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JAVIER MORENO LUZÓN regime of Admiral Horthy in Hungary, although in Spain the Constitution was suspended, only one official party was permitted and no parliamentary elections were held. Inevitably, the dictatorship led to national symbols such as the red and yellow flag, which up to then had been shared by the majority of Spaniards, becoming identified with an authoritarian monarchy, and so rejected by democratic forces. 1he fall of this dictatorship also signified the fall of the monarchy, and the proclamation in 1931 of a democratic republic. On the one hand this promoted the other variant of Spanish nationalism, civic and democratic, in its schools and national holidays, with its own symbols such as the old liberal hymn the Himno de Riego as a new national anthem, and a new national flag of three colours (in the French revolutionary style) incorporating the purple that was associated with Castile and so with the Castilian revolt against the Habsburgs in the 1520s.’° At the same time it brought a new opportunity for Catalan and Basque nationalists. The Catalan republicans succeeded in getting the Madrid parliament to approve a Statute of Autonomy for Catalonia, under which the Catalan government would take responsibility for education, economic affairs and public order. However, the Basque nationalists, more conservative and opposed to the secular republic, did not achieve their autonomy until the outbreak of the Civil War in 1936, in exchange for supporting the republicans against the military officers who had rebelled against constitutional legality. In the Civil War one could see demonstrated the depth of nationalization that had been achieved up to that point. For, as Xosé M. Nuiiez Seixas has underlined, both sides employed mobilizing propaganda that conceived the conflict as a war of independence against foreign invaders. The republicans saw themselves as heirs to the people in arms of 1808, risen up this time against fascism, since Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy both supported the army that had rebelled against the Republic. While the insurgents headed by General Franco considered themselves the heirs to imperial and Catholic Spain struggling against the enemies of religion, and above all international Communism, since the Soviet Union was the principal external source of support for the Republic. As we all know, Franco’s side, which called itself the ‘national’ side, won, and with this victory fierce repression was unleashed against leftists and Catalan and Basque nationalists, and the conservative, Catholic and militarist version of Spanish nationalism imposed from above." 0 Sandie Holguin: Creating Spaniards: Culture and National Identity in Republican Spain, Madison, Wisconsin University Press, 2002. Xosé M. Nujfiez Seixas: Nations in Arms against the Invader: On nationalist discourses during the Spanish Civil War, in Chris Ealham — Michael Richards (eds.): The Splintering of Spain: Cultural History and the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2005, 45-67. 11 + 74 +
