Juventudes de Acción Popular

The Juventudes de Acción Popular (JAP) was the youth wing of CEDA, a Spanish rightwing party in the 1930s.

The organisation was originally created as a branch of Acción Popular in 1933. Its founder and leader was José María Valiente Soriano. Expelled from CEDA and JAP in 1934, he was replaced by José María Perez de Laborda. JAP ceased to exist in 1937, following the Decreto de Unificación.

The JAP emphasized sporting and political activity. It had its own fortnightly paper, the first issue of which proclaimed : 'We want a new state.' The JAP's distaste for the principles of universal suffrage was such that internal decisions were never voted upon. As the thirteenth point of the JAP put it : 'Anti-parliamentarianism. Anti-dictatorship. The people participating in Government in an organic manner, not by degenerate democracy.' The line between Christian corporatism and fascist statism became very thin indeed.^[1]

The fascist tendencies of the JAP were vividly demonstrated in the series of rallies held by the CEDA youth movement during the course of 1934. Using the title jefe, the JAP created an intense and often disturbing cult around the figure of Gil Robles. Robles himself had returned from the Nuremberg rally in 1933 and spoken of its "youthful enthusiasm, steeped in optimism, so different to the desolate and enervating scepticism of our defeatists and intellectuals." JAP members wore green shirts and employed a salute that mimicked the fascist salute by raising the arm partway up.^[2]

A history of the JAP has been published by Sussex Academic press.^[3]

References

1. M.Vincent, Catholicism in the Second Spanish Republic
2. Payne, Stanley G. (1961). Falange: a history of Spanish fascism. Stanford University Press. p. 70.
3. http://www.sussex-academic.com/sa/titles/history/lowe.htm