Falange Española de las JONS in the context of Nationalists (Spanish Civil War)

The Spanish Civil War (Spanish: guerra civil española) was fought from 1936 to 1939 between the Republicans and the Nationalists. Republicans were loyal to the left-leaning Popular Front government of the Second Spanish Republic and included socialists, anarchists, communists, and separatists. The opposing Nationalists who established the Spanish State were an alliance of fascist Falangists, monarchists, conservatives, and traditionalists supported by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy and led by a military junta among whom General Francisco Franco quickly achieved a preponderant role. Due to the international political climate at the time, the war was variously viewed as class struggle, a religious struggle, or a struggle between dictatorship and republican democracy, between revolution and counterrevolution, or between fascism and communism. The Nationalists won the war, which ended in early 1939, and ruled Spain until Franco's death in November 1975.

The war began after the partial failure of the coup d'état of July 1936 against the Popular Front government by a group of generals of the Spanish Republican Armed Forces. The Nationalist faction consisted of right-wing groups, including Christian traditionalist party CEDA, monarchists, including both the opposing Alfonsists and the religious conservative Carlists, and the Falange Española de las JONS, a fascist political party. However, rebelling units in almost all important cities did not gain control, leaving Spain militarily and politically divided. The rebellion was countered with the help of arming left-wing social movements and parties and formation of militias, what led to rapid socioeconomic and political transformation in the Republican zone, referred to as the Spanish Revolution. The Nationalist forces received munitions, soldiers, and air support from Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany while the Republican side received support from the Soviet Union and Mexico. Other countries, such as the United Kingdom, France, and the United States, continued to recognise the Republican government but followed an official policy of non-intervention. Despite this policy, tens of thousands of citizens from non-interventionist countries directly participated in the conflict, mostly in the pro-Republican International Brigades.

The Nationalist faction (Spanish: Bando nacional), also called the Rebel faction (Spanish: Bando sublevado) and Francoist faction (Spanish: Bando franquista), was a major faction in the Spanish Civil War of 1936 to 1939. It was composed of a variety of right-leaning political groups that supported the Spanish Coup of July 1936 against the Second Spanish Republic and Republican faction and sought to depose Manuel Azaña, including the Falange, the CEDA, and two rival monarchist claimants: the Alfonsist Renovación Española and the Carlist Traditionalist Communion. In 1937, all the groups were merged into the FET y de las JONS. After the death of the faction's early leaders, General Francisco Franco, one of the members of the 1936 coup, headed the Nationalists throughout most of the war, and emerged as the dictator of Spain until his death in 1975.

The term Nationalists or Nationals (nacionales) was coined by Joseph Goebbels following the visit of the clandestine Spanish delegation led by Captain Francisco Arranz requesting war materiel on 24 July 1936, in order to give a cloak of legitimacy to Nazi Germany's help to the Spanish rebel military. The leaders of the rebel faction, who had already been denominated as 'Crusaders' by Bishop of Salamanca Enrique Pla y Deniel – and also used the term Cruzada for their campaign – immediately took a liking to it.

Falangism (Spanish: Falangismo) was the political ideology of three political parties in Spain that were known as the Falange, namely first the Falange Española, the Falange Española de las Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional Sindicalista (FE de las JONS), and afterward the Falange Española Tradicionalista y de las Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional Sindicalista (FET y de las JONS). Falangism combined Spanish nationalism, authoritarianism, Catholic traditionalism, anti-capitalism, and anti-communism, along with a call for national syndicalism. Historian Stanley G. Payne, a scholar on fascism, considers the Falange to have been a fascist movement, though he also recognizes the nuances, faults, and controversies of calling Falangism a fascist movement. Another interpretation is that the Falange from 1937 onward during Franco's leadership was a compromise between radical fascism and authoritarian conservatism.

The FE de las JONS merged with the Traditionalist Communion and several other parties in 1937 following the Unification Decree of Francisco Franco, to form FET y de las JONS. This new Falange was meant to incorporate all Nationalist political factions and became the sole political party of Francoist Spain. The merger was opposed by some of the original Falangists, such as Manuel Hedilla.

