After the death of dictator Francisco Franco in 1975, and coinciding with the period known as the Spanish Transition, a destabilization campaign led by some sectors of the right, trying to repeat the strategy of the 1930s, began. Originally, FE-JONS was linked with the neofascist terrorism in Spain, along with other similar groups.[2] A prominent member of the party was linked with the 1977 Massacre of Atocha. This strategy continued in the following years,[3][4] although the party also participated in elections and fully legal activities. In 1980 an "escuadrilla" (squadron) of the party killed Juan Carlos García Pérez in Ciudad Lineal, Madrid.[5]
After the electoral defeat in the general elections of 1977, in which the candidacies openly defending neo-francoist positions gained less than the 1% of the vote, the party begun a gradual distancing from the Franco regime, highlighting the thoughts of pre-Franco falangists, like José Antonio Primo de Rivera or Ramiro Ledesma.[6] In 1979 the Círculos Doctrinales José Antonio joined the organization, in an attempt to unite neofalangists under a single political party. The same year FE-JONS formed a coalition with Fuerza Nueva and various Carlist political organizations called National Union. The coalition gained 1 MP in the elections of that year, gaining 378,964 votes (2.11%). The party didn't participate in the 23-F coup attempt.
Raimundo Fernández-Cuesta, the "National Chief" of the party since its foundation, resigned in 1983. Diego Márquez Horrillo (1928-2014) was elected as the new chief the same year. Since then the party fully broke with Francoism, declaring itself the successor of the original Falange Española de las JONS, and fully rejecting the "Unification Decree" of 1937.
In 1999, a sector of the party split, forming La Falange. In 2004, the small faction Falange Española Independiente (FEI) joined FE-JONS. In 2011 the organization elected a new national chief, Norberto Pedro Pico Sanabria. Pico was an ex-member of the FEI. In 2012 another small faction, Mesa Nacional Falangista, joined FE-JONS.[7]
In March 2020, Luz Belinda Rodríguez, a member of the Parliament of Andalusia who had left Vox to become an unaffiliated legislator in January 2020,[8] reportedly joined the Falange and vowed to bring the initiatives of FE-JONS to the Parliament of Andalusia.[9] She then quit the Falange to found her own party.[10]
On July 8, 2023, the Junta Electoral Central gave permission for the Falange to use their anthem Cara al Sol in advertisement, citing that the lyrics themselves do not violate the Democratic Memory Law and do not incite conflict or hatred against any specific group.[11]
On October 29, 2024, La Falange announced it would be rejoining FE-JONS after 48 years.[12]
^[1]José Luis Rodríguez Jiménez. Los terrorismos en la crisis del franquismo y en la transición política a la democracia. Historia del presente, ISSN 1579-8135, Nº 13, 2009, pages 133-151
