Carlist Party

The Carlist Party (Spanish: Partido carlista, PC) is a Spanish political party that considers itself as a successor to the historical tradition of Carlism. The party was founded in 1969, although it remained illegal until 1977, following the death of the dictator Franco and the democratisation of Spain.

The general secretary of the party, since the year 2000, is Evaristo Olcina. Its official publication is El Federal (since 1999, had been before IM). It has a political line of the alternative left, workers' self-management and federalism. It annually organises the acts of Montejurra. The Carlist Party holds a federal structure with the possibility of it forming sovereign Carlist parties in the associate nationalities in the Carlist Party. The youths of the different Carlist Parties and Carlist groups group together in the Carlist Youths.

The Party is known to be the "Left-Wing" of the Carlist Movement since the movement itself primarily belonged to the Right-wing spectrum such as Conservatism. It was also known for supporting Carlos Hugo over his brother for leading the Carlist movement.

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 materialised the ideological change of Carlism towards a 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 the pact between the dynasty and the people. A few after 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 abdicated it on 20th April 1975.

According to party data, it contained around 25,000 militants 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 in order to reach a time its official recognition as a party. 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 a strong collaboration of New Force, meeting his followers to carry out a 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 went into a crisis with the split-off from its basis to 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 was in Navarre with 7.72% and Basque Country with 0.65%. Because of the electoral fighting, its general secretary, Zavala, diminished, following the rest of the directors, between Carlos Carnicero and Josep Carles Clemente. In the 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 return to confirm). 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 Navarrean 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 was pronounced against the European Constitution.

It opposes both parties of the establishment, the People's Party and the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party. [1]

External links

• Official site