Talk:Movimiento Nacional

Proposal to merge with FET y de las JONS

TLDR: I propose to merge the article with FET y de las JONS, since "Movimiento Nacional" appears to be merely a second name of the Falange, as said in the current version of the lede, and the article itself appears to be redundant and containing little information on its subject.

The main problem of this article has always been that it never really explained what the "National Movement" was. The definition provided in the lede prior to my edits was "the governing institution of Spain". While very unclear, it also turned out to be not based on the source it cited, which described the definitions of the "National Movement" proposed by the Francoists themselves long after the "Movement" has been established and did not contained the definition given in the lede. In January, I read a little, and it the "Movimiento Nacional" appeared to be just a second name for the Falange (perhaps used more often that the original one), so I edited the definition in the lede into what it is now. No one has changed it, so I assume I was right that it was just a second name for the ruling party. This explains the major problems that this article has always had: half of the information, dedicated to the topic of the article, cites no sources at all and does not explain the difference between the Falange and the Movement (since there is none). The other half is the section "Francoist "families"" which is based on source material, but has no mentions of the "National Movement" - this section about the factions within the bureacracy would be more due in the articles on Francoist Spain / Francoism proper and on FET y de las JONS (since all the bureaucracy were nominal members of the Falange, as said in Paul Preston (2003). The Politics of Revenge: Fascism and the Military in 20th-century Spain. Routledge. p. 110. ISBN 1134811136. and F. L. Carsten (1982). The Rise of Fascism, Second Edition. University of California Press. p. 203.).

Since the article appears to be redundant, overlapping with FET y de las JONS and containing little info on its subject, I propose to merge it with FET y de las JONS. Opostylov (talk) 23:37, 25 February 2026 (UTC)

• Oppose. "Movimiento Nacional" is not a "second name of the Falange", and it was you who edited the article to look like in the current version ([1]), so it looks weird to claim "Movimiento Nacional" appears to be merely a second name of the Falange, as said in the current version of the lede, and the article itself appears to be redundant and containing little information on its subject. Well of course: you edited it to look like it appears now.

While the term "Movement" was frequently associated with the FET y de las JONS party, these two were not strictly the same, as the Movement encompassed other aspects and institutions of the Franco regime. There are multiple sources pointing to this differentiation between Falange and Movimiento. To point out a few examples:

• "Area Handbook for Spain, volume 179 (Eugene K. Keefe):
  • p. 233: "The National Movement is a coalition of the political families that actively supported the National cause during the civil war. These component parts have tended to keep distinct identities within the National Movement: Falangists, conservative Catholic groups, and monarchists. (...) Although the military establishment and the church were hostile to the Falange, both to some extent have had members active in the National Movement. All remain under its umbrella as pressure groups."
  • p. 234: "The Falange, reshaped by Franco during the civil war, was for some time the dominant element within the National Movement, but no one group has been allowed to monopolize access to power—that is, to Franco—nor has the movement's elite necessarily identified with the Falange.
  • p. 234-235: "Before it was subsumed into the National Movement—a gradual process—the Falange, had already become a catchall for Franco's political supporters outside the army (...) Franco did not join the Falange.
• "The Franco Regime, 1936–1975" (Stanley G. Payne):
  • p. 178: "(...) development of the FET had to be conducted in balance with the various factions behind the National Movement—the several "ideological families" of the new regime, as they would later be termed by commentators."
  • p. 179: "(...) it should not be forgotten that the official party, like the National Movement itself, was a conglomerate of forces."
• "Fighting For Franco. International Volunteers in Nationalist Spain During the Spanish Civil War" (Judith Keene):
  • p. 26: "The last strand within the National Movement, and with some different aspirations from all of the above, were the Falangists."
• "Franco’s Spain, 1939–75" (Encyclopedia Britannica):
  • Britannica: "Ultimately, the Falange lost power in the National Movement, the sole legal political organization; its attempts to create a Falangist one-party state were defeated in 1956, though tensions between the Falange and the conservative elements persisted."
• "La Asociación Católica Nacional de Propagandistas durante la fase central del régimen de Franco" (in Spanish) (Antonio Martín Puerta):
  • p. 307: "De hecho Falange nunca tuvo control sobre los ministerios esenciales, Ejército, Hacienda, o Gobernación, salvado para este último caso la presencia de Serrano Súñer desde 1938 hasta octubre de 1940. Incluso para muchos falangistas, llamar «nacionalsindicalismo» a un sistema en el que no había sino uno o dos ministros falangistas, salvo el titular de la Secretaría General del Movimiento –que ni siquiera controlaba más que una de las cuatro fuerzas originarias del Movimiento–, aparecía como absurdo";

One of the main points of confusion is that, because Franco's regime lasted for four decades, the relevance of FET y de las JONS varied over time (it gradually decreased in favour of other factions). From the late 1950s and the 1960s, mentions to the party itself had almost entirely disappeared from the legal scheme of the regime, and the term "Movement" was used to refer to the whole thing (including whatever elements remained from the core party itself). But the scope of the two articles is different, and the two should not be confused into being the same thing, nor should be portrayed as fully overlapping elements. As a result, I not only oppose the proposed merge, but I also oppose Opostylov's edits on 17 January 2026 that significantly altered the article's scope to make it look as fully overlapping with FET y de las JONS (and, ultimately, are being used as an attempt to justify this proposal). Impru20^talk 10:24, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

Comment: While it should not be assumed that both items were the same thing (neither one a strict continuation of the other), the ambiguous, tricky, fuzzy nature of the so-called National Movement, and in practical terms, perhaps also the limited source-based growth potential of the article of the National Movement as some kind of superstructure perhaps suggests that a redirect to a subsection of FET y de las JONS or Francoist Spain titled "National Movement" or "FET y de las JONS and National Movement" dealing with the subtleties could work too. After all, little of the current content is fully about the topic. The bit about the Francoist families could be here as well as it could be in Francoist Spain#Francoism. A recurring overarching problem related to this is that the article Francoist Spain is both a dumping ground for content on the period of Spanish history between 1939 and 1975, for the dictatorship as a political regime itself, and for the sketch of some kind of kind of purported coherent ideology ("Francoism"). Sadly but, needless to say, not unexpectedly, in addition to the topical awkwardness and some degree of poor original synthesis, it falls short in practically all of its aims.--Asqueladd (talk) 11:22, 26 February 2026 (UTC)