Franco’s Spain and Italy’s Christian Democracy: The Anti-Francoism of the Italian Magazine Politica (1955–1968)

Abstract

This paper sets out to study the transnational relations between progressive sectors of the Italian and Spanish Catholic worlds. The aim is to focus on various groups of Italian Catholics who took action against the Spanish dictatorship between 1955 and 1968. To this end, the paper examines Politica, a magazine of the Christian Democratic left and an important publication that criticised both Spanish and Italian Catholicism for appeasing the Francoist dictatorship. The magazine served as the mouthpiece of one of the most dynamic sectors among the new generations of Christians committed to the renewal of Italian politics. Moreover, this current of Christian Democracy was bolstered by the local government activities of Giorgio La Pira, the emblematic mayor of Florence between 1951 and 1964, who embodied a political praxis of staunch commitment to the underclasses and in favour of peace in the world.

1. Introduction

The present study analyses the transnational relations between Spanish anti-Francoism and a sector of Italian Christian Democracy, as well as the denunciation of Franco’s dictatorship in the Italian press. In recent years, the historiography has given special attention to studying the collaborations between Spanish communists and their Italian counterparts (Múñoz Soro and Treglia 2017; Bottai 2019; Balsamini and Sacchetti 2019; Santacana 2022). The aim of the present text, however, is to focus on a less studied sector, namely the various groups of Italian Catholics who took active steps against the Spanish dictatorship over the years. We will focus especially on the left-wing Christian Democratic current of “La Base” and its magazine Politica. Politica is important not only because of its relevance as a publication that criticised both Spanish and Italian Catholicism for appeasing the Francoist dictatorship, but also because it represented one of the most dynamic sectors among the new generations of Christians committed to the renewal of Italian politics. As noted above, Politica came into being as the mouthpiece of a particular political current of Christian Democracy, but it also benefited from the support of Giorgio La Pira, the emblematic mayor of Florence between 1951 and 1964. La Pira was one of the most prominent exponents of left-wing Social Christianity and he advocated for an international policy of détente and peaceful coexistence. In the context of international politics, the Christian Democrats are well known to have always defended the Atlantic option in the Cold War, but they also pursued a policy of active participation in the process of European integration led by France and the Federal Republic of Germany and, beginning in the 1950s, put forward proposals on the processes of decolonisation that soon marked the post-war period (Varsori and Zaccaria 2018; Formigoni 2016b; Acanfora 2013).

More specifically, Italy’s Christian Democracy made policy proposals that aimed to give concrete form to an idea of autonomy in international politics that not only adhered to the Christian values of the party’s rank and file but also marked out the party’s independence from the political decisions of the United States. In this respect, the Iberian Peninsula offers an important case because it shows the mixed feelings that were aroused by the National Catholic dictatorship of General Franco among the Italian Catholic world. The terrible civil war with its anti-clerical violence and religious persecution left a heavy weight of hatred and bitterness in its wake. For instance, most Spanish bishops had not hesitated in backing the rebel soldiers against the Second Spanish Republic and even went so far as to herald the war as a “crusade”. Indeed, the leaders of the military uprising had seized on the opportunity to brandish the “crusader” label systematically at home and abroad to rally support for their cause. For nearly twenty years afterwards, both in the Vatican and among a broad swath of the Catholic world, the idea persisted that Franco’s “crusade” had been necessary to save the country from communism and keep it from turning into a dictatorship on Soviet lines. Alongside this opinion, there were also those who, like Don Luigi Sturzo, founder of Christian Democracy, in 1936 had already denounced the Church as bearing some responsibility for the tragedy of the civil war. Sturzo had spoken out against those Catholics who justified the military rebels and fascism as lesser evils in the face of communism. In addition, Sturzo had tried to promote international mediation to end the war (Botti 2019). Consistent with these approaches, a debate arose at the heart of Italian Catholicism at the end of the Second World War over the possibility of lending support for the creation of a Spanish Christian Democracy that could serve as a vehicle of transition from dictatorship to democracy. Viewpoints, however, were divided over the form of government that was needed to restore democracy to Spain: the Vatican threw its support behind a constitutional monarchy led by the Infante Juan, Count of Barcelona and son of Alfonso XIII, while many in the Christian Democratic Party preferred to restore the legitimate institutions of the republic. As late as 1943, Pope Pius XII was clearly in the camp of General Franco, but even so, caution at the close of the Second World War precipitated a cooling in relations between the Vatican and the Francoist regime (Sergio 2021).

Rather than driving a process of political change, the end of the Second World War ushered in the replacement of many political figures committed more deeply to National Socialism and Fascism by a sizeable number of Catholics who took up leadership positions in the Spanish state (Tusell 1984; Montero and Louzao 2015, 2016). This development hindered the renewal of Spanish Catholicism and prevented its autonomy from the highest echelons of the Francoist regime. Indeed, it put serious dampers on the consolidation of a Spanish Christian Democracy, which was forced to stand by powerless amid the easing of international relations between the dictatorship and the Vatican that ultimately resulted in the Concordat of 1953. The Church in Spain was granted a number of new privileges on top of the ones that it had already gained through the agreements of 1941: for example, the teaching of Catholic religion was made mandatory at all levels of education from schools to universities, and the clergy were given an exemption from government taxation. In return, the Francoist regime’s institutions received international legitimacy, thanks in part to the new dynamics of the Cold War and the needs of NATO leadership.

Nevertheless, cooperation between the Francoist regime and successive Christian Democratic governments in Italy never went beyond the military agreements of the Cold War. Italian public opinion as well as the parties of the left, the liberal centre and the republicans remained wary of contact with Francoist officials (Branciforte 2012, 2013, 2016).

2. Politica and the Role of Giorgio La Pira in Pursuit of Renewal

One of the peculiarities of Christian Democracy was that it drew on a number of different political currents: from the 1950s onwards, the majority current was the “Democratic Initiative”, led by Amintore Fanfani (1908–1999) and including Aldo Moro (1916–1978) and Benigno Zaccagnini (1912–1989), among others. This sector proposed broadening the foundations of Christian Democratic governments by opening them up to the Italian socialists, but it ultimately collapsed in 1959, giving way to a more moderate sector of the same political current, the Dorothean line (from the name of the convent of Santa Dorotea in Rome where the movement was created). The Dorothean line’s most notable exponents were Antonio Segni (1891–1972) and Mariano Rumor (1915–1990), and it drew on the external support of Aldo Moro. Members of this tendency argued that it was necessary to slow down the overture to the socialists in order not to frighten the economic world but rather to promote a gradual reformist policy (Formigoni 2016a).

