ABSTRACT
The careful ambiguity of the patriotic war discourse for the peripheries grew increasingly nuanced in a direction that favoured Spain as its reference point after mid-1937. The national-revolutionary war of independence would in turn help liberate the German and Italian peoples from fascism and would encourage the liberation of the sub-state nationalities in Spain. Spanish communists considered The Terror of 1824 a representative work of common patriotic heritage that should be preserved and publicized among their followers. Besides German communists, Spanish communists were probably among the first to make extensive use of national-patriotic propaganda as a central part of their political strategy. By 1940, Spanish nationalism had become incorporated into the Spanish communist ideological repertoire. The Spanish Civil War and the ensuing armed resistance against the Franco regime were embedded within a discourse of national liberation, drawing upon a "popular" interpretation of national history and culture.
