Genealogies for a New State: Painting and Propaganda in Franco's Spain, 1936-1940 (original) (raw)
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This article aims to contribute to our knowledge of the relationship between war and culture in the twentieth century by reconstructing the accounts of the so-called Red Terror that circulated with profusion in the Nationalist zone of Spain during the Civil War of 1936–39 and the early 1940s. Contrary to the thesis that regards this literature as an appendix of the rebel leadership's official propaganda, this article argues that it was an original literary genre, born of the experiences of the real and potential victims of Republican repression and popularized by recognized authors of the period, although its political utility was immediate. The dramatization of the testimonies about the terror realized by authors such as Jacinto Miquelarena, Concha Espina and Agustín de Foxá, often inspired by classic works such as The Scarlet Pimpernel, explains the popularity that they enjoyed during the early Franco era.
Ideology and Film in the Spain of General Francisco Franco
published in: ÖT KONTINENS, 2/2013, ELTE, BUDAPEST, 2015. 323-336. Ideología y cine en la España del general Francisco Franco. (https://edit.elte.hu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10831/20584/%C3%96TKONTINENS\_2013-2\_Wittman\_pdfa.pdf?sequence=4)
Spain's Dictatorship and the Control of the Historical Image of Francisco Franco
Approaches to Historiography II. Writing under Dictatorships, 2022
Censors in dictatorial Spain were always on their qui vive when the historical image of the highest state official, Francisco Franco, was at stake. This article checks their attitude and behavior based on four themes: Franco's role in the coup d'etat of 1936, his coming to the highest political and military power, his relations with the Hitler regime, and the monarchist opposition to his position in 1944/1945.
Identity and fascist discourse in the rebel propaganda during the Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil War was a total war, framed in the context of development of a new type of conflict were the boundaries between civilians and military became totally blurred. A war in which soldiers needed the essential contribution of propaganda in order to reinforce their moral and willingness to fight. Something that was especially important regarding the sphere of violence in the rearguard that was implemented by the combatants over the civil population. In this sense, as historians like Omer Bartov have highlighted, propaganda played the crucial role of creating mental frameworks and survival strategies for these soldiers, so they were able to implement the eliminationist tasks the were ordered to, as it happened both in the Spanish Civil War and in the Second World War. Connected to this, fascism provide this sort of psychic tools through the permeation of the frontline propaganda, making the front and the war experience as ideal socializers of this ideology. On this basis, the aim of our paper is to analyze fascist discourse codified in frontline propaganda during the Spanish World War, focusing, as it cannot be in other way, in the rebel side. Thus, we have to start from the consideration of the low specific military frontline propaganda in the rebel side, as we can only identify few newspapers and newsletters that were focused on the combatants. Because of that, in our study we will work with rear press, mainly due to it was taken to the frontline and distributed among soldiers. Therefore, we are going to analyze the specific front press, like La Ametralladora or Boletín de Campaña de los Requetés, but also the rear press like ABC Sevilla, El Noticiero or Unidad. Diario de combate nacionalsindicalista, trying to explore the different points of view of falangists, carlists, and right wing catholics, considering all of them parts of the same project, the fascist one. In conclusion, we will tackle the issue of propaganda during the Spanish Civil War trying to determine if it worked as a socializer of the fascist discourse –of fascism itself-, analyzing how this propaganda was made and what were the main ideas in which it was based. Then, we will compare it with the main characteristics of Spanish fascism –mainly the same as Italian or German, but adapted to the Spanish context-, that it to say, Catholicism, myth of national palingenesis –for the Spanish fascism, resume and actualize the “glorious” times of the Spanish Empire- or the need of social prophylaxis to “heal” the nation, among others, taking always into account using a comparative and transnational perspective what happened in the other fascist experiences, and also what did the Spanish soldiers thought –studying memories, in this case- about the nature of their fight. Thus, we will analyze propaganda during the conflict of 1936-1939 as a mean of shedding light over the process of building of the fascist regime in Spain, in which we consider propaganda –linked with war experience itself- played an essential role.
Spain Under Franco: The Changing Character of an Authoritarian Regime *
European Journal of Political Research, 1976
The last of the traditional counter-revolutionary dictatorships in l u r o p e and the first authoritarian technocratic regime which claims t o reconcile economic development with a tight social control, the many-sided dictatorship of General Franco covers a complex network of varied and a t times contradictory social and ideological elements which form a sort of compendium of contemporary conservative authoritarianisms. It is a pity that serious studies of such a regime are so rare, despite, its duration. The question remains whether any fundamental study of Francoist Spain exists. ho-one has as yet examined methodically the application to Spain of the Marxist concept of Honapartism or Gramsci's notion of Caesarism, nor even explored t o the full the term fascism which is bandied about at random. It is in fact the functionalist analyses which are the most reliable and systematic of the existing studies; there is but a single researcher, Juan J. Linz, who can take the credit for this.
El Valle de los Caídos: Francoist Anachronism in Spain, by Hugues HENRI
Commonly known as the Valle de los Caídos, this religious monument was commissioned by General Franco, dictator of the Spanish state from 1939 to 1975, to pay homage to the "heroes and martyrs of the Crusade", referring to the only nationalist fighters who died during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). Subsequently, in 1958, the Spanish government decided to make a mausoleum for all the combatants who died in the Civil War, including Republican combatants, provided they were Catholics. Thus, nearly thirty-five thousand fighters, mainly nationalists but also Republicans, rest in the crypt, not far from the central nave where the graves of Francisco Franco and the leader of the Phalanx (Spanish fascist party), José Antonio Primo de Rivera (executed by the Republicans), himself the son of the Spanish dictator Primo de Rivera from 1923 to 1930, are located. . It was the Spanish dictator who set by decree the place and purpose of this monument on April 1, 1940, one year after its triumphant entry into Madrid defeated, thus sealing its victory over the Second Spanish Republic at the end of the Civil War that lasted from 1936 to 1939. The uprising of the Spanish army on July 18, 1936 against the elected government of the Republic was a risky operation that failed almost everywhere except in Spanish Morocco, Seville, Valladolid, Burgos and Zaragoza, with the rest of Spain and the largest cities (Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, etc.) remaining loyal to the Republic. The salvation of the Spanish Nationalists came from the unhoped-for help of Hitler and Mussolini, who, in July/August 1936, sent their air force to establish an air bridge across the Strait of Gibraltar to the African Army, made up of the Spanish Foreign Legion and the mercenary troops of Moroccan goummiers. The "Pronunciamento" became an international war, because the European dictatorships (Portugal, Italy and Germany) intervened militarily in this conflict by sending troops and weapons, unlike the European democracies (France, Great Britain), which took refuge in a hypocritical policy of "non-intervention", putting an assailed democratic government and a putschist junta on the same level.