On the other hand, the most conservative sector of the Christian Democrats was made up of the centrist currents of Giulio Andreotti’s (1919–2013) “La Primavera” and the more right-wing “Centrismo Popolare” of Mario Scelba (1901–1991). Finally, the most left-wing current of the Christian Democrats was “La Base”, founded by Giovanni Marcora (1922–1983) and including men like Ciriaco de Mita (1928–2022) and Nicola Pistelli (1929–1964), with the support of the all-powerful Enrico Mattei, president of ENI (the “Ente Nazionale Idrocarburi” or “National Hydrocarbons Board”) (Galli 2022; Mattesini 2012; Capperucci 2010). The experience of the magazine Politica, under the above-mentioned Nicola Pistelli as its first editor-in-chief, should be noted in the same vein. Politica came into being in response to the challenge of broadening the cultural, political and organisational horizons of Christian Democracy. On more than one occasion, Italian historiography has stressed the role of such grassroots Catholic periodicals in the renewal and transformation of Italian Catholicism in order to capture a moment of communication, back-and-forth and deeper delving into a whole host of topics and issues (Cuminetti 1983; Cerrato 1999; Saresella 2005).

Against this backdrop, Politica stands out as one of the few Christian Democratic mouthpieces to debate topics such as the independence of the state from church interference or the need for dialogue with the socialist world, seizing on the necessity of interpreting the aspirations of the subaltern classes from a Christian viewpoint that took into account the justness of their material demands and grievances (Saresella 2005). From the internal viewpoint of Italian Christian Democracy, the magazine also needed to educate and train the party’s political cadres: this was the proposition advanced by Pistelli as editor-in-chief when he said that Politica sought to create public opinion among Catholic intellectuals, redirecting their attention from questions of faith towards issues of political debate (Bagnato 2020). In this context, international politics took on a crucial aspect because it reflected the idea—to put it in the words of one of the magazine’s directors, Remo Giannelli—of making Italian politics less provincial and broadening its overly narrow focus on internal affairs. In short, international politics had to be the new priority. As the group of young people running the magazine found out, however, it was necessary to muster an enormous strength of will to achieve such an objective (Cattini 2022). Pistelli proposed that the magazine reach out to the entirety of Christian Democracy to put across the need to work on three key pillars of foreign policy: first, giving staunch support to the North Atlantic alliance while also working towards peaceful coexistence with the communist bloc; second, making preferential overtures to the old and new states of the Mediterranean while giving greater favour to the countries of North Africa and the Middle East; and third, engaging in open contact with the peoples of Latin America where there were many communities of Italian emigrants (Bagnato 2020, p. 124).

In this sense, Catholic Spain repeatedly came into the crosshairs of the magazine, which entered into contact with a host of leaders in the Spanish Catholic world and with representatives of Christian-inspired nationalist movements in the Basque Country and Catalonia.

Two of the most active pundits on Spanish topics in the pages of Politica were Remo Giannelli, who was also an active correspondent of Cuadernos para el Diálogo, a leading anti-Francoist magazine published in Madrid, and Massimo Olmi, who also worked for Italian television and played a major role in news broadcasting. Both men were notable for their reporting on the reality in Spain and their direct contacts on the ground (Cattini 2023). On the other hand, a reading of the magazine and the impact of the controversies that enlivened its pages help to grasp a recurring issue on the Italian Christian Democratic left, namely that a vast swath of the Italian Catholic world looked on Francoist Spain with complicity. Far from being viewed as an execrable model, the Francoist regime aroused sympathies among members of Italy’s clergy and conservatives in the Church. The so-called “Roman party”, which had an important number of followers within the Vatican, had been a defender of General Franco’s regime and remained influential not only in the halls of the Vatican but also in the halls of Christian Democratic power (Riccardi 1983). This is why the activity of Politica was so important in denouncing the Francoist dictatorship.

The editors of the Florentine magazine put across a highly negative image of the dictatorship, arguing that its Christianity was only a façade and that it bore responsibility for the de-Christianisation of Spanish society because of its distance and detachment from the message of the Gospels. By contrast, the Christian Democratic left was already anticipating what would become major issues of the Second Vatican Council, and it would eventually come to defend the council’s resolutions as a tool for global Catholicism and the solution to the problems that beset humanity.

Nor can the actions of the magazine be separated from the figure of Giorgio La Pira. La Pira was a Christian Democrat politician of notable leadership ability, who challenged the direction of his own party and represented an adversary regarded as fearsome among socialists and communists alike because of the social policies that he pursued in the Florence mayor’s office as well as his international activities in support of peace in the Mediterranean and in the wider world (Spinoso and Turrini 2022; De Giuseppe 2018, 2022). La Pira had been one of the leading proponents of Christian Democracy since the Italian constituent assembly of 1946, where he was one of the delegates tasked with drafting the country’s new constitution, and he was a key piece in the Social Christianity movement led by Giuseppe Dossetti. Shortly after the 1946 assembly, he went on to serve as undersecretary in the Ministry of Labour (1948–1950), which was led at the time by Amintore Fanfani, a friend of La Pira and another leading proponent of the Christian Democratic left. However, the most distinguished part of La Pira’s illustrious career is doubtless his long and nearly unbroken stint as mayor of Florence (1951–1964). At the time, he was especially notable for his staunch commitment to the underclasses of the Tuscan capital, promoting public housing projects and defending jobs in companies threatened with closure and/or encouraging their restructuring so as to be able to carry on offering employment to large families. These actions raised his profile as one of the foremost proponents of Social Christianity in Italy. At the same time, his ecumenical vocation and his pursuit of peace in the war-torn region of the Mediterranean led him to organise five “conferences for peace and Christian civilisation”, embark on agreements with mayors of capitals around the world, and host four “Mediterranean colloquies”, all in the period from 1951 to 1964. It was La Pira’s obsession to foster religious tolerance and thereby bring lasting peace to the Mediterranean. His deep piety impelled him to seek dialogue among the world’s three great monotheistic religions (Islam, Judaism and Christianity). The next phase in La Pira’s career would come in the 1960s, when he expanded the scope of his efforts and sought to become a mediator in the peaceful resolution of major international conflicts, as can be seen from his thwarted role in the Hanoi meetings with Ho Chi Minh in pursuit of peace in Vietnam, although his efforts in this case went unheeded by the United States. La Pira’s diplomatic undertakings went hand in hand with a persistent idea that cities could become an alternative power to the great nation-states and thus democratise international relations and foster a culture of peace and coexistence; indeed, his endeavours ultimately led him to serve as leader of the United Towns Organisation (Fédération Mondiale des Villes Jumelées, FMVJ) between 1967 and 1974 (De Giuseppe 2022).

