Talk:José María Zavala Castella

Partido Carlista: far-left or left-wing

what is it all about: a user named Soman changed the original part of the lead from attempt to transform Carlism from a far-right traditionalist movement into a far-left radical socialist party to attempt to transform Carlism from a right-wing traditionalist movement into a left-wing radical socialist party. The justification provided might be inspected on the "history" page.

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1. To begin with: I think it is a good practice that in case you want to change basic information in the lead of a fairly detailed, well-referenced article written by somebody else, you start a thread on discussion page.

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2. Now to the point: yes, the term “far-left” is helpful and it correctly depicts the position of Partido Carlista in the mid-1970s. The solution advanced by PC was this of a Yugoslav-style communism, enveloped in vague, untested and radical phraseology; compared to PSOE and a myriad of other socialist or social-democratic parties, which indeed might be categorized as “left”, Partido Carlista was far-left. The difference with FRAP or GRAPO is not in terms of final political objectives, but in terms of strategy: FRAP or GRAPO were terrorist organisations, while Partido Carlista was not.

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3. So, is it the usual Wikipedia “I know better” dispute? One editor thinks he is more competent, another one thinks otherwise, one opinion against another? Well, you might look at it this way. My credentials are:

• I have written a 4.000-word article, quoting 200+ references and giving 10 monographs as background (all of them I have read and most I have on my shelf, not just found loose excerpts on Google.Books).
• During the last 8 years I have also written some 140 equally detailed, fully-fledged articles on 20-th-century Carlism.

Credentials of user Soman are:

• he/she writes mostly about politics and history in Asia, Africa and Eastern Europe
• I did not have the patience to run through all of his/her edits, but based of the first 5,000, among those on Lithuania, Belarus, Russia, Nepal, India, Afghanistan, Kampuchea, Ethiopia, Sudan, Egypt, Kenya and similar there are only 2 related to Spain
• he/she has not provided a single reference
• it took him/her 13 minutes (22:48 to 23:01) before he/she made a previous unrelated WP edit and edited this one, which means he/she has not read even 30% of my article, let alone have reflected upon it; guess all of these 13 minutes were needed to find out about FRAP and GRAPO.

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4. But perhaps the more legitimate way to discuss is reverting to WP basics, which is about producing articles based on reliable sources.

There are at least 2 scholars – one expert in recent Spanish history, actually one of the most distinguished living hispanists, and another one expert in international far-right political thought – who claim that what is absolutely globally unique about Carlism, something which has not happened to any other political current in the world, is the transition from the right-wing extreme to the left-wing extreme (detailed bibliographical references as in the article):

• “Pero de todas formas, éste alcanzó otra singularidad final del carlismo, o del pseudo-carlismo, como el único movimiento en la historia del mundo que pasó de la extrema derecha a la extrema izquierda” – Stanley G. Payne, Prologue, [in:] Vázquez de Prada 2016, p. 20. Also: “under its current leader, Carlos Hugo (as he renamed himself), had evolved from the extreme right to left” – Stanley G. Payne, Jesús Palacios, Franco (2014), p. 484
• “Każda z owych ‘herezji’ jest oczywiście usytuowana w jakimś punkcie ‘na prawo’ lub ‘na lewo’ w relacji do położenia doktryny pierwotnej na osi diady prawica-lewica, ale żadna z nich nie dokonała translokacji z jednej skrajności w drugą na linii horyzontalnej całej osi” – Bartyzel (2011), p. 14 [since Soman apparently reads Russian, Belarusian and even Lithuanian, I do not think there is a need to translate this from Polish into English, but in case someone else thinks so and internet translators do not work, please give me a shout]

Other scholars might not offer such general conclusons of global reach, but they also categorize Partido Carlista as utopian, revolutionary, extremist, far-left party:

• “Carlos Hugo in his shift to the utopian left” – MacClancy 2000, p. 224
• “Carlist utopianism of socialist self-management” – MacClancy 2000, p. 191
• [when explaining reasons for Partido Carlista defeat in 1979 elections] “the earlier elections had shown that many leftists with radical sympathies chose not to vote for extremist parties for fear of participating another civil war” – MacClancy 2000, p. 194
• “Pero será ese nuevo Carlismo el que salga adelante, con las bendiciones del Rey Javier, hasta llegar al paroxismo de la negación a la totalidad, de la contradicción más brutal y de la autoinmolación en aras de un pensamiento que le asimilaba a la evolución que estaban experimentando los partidos de la extrema izquierda española” – García Riol 2015, p. 255
• “Renunciando a su pensamiento propio se había dirigido a la escollera incierta, y de catastróficas consecuencias, que era apostar por un modelo socialista, federalista y autogestionario; modelo que bien podían profesar numerosos grupúsculos de la extrema izquierda y del nacionalismo radical” – García Riol 2015, pp. 417-418, also 82, 105, 271
• “Ya veremos, en proximos capítulos, como la verdadera radicalizacíon hasta los posicionamentos de la extrema izquierda y el filomarxismo, vendrán a partir de finales de 1969 y principios de 1970, tras la expulsion de toda la familia Borbón Parma de España” – Rodon Guinjoan 2015, p. 348
• “Por otra parte no es necesario destacar que, con la bandosidad carloshuguista, formaron todos los partidos y grupos que, en aquel entonces, constituían el completo del aspecto de la extrema izquierda española” – Rodon Guinjoan 2015, p. 621
• „Autor wyciąga z tego wniosek bardzo radykalny, że elektorat karlizmu na początku XX wieku jest jeszcze skrajnie prawicowy, ale potencjalnie już skrajnie lewicowy” – Bartyzel 2010, p. 92
• „Zasadniczo zatem, biorąc pod uwagę owe dwie cezury, można stwierdzić, że owocem pierwszego etapu ewolucji ideologicznej była demokratyzacja karlizmu, drugiego zaś – jego socjalizacja, która już zdecydowanie ulokowała ten ruch na lewicy, i to skrajnej, rewolucyjnej, radykalnej” – Bartyzel 2010, p. 81
• „La realitat els demostra que la solició aportada per carlisme a la societat espanyola fou considereda irreal per ler grans masses d’una població que fugia de la dictadura i del temor de les represalie i que no estava preparada per assmir un canvi tan radical” – Vallverdú Martí 2014, p. 279
• “Las organizaciones de la llamada izquierda revolucionaria defendían la ruptura democrática; y el Partido Carlista, defensor del socialismo de autogestión global, también defendía el rupturismo democrático” – Juan Carlos Senant Sansegundo, ¿Todos los partidos?: partidos ilegales y las elecciones de 1977, [in:] Hispania Nova 19 (2021), p. 454
• “La mayor muestra del desconcierto y la crisis del carlismo fue el paso del partido, encabezado por el nuevo pretendiente Carlos Hugo, al socialismo autogestionario y federalista, lindante con la extrema izquierda” – Eliseo Gil Zubillaga, De Túbal a Aitor: historia de Vasconia (2011), p. 611

