The Jefe Is Responsible before God and History

In the draft of his speech for July 18, 1938, commemorating the second anniversary of the National Movement, he applied the adjective “Fascist” to his regime and, more extravagantly, to the Catholic monarchs but decided to delete it from the final version. The official statutes of the party, promulgated on August 4, 1937, structured a completely authoritarian and hierarchical system. Franco’s role was defined in Articles 47 and 48:

The Jefe Nacional of F. E. T., supreme Caudillo of the Movement, personifies all its values and honors. As author of the historical era in which Spain acquires the means to carry out its destiny and with that the goals of the Movement, the Jefe, in the plenitude of his powers, assumes the most absolute authority. The Jefe is responsible before God and history.

 --Stanley G. Payne and Jesús Palacios, Franco: A Personal and Political Biography (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2014), 160-161.