The Roman Forum, led by our friend Professor John Rao, holds an annual summer campus in Gardone Riviera, bringing together some of the leading traditionalist speakers from the United States and Europe. The 2024 edition took place from 9 to 20 July.
Professor Miguel Ayuso, president of the Philip II Hispanic Studies Council, usually participates in a joint session with Danilo Castellano and Bernard Dumont. This year the director of the French journal Catholica was unable to attend, but the other two did. We publish below the outline of Miguel Ayuso’s speech on 11th July.
An overview of Hispanic traditionalism
1. It is a great pleasure to be back in Gardone. Professor John Rao has asked me this time to present briefly the action we are developing within traditionalism, not only Spanish but more broadly Hispanic and even worldwide. I shall do so in ten succinct point.
2. A first remark must be made about the word «traditionalism»:
–In its origin it was reserved only for a heterodox philosophical school characterised by fideism and irrationalism, partly explainable by the neglect of Christian philosophy during the 18th century, which was general with the exception of the Spanish-speaking world.
–The label has since been used to designate other heterodox philosophies of a Gnostic nature and very dangerous from the Catholic point of view.
–In any case, its meaning is not unambiguous:
In France, for example, it designates only opposition to religious modernism and adherence to the Tridentine liturgy. Without political significance and as a synonym for integralism (integrisme), by the way a term of Spanish origin. It can be seen, for example, in the important (and debatable) recent book by Yves Chiron.
In Spain it only acquired political meaning in the last third of the 19th century, when some moderate liberal Catholics, frightened by the Revolution of 1868, switched to the Carlist camp. Until then there was talked of «royalists», first, and then Carlists, without further ado. The Carlist or Catholic-Monarchist-Legitimist Communion was then called the Traditionalist Communion.
In the Anglo-Saxon world it is not limited to the religious sphere, but sometimes also refers to the political one. However, the widespread use of the term «conservatism» sometimes creates difficulties. In Italy, the important weight of the Gnostic line has also been a source of misunderstanding and has led to talk of «Catholic traditionalism».
3. I have written many times that the difference between the Spanish experience and other Hispanic experiences, but also with those of other cultures, comes from the existence of Carlism.
In peninsular Spain, the Catholic and monarchical people resisted the liberal revolution organised around the legitimate dynasty, which had been driven from power by usurpation. But unlike other popular resistance to the revolution, in Spain it was not short-lived. Between 1833 and 1876 there were three wars. But afterwards, without abandoning direct action, it had an important parliamentary presence. And in the uprising of 18 July 1936, impossible without the participation of Carlism, as well as in the subsequent war, more than 100,000 Carlist volunteers fought.
After the Crusade, Franco’s personal dictatorship marginalised traditionalism and gave priority successively to the Falange (i.e. Fascism), the conservative Christian democracy and the technocratic liberalism of Opus Dei. But Carlism continued to gather hundreds of thousands of people at its events until the years of the Second Vatican Council. And, afterwards, it continued to be the reference point for traditional Catholicism throughout the world. There were important intellectual personalities: theologians such as Francisco Canals, philosophers such as Rafael Gambra, historians such as Elías de Tejada or jurists such as Álvaro d’Ors. Not only in Spanish America, but also in France, Italy and the Anglo-Saxon world, any new initiative was immediately linked to the Traditionalist Communion. This was the case in France, with Jean Madiran’s journal Itinéraires. It is the case of Fritz Wilhelmsen or Brent Bozell in the United States. Even in other fields, when Archbishop Lefebvre founded the Society of Saint Pius X, support in Spain (and in Spanish America) came mainly from the Carlists.
4. In Spanish America, on the other hand, the coincidence of the birth of the new republics with the liberal revolution made political traditionalism impossible.
There was conservatism, that is, moderate liberalism, whose Catholic sector became simple ultramontanism. Nothing more.
It was only in the 20th century, because of the recovery of the meaning of Hispanidad, that traditionalism began to appear, although sometimes mixed with authoritarianism and even fascism. But the most conscious authors, on the other hand, became Carlists. This is the case of Professor José Pedro Galvão de Sousa in Brazil or Father Osvaldo Lira in Chile.
5. In 1972, the Carlist professor Elías de Tejada founded the Philip II Society of Hispanic Natural-Lawyers, nowadays converted into the Philip II Council for Hispanic Studies, which has three sections: historical studies, political studies and natural law studies. The most prominent names in Hispanic traditionalism have been members: Enrique Gómez Hurtado and Luis Corsi Otálora (Colombia), Vicente Ugarte del Pino and Alberto Wagner de Reyna (Peru), Jorge Siles Salinas (Bolivia), Guido Soaje and Carlos Sacheri (Argentina), President Juan María Bordaberry and Monsignor Ignacio Barreiro (Uruguay), Father Osvaldo Lira (Chile), José Pedro Galvão de Sousa (Brazil) and Frederick Wilhelmsen (USA) among others. Today they are still Alejandro Ordóñez (Colombia), Fernán Altuve-Febres (Peru), Juan Fernando Segovia (Argentina), Juan Antonio Widow (Chile), Ricardo Dip (Brazil). But also others from traditionalism in general, such as Michel Bastit (France), Danilo Castellano (Italy) and John Rao (USA).