3. The Christian Democratic Left at Politica and Its Exposure of Francoist Spain (1955–1960)

The Christian Democratic left of Giorgio La Pira and especially the magazine Politica took great interest in key debates of foreign policy, as noted above. During the first five years of the periodical’s existence, its top areas of focus revolved around the construction of the European Economic Community, symbolised by the historic accords signed in Rome in 1957, and the evolution of the politics of the Federal Republic of Germany and the French Republic, which were both marked by strife from colonial wars. Prominent among another order of things were the many controversies bound up with the Cold War and the denunciation of all dictatorships. Against this backdrop, the Francoist dictatorship drew repeated criticism from Politica as a form of anti-democratic regime, much as an article appearing in September 1955 condemned the Perón dictatorship in Argentina and dubbed Perón himself as “a student of the Fascist school” for clinging onto power with a blend of “Nazism and Fascism, especially in their theatrical and histrionic aspects, adding in an extra dose of Francoism”.1 On 1 December 1955, an article written by Antonio Jerkov criticised a meeting held the previous summer at the Escorial Palace near Madrid. Participants at the event included not only defenders of the Francoist and Portuguese dictatorships but also Catholic conservatives from elsewhere in Europe. Jerkov highlighted that the gathering’s aim had been to normalise the dictatorships of the Iberian Peninsula in the context of the Cold War. He bemoaned the presence of European democrats and recalled that the USSR had long had a commercial and economic treaty with the Francoist regime. He also went so far as to hypothesise a degree of tolerance and even a possible recognition of the Francoist regime by the Soviets leading to the acceptance of the former in the international context of the period.2

In the years that followed, international priorities shifted. For example, any condemnation of Francoism in Politica became generic, as did any criticism voiced in response to the authoritarian backsliding and presidentialism of De Gaulle in France. Against this backdrop, the journalist Gianfranco Vistosi put the question: “How can we in the democratic West fight the communists if, after Franco’s Spain and Salazar’s Portugal, even France falls into the hands of an autocrat?”3 Even so, the politics and Catholicism of De Gaulle aroused heterogeneous and even opposing opinions across the world of Christian Democracy (Argenio 2013).

The magazine Politica now trained its focus on the crisis of European imperialisms, specifically the empires of France and Britain in Africa and the Middle East. Indeed, it was a moment in history that offered an opportunity for reflection on Italy’s own aims and intentions in the Mediterranean. In this regard, it is crucial not to forget the importance of the pursuit of peace in the region that led Giorgio La Pira to conceive of the above-mentioned conferences in the Tuscan capital in 1958, 1960, 1961 and 1964 (Spinoso and Turrini 2022; Giovannoni 2014). From the very first of his conferences in Florence, the milieu surrounding La Pira called for the attendance of Catholic intellectuals from all over the heterogeneous world of non-communist anti-Francoism (Cattini 2021).

From 1959 onwards, the Spanish case took on heightened importance, becoming an issue of current interest and reflection in the pages of Politica. The new pontificate of John XXIII marked a key turning point in the regeneration and renewal of Catholicism worldwide. An article in Politica titled “The Holy Alliance” by Gerardo Bianco set out an early in-depth analysis of the Iberian dictatorships, noting the first changes among the Spanish and Portuguese clergy in their attitudes towards the respective regimes. Bianco hoped that the clergy in both countries would return to “a more strictly religious function, without becoming excessively committed to the Fascist-tending inclinations of political leaders, who are losing consensus among the populations”. Bianco took the view that the Vatican still lacked forthright examples of repudiation or changing conduct towards Franco, but he argued that the trip of Cardinal Eugenio Tisserant to the Iberian Peninsula to inaugurate the altar of the Benedictine convent of Montserrat in late April 1959 clearly pointed towards a process of mounting contempt. Indeed, a few weeks earlier, the basilica in the Valley of the Fallen had opened on 1 April 1959 and, despite Franco’s requests, the Roman Curia had decided not to send any high-level representatives. By contrast, the arrival of Cardinal Tisserant in Montserrat marked a gesture of support for Abbot Escarré in opposition to the civil governor of Barcelona, General Felipe Acedo. Lastly, Gerardo Bianco stressed that Franco still enjoyed support in some sectors of the Vatican that viewed the Spanish dictator as a bulwark against communism, but that these same backers of Franco were isolated now in the new pontificate of John XXIII, which sided openly with the peoples of the world in their struggles for freedom and stood against regimes that perpetuated a dictatorship in opposition to the working classes. Bianco’s piece concluded with a warning that Italian politicians could not permit Francoist Spain to join NATO, because it was a regime “that our conscience as democrats not only repudiates, but also obliges us resolutely to fight against”.4

The direction of Politica could not have been clearer. Indeed, Luigi Gori in the same issue responded to the words of the Sicilian Cardinal Ruffini, who had called on the faithful to follow the Christian example of the Francoist dictatorship. Gori’s angry reaction went as follows:

[…] it is a cause for bitterness and sorrow, after forty years of turbulent historical events that have demonstrated how Fascist dictatorships are inimical to democratic and communist regimes alike, to see the Spanish experience recommended to the public for their esteem, when it is no different from the rest of that political order that tyrannised Europe until May 1945.

5

In his article, Gori recalled Franco’s responsibility in the terrible Spanish Civil War, the dictatorship of the moneyed classes and the massacres of republicans by Francoist troops, both in war and in peacetime. Gori also raised the slaughters carried out by communist regimes in the name of Marxist doctrine and noted with macabre irony that it was not possible to compare the two cases because those murdered by Franco were doubtless comforted to see the crucifix omnipresent in their courtrooms.

