Spanish State Research Articles

Is Spain Different? The Tamed Memory of the Spanish Civil War and the Limits of Spain's National Self‐Image (2008–10)

This article focusses on ongoing discussions about the place of the Spanish Civil War (1936–39) and the Franco dictatorship (1939–75) in Spain's democracy. Following the suspension of Judge Baltasar Garzón by the Spanish Supreme Court in 2010, who had indicted General Francisco Franco (1892–1975) and thirty‐four accomplices under international law for committing crimes against humanity, a debate arose between leading intellectuals in Spain about the growing international influence on Spain's war past. This debate revealed that a group of influential left‐wing intellectuals attempted to curb the social and political influence of the citizens' memory movements. The author observes how this happened by applying three strategies: the foreign strategy, the nationalistic‐ethical strategy, and the saturation strategy. He concludes that the growing international pressure on Spain's handling of the Civil War and dictatorship led to a “Spanification” of the “culture of the transición” as a national memory, causing the memory movements to lose momentum and curbing the international influence on Spain's handling of its dictatorial past.

The production of socio-spatial injustice towards the Romani population during the franco regime: The neighborhoods of Lo Campano and los Mateos in Cartagena (Spain)

62.8% of the Romani population in Spain lives in settlements that are segregated from the urban center or in peripheral neighborhoods, a sign of their historical persecution and discrimination. Anti-Romani sentiment has been territorialized by eliminating autonomy and means of self-production of space, with urban planning and housing policies being a key element in the materialization of their urban segregation, particularly during the Franco regime. Identifying the Romani as a surplus element in urban space led to their expulsion from self-produced housing, relocating them to peripheral social housing neighborhoods. Through the case studies, this article analyzes the Lo Campano and Los Mateos neighborhoods in Cartagena, Spain, the production of socio-spatial injustice against the Romani during Franco's regime, using Nancy Fraser's (1996) definition of social justice, and Giddens' (1994) structuration theory, as an analytical framework. The results indicate that these policies formed the basis of an urban and housing necropolitical exercise against the Romani, identifying them as surplus to the urban space and expelling them from their self-built homes to peripheral social housing.

‘I’ve never seen so many men wasted so badly’: On Francoist Mass Graves and a Film Set Cemetery

This article compares the reception of Sad Hill Cemetery, a fictional setting from the 1966 film The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly by Sergio Leone, and the reality of the mass graves from the Spanish Civil War. The Western was mainly filmed in Spain during General Franco's dictatorship. It is set during the American Civil War (1861–1865). This article looks at the different forms of memory politics in both cases in Spain today. Drawing on Roland Barthes’ concept of myth, the discussion also refers to current conflicts in modern Spanish society.

Spatial Crisis and the Experimental Production of Urban Space in Franco’s Spain: The History of Madrid’s Poblados Dirigidos

The article analyzes the ideological reasoning, planning rationale, and construction of controlled/satellite neighborhoods ( poblados dirigidos) in the metropolitan area of Madrid during the 1950s and 1960s. Poblados dirigidos were compact and minutely planned barrios on which the Franco regime (1939-1975) hinged its hopes for re-directing urban growth and controlling informal urbanization. While the phenomenon of poblados dirigidos was investigated by several Spanish architects and urban planners, their work focused mostly on the design of these neighborhoods, the structure of their housing units, and the innovative construction techniques. The current article suggests that the spatial crisis that drove the dictatorship to embrace the planning module of poblados dirigidos cannot be understood in isolation from the political and economic challenges faced by the regime during its “interim decades.” These challenges led to a progressive shift in the regime’s territorial representations and to a partial shift in its spatial practices, which the article analyzes.

The Censorship of a Closeted Spain: The Case of Elena Fortún (1886–1952)

This article focuses on how self-censorship and state censorship have shaped the literary legacy of the Spanish author of children’s books, Elena Fortún. The homosexual closet is presented as a key concept for understanding the impact of censorship on the work of a lesbian writer such as Fortún who has contributed to various narratives of Spanish femininity over the course of almost a century. The first of these is the narrative of gender dissidence during the Second Republic (1931–1939); followed by the narrative of the wife and mother belonging to the Franco Regime (1939–1975); and finally the LGBTQ inclusiveness of the new millennium in Spain (2005–2022). The works included in the analysis are varied, spanning from Fortún’s children’s books to her correspondence and finally two posthumously published novels. This reading of Fortún’s texts reveals how censorship works as a controlling gaze that not only operates from the outside, but is also internalized in the individual, maintaining the doors of the homosexual closet closed from the inside.