The Philip II Council organises the International Conferences on Natural Law and a series of meetings in El Escorial (Spain), Tlaxcala (Mexico), Paipa (Colombia), San Isidro (Peru), La Reja (Argentina) and Providencia (Chile). We publish a journal on legal-political history and philosophy (Anales) and another on Spanish-American history and politics (Fuego y Raya). We also direct international research projects with the collaboration of different universities, on subjects as varied as, for example, transhumanism, self-determination, secularism, the Baroque or neo-constitutionalism… Always in a classical perspective and against New Natural Law Theory or Human Rigths talk.
6. In the late 1950s, an integralist but non-Carlist monarchist, Eugenio Vegas Latapie, introduced in Spain the organisation of French origin called the Cité Catholique, founded by Jean Ousset. John Rao in an excellent lecture given in Madrid last year explained the subject very well from his experience in Oxford and the United States. Naturally, the Carlists participated and played a very important role in the work, which has taken shape above all in the magazine Verbo, which is still in existence more than sixty years later. Danilo Castellano considers it to be the most outstanding on the international traditionalist scene. In it, apart from Spaniards and Spanish-Americans, Jean Madiran, Louis Salleron, Gustave Thibon, Marcel de Corte, Thomas Molnar, Frederick Wilhelmsen, Michele Federico Sciacca, as well as Archbishop Lefebvre have collaborated. Danilo Castellano, Bernard Dumont and John Rao continue to do so.
The Catholic City also holds an annual congress, the proceedings of which are published in a book. The monographic themes are historical, philosophical, political or legal.
7. Between the Traditionalist Communion and its cultural arm (the Philip II Council), on the one hand, and the Catholic City and Verbo, on the other, there has always been a close relationship. In recent decades this relationship has intensified. To the point of collaborating together on most initiatives.
A news agency (Faro) and a digital newspaper (La Esperanza) have joined the above-mentioned journals. And to the three book collections: Prudentia iuris, De Regno and Res publica. For three different publishers.
There are Carlist circles throughout the Old Hispanic Monarchy: from Texas to Tierra del Fuego, from Portugal to the Philippines, as well as Naples. In addition to those scattered throughout the Spanish provinces.
One uncertainty on the horizon is that of the succession. The current incumbent, H.R.H. Don Sixtus Henry Bourbon, son of Don Javier, a close friend of Pius XII, and therefore nephew of Empress Zita, is over eighty years old and has no direct succession. The actions he has undertaken, together with his collaborators, in this regard are in the hands of God, who does not abandon his faithful.
8. Finally, the major problem today does not come from the secular world but from within the Church. And nor does it have as much to do with Marxism as with liberalism. But this, of course, is not exclusive to the Hispanic world.
The Church opposed liberalism doctrinally, although it yielded to it often diplomatically and politically during the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century. There was talk of ralliement in the France of the Third Republic, but there were many others, elsewhere, before and after. With the Council, the cession reached the doctrinal sphere, which did not originate with the pontificate of Francis, even if it increased it. In this way, the ambiguity of the Council’s texts has been exploited by progressivism. We all know this and there is no need to insist on it. However, it is not easy to find the right reaction to the confusion we are experiencing. For in the current context, fragmentation and confusion prevail.
On the other hand, organisations have recently proliferated in the Catholic world which, from the conservative side, prevent the growth of traditionalism, although they sometimes pretend to appear as traditionalists. They are generally liberal (though moderate) and clerical. Frequently Americanist. They incorporate elements of so-called populism and may have fascist contaminations. They have invented a «cultural Marxism» which they blame for the present situation. They claim that the so-called «new rights» have nothing to do with the old ones of the declarations of 1789 and 1948. They blame a neo-constitutionalism for having broken with constitutions that supposedly received natural law. Errors and illusions that prevent us from facing the social, institutional and doctrinal problems of our world.
9. Thus, in conclusion, a certain network functions for the defence of the traditional Catholic world. With few means, but with a resolute orientation. It avoids eclecticism and tries to break new ground rather than limiting itself to contesting progressive and conservative positions. This is our fight. Quite different from the «cultural battle» that is so often referred to in the conservative media and which is neither a real battle nor a truly cultural one. It is not cultural but usually only ideological (in the strict and bad sense or the word). And it is not a battle either because the premises and foundations of the position it claims to be fighting are not being fought. A battle in which the bases and rules of the enemy are accepted is not a real battle.
10. Thus, only Carlism represents the true Spanish and Hispanic tradition.
Miguel Ayuso
Agencia FARO
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