19 DECEMBER 1981, Page 26

Falangistas

Sir: Mr Beale takes me to task (Letters, 12 December) for describing those commemorating the sixth anniversary of Franco's death in Madrid on 22 November as `blue-shirted right wingers'. To describe Falangistas thus is, he asserts, 'a misleading media cliche'.

Two points: first, the vast majority of those at the rally were not Falangistas (circa 1933) but supporters of Senor Bias Pinar's Fuerza Nueva which must, by any stretch of the imagination, count as right-wing. Second, Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera and the other founders of the Falange were not as 'radical' as Mr Beale would have us believe. In any event they were quickly overwhelmed by middle-class supporters, attracted by the Falange's atavistic anticommunism.

Stephen Aris

Sunday Times, 200 Gray's Inn Road, London WCI