Africanist anthropology during Francoism: the Bernardino de Sahagún Institute, 1939-1951

With the creation of the “Bernardino de Sahagún” Institute, anthropology was put at the service of the national-Catholic values that the Francoist regime imposed on all levels of public life in the immediate aftermath of the war. Anthropological research focused on two main issues: scientific-medical issues - anthropobiology - and cultural issues - ethnology. The colonial discourse and the renewed interest in Africanist studies resulted in funding being made available for researchers to visit the African colonies under Spanish jurisdiction to carry out anthropobiological and ethnological studies.

Rural migration and agricultural modernization. An analysis of provincial Spain during its great rural exodus, 1960–1981

Rural exodus in Spain reached its peak in the period between 1960 and 1980. At this time, the Spanish countryside also witnessed its greatest agricultural transformation. Not coincidentally, the end of traditional agriculture and the massive shift of the rural population into industry and services were two major points of the Franco regime’s economic development strategy. In any event, the rate of agricultural modernization in Spain by about 1960 presented substantial differences among the country’s provinces that were to be most affected by both depopulation and de-agrarianization processes. This work analyses the influence of degree of initial agricultural modernization, through several key agricultural features (motorization, irrigation, land consolidation and yields, among others), on the net rural migration rates at provincial level, during the period 1960-1980. The results point to differences in the impact of these variables between the two decades under study, as well as the importance of preceding migration trends.

Francoism, Urban Displacement, and Nostalgia in Flamenco Dance from Seville

AbstractWhile it is often assumed that flamenco is strongly oriented towards the past, thus far, few scholars have explored the roles of flamenco in voicing memories of the Franco dictatorship (1939–75). During the second half of the dictatorship, a series of natural disasters, combined with new economic and political developments, led to the forced displacement of a number of flamenco artists and their wider communities in various Spanish cities. This article will explore how memories of this episode have impacted the flamenco dance repertoire associated with the Triana neighbourhood in Seville, focusing on three interrelated case studies: the performance and documentary filmTriana pura y pura, and recent productions by the flamenco dancers Pastora Galván and Israel Galván. By analysing these performances alongside their historical, social, and institutional contexts, this article conceptualizes the intersections between dance, nostalgia, and festivity as a meaningful scenario of embodied memory in post-Franco Spain.

An Appraisal of the Work of Gustave Le Bon Within the Case Studies of Fascist Spain (1936–1975) and Nazi Germany (1933–1945)

In a bid to explore the work of French sociologist Gustave Le Bon on dissimulating specific beliefs within a populace, this article will localise the factors he purported to amount to propagandistic success within the case studies of Nazi Germany and fascist Spain. This will be done using a consideration of primary visual sources and qualitative data associated with the campaigns in which they were used. Additionally, this work will analyse whether one can quantify propagandistic success, and whether this is at odds with the academic bases of Le Bon’s work. This research will ultimately provide a novel reading of Le Bon’s theory, demonstrating how the work can indeed allow for interesting analyses of different propagandistic contexts while concluding that there are limitations with the means through which the factors he brought to the fore directly contribute to successful propaganda initiatives.

Social representations on the environment and socio-metabolic regimes: The case of the Spanish state

This article investigates the relationship between the socio-historical representation of the environment and socio-metabolic regimes in the case of the Spanish state. For this purpose, 70 interviews and three focus groups were conducted with different social actors. This qualitative study has been complemented by reconstructing per capita trends in the material footprint. The results show three differentiated regimes. First, before the 1960s, we found an era predominantly characterized by an agricultural economy, and the environment was understood as a source of livelihood. Material use was between 3 and 6 tons/capita/year. After the 1960s, economic modernization started, and natural resources were considered unlimited. The transition from an agrarian to an industrial socio-metabolic regime was inherently linked to a surge in material use per capita. In the 1980s, political modernization began, and the consumption of materials on average is currently between 14 and 27 tons/capita/year. However, when the material footprint has reached the highest amount, the environment is considered a product of economic growth and a post-material value. Post-materialism's historical and social specifics promote a social representation of the environment that hinges on separating lived practices from the environmental impacts these practices have produced. The resulting environmental concern may not benefit the environment. Conclusions highlight a need to rescue social representations of the environment that relate to the environmental impact of lifestyles.