In the subsequent month of October 1959, Politica published a lengthy piece by Francisco Javier de Landaburu, a leading member of the Basque Nationalist Party. Landaburu was responsible for his party’s foreign policy and took an active part in international networks of European Christian Democrats after the Second World War, growing particularly close to Italian Christian Democracy (Arrieta Alberdi 2021, p. 391 ff.). In his article, Landaburu laid out the various ways that Christian Democratic thinking had spread throughout the Second Spanish Republic, and he argued that only a portion of the membership of the conservative party called the Confederación Española de Derechas Autónomas (CEDA) could be regarded as Christian Democrats, whereas he stressed that the Basque nationalists and the Democratic Union of Catalonia were the true Christian Democratic parties of the period. Landaburu emphasised that the Spanish Civil War had led CEDA to defend the military uprising against the Second Spanish Republic, while both the Basque and the Catalan nationalist parties had defended legitimate republican institutions. He also underscored the continuity among the Christian Democratic groups of the left and the Basque Nationalist Party that carried on their resistance after the war was lost. Bringing his analysis up to the present moment, Landaburu noted that there were Catholic sectors in the regime, particularly those linked to leading figures such as Martín Artajo and Joaquín Ruiz Giménez, who wanted to distance themselves from the dictatorship and now called themselves Christian Democrats. However, Landaburu distrusted their trajectory and recalled that there were newly formed groups of young Christians who were the true hope of the anti-Francoist democratic struggle that needed to be unleashed across the length and breadth of the Spanish state.6

Some months later, Spain was once again a subject in the news, thanks to Remo Giannelli. Over the years, Giannelli had become one of the most active, knowledgeable experts on Iberia and took a very active part in networks of solidarity that gave support to Christian anti-Francoism in Spain (Cattini 2022, p. 209). On 1 June 1960, Giannelli published a lengthy article on the history of Spain, which led off with some clichés about modern history, Spain’s New World empire and its immense riches. Giannelli, who had himself been a student of Oreste Macrí at the University of Florence, summarised the history leading up the Spanish Civil War and concluded that it had managed to destroy peaceful coexistence among the peoples of Spain right down to the present moment. Giannelli also showed that the war had been characterised by crimes on both sides, but rejected the notion that Franco had led a Catholic “crusade” in response to the murders committed by republicans, emphasising that anyone who defended the notion was simply parroting Fascist propaganda. The article invited its audience to read Georges Bernanos and his work titled Les Grands Cimetières sous la Lune (published in English at the time under the title “A Diary of My Times”), which was a Catholic denunciation of Francoist repression. The same journalist noted that the French at the end of the Second World War had begun to reflect on their errors in relation to Spain when it had still been a democracy, but that the Italians had not yet begun to consider their own mistakes.

Moving on to an analysis of his present day, Giannelli wrote of the growing weight of Opus Dei, which he presented as an intransigent, reactionary religious and political organisation. Giannelli made it clear that power in Spain remained firmly in the hands of Franco, and he predicted that only Franco’s death would bring the dictatorship to an end and make way for the monarchical option in the figure of the Infante Juan, Count of Barcelona or his son Juan Carlos. Lastly, the article summarised the opposition to the dictatorship, warning that the hard life of the regime’s opponents in the underground did not make it easy for democratic forces to regroup. In addition, he cast blame on Spanish individualism for creating too many different factions that did not collaborate with one another in spite of their ideological kinship, because they were mutually distrustful. The groups introduced to Italian readers in Giannelli’s article included: a faction that had left the Falange and operated under the leadership of Dionisio Ridruejo; a faction that had left CEDA and promoted the Christian Democratic Left, which was being steered by Manuel Jiménez Fernández; another, more conservative faction close to former Francoist minister Martín Artajo; and in Catalonia, the former Democratic Union of Catalonia and its breakaway faction the Christian Democratic Party of Catalonia. In addition, Giannelli’s article mentioned the Popular Democratic Association, which grouped together Catholics and secularists. Also still in existence was the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE), which was notable for its anti-communism and for the sympathy of its leaders towards American trade unions. On the revolutionary side, the Italian journalist noted the Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia, a branch of the Communist Party of Spain, though he also pointed out that the regional branch pursued a policy of respect toward the Church and had regionalist tendencies. Giannelli himself was wary of the communists, whose spirit of discipline and self-sacrifice afforded them significant room for expansion, especially among younger people. Lastly, he pointed out that the anarchists no longer proselytised among the younger generations, and concluded by stressing the disunity among Spain’s Catholics.7

Gianelli’s article garnered attention for a whole host of reasons and launched a series of controversies that stretched beyond the borders of Italy. The position adopted by Politica represented a minority voice of public opinion among Italian Catholics, especially among the priesthood and much of the Vatican, despite the influence of the papacy of Pope John XXIII and the Second Vatican Council, which had brought in so many profound changes among the sectors in question. Nevertheless, it should be noted that a wide range of Catholic youth publications were perfectly in tune with the cultural horizon of Politica, which would come to play an influential role in the formation of new generations of Catholic activists (Saresella 2005). It is also important to note that the summer of 1960 in Italy was characterised by large-scale, violent protests against the Christian Democratic government of Fernando Tambroni, which had come about only with great difficulty between March and April 1960 thanks to the votes of the neo-Fascists in the Movimento Sociale Italiano. The group on the Christian Democratic left, which had championed the candidacy of Amintore Fanfani, was deeply critical of the Tambroni government’s reliance on the votes of neo-Fascists for the first time. Fanfani wrote in his personal journal that, on 29 April 1960, Nicola Pistelli, editor-in-chief of Politica, had come to tell him that 36 sections of Christian Democrats in Florence had refused to renew their party membership. Fanfani also noted down that the new government was viewed in a bad light by the Christian Democratic left in a great many Italian locales (Fanfani 2012, p. 83). A wave of protests in July, which resulted in deaths in Genoa, Reggio Emilia and Catania, ultimately forced Tambroni to step down and opened the way for a return of Fanfani to the head of the government (Formigoni 2016b).

Politica stood in the frontline, witnessing the events at first hand, and drew repeated accusations from the Catholic right, which saw them as “the enemies within” and regarded them as much more dangerous for breaking up Catholic unity in the present circumstances. In much the same way, the Catholic right also took Politica to task for its international positions, particularly its stance against the Francoist regime. This is why it can be said that the magazine carved out a central place in the concerns of Spanish diplomacy, because it was regarded as intolerable that any Italian Catholics might challenge the interpretation of the Spanish Civil War as a crusade or would deign to criticise the policies of General Franco’s National Catholic regime. Indeed, Politica itself reported on the ensuing controversies, publishing a letter from the rector of the Spanish College in Rome, Gérman Martil, who sent his complaints to Nicola Pistelli, the magazine’s editor-in-chief, in response to the above-mentioned article by Remo Giannelli, arguing that the piece had failed to take into account the murder of thousands of priests by Spanish revolutionaries. Nicola Pistelli responded directly to Rector Martil, stating that he deplored the murder of any clergy in Spain at the hands of republicans. On the other hand, he also stressed the importance of asking why the murders had happened in the first place and why the Spanish church lent its support to the most affluent people in society while the members of the proletariat were reduced to lives of squalor.8

In the months that followed, the magazine drew fire from pro-Francoist sectors in Italy, including an article in the Palestra del Clero, a reactionary periodical published in Rovigo. The arguments of the article in question revolved around the Christian martyrs created during the “crusade” of the Spanish Civil War, the benevolence of the Franco regime, and the profound transformation of the Spanish people.9 In the city of Florence, Cardinal Florit had issued a reprimand against the arguments of Giannelli and demanded that the latter stop writing about Spanish history and current events (Cattini 2021, p. 12).

