An old king for new times: the mediatic construction of the pretender Alfonso Carlos I in the Carlist press during the Second Republic

Abstract

The objective of this article aims to evaluate through the pages of various publications attached to the Traditionalist press network in the period 1931-1936 the image that they were commissioned to convey the new, although octogenarian, Carlist king-pretender, Alfonso Carlos (1849-1936), who embodied the new turn of the Traditionalist Communion. His image and that of the members of the great family appeared again and again in the journalistic media –at the same time that his portraits presided over spaces of traditionalist sociability– because of his manifest as the head of the Carlist non-state form, the festivities, holydays or birthdays of the legitimist royal family. Ultimately, the treatment of the inheritance dilemma faced in the field of ideology and propaganda will be addressed to the reunified factions of the "counterrevolutionary amalgam". Among the heads associated with the Carlist journalistic network will be analyzed, among others, for its importance: the previously integrist newspapers El Siglo Futuro and La Constancia, the biweekly El Cruzado Español, the Santander magazine Tradición or the Vitoria publications Heraldo and Pensamiento Alavés.

Keywords

• prensa tradicionalista
• alfonso carlos de borbón
• el siglo futuro
• monarquías
• ii república
• culturas políticas.