Biases in wind speed measurements due to anemometer changes

This research presents a case study of the biases and discontinuities that were introduced in observed long-term mean wind-speed and gust data-series due to anemometer changes in a meteorological station in northern Spain, operated by the Spanish State Meteorological Agency: San Sebastian-Igueldo. Field and wind-tunnel experiments with predefined conditions have been presented in the literature, however this research uses a real case study to assess the impact of anemometer changes on wind speed measurements due to three factors being: (i) the 3-cup anemometer model (SEAC vs. THIES companies); (ii) sensor height (∼19.95 m vs. ∼20.45 m) and (iii) sensor age (20-years old vs. new). Our results show (a) substantial biases in the measured wind speed and daily peak wind gusts, with the new THIES anemometer reporting stronger surface winds than the old SEAC anemometer; (b) opposing biases under weak (negative) and moderate-strong (positive) winds; and (c) significant breakpoints in the long-term wind data-series, which highlight the importance of data homogenization. National Weather Services and climate assessment groups will benefit from these findings since errors in wind speed and gust measurements can be minimized by implementing systematic observation protocols. Robust anemometer observations provide a basis for accurate quantification of the magnitude of changes and the variability of surface winds.

Soft Power, Modernization, and Security: US Educational Foreign Policy Toward Authoritarian Spain in the Cold War

AbstractCold War strategic priorities led the United States to establish an enduring military alliance with General Francisco Franco's dictatorship in Spain between 1953 and 1975. This article examines the educational diplomacy carried out by the US government during the 1960s and early 1970s to foster Spain's stable modernization through the training of national development elites and the dissemination of US educational ideas. The work surveys US educational, informational, and cultural programs aimed at shaping an educational framework conducive to the expansion and legitimization of a US-oriented socioeconomic liberalization in Spain. On the one hand, this US soft power strategy sought to attract those groups who could play an important role in the capitalist modernization of the educational and economic structures of the Iberian country. On the other hand, it sought to reduce the identification of the United States with Franco's dictatorship and to link the image of the American superpower to the hopes for progress of the Spanish people. All of this was pursued in order to preserve US defensive interests in Spain. The piece also discusses US assistance to the crucial 1970 Spanish General Education Law, which allows us to explore how the US ideology of development and education was received by Spanish educational audiences. Thus, by delving deeper into the intersection between cultural diplomacy, international development, and the history of education, we aim to contribute to the integration of education into the histories of modernization and to deepen our understanding of US educational foreign policy in the Cold War.

‘Facts that are declared proven’: sexual violence, forensic medicine, and the courtroom in early Francoist Spain.

ABSTRACT This article examines the Spanish court system as a site for the secondary victimisation or ‘second rape’ of sexual assault victims under the right-wing, Catholic dictatorship of Francisco Franco in Spain. Medical evidence enjoyed a high level of prestige as a modern and ‘objective’ arbiter of truth in Francoist Spain, precisely because of widespread recognition of the legal system’s corruptible nature. As such, contemporary court records reveal how victims in fact sometimes sought out medical examinations, even before reporting sexual crimes to law enforcement. However, the discretional nature of the Francoist legal system, heavily reliant on character references, allowed investigating judges to exploit the ambiguities of medical evidence to fit their vision of who constituted the legitimate ‘victims’ and ‘perpetrators’ of sexual violence. Medical forensic evidence therefore served an important purpose in Francoist rape trials; this was not the pursuit of justice or reparations for victims, but rather to reinforce conservative, patriarchal societal structures while providing a veneer of legitimacy to an otherwise distrusted legal system.