The Unification Decree was a political measure adopted by Francisco Franco in his capacity of Head of State of Nationalist Spain on April 19, 1937. The decree merged two existing political groupings, the Falangists and the Carlists, into a new party - the Falange Española Tradicionalista y de las Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional Sindicalista (FET y de las JONS). As all other parties were declared dissolved at the same time, the FET became the only legal party in Nationalist Spain. It was defined in the decree as a link between state and society and was intended to form the basis for an eventual totalitarian regime. The head of state – Franco himself – was proclaimed party leader, to be assisted by the Junta Política and Consejo Nacional. A set of decrees which followed shortly after appointed members to the new executive.

The merger was imposed upon the Falange Española de las JONS and the Carlist Traditionalist Communion. Leaders of both parties – Manuel Hedilla of the Falange and Manuel Fal Conde of the Carlists – were outmaneuvered by Franco, who divided, deceived, and misled them and finally left them no option but to comply with unification on his own terms, and they along with other political opponents were subsequently marginalized. The Unification Decree ensured Franco's total political dominance and secured at least a formal political unity within the Nationalist zone, albeit not one of genuine affection. It in reality represented the absorption of Carlist offshoots into a subsequently domesticated and subordinated Falange. Most scholars consider unification to have been a stepping stone towards a semi-fascist state. This augmented Falange served as Spain's sole legal party for the next 38 years, becoming one of the instrumental pillars of Franco's regime.

The Falange Española Tradicionalista y de las Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional Sindicalista (lit. 'Traditionalist Spanish Phalanx of the Councils of the National Syndicalist Offensive'; FET y de las JONS), frequently shortened to just "FET", was the sole legal party of the Francoist regime in Spain. It was created by General Francisco Franco in 1937 as a merger of the National Syndicalist Falange Española de las JONS (FE de las JONS) with the monarchist neo-absolutist and integralist Catholic Traditionalist Communion belonging to the Carlist movement. In addition to the resemblance of names, the party formally retained most of the platform of FE de las JONS (26 out of 27 points) and a similar inner structure.

José Antonio Primo de Rivera y Sáenz de Heredia, 1st Duke of Primo de Rivera, 3rd Marquis of Estella GE (24 April 1903 – 20 November 1936), often referred to simply as José Antonio, was a Spanish national syndicalist politician who founded the Falange Española ("Spanish Phalanx"), later Falange Española de las JONS.

José Antonio was the eldest son of General Miguel Primo de Rivera (2nd Marquess of Estella), who governed Spain as dictator from 1923 to 1930. He worked as a lawyer from 1927 to 1933 before entering politics through the National Monarchist Union, an enterprise he initially engaged in because of his vows to defend his recently deceased father's memory. After becoming disillusioned with the traditionalist monarchist policies, he founded the short lived Movimiento Español Sindicalista alongside Julio Ruiz de Alda. Soon after he founded Falange Española in October 1933, shortly before running as a candidate in the 1933 general election, in which he won a seat in the Congress of Deputies of the Second Spanish Republic. He assumed the role of messianic leader and charged himself with the task of saving Spain in founding a national syndicalist party, but he encountered difficulties widening his support base during his entire political life.

Falange Española (FE) was a Spanish fascist and national syndicalist political organization active from 1933 to 1934. Its name translates to "Spanish Phalanx." Founded on October 29, 1933 by Alfonso García Valdecasas, Julio Ruiz de Alda, and José Antonio Primo de Rivera, the eldest son of the deceased dictator Miguel Primo de Rivera. On February 15, 1934, FE merged with the Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional-Sindicalista (JONS), founded by Onésimo Redondo and Ramiro Ledesma Ramos, among others. The new party was called Falange Española de las JONS (FE de las JONS).

Following the success of Italian fascism with Benito Mussolini's March on Rome in 1922, various attempts to create a fascist organization in Spain along Italian lines failed. Organizations like the Comunión Tradicionalist, Acción Popular, and Renovación Españoa already existed but those organizations were never fascist and only minor fractions in those organizations would be. In those years, the Spanish fascists and the most reactionary financial and business sectors felt the need for a fascist party, which had proven to be an effective check on the development of left-wing mass movements in Europe. With the establishment of the Second Republic and the initiation of the democratization of Spain, the first attempts crystallized in the Falange Española, promoted by these reactionary sectors.

Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional-Sindicalista (lit. 'Councils of National-Syndicalist Offensive', JONS) was a nationalist and fascist movement in 1930s Spain. In 1934, it merged with the Falange Española into the Falange Española de las JONS.