Ramón Serrano Suñer
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Ramón Serrano Suñer | |
---|---|
Francisco Gómez | |
Personal details | |
Born | 12 September 1901 FET y de las JONS |
Spouse | Ramona (Zita) Polo y Martínez-Valdés |
Relations | Francisco Franco (co-brother-in-law) |
Alma mater | Universidad Central |
Signature | |
Nickname | Cuñadísimo |
Ramón Serrano Suñer (12 September 1901 – 1 September 2003), was a Spanish politician during the first stages of the
Serrano Suñer was the founder of the 67,000-strong Spanish blind people's organization ONCE on 13 December 1938, as well as of the EFE press-agency, in 1939. Serrano Suñer also founded the Radio Intercontinental radio network in 1950.
Early life
He was born Ramón Serrano Suñer in Cartagena, the fifth of seven children born to an engineer working in the Valencian port of Castellón de la Plana. Although he was an excellent student, his father disapproved of his plans to become a lawyer. He enrolled at the Madrid's Central University to study law, just the same. A fellow student of José Antonio Primo de Rivera (son of Spanish dictator Miguel Primo de Rivera, and founder of the Falange), he developed a taste for falangism while spending a year in Bologna.
He joined the State Lawyers Corps in 1924.[3] Ramón Serrano Suñer and Francisco Franco were co-brothers-in-law, since the two married two sisters: Serrano Suñer married Ramona (Zita) Polo y Martínez-Valdés, in Oviedo on 6 February 1932, whom he had met shortly after moving to Zaragoza in 1931. Franco married Carmen Polo y Martínez-Valdés in October 1923. Ramón Serrano Suñer and Zita Polo had six children: Fernando, Francisco, Jaime Javier, José, María del Pilar and Ramón Serrano-Suñer y Polo.[4]
Early political career
Suñer was a member of the
In 1938, Serrano Suñer went to
Serrano Suñer served as Nationalist
Suñer also managed to re-elaborate the statutes of the
While Serrano Suñer had been Minister of the Interior, the Minister of Foreign Affairs was General
In September 1940, the strongly pro-Axis Serrano Suñer visited Berlin to meet the German Foreign Minister
Meanwhile, even on becoming Minister of Foreign Affairs, Serrano Suñer had to accept
In June 1939, Serrano Suñer had been back to Italy to present
Even though he was working with Franco, he objected to the increasing role of the Catholic Church in Falangist politics. The two brothers-in-law had some intraparty conflicts of their own, as Serrano Suñer accused Franco of riding on a "cult of personality", and Franco viewed Serrano Suñer as increasingly becoming a thorn in the side of his party who criticised too many of its policies.
Involvement in World War II
Just one week after Serrano Suñer was promoted to Minister of Foreign Affairs, on 23 October 1940, Franco and Adolf Hitler met at the Hendaye railway station in France, near the Spanish border. There, Serrano Suñer met with Ribbentrop. Paul Schmidt, head interpreter of the German Chancellor, reported that Franco sat between Ribbentrop and Walther von Brauchitsch, while Adolf Hitler sat between the Spanish Foreign Affairs Minister Ramón Serrano Suñer and the Spanish Ambassador at Berlin, Eugenio Espinosa de los Monteros. However, neither the Spanish Ambassador at Berlin nor the German Ambassador at Madrid, Eberhard von Stohrer, were allowed at the exhaustive and inconclusive political meetings. By morning the meeting ended with no compromise. Serrano Suñer was later to say of the Hendaye summit that because of General Franco's obsession with Morocco, that if only Hitler had offered him French Morocco, then Spain would have entered the war in October 1940.[11]
Although Serrano Suñer had played a major role in establishing the Spanish state under Franco, being so influential as to be nicknamed the Cuñadísimo, which translates as supreme brother-in-law (a joke on "
To make up for that failure, Serrano Suñer proposed the Blue Division of Spanish volunteers[13] to fight with the Germans against the Soviet Union after Operation Barbarossa, which started on 22 June 1941. On 23 June, upon receiving the news, he met with Franco in El Pardo, and the Council of Ministers passed a resolution thereafter concerning the sending of a division of Spanish volunteers to the front.[14] A day after, on 24 June, he declaimed his famous invective ¡Rusia es culpable! (transl. Russia is guilty!) rallying a revanchist mood during a speech delivered from the balcony of the FET-JONS headquarters.[15][16]
On 25 November 1941 he signed in Berlin the revision of the pact of 25 November 1936
In September 1942, following the Basilica of Begoña incident of August 1942, Serrano Suñer was forced to resign as foreign minister and president of the political council of the Falange Española Tradicionalista y de las JONS.[17]
Later life
After World War II, he wrote a persuasive letter to Franco, calling for a transitional government that would have room for intellectuals in exile. When Franco received the letter, he wrote a derisive "Ho-ho." in its margin. Serrano Suñer ultimately retired from public life in 1947.