I consider the far-left categorization sufficiently backed by scientific historiographic literature in 4 languages. I am reverting to the original “far-left” label, applied to Partico Carlista in the late 1970s. Moreover, I am reverting to the original “far-right” label, applied to historical Carlism in the lead, which has also been deleted by Soman, this time not with a single word of justification or rationale.

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Writing all the above, finding quotations and references, took me some 4 hours. Deleting two words from the lead took 13 minutes. Unfortunately, this is the grim reality of Wikipedia. regards,--Dd1495 (talk) 18:02, 26 December 2022 (UTC)

Hi, a 'user named Soman' here. To begin, I think to reaffirm some basics on how Wikipedia works are in order, ideally with reading WP:OWN and remembering that we discuss and debate the merit of content and sources (not the credentials of individual editors).

• Secondly, I insist that the edit made remains justified. In fact several of the sources you attribute above point in this direction (like Gil Zubillaga, MacClancy).
• Left-right political axis positions are generally problematic. It is a common mistake in Wikipedia to assume that left-right positions are absolute, but in reality they correspond to no fixed points. It's perfectly fine to write "According to [Historian X], [individual Y] held so and so position' in article text. But stating narrow left/right definitions are absolute facts in ledes or infoboxes is unhelpful. We can almost always find multiple accounts of where an individual or party are placed on the axis, in this case I note "...hemos elegido como menos malo , y pese a sus deficiencias , el criterio siguiente para Euskadi : Izquierda revolucionaria : Agrupación Electoral de Trabajadores ( ORT ) , Euskadiko Ezkerra ( EIA y EMK - MCE ) , Frente Democrático de Izquierdas ( PT ) , Frente por la Unidad de los Trabajadores ( Liga Comunista y OIC ) y Unión Navarra de Izquierdas ( independientes y EMK - MCE ) . Izquierda moderada : Acción Nacionalista Vasca , ESB ( Partido Socialista Vasco ) , Partido Carlista , Partido Comunista , PSOE y PSP." I'm certain that there is a myriad of other classification schemes out there for the same period. The key is to avoid cherry-picking the reference that skews the facts the most.
• Notably, there are refs talking about PC and far-left as different tendencies, such as "...el PNV, los socialdemócratas de USDE, el Partido Carlista y dos grupos políticos de la extrema izquierda: el Movimiento Comunista y la Organización Revolucionaria de Trabajadores.", "...como la Unió Democràtica del País Valencià, hasta agrupaciones de extrema izquierda, como el Movimiento Comunista o la Organización Revolucionaria de Trabajadores, pasando por el Partido Carlista y por diversas fuerzas gallegas,..."
• 'Left-wing' and 'far-left' are not mutually exclusive terms. 'Left-wing' is a broader term, that can encompass many different left-wing tendencies. It's is a better term to use, as it is easier to source properly and less likely to be the result of WP:OR. It is much more common in contemporary Spanish political terminology to describe IU and its constituents as 'izquierda', whereas a political commentator referring to IU as 'extrema izquierda' would likely hail from the political right.
• I don't think 'far left' and 'far right' are labels that work in identical ways. But for what it's worth, neither is particularily useful here. Framing early Carlism as a fringe movement, rather than as one of the pillars of traditionalism in Spain, is misleading to the reader.
• As for the Payne quote, if attributed (with linked name in article itself), it could be given as a quote. The claim isn't true by any means - there are other movements that have made massive moves across the political spectrum (you could make similar claims about the Syrian Social Nationalist Party - which is another article suffering from arbitrary left/right Wiki-labels). But Payne is sufficiently notable in his for his opinion to be stated. But placing it in the lede is disproportional. --Soman (talk) 18:39, 27 December 2022 (UTC)

To support my claim, I have provided 14 quotations from 8 different scholars in 4 different languages. The user above can not provide a single excerpt to support his/her view, and all he/she does is twisting and turning the quotations I have given, plus embarking on loose own speculations. Fortunately, anyone can see the references in question to make his/her own judgement. --Dd1495 (talk) 13:15, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

References