page_title: Tomás Dolz de Espejo
section_title: Executive or figurehead (1937-1939)
hierarchical_section_title: Tomás Dolz de Espejo / Executive or figurehead (1937-1939)
caption_attribution_description: Español: Actos celebrados en San Sebastián con motivo de la visita del dictador Francisco Franco y el conde Ciano, ministro de Asuntos Exteriores de la Italia fascistaEuskara: Donostian Francisco Franco diktadorearen eta Galeazzo Ciano konde eta Italia faxistako Kanpo Gaietako ministroaren bisitan egindako ospakizunak (1939ko uztaila)
context_page_description: Tomás Dolz de Espejo Andreu Muñoz Serrano y Duforq-Salinis, 5th Count of La Florida was a Spanish politician and businessman. For some 30 years he campaigned within Traditionalism and Carlism. Periodically he was holding regional party leadership jobs, though nationwide he remained rather in the back row. He is best known as member of the first Junta Política and Consejo Nacional, executive bodies of the newly created Francoist state party, Falange Española Tradicionalista.
context_section_description: Frustrated by lack of the Falangist give and take in the Junta, some Carlists complained to Franco; the result were October 1937 nominations to another party body, a 50-member Consejo Nacional. Florida found himself among 12 Carlist nominees and was already firmly mounted among highest-positioned civilians of the Francoist Spain, sitting in two bodies directing the only political organization allowed in the state. However, many historians agree that both executive structures were rather decorative and that the entire party was at that stage a nascent structure, called into being to ensure that power stays with Franco and yet to acquire its later dynamics. Moreover, the Carlists were enraged to find that what they supposed to be an organization they could control or at least influence was increasingly turning into a new version of Falange, with syndicalist blue-shirts systematically gaining the upper hand. Following unification Carlist rank-and-file started to bombard their leaders in Junta and in Consejo with complaints about getting sidetracked, asking for support. As recipient of these notes and phone calls Florida is recorded as pledging support; it is not clear whether he indeed intervened, though it is clear that nothing changed.
  Throughout most of the Civil War in public Florida maintained a loyal Francoist stand. In newspapers he was quoted arguing in favor of the unification; according to him both Carlism and Falange were anti-democratic, anti-Liberal, anti-parliamentarian and Catholic, he claimed also that both supported monarchist solution, to be implemented in the future. Apparently he also tried to cultivate the Traditionalist format as much as he could, with some other FET executives attending sermons honoring Carlist kings Carlos VII and Alfonso Carlos or taking part in annual Carlist feast dedicated to Mártires de la Tradición, initially observed by the state party. On the other hand, he did not refrain from attending new-style events, like banquets in the Nazi headquarters in Salamanca. In 1938 he acted as FET Jefe Provincial in Salamanca, typically one of the 3 most important civilian positions in every province; it is not clear what exact dates of his term were.
  Florida's career at the top of the Francoist political strata came to the end in late summer of 1939. As late as in August he was still reported taking part in public events as consejero nacional, but this changed in September; he did not find himself among appointees to the II Consejo Nacional and starting 1940 he was reported in the press simply as "Conde de la Florida". None of the sources consulted offers any insight into his departure from the party executive, and specifically whether it was a fall from grace or a conscious decision to withdraw. It could have been resignation following disappointment with the syndicalist format of the new party; it could have been marginalization suffered as a result of an internal conflict, as it happened with Joaquín Bau, another Carlist sidetracked by Ramón Serrano Suñer, especially that Florida publicly kept declaring inevitable restoration of the monarchy.
caption: Francoism, 1939
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