Camp i política. La Falange en una comunitat rural valenciana (la Ribera Baixa)

2005. Pròleg de Pelai Pagès, 252 pp.

The object of interest of this study about the Ribera Baixa is the traditionalist Falange Española and the Councils of the National-Syndicalist Offensive and its collateral organisations: veterans association, rural union and some organisms that during Franco’s regime maintained the monopoly of the political and union organisation of the state. In the case of Ribera Baixa, it is interesting to note that as in most populations the Falange had never been present before the war and was organised after 1939 gathering right-wing sectors, often traditionalists and almost always linked to the interests of the traditional ‘caciquismo’. The organisation of the unique party and the ideological and political heterogeneity of the sectors that attended, motivated municipal tensions that reflected the conflicts between the local leadership factions. The former landowner ‘caciques’ not always saw with good eyes the new organisation which intended to have the absolute power: what was valid for the unique party in general was also for its collateral organisations, especially in those territories that, like Valencia, had lost the war.