The XXV Años de Paz Española: the invention of a Francoist aesthetics of objectivity and the constitution of a new visual regime of history

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article explores how the celebration of the XXV Años de Paz in 1964 served as the stage for a new national rhetoric of peace, progress and modernity that allowed the Francoist dictatorship to move away from its fascist past. Through its study of the exhibition España 64 and the movie Franco, ese hombre, this paper explores how the celebration put into circulation what I refer to as a Francoist aesthetics of objectivity – the visual strategies used by the state to create visible indices of progress through statistics and economics as signs of good governmental practice. I challenge this idea with my analysis of the curatorial narrative of the Spanish pavilion at the New York World’s Fair of 1964. Ultimately, this article argues that what took place during the year 1964 was a rearrangement of the national narrative surrounding the Spanish Civil War that allowed the dictatorship to fluctuate between its fascist ideological tenets and pseudo-liberal economic policies and combine them at will. Despite the alleged aperturismo of the 1960s, I propose that the values attached to the Civil War continued to be at the core of the ideology determining the creation and circulation of new national narratives that would constitute a new visual regime of history.