Nudging the Ship in the Right Direction: United States Public Diplomacy and Development in 1960s Spain

In the early 1960s, Franco's Spain began to experience a rapid process of economic growth, which was encouraged by US diplomacy as it would underpin the stability required by the US defence program in the country. However, American officials felt that such an accelerated economic development should be orderly since chaotic modernization might spark social turmoil that would compromise the US geo-strategic objectives in Spain. The article unravels the US public diplomacy programs to steer Spanish society along with a stable development path based on US-inspired capitalism and alliance with the Western bloc. It examines the cultural, educational, and informational means employed by the US government in a bid to channel the socio-economic upheaval occurring in Spain in a direction that was compatible with US security interests. We also argue that modernization theory provided the ideological and intellectual framework for US persuasion efforts to harness Spain's socio-economic ferment. Nevertheless, the ‘development model’ promoted by the dictatorship generated inequalities and conflicts that fuelled anti-American sentiment among sectors of Spanish society called to play a role in the future post-Franco transition.

Crossroads of Identities in Women Religious in Spain. Catholicism, Society and Second Vatican Council (1953–69)*

This article examines the evolution and transformation of female religious life in Spain under Franco's regime, which began after the Spanish Civil War in 1939 and ended with the dictator's death in 1975. During the dictatorship, the public stance towards Catholicism made consecrated religious life one of the potential social undertakings for women at that time. The Concordat of 1953 corroborated National Catholicism, and women religious abided by a heritage sanctioned by this ideology. The Second Vatican Council parted ways with this tradition, and some women religious reassessed their role as females and consecrated women in their society. This article analyses how the renewal doctrine of the Council was received in Spain, particularly regarding female religious life, revealing the commonalities and differences of opinions and practices resulting from the break with National Catholic schematism, as well as the first manifestations of renewal among women religious.

Assessment of future teachers’ geographic knowledge of the territorial organization of Spain using mental maps

This study analyzes the knowledge of the Spanish State’s administrative structure (provinces and autonomous communities) of future primary education teachers in Spain. The purpose is to analyze the relationship between the results yielded by a geographic knowledge test and students’ socioeconomic, educational and geographic context. The methodology chosen is based on the analysis of mental maps drawn up by the participants in the study, which included 627 students taking the Undergraduate Degree in Primary Education Teaching at four Spanish universities. A synthetic index supported by a principal component analysis and Cloke’s rurality index has been developed. The results show that students’ origin, their parents’ occupational status, their age and, to a lesser degree, their gender, are variables that contribute to drawing an explanation of the geographic literacy of the participants in the study. Only the indexes of 38% of the total scored above average.

The Distribution, Exhibition, and Reception of John Ford’s Cavalry Trilogy in Madrid

ABSTRACT The article uses data from the Spanish Virtual Library of Historical Newspapers (BVPH) and the digital archive of the Madrid daily ABC to trace the promotion and theatrical run of John Ford’s Cavalry Trilogy in the Spanish capital. We begin by describing the main features of the local film market at the time of the movies’ release and how the shifting relationship between the US government, Hollywood, and the Franco dictatorship at the dawn of the Cold War affected it. By relating this with the archival data, we propose that Fort Apache was the most successful of the films in the Trilogy, despite its blatant non-alignment with the regime’s uncritical militarism. We also contend that the commercial prospects of She Wore a Yellow Ribbon and, especially, Rio Grande were damaged by the delay in importing them and what seems to have been an attempt to use them to help naturalize the U-turn in the regime’s relationship with and discourse on the United States in the early 1950s, and the concessions it had to make in the Pact of Madrid (1953).

Spanish Culture from Romanticism to the Present: Structures of Feeling by Jo Labanyi

