Carlist Party - History

History

The current organisation of the Carlist Party originates from the renovation of the ideology of the illegal Traditionalist Communion which it gave in the 1950 and 1960 decades in a situation of illegality and prohibition under imposed Francoism to university and workers organisations of non-integrated Carlism in the only Francoist (Group of Traditionalist Students, AET, the university, Traditionalist Worker’s Movement, MOT, the worker) with the support of Prince Xavier of Bourbon-Parma, even though the name of the Carlist Party did not generalise until the end of the 1960 years.

Between 1970 and 1972 the Carlist Party organised Congresses of the Carlist People in Arbonne, in which it adopted a program for the ideological change of Carlism towards self-management socialism and the conversion of PC into a federal and democratic party of the masses, of class, which aspired to a socialist based monarchy in a pact between the dynasty and the people. The leader, Francesc Xavier, after suffering a serious automobile accident, conceded full powers to his son, Carlos Hugo, Duke of Parma, represented in Spain for José María de Zavala, to run the party and resigned on 20 April 1975.

According to party data, it contained around 25,000 members in 1977. In 1974 the Carlist Party went on to form an alliance, jointly with other forces of the opposition, from the Democratic Junta of Spain, until it ended in February 1975 to go on to form part of the Platform of Democratic Convergence which fused with the Junta in the Democratic Co-ordination in March 1976.

It was not able to participate in the first democratic elections of 1977 as it did not secure official recognition as a party on time. On the other hand, Prince Sixtus Henry of Bourbon-Parma, gave support for the residues of Francoism and with the collaboration of international far-right elements, he intended to organise an alternative Carlism to the Carlist Party and of the far-right, with strong support from New Force, meeting his followers to carry out terrorist aggression in the annual carline concentration of Montejurra in 1976, which he settled with the death of two carline partisans of Carlos Huge de Bourbon-Parma.

After supporting the 1978 Constitution, the Carlist Party suffered an internal crisis with a split into nationalist and left-wing parties. In the 1979 Spanish General Election, the PC obtained 50,552 votes (0.28%) and remained without parliamentary representation. The best results they obtained were in Navarre with 7.72% and the Basque Country with 0.65%. Because of the electoral infighting, its general secretary, Zavala, resigned, following the rest of the directors, between Carlos Carnicero and Josep Carles Clemente. In April of that year, it obtained 12,165 votes (4.79%) in the elections for the Parliament of Navarre, obtaining one representative (who did not attend the parliamentary sessions). In November 1979 Carlos Hugo renounced the presidency and in April 1980 he was lowered down in the party (even though he did not reject the dynastic rights in the Spanish crown the pretence from which he held since the abdication of his father in 1975), which happened to be testimonial in Spanish political life.

Mariano Zufia, general secretary of EKA- Basque Country Carlist Party, and Navarran member of parliament, assumed the general secretary of the PC. In 1986, he was one of the forces that gave origin to United Left, even though he walked out of the coalition in 1987. The PC left to attend the majority of the electoral processes for the mistake of funds and militancy. In 1989 it was one of the parties and signing associations of the Pact of Estella, and in 2005 it campaigned against the European Constitution.

It opposes both main political parties in Spain, the People's Party and the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party.