of the Spanish Nation and the prowess of dictatorial rule- have as one of their residual effects the condensation of time and space for more efficient regulation of the “new” (and urban, proletariat) multitude. I have in mind one example (among many) of this spectacular monumentality at the service of the regime: the sports arena. The expansion of the stadium in the late 1920s was made possible by a rise in popular appeal for sporting events -most notably, soccer- as a "new" form of spectacle, with bullfighting attendances in decline since the 1910s, and with it, the common perception that sport was a leisure activity for the wealthy. But the construction of massive sports arenas and stadiums in the 1920s was due in large part to advances in modern technology. The loudspeaker, now amplified electrically, had a significant impact on the sheer numbers of people who could attend an event in a single, closed arena. (The Campo de Ciudad Lineal in Madrid jumped from a capacity of 8,000 sideline spectators in the late 1910s, to nearly 15,000 in the elevated bleachers of Estadio Chamartín in 1924). The loudspeaker, in this regard, facilitated a collapse of time and space, with a single voice projected across a vast terrain that could accomodate a greater number of people. A tool to instruct the masses, or to inform a crowd of happenings on the field, the sound of the amplified loudspeaker now promised to amass even greater numbers, who could respond to the “real time” voice of an announcer narrating the positions of players on the field, or to the precise movement of a weapon during a military exercise. Political rallies, sports, and mass military spectacles served as the Regime’s condoned spaces of crowd control and, likewise, as the creative loci of an emergent Spanish National narrative, where winnings by sports teams were equivalent with national victories; the homogeneous time of the sports arena became a nascent form of control, when employed to organize the multitude in celebration of Spain's cultural unity.

I should like to end by suggesting that these “new” spectacles not only appealed to popular tastes for their novelty, met by the Primo regime’s aspirations to “pacify” the masses; it seems to me that, generally, the sites of mass culture –-the stadium, the State-sponsored folkloric festival and the military exercize— were to become the condoned spaces wherein the fascist narrative of the Spanish Nation would be developed and written: a space that under the Franco Regime became synonymous with the homogeneous time of the National narratives of fascism, and consistent with the regimes' desire that the national citizenry might adhere to the regulatory processes of modern control and entertainment.