Éljen a halál? A vasgárdisták spanyolországi útja és a nagy temetések
Long Live Death? The Romanian Iron Guardists' Mission to Spain and the Ritual Burials

Summary/Abstract: While the Nazis and the Soviets regarded the Spanish civil war as an opportunity to test new weapons, the bloody conflict occurring in a distant country gave the Romanian Iron Guard the possibility of strengthening its ideology. In 1936 seven members of the far-right party decided to take part as volunteers in the Spanish civil war. After two of them died in combat, the burial ceremony in Bucharest became the stage for an immense popular mobilization. King Carol II was in a serious dilemma: he could either liquidate the party leadership, or attract them to cooperation and integrate this antisystemic movement into the Romanian political game, with the barely hidden aim to discredit it. A marginal episode like the small Romanian expedition to Spain becomes a good opportunity to explore in this article the complex mythology, based on the cult of dead heroes, elaborated by Romanian fascism. When confronted with empirical facts, the mythical world proves itself an indissoluble connubium of tragedy and farce, in conformity with the only trustful law of History: irony.

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