The fatherland and religion in Spanish Catholicism: from turn-of-the-century decline to the Rif War (c.1898–1923)

Abstract

ABSTRACT The present article analyses both the discourse as well as actions and policies through which non-Carlist Catholic movement promoted and socialised the Catholic image of Spain, from the end of the nineteenth century until the beginning of the 1920s. The anticlerical fervour of the first decade of the twentieth century served to mobilise Catholics who called for the re-Catholicisation of Spanish society for the benefit of religion and the fatherland. Recourse to the fatherland and its identity as exclusively Catholic were significantly reinforced during the insecurity unleashed by the crisis of 1917 and the threat of revolution. Finally, the present paper also analyses the repercussions of the Catalan nationalist movement in 1918–1919 and the Rif War, two events that only augmented the centrality of the fatherland for the Catholic discourse of the period.