In 1949, Serrano Suñer sponsored the visit to Spain of British Fascist leader
Serrano Suñer died on 1 September 2003 in Madrid, eleven days before his 102nd birthday.[21]
References
- ^ Gil Pecharromán 2019, p. 42.
- ^ "La Etapa de Ramón Serrano Súñer en el Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores". Archived from the original on 2 October 2011. Retrieved 2 October 2011.
- ^ "El último dirigente vivo de la Guerra Civil". El Mundo. 2 September 2003.
- ^ Ramón Serrano Suñer (in Spanish)
- ^ María Luisa Mataix, "Carmen Díez de Rivera e Icaza". A short biography in Spanish (December 2002), based on Ana Romero, Historia de Carmen. Memoria de Carmen Díez de Rivera, Editorial Planeta.
- ^ Redondo 1993, p. 201.
- ^ Lowe 2010, p. 221.
- ^ Gil Pecharromán 2013, p. 43.
- ^ a b c d e f g Preston, Paul "Franco and Hitler: The Myth of Hendaye 1940" pages 1-16 from Contemporary European History, Volume 1, Issue # 1, March 1992 page 5.
- ^ Preston, Paul "Franco and Hitler: The Myth of Hendaye 1940" pages 1-16 from Contemporary European History, Volume 1, Issue # 1, March 1992 page 6.
- ^ Preston, Paul "Franco and Hitler: The Myth of Hendaye 1940" pages 1-16 from Contemporary European History, Volume 1, Issue # 1, March 1992 page 14.
- ^ Paul Preston, Franco, London: 1995, p. 415
- ^ 250. Infanterie-Division
- ISBN 978-84-16133-89-5.
- ISBN 978-84-937244-3-6.
- ISBN 978-84-16133-89-5.
- ^ Ellwood 1987, p. 74; Marquina Barrio 1989, p. 167.
- I.B.Tauris. pp. 100–101.
- ISSN 1957-7761.
- ^ Ribeiro De Meneses, Filipe (2009). Salazar: A Political Biography. Enigma Books. p. 512.
- ^ "Ramón Serrano Suner, 101, a Franco Aide". The New York Times. 4 September 2003. Retrieved 4 September 2003.
Bibliography
- Ellwood, Sheelagh (1987). "Las fuentes orales y la historiografía del fascismo español" (PDF). Revista de Historia Jerónimo Zurita. 56: 65–79. ISSN 0044-5517.
- ISBN 978-84-08-12138-1.
- ISBN 978-84-306-2301-3.
- ISBN 978-1-84519-373-7.
- Marquina Barrio, Antonio (1989). "La Etapa de Ramón Serrano Súñer en el Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores" (PDF). Espacio, Tiempo y Forma, Serie V, Historia Contemporánea (2). Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia: 145–167.
- Redondo, Gonzalo (1993). Historia de la Iglesia en España, 1931-1939: La Guerra Civil, 1936-1939. Ediciones Rialp. ISBN 84-321-3016-8.
External links
- Cien Empresarios Españoles del Siglo Veinte Info on a book, 672 pages, by Rojo Cagigal, Juan Carlos . Azagra Ros, Joaquín Pedro . Arana Pérez, Ignacio . Echániz Ortúñez, José and others, 13 economists in total . ISBN 978-84-88717-27-6, 2000. (in Spanish)
- Milicia y diplomacia: los diarios del Conde de Jordana 1936-1944, forewords and initial study by Carlos Seco Serrano. (Selección y glosas de Rafael Gómez- Jordana Prats). Burgos: Dossoles, 2002. "Colección La Valija Diplomática". 311 pp.ISBN 9788487528453. (in Spanish)
- Charles B. Burdick. Germany's Military strategy and Spain In World War II.Syracuse Univ. Press, Syracuse, U.S.A., (1968). 228 pages. ISBN 978-0-608-18105-9. Former American Professor Charles B. Burdick biography can be seen at:
- Madrid Carmen Díez de Rivera[permanent dead link]
- Memorias de Carmen Diez de Rivera
- Ramón Serrano Súñer, Entre Hendaya y Gibraltar. ISBN 978-84-08-10417-9, (2011).
- Pauley, Bruce F. (1981). Hitler and the Forgotten Nazis: A History of Austrian National Socialism, University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 0-8078-1456-3.
- Newspaper clippings about Ramón Serrano Suñer in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW