Vicente Risco - Second Republic

Second Republic

In the VI Nationalist Assembly Risco supported the idea of the transformation of the Irmandades da Fala into a political party. With Ramón Otero Pedraio he founded the Partido Nazonalista Republicán de Ourense to take part in the elections of 1931. After losing the election for the position of deputy, he began to lose influence in the Galicianist movement in favour of Otero Pedraio and Castelao.

On October 25, 1931, he led a group of Galicianists that published a Catholic manifest against what they considered the persecution of the Catholic Church by the Republican government.

In 1933 he published Nós, os inadaptados, in which he expounded his spiritual and cyclical conception of history.

In the Third Assembly of the PG (October 1935), he accepted temporary collaboration with the left-wing parties to avoid the dissolution of the PG. In January 1935 he published an article in the Heraldo de Galicia, where he called for the reconquest of Galicia by God. In confrontation with the leaders of his party he didn't attend the IV Assembly of the PG in Monforte de Lemos. It was during that assembly the accords with left-wing parties were ratified. In the extraordinary Assembly of Santiago in February 1936 the PG formed a coalition with the Popular Front. Risco united with the group of right-wing Galicianists, and he left the PG to direct Dereita Galeguista.

On June 13, 1936, when the campaign began to establish the Statute of Autonomy of Galicia, he supported the affirmative vote. When the Civil War began, he did nothing to help his Galicianist friends that were murdered or imprisoned. From 1937 he directed Misión, founded with Otero Pedraio. After 1938 he started to write articles for La Región where he supported Franco's band. As a result, old Galicianist friends regarded him as a traitor. This is symbolized in the phrase of Castelao in his book Sempre en Galiza: "...said Risco, when Risco was somebody".