The nature of the debate spread beyond the borders of Italy for contrasting reasons: the social democratic periodical La Parola del Popolo, printed in Chicago, published a lengthy summary of the article by Remo Giannelli under the title, in Italian, of “La Spagna franchista vista da un cattolico italiano” (“Francoist Spain viewed by an Italian Catholic”). The commentary of the US periodical was clear: “The wealth of the collected data and the objectivity of the information” have led to “a panoramic synthesis of great value, which goes up another notch in value when one learns that the article’s writer is Catholic”.10

It is also possible to add Miguel Sánchez-Mazas Ferlosio, a young anti-Francoist professor who was forced into exile in Geneva because of the protests that occurred in 1956 at Complutense University of Madrid and who sought to read the Giannelli article, which was sent to him by the magazine with a handwritten note that went as follows: “Politica represents the thinking of the Christian Democratic left and we have encountered some objections on the Catholic right because of our treatment of the war in Spain and the current Francoist regime”.11

On the other hand, the Falangist weekly publication El Español reported on the same article a few months later, but provided a Spanish translation of the accusations levelled against Remo Giannelli by the reactionary Italian periodical Palestra del Clero. Together with stressing the fact that “the Christian Democratic left is a grave danger for Catholics”, the attack sought to rebut the reflections of the Politica contributor, recalling the anti-clerical crimes of the Spanish Civil War and the words of condemnation voiced by Pius XI and Pius XII as well as both popes’ support for General Franco. Unlike the Christian Democratic writer in Politica, the Italian clerical publication took the view that the positive results of Francoism were indisputable twenty years after the end of the war: “The diocesan seminaries, which have largely been rebuilt, are full; vocations are increasing everywhere; the religious communities are sending reinforcements to other countries […]”. The commentator in El Español concluded by adding that no journalist who speaks of Spain must ever forget the civil war, “a diabolical example of the communist assault on civilisation, Christendom and the world”.12

It is important to emphasise that the issue of Spain and the Iberian Peninsula in general was becoming even more important for the magazine during the period in question: on 15 June 1960, Vittorio Citterich (1930–2011), who was a collaborator of Giorgio La Pira and a journalist with Il Giornale del Mattino, devoted a lengthy feature to the Portugal of Oliveira Salazar. The Christian Democratic journalist warned that the Portuguese dictatorship was viewed by certain sectors of Italian Catholicism as a more moderate response than Francoism and might serve as an example from which to draw inspiration for Italy. Citterich was categorical in rejecting the Portuguese case, underscoring Portugal’s lack of social cohesion, its dire economic and imperial failings, and how far removed it was from Christian values.13

In the first issue of Politica in July, Citterich published more information on the Iberian dictatorships, this time bringing up the Francoist regime. The author wrote about a conflict between progressive Catholics and Falangists that showed, together with the fight for political liberties against totalitarianism, that there existed a new conception “of the integration of the popular masses in the State, of articulating political power with the safeguarding of local and regional autonomies”. The new conception also addressed “the problem of income distribution, a Christian method to remedy the oppositional adherence of the dispossessed to communism”.14

Francoist authorities had detained and tortured the Catholic activist Jordi Pujol and the editor Francesc Pison Malé as instigators of an anti-Francoist protest that came to be known as “the Events of the Palau de la Música Catalana” in Barcelona in May 1960. On the occasion of a concert of the Orfeó Català choral society, a portion of the public rose to sing a song in Catalan, which was banned by the dictatorship. In response, the police in attendance cracked down on the singers. In the investigations that ensued, the police picked out two scapegoats, the above-mentioned Pujol and Pison Malé. Citterich emphasised the importance of the protests organised by Catholic Action on behalf of the prisoners and reproduced the words of Pujol’s democratic and Christian demands as well as an anti-Francoist leaflet that circulated in Barcelona. Lastly, the article closed with news that 300 priests from the Basque Country had sent a joint letter to the respective bishops of San Sebastian, Bilbao and Pamplona calling for a resolute fight in defence of political, labour-union, ideological and religious liberties, and noted that the Brotherhood of Workers of Catholic Action (HOAC) had denounced the oppression of the Spanish working class within the labour unions of the dictatorship, which neither defended nor represented them. Citterich ended his piece with a clear denunciation of the Francoist dictatorship.15

4. Politica and the Spread of Spanish Anti-Francoism (1960–1963)

In spite of everything, it was clear at the beginning of the 1960s that Francoist Spain still exerted a certain degree of influence among the Italian clergy, whose memory of the Spanish Civil War remained alive. Indeed, the war’s tales of anti-clerical violence were being relived in the current fight against communism. In this vein, the Christian Democratic sectors of the left saw the importance of building bridges with leading figures and movements that were compatible with their viewpoints and could help to denounce the real absence of Christian principles in the Spanish dictatorship. Giorgio La Pira, the mayor of Florence, was one of the Christian Democratic politicians who saw clearly that lending support to Spanish anti-Francoism was crucial. On 24 and 25 March 1961, La Pira went to Paris to take part in the Western European conference in favour of amnesty for Spanish political prisoners and exiles (Spinoso and Turrini 2022, p. 1262).

In the issue of Politica dated 15 April 1961, Giacomo Ulivi penned a lengthy feature on the conference in Paris, recalling the continued existence of political prisoners more than 22 years after the end of the war and noting that the event had also enjoyed the active participation of voices from the progressive wing of French Catholicism, such as Jacques Leclerc, François Mauriac, the Jesuit priest M Riquet and the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize Father Dominique Pire, together with Giorgio La Pira.16 In addition, Remo Giannelli reported on a document that had been delivered to the editorial offices of Politica signed by an array of political organisations (the Socialist Movement of Catalonia, the Christian Democratic Party of Catalonia, the Popular Democratic Association of Catalonia, the National Front of Catalonia) and trade-union organisations (the National Confederation of Catalonia-Committee of Catalonia and the General Union of Workers). The document in question17 issued a call for ongoing international mobilisation in favour of amnesty for all Spanish political prisoners and the abolition of all totalitarian legislation put in place under the Francoist regime.18 A few months later, Giannelli denounced the efforts of Fernando Maria Castiella, Franco’s foreign minister, to negotiate the possible entry of Spain into the European Economic Community and recalled a key necessary condition that the dictatorship must come to end before any consideration could be given to the Spanish candidacy.19 Then, in early June 1962, Giannelli wrote on the miners’ strikes in Asturias and the Basque Country, rejecting claims that they were promoted by the communists and noting instead that they enjoyed the backing of Catholic Youth, Catholic Action and other exponents of the Church that had denounced the squalor and misery of the working classes, while pointing to the need to raise wages.20 Nicola Pistelli, Politica editor-in-chief, also seized on the opportunity to write that the dictatorships in Spain and Portugal would not fall in armed struggle but rather because of the slow withering of their regimes and their likely replacement by conservative sectors that would enact timid democratising reforms. Pistelli wondered aloud what Italian Christian Democrats could do to help usher in a political change that, in his view, would come about only if the United States and the great powers of the West agreed to work jointly on the formation of a new ruling class in Spain and Portugal. In this respect, Pistelli raised the possibility of hosting brief stays of Catholic youth from the two countries at the homes of activists and readers of Politica as the best possible contact for them to gain some familiarity with the democratic life of a country very much like their own.21

