page_title: Carlism in literature
section_title: Poets
hierarchical_section_title: Carlism in literature / Francoism / Poets
caption_attribution_description: Español: Ignacio Romero Raizábal
context_page_description: On March 21, 1890, at a conference dedicated to the siege of Bilbao during the last civil war, Miguel de Unamuno delivered a lecture titled La última guerra carlista como materia poética. It was probably the first ever attempt to examine the Carlist motive in literature, as for the previous 57 years the subject had been increasingly present in poetry, drama and novel. However, it remains paradoxical that when Unamuno was offering his analysis, the period of great Carlist role in letters was just about to begin. It lasted for some quarter of a century, as until the late 1910s Carlism remained a key theme of numerous monumental works of Spanish literature. Afterwards it lost its appeal as a literary motive, still later reduced to instrumental role during Francoism. Today it enjoys some popularity, though no longer as catalyst of paramount cultural or political discourse; its role is mostly to provide exotic, historical, romantic and sometimes mysterious setting.
context_section_description: In poetry José Bernabé Oliva released, among prosaic attempts, Hispánica: Romancero de Mío Cid y otros poemas (1942), but his contribution is dwarfed - at least in numerical terms - by poems of Manuel García-Sañudo, who kept writing since the 1910s; his poetic volumes Las razones de Alonso Quijano (1941), El dolor de Cádiz (1947), Elogio de Marchena (1951) revolve around traditional themes. A straightforward exaltation of Carlism is poetry of a requete combatant Germán Raguán, the author known for his single poetic collection Montejurra (1957), and this of Maximo Gonzalez del Valle, whose poems - e.g. Elegía de los Requetés (1966) - are scattered across a few volumes. However, it was Ignacio Romero Raizábal who emerged as the best-known clearly Carlist man of belles-lettres of Francoism, especially that he kept publishing until the early 1970s and became sort of a Carlist literary patriarch; apart from novels and non-fiction he used to release also poems, some included in a 1955 anthology of all-time Spanish poetry. An author who remains almost forgotten but whose poetic work is among most-performed ones during official military ceremonies in present-day Spain is Martin Garrido Hernando, who volunteered to Carlist troops during the Civil War at the age of 40. He penned a poem titled Soneto a los Caídos, intended as a lament of the Carlist and Nationalist dead. Over time the poem with accompanying music was accepted by the army and is performed during military funerals. However, the original lyrics have been changed: passages "Inmolarse por Dios" and "servir al Rey" were replaced.
  The rising star of poetry was Rafael Montesinos, who as teenager volunteered to requeté. Since the 1940s he regularly kept publishing poetry, which earned him Premio Ateneo de Madrid of 1943 and Premio Ciudad de Sevilla of 1957; during Francoism he released at least 10 volumes: Balada del amor primero (1944), Canciones perversas para una niña tonta (1946), El libro de las cosas perdidas (1946), Las incredulidades (1948), Cuaderno de las últimas nostalgias (1954), País de la esperanza (1955), La soledad y los días (1956), El tiempo en nuestros brazos (1958), La verdad y otras dudas (1967) and Cancionerillo de tipo tradicional (1971). Deprived of clearly Carlist or Traditionalist threads, his poetry is spanned between irony and melancholy. In terms of style he is considered a disciple of a Romantic Sevillan poet Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, to whom Montesinos dedicated a separate study. However, he is best known as the moving spirit behind La Tertulia Literaria Hispanoamericana, weekly sessions of live poetry; the event was launched in 1952 and has been operating as part of various institutional frameworks; the project outlived Francoism and earned Montesinos prestigious standing especially among the younger generation.
caption: Romero Raizábal
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