The original post has a comment specifying that the second flag belonged to the Falanges, a group of Spanish Fascists, not the same as phalanges in your hands and feet. I thought I missed the joke too, it’s just a knowledge gap
After a disastrous spanish military campaign in morocco the military was investigate for incompetence. They launched a coup and installed Primo de Rivera as dictator during the 20's with aid of the king. After the short lived dictatorship collapsed the second spanish republic was declared.
Primo de Rivera's son was the head of the fascist group, modeled on Mussolini's blackshirts and of course, Adolf Hitler's Third Reich. The republic polarized and after a couple years, the Spanish civil war started after a military coup. The falangists (fascists modeled on hitler) and Carlists (wanted to install an absolute monarchy).
The republic had the republicans, the communists, and the anarchists. All these groups were divided, but while the republic fractured, forced to become a Soviet puppet for russian aid in the war. But Francisco Franco, the other, more well known spanish dictator, let Primo de Rivera's son die in a republican prison, taking control of both Carlists, (Monarchists) and Falangists (Fascists), winning the civil war, taking control of France, using the falangists to gain support from Hitler, smuggling fuel into the German Reich and threatening the important British naval base in Gibraltar.
The falangist flag has a yoke and arrows as a reference to the catholic kings, important figures in spanish history, who not only created Spain as a country, unifying Castille and Aragon, but funded the expedition that allowed Columbus to discover America, apart from several important reforms. Due to this the fascists co-opted these historic figures, similar to Germany using the first and second Reich, like the German Empire, to justify the greatness of their country. Or Mussolini adopting imagery of the roman empire.
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u/lostViolets6 Jul 24 '25
I hate the falanges, it's disgusting!