At this juncture, Giannelli decided to interview one of the leading lights of Catholic anti-Francoism and settled on the former CEDA parliamentarian José María Gil Robles, who was one of the most prominent figures to attend the anti-Francoist event in Munich in the summer of 1962. Indeed, the 4th Conference of the European Federalist Movement that took place in the Bavarian capital in early June of that year drew representatives from the heterogeneous world of Spanish anti-Francoism both in Spain and abroad (with the exclusion of the communists). The dictatorship pejoratively labelled the conference as the “contubernio de Munich” (or something like the “conspiracy in Munich”) and denigrated its participants, who were put under arrest on their return to Spain (Amat 2016). Among the exiled Spaniards to play a key role in Munich was Gil Robles, whom Giannelli was able to contact through Pablo Beltrán de Heredia, an anti-Francoist editor and activist living in Santander and a contact of Aldo Garosci, an anti-Fascist writer who had served as a volunteer in the civil war and worked actively to keep alive the legitimacy of the Spanish Second Republic. It should be noted that Pablo Beltrán told Giannelli that he would forward the letter through acquaintances set to travel to France because any post leaving Spain was subject to police controls and might never reach its recipient abroad.22 In the end, Giannelli’s letter did get through to Gil Robles, who responded with a letter dated 10 August 1962 in which he said that he was familiar with Politica and would give an interview before the end of August in the spa town of Plombières.23 The interview, which appeared in the magazine on 1 September 1962, presented Gil Robles as a conservative who had taken Franco’s side in the coup against the Second Spanish Republic, but had wound up in anti-Francoist exile. At the time, Gil Robles was hard at work on the construction of a Christian Democracy that could serve as the foundation for a future democratic Spain. In this vein, he also argued for the need to build a broad opposition including the socialists now that the latter had largely severed ties with atheistic and revolutionary Marxism and could forge alliances with the Catholics. By contrast, Gil Robles did not wish to include the communists in his policy of alliances because he repudiated the religious persecution taking place in the Soviet Union and feared the popularity of the communists’ anti-Francoist activism among the younger generations. While the priority of Gil Robles was to create a wide-reaching Christian Democracy in Spain along the lines of the Italian approach, he nevertheless placed no importance on the republicans in exile because he did not regard them as constructive for the future, viewing them instead as too caught up in the old resentments of the past.24

On 19 September, only a few weeks after the publication of the Gil Robles interview, the anarchist Jordi Conill was arrested in Barcelona on the charge of setting off three bombs: one at the headquarters of the Falange; a second in the doorway of the social security offices, the Instituto Nacional de Previsión; and a third in a window of the headquarters of Opus Dei in Carrer Monterols, all three on the night of 29–30 June 1962. It proved to be local Christian Democrats led by the Catholic lawyer Josep Benet who worked to drum up international support against the regime’s execution of Conill (Amat 2017, pp. 266–74). It is also important to recall that a handful of Italian anarchists abducted Spain’s honorary vice-consul in Milan on 28 September to raise awareness among the Italian public of the potential execution of the Catalan anarchist. However, the vice-consul broke free, and his kidnappers were arrested. Tensions continued to run high. In early October, protests in support of Conill broke out all over Italy. In Milan, young Catholics joined in a large-scale march that spurred a telegram to Franco from Giovanni Battista Montini, archbishop of Milan and future Pope Paul VI, who called on the dictator to act in a Christian manner and not sentence the political prisoners to death (Treglia 2017, p. 168), and in Florence there was a major public event organised by a host of anti-Fascist movements and parties in the municipal government, drawing on the participation of Giorgio La Pira. Among the protesters’ demands was a call to show clemency to any Spanish prisoners incarcerated on political or economic grounds, for example, in the case of Ramon Ormazabal and the detained Basque strikers, who had sent a telegram to La Pira so that he could report on their problems. The regime’s response was to stage a counter-protest in front of the Italian embassy in Madrid rejecting the demands: the crowd threw stones and waved posters with the words “Sofia Loren yes, Montini no”. It is also important to note a lengthy telegram sent by Pan de Soraluce, a delegate in the Spanish embassy in Rome, to Giorgio La Pira, in which the writer expressed enormous surprise at the Florence protest because “in Spain there are no prisoners held on thought crimes”, but rather the sentences stemmed from “serious terrorist acts with high explosives” (Spinoso and Turrini 2022, p. 1308; Cattini 2021, pp. 13–14).

While the air still rang with the protests against Montini in Rome and Madrid, Giannelli decided to explain at length exactly who the members of Opus Dei were and what it sought, because in no time at all the organisation had risen to occupy the highest echelons of power in the Francoist dictatorship. In the first issue of Politica in November 1962, the Italian journalist labelled the members of Opus Dei ironically as Spanish “Dorotheans”, alluding to the above-mentioned political current of Christian Democracy. Giannelli drew attention to the new direction of the Spanish economy and especially to the fact that Opus Dei was becoming entrenched among the most affluent classes of Iberian society, no longer serving as an instrument for the re-Christianisation of the Spanish people but rather acting as a scaffold for its own members to grab hold of the dictatorship’s mechanisms of power, just as the Catholic intellectual Luis L. Aranguren had denounced. Giannelli concluded by noting that the working classes profoundly rejected Opus Dei and hoped that the longed-for fall of the regime would herald its demise as well.25

