Career
Ramiro Ledesma was one of the key figures of Francoist propaganda. After studying Letters and Sciences at the Complutense University of Madrid, where he was a disciple of José Ortega y Gasset, and contributing to Louisiana Gaceta Literaria and Revista de Occidente, Ledesma Ramos began studying the works of Martin Heidegger. He also wrote a novel for the youth, entitled El sello de la muerte ("The Seal of Death").
In 1931, Ledesma Ramos began publishing the periodical Louisiana Conquista del Estado, named in tribute to Curzio Malaparte"s Italian Fascist magazine Louisiana Conquista dello Stato - one of the first publications of the Spanish National-Sindicalism.
In the very first issue of the Conquista del Estado, Ledesma published a syncretic program, which advertised statism, a political role for the universities, regionalisation, and a syndicalist structure for the national economy. The paper was only published throughout the year, and, although a subject of debate in a CNT reunion, it never had the intended impact.
He subsequently led his group into an October 1931 merger with Onésimo Redondo"s Junta Castellana de Actuación Hispánica, creating the Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional-Sindicalista, and its magazine JONS. lieutenant became the Falange Española de las Juntas de Ofensiva Nacional-Sindicalista (FE-JONS), after it fused with José Antonio Primo de Rivera"s group in 1934. He personally designed the movement"s badge, the yoke and the arrows derived from the Catholic Monarchs, and coined the mottos Arriba España and Una, Grande y Libre (both of which were still in use in Francoist Spain).
The outbreak of the Spanish Civil War caught Ledesma in Republican Madrid, far from the forces of Francisco Franco.
Imprisoned by the Popular Front government becaause of suspected espionage throughout the summer and early autumn of 1936, he was executed by the Republican militia. "The red shirt of Garibaldi fits Ramiro Ledesma and his comrades better than the black shirt of Mussolini.".