Reviewed by: Spanish Culture from Romanticism to the Present: Structures of Feeling by Jo Labanyi Richard Cleminson Spanish Culture from Romanticism to the Present: Structures of Feeling. By Jo Labanyi. (Selected Essay, 11) Cambridge: Legenda. 2019. xii+349 pp. £80. ISBN 978–1–78188–932–9. The great advantage of the Legenda 'Selected Essays' series is the combination in one volume of a set of prodigious works by highly influential authors such as Jo Labanyi. The task for the reviewer is, consequently, a somewhat daunting one, however satisfying the reading of the individual chapters may be. This book, set out in six parts and containing previously published essays, constitutes a key contribution to Spanish Cultural and Literary Studies. Running through the collection is the author's attention to 'structures of feeling', drawing on Raymond Williams's notion, as a driver and explanatory resource for the comprehension of a diverse array of cultural production primarily from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Part I focuses on romanticism; Part II on the realist novel and art; and the remaining parts centre on the twentieth century, with the final sections on historical memory. The first chapter, originally published in the Hispanic Research Journal in 2004, addresses the understudied (and nowadays rarely taught, at least in British universities) eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth century in order to reconsider the contribution made to European discourses on modernization and romantic love by literary production from the period. In a deft reappraisal of works by the Spanish Romantics who turned to the medieval period, Labanyi argues for the interconnectedness of Spain with European representations of love, thereby disrupting the [End Page 269] 'primitive' and anti-modern stereotypes foisted on Spain by less careful observers. Rather than rigid categories and set characteristics, Labanyi invites the reader to consider the unruly influence of alternative expressions of subjectivity by engaging in a kind of historical 'border studies' 'that tries to think across the historical "divides" produced by established schemes of periodization' (p. 11). Coupled with the identification of the structures of feeling manifested in alternative stories and readings, this borderland subjectivity perused against the grain forms the hilo conductor of Labanyi's book. The romanticized versions of love, drawn on an Arabic past, provide 'the basis for future models of the nation' (p. 15). Nation-forming was also influenced by the representation of important moments from the past or instances of daily life as events around which to coalesce and expose 'the public to representations of the past organized in a particular way', thereby schooling the public 'in modes of viewing appropriate to modern citizens' (p. 88) and emphasizing the generative force of painting in constructions of feeling and identity in the present (Chapter 8 in Part II). Novels and films are other sources of (re)presentation of images in the early twentieth century and under the Franco regime. Drawing on work by Klaus Theweleit on the genesis of the 'fascist character' in men, the chapter on Giménez Caballero's Genio de España (1932) shows how the author drew on a version of modernism that was defined by an appeal to the irrational, 'allowing it to reach the masses by speaking to the unconscious' (p. 122). Such an interpretation permits Labanyi to complicate the acceptance of certain traits of modernism by both left and right rather than assume an implicit anti-modernism on the part of Spanish fascists. Caballero's writings and speeches were ingrained with gendered aspects and the fear of the loss of unity, whether by means of the republican divorce law of 1932 or the separation of Catalonia from Spain. Rather than rejecting or eschewing the Jewish contribution to Hispanic civilization, his desire was to incorporate said contribution(s) into Spain's imperial history just as other races had been dissolved by Spanish males into the broader imperial project begun centuries before. The wide-ranging Chapter 11 on commonalities and differences between Maeztu, Giménez Caballero, and Madariaga as well as their usages of Don Juan and romantic love to prop up their own political visions is, alongside the first chapter on Arabic love and the last chapters on the intricacies of...

‘The Falange Changed Our Way of Being Completely’: Women and Gender Identity in Spanish Fascism

Women's and gender history has broadened our knowledge of the Franco dictatorship by incorporating new perspectives and categories of analysis. The Women's Section of the Falange, a topic that has attracted progressively greater attention since the 1990s, has been analyzed mainly as a mechanism of female subordination and as a differentiated sphere for women's agency. This dual approach follows to a great extent the ground rules established in ongoing debates on other European experiences of fascism. This article intends to offer ways of surmounting some dichotomies (e.g., subordinated/emancipated, victims/perpetrators) that have underpinned the analysis of women during the dictatorship. Accordingly, an attempt will be made to explore how the Falangists constructed a collective subjectivity from their own notions of their political culture – Spanish fascism – and a specific war experience that had shaped them as subjects. And, from this perspective, the article offers an understanding of their agency in a context in which the ‘victory’ of the military uprising had led to a process of reconstructing political and social power.

Invited Commentary: Hodgkin Lymphoma and Beyond: Breast Cancer Screening in Survivors of Childhood Cancer

HomeRadioGraphicsVol. 43, No. 4 PreviousNext Breast ImagingInvited Commentary: Hodgkin Lymphoma and Beyond: Breast Cancer Screening in Survivors of Childhood CancerSona A. Chikarmane Sona A. Chikarmane Author AffiliationsFrom the Department of Radiology, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, 75 Francis St, Boston, MA 02115.Address correspondence to the author (email: [email protected]).Sona A. Chikarmane Published Online:Mar 16 2023https://doi.org/10.1148/rg.220203MoreSectionsFull textPDF ToolsImage ViewerAdd to favoritesCiteTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked In