Spanish State Research Articles

Typology, Political and Legal Foundations of Francoism: Modern Interpretations

The article proposes a conceptual analysis of the political practices of the Francoist authoritarian regime, including its ideological principles and socio-political doctrines. The study delves into their historical origins, factors and reasons for formation, components, essence, and the evolution and transformation of these ideological principles and doctrines throughout the historical stages that the Spanish Francoist regime underwent from 1939 to 1975.The argument is presented that Francoist Spain did not adhere to a unified ideology, similar to national-socialist or fascist regimes. Instead, a diverse conservative political-ideological spectrum was employed, encompassing nationalist, traditionalist, and confessional movements, rooted in the ancient historical past of Spain. The article explores the historical, political-philosophical, and social origins of these movements, as well as their components, peculiarities of formation, development, modifications, and evolution in alignment with the transformation of Francoism’s political, socio-economic, and foreign policy practices.The legal foundations of the Francoist regime, the essence of the theory and practice of ‘organic democracy,’ and the ways and mechanisms of government organization are examined. The article also explores the formation and evolution of the universal status of the head of state, which ensured the efficiency and heredity of royal power and facilitated a peaceful transition to democratic reforms.The author focuses on the direct interdependence of the development and evolution of the Francoist authoritarian political system, aimed at stabilization and reforms, and the unique model of Spain’s transition to a full-fledged democracy. The article discusses Spain’s rapid acquisition of subjectivity in international relations and its membership in Euro-Atlantic structures.

Forms of rage in Franco's Spain

This video essay explores how the film Black bread (2010) by Agustí Villaronga foregrounds the relationship between vulnerability, fear, and rage in the context of economic, political, and sexual repression. It is a film that depicts a world of inequality and homophobia where children learn that violence is not an anomaly but a tool. Through the audiovisual format I argue that the film provokes thought on the complexity of rage and how to either challenge or perpetuate heteropatriarchal norms. The film makes visible the process through which the powerful manipulate the rage of the marginalized by shifting blame for their oppression. When shame and fear fuel rage, it loses its productive potential and becomes destructive. In denying his roots out of fear and rage, the protagonist reconstructs himself in the image of those behind his pain. There is no cinematic vision of a remedy to cruelty, or a productive use of rage. The conclusion suggests that representing that destructive process is enough.

Les procurateurs élus par les îles Baléares lors des dernières Cortes franquistes (1975–77)

ABSTRACT The Spanish Cortes, born and formed during the Franco dictatorship, played a relevant role during the initial stage of the Transition (Transición). This article aims to understand the biographical and sociological profile of the men who were elected within the framework of the province of Baleares, whether as part of what was known as the ‘family third’ or by municipal or provincial corporations. This approach will allow us to get closer to individuals who experienced first hand the controlled dismantling of the Franco regime and, moreover, understand what role they could have played in that ending, especially in relation to the processing and voting of the Law for Political Reform of 1976. We are also interested, among other aspects, in establishing their position regarding the development of tourism in a time of economic crisis and their attitude towards a possible decentralization of the Spanish State.

Leandro Mbomio, the “Black Picasso”: Spanish state propaganda, Blackness, and neocolonialism in Equatorial Guinea

ABSTRACT In 1968, Equatorial Guinea’s emergence as an independent nation signaled a pivotal chapter in Spain’s national identity, deeply grounded on an imperial narrative. Around this juncture, Leandro Mbomio was etching his mark on Spain's cultural milieu as a sculptor. His success and persona reflected the image, voice, and thought the Francoist state sought in its former African subjects. Amid Spain’s stringent media censorship, the official narrative that emerges from Mbomio’s career is captivating. He was celebrated as “the black Picasso” and deemed emblematic of Black culture in Spain. This paper seeks to answer the following questions: How did the portrayal and reception of Mbomio reflect Spain’s shifting views on Equatorial Guinea, “Black Africa”, and the broader understanding of “Blackness” at the time?

Journalistic Practices in Difficult Times: The Cases of Fictional Television Series Borgen and El Caso in Denmark and Spain

This study sets out to understand how journalism is represented in the Danish fiction series Borgen and the Spanish series El Caso: Crónica de Sucesos. The aim is to provide an understanding of how journalism is conceptualized in non-American fiction. Through textual analysis, we found out that Borgen (years 2010 and up) represents a generational and evolutionary conflict in which journalistic values are restrained by political and commercial imperatives reflecting challenges in Danish journalism. As such, this series criticizes the free press myth—commonly found in American fiction series. El Caso (1960s) also engages with this myth through the representation of journalism practices embedded in Spain’s Francoist regime that balance public and political-religious interests. However, El Caso smooths over this conflict to illustrate how journalists cleverly overcame the censorship of the Catholic church. Both series explore the gendered and cultural obstacles of their respective contexts and eras.

Pathologization, Law, and Gender in Cases of Infanticide in Spain and the Netherlands in the Mid-Twentieth Century: A Comparative Perspective

Abstract This article compares how gender and pathologization were entangled in the laws on infanticide in Spain and the Netherlands in 1930–1960, as well as in court practices. Both countries knew lenient laws for women who killed their newborn babies. These laws themselves did not assume that these women were suffering from a mental disorder, even though they referred to emotional state. In Spain, where the notion of honor was more important in the law, from the 1940s a debate was held about the relationship between mental illness and infanticide laws in the context of the Franco regime's emphasis on pronatalism. While in Spain the institutional monopoly of the generalist forensic physician as preferred expert excluded psychiatrists, in the Netherlands forensic psychiatrists were more influential, and their role increased from the 1950s. The article argues that regardless of many differences in forensic and political culture in both countries infanticidal women were pathologized: in Spain mostly via some interpretations of the infanticide law, and in the Netherlands via forensic psychiatry. However, pathologization, we show, involved many lay actors such as lawyers, legal scholars, and probation services.

The evolution of marriage in Spain from the francoist dictatorship to the present day

ABSTRACT: The aim of this paper is to present a brief summary about the evolution of marriage in Spain: from Catholic marriage during the years of the Francoist dictatorship (1939-1975), going through the democratic transition and the recognition of the right to marriage in the Constitution of 1978, until the necessity for legislative intervention to interpret the constitutional precept more broadly in order to recognise homosexual marriage. Moreover, we will observe what has been and continues to be the impact of non-catholic confessions in the Spanish marriage system.
 KEYWORDS: marriage, religious confessions, homosexual marriage.

Architecture and Spanish art in the second half of the 20th century. Disciplinary transfers and collaborations

Spanish architecture experienced a revival of modernity in the 1950s and 1960s. The stripping away of the historicist and vernacular forms of the early Franco regime marked this revival; also, due to the disciplinary interaction with the plastic arts, which at that time moved towards abstraction as modernity. This paper traces the lines of transfers and collaborations between architecture, painting and sculpture in a complex moment of interdisciplinary relationship through an analytical reading of different works and events of the moment. It is about outlining an environment of collaboration and interaction between singular architects and artists, who learned from each other and proposed other ways of building the common ‘plastic space’ of the arts.

‘The first rearguard battle’: an analysis of the autarkic (re)planning for Spanish grain agriculture, 1937–1959

ABSTRACT This paper analyzes the process of reordering and intensification associated with the Spanish cereal sector, which began in 1937 under Franco's regime. Considering the process as a practice of design and spatial re-planning of the territory, the first stage focuses on the reordering of the sector through an intense state interventionism in the processes of production, distribution, and consumption of cereals. The second stage, framed in a context of significant economic development in the country encouraged by the international context, focuses on the adoption of multiple measures for the intensification of production. Approached from an anthropic perspective of instrumentalisation of the natural environment, this process would lead to the reconfiguration of the structure of operations and to the alteration of part of the biophysical and sociocultural components of the sector.

Ecology in Transition: Fernando González Bernáldez, Scientific Modernisation and Environmental Advocacy in Late Francoist Spain, 1960–1980

The final years of Franco’s dictatorship and the subsequent transition to a democracy saw the unfolding of parallel processes of economic and scientific modernisation in Spanish society. An unexpected interference between both processes occurred in the fields of ecology and the environmental sciences, when environmentally minded scientists defended threatened ecosystems, rural landscapes and traditional land-use systems. At the time, prevailing discourses and policies considered these ecosystems and landscapes backward remnants of an undeveloped Spain, ready to be transformed by irrigation plans, afforestation schemes and urban development. From the early 1970s onwards, ecologist Fernando González Bernáldez consciously chose to take on a dual role, combining and mutually reinforcing two distinct yet associated personae: a highly respected scientist and an outspoken defender of the environment. This paper examines González Bernáldez’s various strategies to strike the right balance between both identities, and how his aims were challenged by the changing political context at the time.

Madrid's Arco de la Victoria: Cultural Symbols and Social Negotiations in Contemporary Spain

This paper examines Madrid's Arco de la Victoria as a cultural symbol and its role in the social negotiations of contemporary Spain. Anchored in the framework of cultural sociology, the study traces the monument's origins to Franco's regime, where it was intended as a symbol of authoritarian triumph. As Spain transitioned to democracy, the Arco's significance shifted, reflecting the changing narratives and collective memory of Spanish society. Through analysis of academic literature and historical records, the study explores the monument's contested semantics over time and public discourses that surround it. The findings reveal that the Arco de la Victoria, much like other Francoist monuments, has evolved from a representation of unified national identity to a site of contestation and re-negotiation in democratic Spain. The paper contributes to the understanding of how historical symbols are re-evaluated as societies progress and how they continue to shape and reflect collective identities and memories.

The death of ‘traditional’ charivari and the invention of pot-banging in Spain, c .1960–2020

Abstract Banging together pots and pans has become established as a common protest technique in Spain and across the world. Pot-banging can be linked to charivari: a centuries-old, Europe-wide, nuptial practice that subjected a marrying couple to mocking moral critique, which was also adapted for political ends. This article, however, distinguishes between nuptial charivari (the cencerrada) and recent political pot-banging (the cacerolada). The former suffered a process decline and disappearance while the latter, separately, was imported into Spain from Latin America in the late 1980s. The lack of connection between the two is reflected in different terms, but can be further established through close attention to their respective staging, gendered nature, meaning and sound. The case of Spanish pot-banging sheds light on the fate of ‘traditions’ during the Transition from the Francoist dictatorship to democracy, particularly in terms of changing notions of individual rights, civility and gender relations, and has implications for how historians approach the history of collective action. Historians should pay greater attention to how techniques are transmitted and learned within and across borders. The history of modern protest is perhaps more disjointed than modernizing approaches suggest.

Screening Older Men: Aging Men’s Sexualities in Contemporary Spanish Cinema and TV Series

Older men’s sexualities have recurrently been defined as either “asexual” or “in decline.” Their sexualities, when/if represented at all, have also been associated with the “dirty old man” stereotype, which has depicted sex in old age as both unpalatable and grotesque. Delving into these (mis)representations, this article offers an overview of representations of older men’s sexual lives in contemporary Spanish cinema and TV series, which seem to reify but also challenge such stereotypes. Thus, for example, both the classic film El abuelo by José Luis Garci and the highly acclaimed animation movie Arrugas by Ignacio Ferreras, based on Paco Plaza’s graphic novel of the same title, present the older men in an old people’s home as eminently asexual, while the TV series Crematorio, based on Rafael Chirbes’ homonymous novel, focuses on the relationship between an aging (heterosexual) man and a younger woman, which thus seems to reinforce the traditional “dirty old man” stereotype. Yet Salvador Calvo’s “El trasplante,” one of the episodes of the recent remake of Chicho Ibáñez-Serrador’s well-known horror TV series Historias para no dormir, appears to turn the stereotype upside down, featuring a dystopian story of an older woman who grows increasingly apart from her suddenly rejuvenated lifelong husband. Movies such as En la ciudad sin límites, on the other hand, question rigid (hetero)sexual binaries as the dying older male protagonist, a supposedly straight husband and father, is finally revealed as bisexual, while Eloy de la Iglesia’s Los novios búlgaros depicts a middle-aged man’s attachment to a younger boy, who ends up marrying his girlfriend. Using the character of Salvador Mallo as his alter-ego, Pedro Almodóvar’s (semi-)autobiographical Pain and Glory also focuses on gay aging, redefining it as a queer” rather than linear or “straight” temporal experience (Halberstam), while one of the latest Spanish horror films, Malasaña 32, revolves around a house inhabited by a ghost whose traumatic past as a transgender person living under the Francoist regime comes back to haunt the present. Whilst exploring a number of selected films and TV series that seem to conform to conventional images of older men’s sexual lives, this article will thus include alternative film representations that also undermine such limited and limiting images, thereby redefining aging men’s sexualities on the contemporary Spanish screen as much more complex and plural than has been acknowledged.

The lost gardens of the Palace of Meirás (Pazo de Meirás), a journey through time

The Pazo de Meirás (Meirás Palace) is a vast historical and artistic heritage complex with a great cultural and political importance in the recent history of Spain, being one of the most recognizable buildings for the Spanish people nowadays. Therefore, the current conservation status of the gardens has been assessed through the reconstruction of its historical evolution. Originally, the Pazo de Meirás and its gardens were built linked to the artistic and romantic style imprint of the outstanding writer Countess Emilia Pardo Bazán (1856­–1921). The gardens experienced their greatest splendor during this period. In fact, the historical floral diversity of the gardens, with a total of 154 recorded taxa, is among the highest in Galician manor houses. However, the context of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) involved a drastic change: the palace became the summer residence of the head of the Spanish state, General Francisco Franco (1938–1975). Despite subsequent neglect and a fire in 1978, the estate’s intrinsic value led to its return to the Spanish State in 2020. Currently, the gardens could constitute a significant cultural asset linked to the Countess of Pardo Bazán and to the socio-political changes that took place in Spain during the 20th century.

The Reception of Holocaust (1978) in Spain: Commending and Condemning Holocaust Memory

ABSTRACT When Holocaust reached Spaniards’ TV sets in 1979, the extermination of the Jews of Europe was an event marginally known and scarcely discussed by the Spanish people. The miniseries was a form of Holocaust representation that for the first time was fully embraced by political and TV authorities in Spain. Consequently, the Holocaust emerged from behind the censorship and silencing typical of Francoist dictatorship and became a topic of discussion in the public sphere. The public TV station Televisión Española (TVE) hosted two debates featuring historians and intellectuals that focused on the miniseries and also on various aspects of Nazism, the Holocaust, and the uses of Holocaust memory in the contemporary world. Similarly, the national newspapers El País and ABC offered broad coverage of the release of Holocaust and the polemics surrounding it. This intellectual discussion and journalistic attention to Holocaust took place against a backdrop of political transition from a dictatorial regime to a parliamentary democracy, conflicting interests in foreign policy in relation to the Middle East and the West, and meager acknowledgment of Spain’s role during WWII and long history of antisemitism. Grounded on cultural memory as a suitable approach to understand the potential of popular culture in affecting historical interpretation, the article argues that the public presentation of Holocaust simultaneously commended and condemned Holocaust memory or, more precisely, condemned a perceived hegemonic Jewish reading of the Holocaust and commended an interpretation of that event particularly useful to the Spanish political elites of the time.

‘El mío no es un asilo’: Aging Masculinity, Disability, and Animalization in Mario Camus’s Los santos inocentes

As an attempt to reflect 1960s rural Spain under Franco’s dictatorship, Mario Camus’s 1984 film adaptation of Miguel Delibes’s Los santos inocentes [The Holy Innocents], published three years before, depicts the daily coexistence of human and non-human animals in an Extremaduran cortijo. Within the highly hierarchized social structure of the Francoist regime, the elderly male characters that are physically or mentally disabled are consistently exploited and humiliated by the caste of señoritos as a metaphorical reproduction of the type of class-based hierarchy established after the Spanish Civil War between the victors and the defeated. The aim of this paper is to examine how the aging, disabled male body of the dispossessed contributes to deepening the class divide through their animalization. By aesthetically emphasizing the blurring of species boundaries in the lower social strata, Camus recreates the type of rural Spain that, under the auspices of the dictatorship, endorses an understanding of the normative, young masculine body as one that distinguishes itself through biological, class-based and androcentric determinism. This triply reinforced canon of the male subject, so irreparably bound to tautologies between class and species, places the aging, masculine body at the heart of an oppressive social system that seeks to justify its hierarchy, mythologizing it as the only viable option through which to erect an empowered, reputable nation.

