Hi, I guess you’re ready for the long speech...
At the end of the 17th Century, the Spanish decadent monarchy was ruled by Carlos II, the last to be from Royal Austrian lineage. When he died with not heirs, Louis XIV, le Roi Soleil, found the opportunity to put some of his own lineage sitting on the Spanish throne. So he did it. Since then, the history of Spain has been full of civil wars (3 between 1833 and 1876!) amongst the supporters of the two royal lineages. The Carlists (King Carlos supporters) were stronger on small cities or rural areas, and wanted a traditionalist, catholic, conservative and absolutist monarchic regime.
When Franco made his push on 1936, the Carlist were (not only but mostly) very strong in Navarre, a northern region close to the Pyrenees and neighboring the Basc Country. All along the 2nd Republic period, the bellicose, ultra-catholic and anti-democratic Carlist (known as Requetés) started to prepare seriously for civil war, and despite a lack of weapons they were organized and trained efficiently with the help of sympathetic Army officers.
The Carlist had significant ideological differences with the Fascist leaders, and Franco’s uprising saw them siding with him uneasy and only at the last moment, when their leader, Manuel Fal Condé, agreed to place his militiamen under local Army commanders. But the Navarrese units would continue to enjoy a degree of separate status which often made their integration into the nationalist Army’s plans difficult.
To avoid that, the Nationalist leaders made a unification of Carlist militia and Falange (the blue shirts, the Spanish fascist movement) into a single Nationalist party. Its traditional leaders were exiled for the rest of the war and more cooperative figures stepped forward keeping the troops from the Carlist heartland of Navarre remaining loyal to the Nationalist side.
These militiamen, who went into battle accompanied by catholic priests and with their shirts breast pockets pinned with crosses, scapulars and catholic medals, had a reputation of toughness, high motivation and comparatively good training; and were instrumental in several Nationalist victories. Most continued to wear their traditional red berets with nationalist uniforms.
And that’s all, folks…!
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