For all its reduced size—it never had more than five hundred members—the Asociación Católica Nacional de Propagandistas occupies an important position in the history of contemporary Spain. It was founded in 1908 by the Jesuit Angel Ayala as a means of establishing an elite that could penetrate the corridors of power to defend the church’s interests and instill its doctrines in an increasingly anticlerical society. It soon became an important center of Catholic thought, and it played a significant role in the organization of the Confederación Nacional Católica Agraria, the Confederación de Estudiantes Católicos, and the Partido Social Popular in the last years of the constitutional monarchy.
At first merely an influential pressure group, with the advent of Primo de Rivera’s dictatorship the ACNP moved to center stage. Not only was the general’s Unión Patriótica in large part the ACNP’s creation, but its members flocked to serve his administration and made a considerable contribution to his social policy. Meanwhile, much aided by the favorable atmosphere, the ACNP doubled in size and, between 1926 and 1928, completely reorganized and revivified the Spanish branch of Catholic Action. It is hardly surprising that the ACNP stood in the forefront of opposition to the republic, especially with regard to the creation of the CEDA. Although the ACNP officially opposed the use of violence, moreover, its propagandistas assisted in the preparation of the 1936 uprising, fought in its ranks, and collaborated enthusiastically with the nationalist regime. In a curious way, however, it lost much of its former influence, attracting some suspicion for its flirtation with parliamentarianism from 1933 to 1936. The period between 1939 and 1945 consequently witnessed a long but ultimately successful attempt at reinserción.
Such, then, is the basic content of this study by José Manuel Ordovás and Mercedes Montero. Exhaustively researched from the archives of the ACNP itself, it will probably remain the definitive guide to the association’s evolution and development. That being said, one cannot but have serious reservations about the tone of the work. The constant use of the term rojos to describe Franco’s opponents is insulting and anachronistic; the sustained effort to show that the ACNP consistently opposed the repression of the Civil War and advocated reconciliation thereafter is, to put it mildly, lacking in conviction. Lip service may indeed have been paid to the Christianity of which Franco was so devoid, but at last resort the ACNP supported him to the hilt. To paraphrase the words of one of its members, for all that it may have killed with love, it still killed. Ordovás and Montero therefore should take note that it is not the job of serious historians to indulge in apologetics.