The women who wrote in the Manicomio Nacional de Leganés after the Spanish Civil War, 1939-1952

This article uses the medical records of six women admitted to the Manicomio Nacional de Leganés, Madrid (Spain), in which, in addition to medical notes, there are letters and other personal documents. These unsent letters allow us to read about their complaints towards the institution, as well as to recover the voices of the inmates and their resistance to being treated like insane people. This analysis leads us to explore the double marginalization: being "women" and being "mentally ill"; it also brings us closer to building a story from the patient's point of view. The time frame is Franco's dictatorship, during which the implementation of a national-Catholic system undoubtedly reinforced the female hegemonic model of the regime.

Bambalinas, ondas y transistores: construcción del canon literario áureo durante el primer franquismo a través del radioteatro de Radio Nacional de España (1939-1959)

Since its origins as a mass media, radio has been one of the fundamental institutions for the maintenance of social order. During the Franco dictatorship, it played an important role, as an ideological apparatus, in the ideological production and reproduction of the regime. T herefore, the study of the contents of its programs helps us reveal how the dictatorship tried to legitimize certain values and discourses to implant a dominant common sense. The aim of this article is to analyze the image projected by Radio Nacional de España during the first Franco regime (1939-1959) of the Hispanic literary canon of the 16th and 17th centuries, that of a supposed glorious past, product of a partisan interpretation of history and culture, vindicated by the dictatorship.

Búsqueda de la innovación y crítica política en el teatro poético canario (1955-1974): Oí crecer a las palomas, de Manuel Padorno; Cuatro estudios en negro, de Gilberto Alemán de Armas; y Vladimir Mayakowsky (tragedia)- koúmos, de Sabas Martín-Vladimir Mayakowsky

This article analyzes three textual and stage milestones that contribute to outlining a schematic panorama of innovative theatrical activity in the Canary Islands; the three plays were also critical of the Franco regime between 1955 and 1974. The pieces chosen are Oí crecer a las palomas (1955), by Manuel Padorno; Cuatro estudios en negro (1964), by Gilberto Alemán de Armas, and Vladimir Mayakowsky (Tragedy)-Koúmos (1974), by Sabas Martín-Vladimir Mayakowsky. Indeed, they have in common that all three were performed and the texts have been preserved. The plays were also heirs to the avant-garde theater of the first half of the 20th century, and their creators searched for formal and linguistic innovation. They belong to the tradition of avant-garde poetic theater, which seeks to investigate new forms and bring the most contemporary and innovative poetry to the stage. At the same time, political criticism against totalitarianism and against the system that oppresses individual freedom is expressed in the texts. In all three cases, in one way or another, the texts also try to refer to the prevailing system. The weight of censorship during the Franco dictatorship probably conditioned these authors, who used various strategies to circumvent it.

Phosphate Mining and Labour in Western Sahara – Dynamics of the Fosbucraa Rent (1969-1975)

Phosphate mining is a key issue in the modern history of both Western Sahara and Morocco. Until 1975 it also affected Spain, as Western Sahara’s phosphates were exploited during the colonial period. In the early 1970s, phosphate mining generated super-profits. The Spanish state was the sole owner of the Bucraa deposit and used its ephemeral but significant super profits for two purposes: to subsidize the Spanish fertilizer industry and, for political reasons, to inflate spending in the Saharan budgets. However, Fosbucraa’s profit maximization and the “development” of the Sahara quickly came into contradiction. The company employed relatively few workers and discriminated against them. Meanwhile, the multiplier effects of Fosbucraa’s investment were rapidly changing the Saharawi way of life. A traditional nomadic society was becoming a peripheral society, dependent on jobs, subsidies and scholarships. The result of these two contradictions resulted in a social blockade: a model of accumulation incompatible with the expectations of young workers, technicians and students. The industrial conflict and anti-colonial action are part of this broader context.