The fracturing of Italian Catholicism continued in the months ahead, when the case of Julián Grimau came to have a profound impact on public opinion: Grimau’s arrest, torture, trial and death by firing squad rested on accusations that dated all the way back to the Spanish Civil War. Indeed, Grimau was hauled before a military court and no account was taken of the fact that more than twenty years had passed since the events in question. These doings ultimately roused a significant swath of Italian Catholicism that now grasped the murderous and criminal nature of Francoism. However, it did not prevent a portion of the Vatican from secretly siding with General Franco (Múñoz Soro 2013). Tuscan Catholics mobilised in an attempt to halt the murder of the Spanish communist, and Giorgio La Pira, too, worked intensely to achieve the same end: he sent a telegram to Alfredo Sánchez Bella, delegate of Francoism at the Vatican, to ask for clemency in the Grimau case, and he wrote repeatedly to the dictator himself. The efforts of Florence’s mayor, however, did not yield any tangible results, and Grimau’s execution was carried out on 20 April 1963. La Pira sent a harshly worded telegram to Franco in response, accusing the dictator of having “left the noble land of Spain and the land of all peoples and all continents stained in blood” and ultimately came to hope that this would prove to be a sign of immense Christian piety and that it would point the way to “redemption by speeding the irresistible movement toward the deliverance of the Spanish people from a tyranny that signs its own definitive downfall with the painful stamp of blood” (Spinoso and Turrini 2022, p. 1353; Cattini 2021, pp. 14–15).

The above telegrams doubtless contributed to the rise of Giorgio La Pira as a guiding light of Catholic anti-Francoism after they appeared in the press and drew both accusations and messages of support that likewise turned up by telegram. La Pira was invited to take part in a demonstration in memory of Grimau in Paris the following week, but had to decline the invitation because he was indisposed. Instead, he instead sent Deputy Mayor Enriques Agnoletti as a representative of Florence’s institutions.

For its part, Politica published a hard-hitting article by Remo Giannelli that accused Franco of reopening the old wounds of the Spanish Civil War with Grimau’s execution: “The civil war continues at the wishes of victors who are not yet grown sick and tired of so much bloodshed”. Giannelli concluded by saying that “persecution and death are meted out to keep a heartless ‘order’ on its feet”.26

A few months later, the bloody tale repeated itself with the execution of the anarchists Joaquín Delgado and Francisco Granados on 17 August 1963. Giorgio La Pira fired off a telegram to Franco levelling serious accusations against the murderous dictatorship. With the Grimau case and the executions of Delgado and Granados, anti-Francoist propaganda expanded beyond the confines of socialist and communist criticism. For the first time, prominent sectors of the Church and the Catholic world engaged in large-scale mobilisation against the Spanish regime. Giorgio La Pira and Politica were forceful and unsparing in their critiques of the dictatorship, and they would remain so in the years to come.

5. The Period of 1964–1967: Anti-Francoism and International Networks of Contacts

In 1964, it should be recalled, Giorgio La Pira hosted the last of his Mediterranean gatherings in Florence, which was focused this time on national minorities and contemporary world issues. The event attracted the participation of a Spanish delegation, which was made up of a group living in exile, including Enrique Adroher Gironella, Julián Gómez Gorkin, José del Barrio Navarro and the Basque José de Rezola, and a group that had remained in Spain, including Gregorio Peces Barba (on behalf of Joaquín Ruiz Giménez), Josep Benet and Josep Verde Altea (Cattini 2021, pp. 14–17). In the same period, efforts were made to pull off another project that had been promoted by José de Rezola together with Nicola Pistelli and dated back to the previous year, namely the creation of a Basque radio station in Italy that could broadcast as far as the Basque Country. The complication was that the main aim of Italy’s Christian Democracy was, by contrast, to spread anti-Francoism across the length and breadth of Spain, encompassing not only the role of the Christian Democrats but also the role of Basque and Catalan Christian nationalisms as well. The radio project came in response to Radio España Independiente, a broadcaster based in the Czech capital of Prague that presented all anti-Francoist activities as the work of the Spanish communists (Arrieta 2014, pp. 17–35). Unfortunately, Giannelli penned a letter to José de Rezola explaining that they had not been able to conclude talks on the radio channel because the fall of the Moro government in June 1964 interrupted negotiations and the project was left dead in its tracks.27 However, the final blow came with the death of Pistelli in September 1964 because he had been the key interlocutor in the Christian Democratic world and was, as noted earlier, deeply inclined to back the Spanish anti-Francoist cause. In Pistelli’s absence, Giannelli took up the task of looking for backers, but his efforts failed. Indeed, while he laid out the radio project in some detail in a Politica article in early September,28 a few months later he took advantage of the Francoist celebrations to mark 25 years of peace, which reminded him of the marches and festivities of the Italian Fascist regime, to confess that the Christian Democratic radio project for Spain had no real future.29 It is also noteworthy that the correspondence between Giannelli and Rezola30 carried news of seven young Basque anti-Francoist activists who had spent a short time in Italy to be present at the administrative elections of November 1964, thus making good on the legacy that Nicola Pistelli himself had openly proposed in the above-mentioned article of June 1962 in Politica.

Politica continued to take an interest in the political evolution of the Spanish regime and the anti-Francoist opposition. The magazine began to receive contributions from a number of significant figures, most notably Alfonso Carlos Comín, who was a touchstone of Social Christianity and was moving in the mid-1960s towards an advocacy of Christian Marxist propositions (Marzà 1995; Martínez Hoyos 2009; González Casanova 2010). Comín wrote a host of pieces for the Italian periodical in which he denounced the growing weight of Opus Dei and how Spain’s development plans were enriching a new oligarchy.31 He also reported on the dissent of Joaquín Ruiz Giménez, who pushed for a resolute overhaul of the Spanish fueros and wanted a new law of association that would permit pluralism in keeping with the Church’s teachings and the papal encyclical Pacem in terris. Comín noted that the Young Christian Workers had thrown their support behind ambitious reform and that broad sectors of Catholicism were persuaded of the possibility.32 Along the same lines of a listening church that sought to respond to the demands for improvement among the subaltern classes, it is also possible to read the article by José Rodríguez that decried the Francoist continuity of the Bishop of Málaga Ángel Herrera Oria and his loyalty to the regime. In Rodríguez’s eyes, these elements of the Spanish religious hierarchy were driving a significant cross-section of the Spanish people out of the Church.33

Between 1965 and 1967, Politica published a number of articles by Guillermo Medina under the pen name of Justo Rigores, one of the main characters in the 1952 novel by Rómulo Gallegos titled Una brizna de paja en el viento. Medina had taken a degree at the Official School of Journalism in Madrid and then moved to Rome where he worked as a manager in the agency International Press Service, which was set up to spread a Christian humanist world view and soon expanded to a number of countries in Latin America. Originally a native of Seville, Medina was a prolific contributor to Politica and took the by-line of Justo Rigores for all of his articles on Spain, while he put his own name to the many features and essays that he wrote on the countries of Latin America (Savio 2011, pp. 236–38; Acanfora 2019, p. 144).

