Traditionalist Communion in the context of "Falangism"

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.

The Falange Española de las Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional Sindicalista (transl. Spanish Phalanx of the Councils of the National Syndicalist Offensive; FE de las JONS) was a national syndicalist political party founded in Spain in 1934 as merger of the Falange Española and the Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional-Sindicalista. FE de las JONS, which became the main national syndicalist group during the Second Spanish Republic, ceased to exist as such when, during the Civil War, General Francisco Franco merged it with the Traditionalist Communion in April 1937 to form the similarly named Falange Española Tradicionalista y de las JONS (FET y de las JONS).

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.

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.