Revisiting Francoism: Fifty Years Later

Sheean, Jacqueline; Sheean, Jacqueline

“What does a society—in particular, Spanish society of the Transition and since—do with its ghosts?” (Labanyi, 2000). Twenty-five years after Spain’s transition to democracy, Jo Labanyi’s question animated academic study of the legacy of the Francisco Franco dictatorship (1939- 1975). Scholars took up the call to analyze how the past returned in the cultural production of the so-called “memory boom” of the early aughts, as films, literature, and visual art began to explore the traumatic history of the dictatorship (Resina, 2000; Merino and Song, 2005). Many pointed to Spain’s material landscapes—its abundant mass graves and aging fascist monuments—as physical evidence of the regime’s survival in the democratic present (Jerez-Farrán and Amago, 2010). Yet today the question of what to “do” with the dictatorship is far from settled: the contentious political debates surrounding Franco’s highly mediated exhumation from the Valley of the Fallen monument in 2019 indicated that Spain had yet to lay its fascist past to rest. Thus, the goal of this panel is to consider new approaches to the study of Francoism and its legacy in present day Spain, fifty years after the death of Franco. The panelists consider new objects of study, methodologies, and theoretical frameworks. In an era in which the cracks in democracy have become increasingly visible worldwide, this panel provides a critical lens for understanding how democracies may provide habitation for both retrograde and renewed forms of authoritarianism.

Each presenter will give a 12 to 15-minute presentation, allowing for 15 minutes of discussion at the end. The panel begins with two papers on the dictatorship period to provide a nuanced context for the present debates. In her paper on the films of the 1960s, Jacqueline Sheean presents a portion of her book manuscript on Francoist cinema, focusing on three films produced during the so-called apertura (opening) period: The Tenant (Nieves Conde, 1958), The Little Apartment (Ferreri, 1958), and The Executioner (Berlanga, 1963). Engaging spatial theory and affect theory, Sheean shows how these films construct Madrid as a benevolent capital, while the visual figuration of claustrophobia and containment reveals the structures of repression just beneath the surface. The apertura period witnessed Spain’s transformation from an impoverished autarchy as it gradually aligned with the tenets of global neoliberalism. As she argues, this discursive and political shift was a key factor in the dictatorship’s longevity as the regime situated itself as an ally to Western nations in the Cold War, and the paper illustrates the lasting structures of fascism—both material and affective—that remain in Spain’s capital. Next, Javier Krauel analyzes the cultural production of the Catalanist movement during the late Francoist period through legal and aesthetic theory. Krauel argues that Catalanist aesthetic products played a significant role in rendering the public sensitive to the political and legal demands posed by the movement. Examining songs of the Nova Cançó movement and the first major film shot in Catalan after Franco’s death, La ciutat cremada (Ribas, 1976), Karuel shows how these encouraged a sense of resistance, rebellion, and hope in audiences while presenting reform (not revolution) as a strategy to destabilize the repressive regime. Throughout the paper, Krauel suggests how a focus on law and aesthetics unearths new perspectives on the Franco regime.

The second two papers consider the ways in which Francoism has seeped into Spain’s democracy. Following up on her work on the narratives of conflict in Narrating War in Peace (2015), Katherine O. Stafford turns to the figure of Spain’s first Prime Minister, Adolfo Suárez, who straddled two eras. Considering Suárez as both a man and a myth, Stafford analyzes various representations of the Prime Minister in literature and film, including Transición (Salvatierra and Plou, 2012), Urtain (Animalario, 2008), and El rey (Teatro del Barrio, 2015). Using Rothberg’s (2019) implicated subject framework to analyze the moral questions of Suarez’s involvement with the dictatorship, the paper provides a nuanced perspective on culpability and the legacy of trauma and seeks to foment a collective historical and political responsibility. Finally, presenting part of his larger book project on the politics of meta-emotion, Carlos Varón González explores Francoism’s undead affects today, which range from dictatorial nostalgia to resentment. Engaging both affect theory and game theory in his analysis of a contemporary videogame, Rojo: A Spanish Horror Experience, Varón argues that the game’s titular experience openly negotiates political affiliation during a critical contemporary moment of wavering identification with national and international liberal institutions. The panel thus ends with an important engagement with the present, indicating the larger stakes in revisiting Francoism today.

419 Revisiting Francoism: Fifty Years Later: Calls for Papers