Dionisio Ridruejo. A fascist poet in the Spanish civil war

Abstract

The Spanish civil war faced two revolutions that were taking place in Europe. Two totalitarianisms that found an appropriate battlefield to settle the controversy between fascism and communism, in a country divided for social, political, and religious reasons.

In this initial conglomerate, the propaganda was carried out by the Falangists. and among them Dionisio Ridruejo stood out, who brought together in his person the hierarch, the activist and the writer, without a doubt, if one can speak of a fascist poetry during the war and the first years of Francoism, it is Ridruejo who leads it (anothers, are poets or fascists). However, Ridruejo soon abandoned these positions and evolved towards liberal democracy. Poetically towards the existentialist, intimate and perhaps social lyric.
This work covers this transition through the analysis of three books: Poesia en armas (1936-1939), and Poesia en armas (Cuadernos de la campaña de Rusia)). Both written at the same time, practically, and that embody the two periods of his work in the first three years after the war. Then, we shall have a look to both books, in order to find their deep differences: one in the line of a ordinary fascist poetry, and the second, an existentialism poetic work.