In his very first article, Guillermo Medina took issue with the dictatorship’s attempts to present itself as a modern regime: while the dictatorship, on the one hand, was benefiting from economic growth because of the pro-development policies pushed by Opus Dei, it was nevertheless, on the other hand, still suppressing opposition and banning dissent. At the same time, the journalist pointed out that the Spanish church would have to relinquish the many benefits that it had received from the regime throughout the latter’s existence. In his subsequent pieces, Medina gave readers an account of Spanish political life, decrying the lack of freedoms in every corner of public life, speaking out against the law of succession to the Spanish throne, and denouncing the figure of Juan Carlos; he also analysed the spirit of the times, noting that many could see the end of the regime not far in the offing and that some sectors of the dictatorship wanted to appear more open to dialogue in preparation for the period after Francoism. Medina explained that Franco’s choice of Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco as his number two and immediate successor was clearly intended to secure the regime’s continuity (Cattini 2023).

In terms of watching for cracks in the edifice of the Franco regime, the Italian editors at Politica did not fail to notice the founding of the Democratic Union of Students of the University of Barcelona in the headquarters of the Capuchins in the neighbourhood of Sarrià in the Catalan capital between 9 and 11 March 1966. Nor did they leave unremarked the fact that the police mounted a charge against a demonstration of priests on the following 11 May. The priests had been protesting the police torture of a number of students held under arrest in the Capuchin headquarters. For the editors of Politica, these stories sent a very important signal, because they confirmed the presence of another Church, another generation, one that was growing further and further apart from the Francoist regime and “learning how tough the fight for democracy could be [in the streets]”, as Massimo Olmi had put it.34 Along the same lines, Remo Giannelli stressed that, while Franco had tried to freeze Spanish life in the year of 1939, driving a gap between Spain and European civilisation, the world had moved forward and it was not possible to stop young generations of Christians who felt their religion differently and who demonstrated in the streets even as police batons fell on them.35

Giannelli’s friendships with Spain’s Christian Democrats became clear when the police detained and prosecuted Alfonso Carlos Comín for an article that appeared in the French magazine Témoignage Chretien, in which Comín voiced criticism of the Spanish constitutional referendum. Giannelli was called by the defence to testify on Comín’s behalf, and he set off for Madrid, where he also planned to meet with Joaquín Ruiz Giménez, who likewise wanted to help the Catalan activist. When Giannelli’s plane touched down at Madrid’s Barajas Airport, however, the police lay in wait and, in the end, he was unable to testify in court because the judge would not allow it, ruling that there was already enough evidence to incriminate the defendant (Cattini 2023).

In any event, Giannelli wrote an article that was critical of the Francoist justice system, which had refused to admit the testimony of defence witnesses and had finally driven Comín’s lawyer to protest that his client was being denied a legal defence. Based on his account, Italian readers could see that Comín was a prime example of the new generation of Spanish Catholics who were committed to the poor and the working classes, demonstrating the political line championed by the Christian Democratic left.36

6. Concluding Remarks

Radicalisation was a hallmark of the period from 1967 to 1970, and from then until the closure of Politica in 1975. However, it is not possible to address the whole matter in the limited space of the present paper. Suffice it to say that Politica reported on the major changes that took place on the international stage, playing a key role in the critique of the period’s wars (e.g., in Vietnam and between Israel and the Arab nations) and examining the guerrilla movements and their influence on the thinking of the international communist left, bedazzled as it was by the death of Ernesto “Che” Guevara in October 1967 and the dissemination of his proposals in support of extending anti-imperialist armed action to every continent on the planet. The death of the popular “Che” came only a year and a half after the death of Camilo Torres, the Colombian priest who had similarly fallen in battle. In the context of cultural change, the impact of 1968 was also very profound, channelling an acceleration of the movements for workers, trade unions, intellectuals and students at every level. Specifically, in terms of the contacts between Politica and its Spanish contributors, it is nevertheless possible to trace a widening distance between the two groups. The reasons are various and include, on the one hand, the growth of anti-Francoist activity among some of the leading figures and, on the other hand, the radicalisation of many of them, who moved ever closer to the new propositions of liberation theology and of merging Christianity with socialism (De la Cueva and Louzao 2023; Barba 2001; Berzal 2017; De Carli 2009, 2017; Montero 2009; Múñoz Soro 2005).

The role of the group at Politica and around Giorgio La Pira may appear to be secondary, but they had a major influence on the Catholic world at the time, and the opinions of Florence’s mayor were important in Vatican circles and in the circles of his own party, reaching as far as Madrid and troubling the Francoist authorities. The contacts of the Tuscan Catholics patched together a support network that was able to spread word of the anti-Francoist cause throughout Italy, especially among Christian Democratic sectors. Around the city of Florence and Politica, a host of initiatives sprang up with the aim of helping to train Spanish Christian activists through their participation in “Mediterranean colloquies” in the Tuscan capital, through the hosting of young people so that they could be present at elections, and through offers to appear as legal witnesses in court cases prosecuted by the dictatorship.

In addition, the activity of Florence’s Christian Democratic left is interesting because it helps in understanding how the struggle for freedom and against the Francoist regime was a key element in opposing more right-wing sectors in the Vatican and in the Christian Democratic party itself, since both structures included many who were reluctant to pursue reform policies and would justify authoritarian regimes as the lesser of two evils, given the communist threat. The struggle for democracy in Spain was thus becoming an important field in which to pursue the struggle for reformist ideas in an effort to marginalise more conservative sectors, and further studies are, therefore, needed to better visualise the debate within the different currents of Christian democracy. On the other hand, Christian Democratic political praxis inspired little enthusiasm among a large swath of Spanish Catholic youth who were opposed to the dictatorship and had an idealistic view of the world, unwilling to shed their ideals and accept the types of agreements and arrangements that were typical of democratic regimes. In this respect, it is illuminating to consider the memoirs of Joan Gomis, then a young Catholic writer at the Catholic magazine El Ciervo, who took advantage of the contact networks noted above but who was clear that the experience of the Italian Christian Democrats was “entirely over” and they would never repeat “the outdated and ill-advised Italian model” (Gomis 1994, p. 108). Ultimately, the pressure of underground opposition to the dictatorship and the radicalisation of global politics after 1968 would drive apart these sectors, which had worked together so effectively in the late 1950s and early 1960s to put forward a coherent democratic vision and action plan for Catholics in response to the world around them.