scholarly journals Writing in Franco's Spain: Censorship, gender and social criticism in the postwar novel

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Julia Van Luijk
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Spanish Civil War ◽  
Wealth Inequality ◽  
Historical Background ◽  
Moral Code ◽  
Franco Regime ◽  
Social Commitment ◽  
Catholic Clergy ◽  
Literary Context ◽  
Political Criticism

<p>Following the Nationalist victory in the Spanish Civil War (1936–39), General Francisco Franco’s authoritarian regime ruled Spain in a dictatorship that lasted almost forty years. In order to preserve the dominance of the regime and its ideology in Spain, all cultural activity was strictly censored, with censorship being particularly severe in the immediate postwar years. The regime’s censorship board, often with the involvement of Catholic clergy, had to approve all types of public communication, from poetry to television, before it could be published or broadcast. The censor was to ensure that the material in question was not critical of the regime or its ideology and that it did not challenge Catholic morals and traditional Spanish family values. Despite the regime’s efforts, however, writers who wished to convey their opposition to the dictatorship turned to a realist, objective narrative style that would allow them to denounce Francoist society without causing concern for the censors. In this thesis, I examine five Spanish postwar novels, published between 1945 and 1961, that provide a critique of Francoism and its associated values: Carmen Laforet’s Nada (1945), Luis Romero’s La noria (1952), Ignacio Aldecoa’s El fulgor y la sangre (1954), Juan García Hortelano’s Nuevas amistades (1959) and Dolores Medio’s Diario de una maestra (1961). This particular combination of novels has been selected in order to examine social and political criticism in the postwar novel from a wider perspective than that which is traditionally assigned to the Spanish novela social. In each case study, I identify which aspects of the Franco regime and postwar society the author sought to denounce and discuss how the author manages to convey these critical views despite the constraints of censorship. Themes include the misery and hunger that plagued Spain in the 1940s, the harsh repression suffered by the losers of the war, class and wealth inequality, the subversion of the regime’s ‘official’ historiography and the adoption of the Catholic Church’s ultra-conservative moral values. There is a particular focus on the critique of social themes that most affected women, such as the strict moral code assigned to women by the regime and the double moral standards with regard to issues such as premarital sex, prostitution and abortion; these themes are prominent in all of the selected novels, regardless of the gender of the author. In the first chapter, I outline the historical background that led to the Civil War and the establishment of the dictatorship and describe the literary context of the early Franco era. The following five chapters consist of my case studies which are examined in chronological order: each novel is examined separately in the context of social and political history, although I will draw parallels where suitable. The analyses are framed by theories of political and social commitment in literature; I draw also on gender and memory studies, and critics who discuss the relationship between literature and censorship. I have consulted the official censor’s report for each novel and discuss how each novel was received and altered, if at all, by the censor, as well as speculating as to how each author may have tailored his or her work in order to avoid such censorial intervention.</p>

scholarly journals Writing in Franco's Spain: Censorship, gender and social criticism in the postwar novel

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Julia Van Luijk
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Spanish Civil War ◽  
Wealth Inequality ◽  
Historical Background ◽  
Moral Code ◽  
Franco Regime ◽  
Social Commitment ◽  
Catholic Clergy ◽  
Literary Context ◽  
Political Criticism

<p>Following the Nationalist victory in the Spanish Civil War (1936–39), General Francisco Franco’s authoritarian regime ruled Spain in a dictatorship that lasted almost forty years. In order to preserve the dominance of the regime and its ideology in Spain, all cultural activity was strictly censored, with censorship being particularly severe in the immediate postwar years. The regime’s censorship board, often with the involvement of Catholic clergy, had to approve all types of public communication, from poetry to television, before it could be published or broadcast. The censor was to ensure that the material in question was not critical of the regime or its ideology and that it did not challenge Catholic morals and traditional Spanish family values. Despite the regime’s efforts, however, writers who wished to convey their opposition to the dictatorship turned to a realist, objective narrative style that would allow them to denounce Francoist society without causing concern for the censors. In this thesis, I examine five Spanish postwar novels, published between 1945 and 1961, that provide a critique of Francoism and its associated values: Carmen Laforet’s Nada (1945), Luis Romero’s La noria (1952), Ignacio Aldecoa’s El fulgor y la sangre (1954), Juan García Hortelano’s Nuevas amistades (1959) and Dolores Medio’s Diario de una maestra (1961). This particular combination of novels has been selected in order to examine social and political criticism in the postwar novel from a wider perspective than that which is traditionally assigned to the Spanish novela social. In each case study, I identify which aspects of the Franco regime and postwar society the author sought to denounce and discuss how the author manages to convey these critical views despite the constraints of censorship. Themes include the misery and hunger that plagued Spain in the 1940s, the harsh repression suffered by the losers of the war, class and wealth inequality, the subversion of the regime’s ‘official’ historiography and the adoption of the Catholic Church’s ultra-conservative moral values. There is a particular focus on the critique of social themes that most affected women, such as the strict moral code assigned to women by the regime and the double moral standards with regard to issues such as premarital sex, prostitution and abortion; these themes are prominent in all of the selected novels, regardless of the gender of the author. In the first chapter, I outline the historical background that led to the Civil War and the establishment of the dictatorship and describe the literary context of the early Franco era. The following five chapters consist of my case studies which are examined in chronological order: each novel is examined separately in the context of social and political history, although I will draw parallels where suitable. The analyses are framed by theories of political and social commitment in literature; I draw also on gender and memory studies, and critics who discuss the relationship between literature and censorship. I have consulted the official censor’s report for each novel and discuss how each novel was received and altered, if at all, by the censor, as well as speculating as to how each author may have tailored his or her work in order to avoid such censorial intervention.</p>

scholarly journals Deans of humanitarianism and perfidy. The collaboration of the Diplomatic Missions of Argentina and Chile with the Francoist cause during the Spanish Civil War (and after), 1936-1969

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. e010
Author(s):  
Carlos Píriz
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Spanish Civil War ◽  
Franco Regime ◽  
The Right ◽  
Good Number

During the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939, some thirty Diplomatic Missions opened their doors and create new sites for the reception of persecution victims under the protection of the right of asylum. However, beyond the humanitarian role, a tendentious collaboration of some of their delegates with the rebels could be seen from the beginning. Argentina and Chile, which held the Diplomatic Deanship in those years, were two prime examples of this. A good number of their representatives used various strategies to help the coup plotters of 1936, such as the refuge, care and irregular extraction of people or espionage. At the same time, they played a role that alternated between searching for consensus with other Diplomatic Missions (mainly the Latin American ones), which really meant demanding that those other legations follow their lead, and denouncing the excesses of the consolidated republican rearguard, especially on the international scene. A situation which tarnishes the image of the legitimate Spanish governments. Once the contest ended, many of those collaborators were praised and rewarded by the Franco regime, and other fascists regimes. This research focuses on demonstrating, based on original documentation and providing new and compelling data, that close (and proven) relationship.

Mobility and Migration of Spanish Mathematicians during the Years around the Spanish Civil War and World War II

2014 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-141 ◽  
Author(s):  
José M. Pacheco
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Civil War ◽  
World War I ◽  
Spanish Civil War ◽  
World War ◽  
Franco Regime ◽  
Key Points ◽  
The Social ◽  
Mathematical Sciences ◽  
And Migration

ArgumentThis paper considers some aspects of the reception and development of contemporary mathematics in Spain during the first half of the twentieth century, more specifically between 1910 and 1950. It analyzes the possible influence of scientists’ mobility in the adoption of newer views or theories. A short overview of key points of the social and scientific background in nineteenth-century Spain locates the expounded facts in an appropriate context. Three leading threads are followed. First is the consideration of the mobility of some Spanish mathematicians during a period including World War I and World War II – when Spain was a theoretically neutral country – and the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939). Second, the emergence and socio-political behavior of a dominant mathematical group gathered around Julio Rey Pastor between 1915 and 1936 is also accounted for, as well as its continuity after the Civil War into the 1940s. Third, attention is paid to the migration or interior exile of a number of mathematicians as a consequence of the Civil War. The paper is organized around nine Tables containing information on mobility of mathematicians, doctorates awarded in the mathematical sciences, and mathematical production in Spain during this period, accompanied by statistical résumés and comments on interesting entries. The main conclusions drawn are: 1) a number of integrants of the Rey group, himself included, officially traveled to Austria, France, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland – usually after having obtained doctorates and fixed positions – imported mathematical knowledge into Spain; 2) the group also managed to dominate the mathematical panorama from both the scientific and the sociological viewpoint; 3) social usages in Spanish mathematical affairs established in Spain in the years prior to the Civil War present a clear continuity under the Franco regime once the war was over.

Memory and Politics in Democratic Spain

2020 ◽  
pp. 46-61
Author(s):  
Omar G. Encarnación
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Spanish Civil War ◽  
The Political ◽  
Truth Telling ◽  
Franco Regime ◽  
Political Class ◽  
Human Rights Abuses ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Right

This chapter explains the persistence of Spain’s ‘politics of forgetting’, a phenomenon revealed by the wilful intent to disremember the political memory of the violence of the Spanish Civil War and the human rights abuses of General Franco’s authoritarian regime. Looking beyond the traumas of the Civil War, the limits on transitional justice and truth-telling on the Franco regime imposed by a transition to democracy anchored on intra-elite pacts, and the conciliatory and forward-looking political culture that consolidated in the new democracy, this analysis emphasizes a decidedly less obvious explanation: the political uses of forgetting. Special attention is paid to how the absence of a reckoning with the past, protected politicians from both the right and the left from embarrassing and inconvenient political histories; facilitated the reinvention of the major political parties as democratic institutions; and lessened societal fears about repeating past historical mistakes. The conclusion of the chapter explains how the success of the current democratic regime, shifting public opinion about the past occasioned by greater awareness about the dark policies and legacies of the Franco regime, and generational change among Spain’s political class have in recent years diminished the political uses of forgetting. This, in turn, has allowed for a more honest treatment of the past in Spain’s public policies.

scholarly journals A Spanish Genocide? Reflections on the Francoist Repression after the Spanish Civil War

2005 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 171-191 ◽  
Author(s):  
JULIUS RUIZ
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Spanish Civil War ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Franco Regime ◽  
Military Justice ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Relative Decline ◽  
Post War ◽  
Second World

This article considers whether the Franco regime pursued a genocidal policy against Republicans after the formal ending of hostilities on 1 April 1939. In post-war Spain, the primary mechanism for punishing Republicans was military tribunals. Francoist military justice was based on the assumption that responsibility for the civil war lay with the Republic: defendants were tried for the crime of ‘military rebellion’. This was, as Ramón Serrano Suñer admitted his memoirs, ‘turning justice on its head’. But although it was extremely harsh, post-war military justice was never exterminatory. The article stresses that the institutionalisation of military justice from 1937, following the arbitrary murders of 1936, contributed to a relative decline in executions. Although the regime's determination to punish Republicans for ‘military rebellion’ inevitably led to the initiation of tens of thousands of post-war military investigations, only a minority of cases ended in execution. This was especially the case from January 1940, when the higher military authorities ended the autonomy of military tribunals over sentencing. This reassertion of central control in January 1940 was part of a wider policy to ease the self-inflicted problem of prison overcrowding; successive parole decrees led to a substantial and permanent decrease in the number of inmates by 1945. Allied victory in the Second World War did not mark the beginning but the end of the process of bringing to a close mass military justice.

scholarly journals Federico García Lorca : el 75 aniversario de su muerte

2011 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
pp. 113-122
Author(s):  
Eszter Katona
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Spanish Civil War ◽  
Public Awareness ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
The Body ◽  
Birth Date ◽  
Federico Garcia Lorca ◽  
Franco Regime ◽  
The Family ◽  
Almost All

The anniversary of Federico Garría Lorca's death and the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War is closely intertwined in the Spanish public awareness. The poet's birth date is equally an important date in the his toy of the Iberian nation, as Spain has lost its last colonies in 1898. Besides these two memorable dates, we also have to highlight 2007, when the Historical Memory Law (Ley de Memoria Histórica) was enacted, aiming to rehabilitate the victims of the Civil War and the Franco regime. This measure has launched such an avalanche on Spanish public life, that affected almost all the society in some way. The family of Garcia Lorca also had to take a commitment as the resting place of their world-famous relative was still unknown. In addition to the identification of the body of the dead poet, Lorca's homosexuality is a constant topic in literary and historical arríes. Today, Spanish society accepts the sexual orientation of the poet, but it remains disputed whether it had a real effec t on Lorca's poetry. Lorca's Hungarian popularity began in 1947 when Gypsy Ballads was issued then the premier of Bernarda in 1955, and has remained unbroken ever since. In connection with this year's anniversary, this study aims to present these three topics — the location of Lorca's resting place, Lorca's homosexuality, Lorca's reception in Hungary.

scholarly journals The valley of the fallen: a new El Escorial for Spain

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Queralt Solé
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Spanish Civil War ◽  
The State ◽  
First Century ◽  
Mass Grave ◽  
Franco Regime ◽  
Mass Graves ◽  
The Dead ◽  
First Time ◽  
New Location

Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, Spain has experienced a cycle of exhumations of the mass graves of the Spanish Civil War (1936–39) and has rediscovered that the largest mass grave of the state is the monument that glorifies the Franco regime: the Valley of the Fallen. Building work in the Sierra de Guadarrama, near Madrid, was begun in 1940 and was not completed until 1958. This article analyses for the first time the regimes wish, from the start of the works, for the construction of the Valley of the Fallen to outdo the monument of El Escorial. At the same time the regime sought to create a new location to sanctify the dictatorship through the vast transfer to its crypts of the remains of the dead of the opposing sides of the war.

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