Ramiro Ledesma Ramos

Ramiro Ledesma Ramos (23 May 1905 – 29 October 1936) was a Spanish philosopher, politician, writer, essayist, and journalist, known as one of the pioneers in the introduction of Fascism in Spain. Early life Born in Alfaraz de Sayago (province of Zamora), he was raised in , where his father worked as school teacher. After studying Arts and Sciences at the Central University of Madrid, where he was a disciple of José Ortega y Gasset, and contributing to La Gaceta Literaria, El Sol 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"). Attracted to both Benito Mussolini's Corporatism, and the developing Nazi movement of Adolf Hitler in Germany, he was troubled by his middle class roots, which he saw as an obstacle in reaching out to the revolutionary milieu of Spanish politics in the 1920s. In 1931, Ledesma Ramos began publishing the periodical La Conquista del Estado, named in tribute to Curzio Malaparte's Italian Fascist magazine La Conquista dello Stato—one of the first publications of the Spanish National-Syndicalism. It attempted to bridge the gap between nationalism and the anarcho-syndicalist of the dominant trade union, the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT), by revising Syndicalism altogether. His admiration for Nazism brought him to imitate Adolf Hitler's hairstyle.