Page 89 - Nada temas, dice ella

Movement, a shrine was erected with a wonderful altar, presided over by the image of Saint Teresa of Jesus. The background wall was covered in flags, and in the central area was the emblem of the Intendancy.’
The event concluded with cheers of Franco, Franco, Franco! and Arriba España!, while the band played the Falange and national anthems.
In a post-war triumphalist climate, Silverio de Santa Teresa published Santa Teresa de Jesús síntesis suprema de la Raza, which was to remain the official biography of the Carmelite mystic for many years. The book, which reproduced the hagiographic model developed for the beatification and canonisation processes, created an image of Teresa that was in perfect agreement with the Church at that time, and underlined the anti-Lutheran spirit.11 By way of an introduction, it declared: ‘Needless to say that the home in which Teresa was born was old Christian, of the purest faith and integrity of custom’.12
The Carmelite saint would be exalted as a kind of icon of National Catholicism until the 1960s, symbol- ised by her title as ‘saint of the race’. Not even the discovery by Narciso Alonso Cortés in 1946 in the Pleito
de los Cepedas of documents reveal- ing her ‘Jewish convert’ origins could alter the depiction of Teresa as an ‘old Christian’ and hidalga.13
2. The 1962 Centenary. Criticism
of National Catholicism
1962, the year of the inauguration
of the Second Vatican Council, coin- cided with the fourth centenary of the Teresian Reform. The means of com- memoration chosen were indicative
of the opposition to progress that con- tinued to characterise rituals and litur- gies. Celebrated with the impressive use of information channels and key involvement by political and religious institutions (Franco himself and his wife Carmen Polo played a role as pres- idents of the organising committee), the event undoubtedly represented an opportunity to relaunch both the cult of Teresa on a national scale and the Reform of 1562, but above all as an at- tempt to strengthen consensus towards the regime at a time when criticism and dissent could be heard even among Catholic sectors. This second objec- tive is apparent in the choice of rituals aimed at reaffirming the strength
of the National Catholic ‘pact’ and at coalescing around the figure of the Caudillo, using the Teresian com- memorations as an instrument of ideo- logical and religious mobilisation, in accordance with a strategy developed by the Carlists during the nineteenth century.
The Teresian relic’s journey across Spain, speeches, public events and military honours provide evidence of the persistence of an anachronistic devotional model and of a public use
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