#francoist spain

[victusinveritas]

[delpasado]

Spanish Archaeology under the Franco Regime

During the regime of Francisco Franco, Spanish archaeology, and the sciences as a whole, experienced a period of isolation, which allowed Franco to exercise a great amount of ideological control. While the fascist regimes of Nazi Germany and Italy relied on the misrepresentation of pre-historical archaeology to support their ideas of racial superiority, the Francoist regime affirmed it’s nationalist superiority with the theoretical reunification of the Spanish state under the Catholic Monarchs during the Middle Ages (Díaz-Andreu, 75). Spanish nationhood was understood as an imperialist project undertaken by the Catholic Monarchs, and Catholicism was understood to be its backbone. As with all fascist projects, attempts were made to “prove” or trace the origins of the Spanish state into the Bronze Age, or more commonly, the age of Rome, although these projects were largely owned by individual archaeologists, rather than the regime itself (Díaz-Andreu, 76). 

The Francoist regime’s apparent disinterest in archaeology did not prevent the field from being impacted by Francoist forces after the Civil War. Several archaeologists of prominence were killed in action during the fighting, made political prisoners, or fled from Spain during the war and refused to return. The Civil War led to the destruction of several regional archaeological institutes, as they were affiliated with ethno-national identities in Basque Country, Galicia, and Valencia (Díaz-Andreu, 76). As with most aspects of Spanish life during the post-Civil War Period, Madrid became the center of archaeological research and academic production, assisted by the destruction of regional institutions. The newly developed institutions in Madrid were quickly populated by Franciosts and falangists, the most notable being Julio Martínez Santa-Olalla. 

Martínez Santa-Olalla occupied the lead role of the Comisaría General de Excavaciones Arqueológicas, Franco’s new administrative body of Spanish archaeology, and served as the chair of Ethnology and Prehistory at the University of Madrid. Martínez Santa-Olalla’s position as head of the Comisaría General and Department Chair in Madrid, granted him broad control over a variety of publications, all of which espoused Francoist beliefs. Martínez Santa-Olalla had fought on behalf of Franco during the Civil War as part of the falangist faction (Díaz-Andreu, 77). He visited and was invited to several conferences and universities in Germany, and spent time visiting with Nazi-affliated professors of prehistory. Martínez Santa-Olalla even attended excavations led by the Schutzstaffel (SS), during their attempts to connect German prehistory to the Nazi mythos of Aryan excellence (Mederos Martin, 9). 

In addition to Martínez Santa-Olalla’s appointment, the directors of other departments and museums were quickly replaced with pro-Franco professionals, who worked to embed Spanish nationalist ideas into institutions that were once deeply committed to their regional identities. As these professionals worked to insert Francoist and fascist ideology into their works, post-Civil War Spanish archaeology became characterized by strong centralization and poor funding. Archaeology became a method by which fascists could support and endorse fascist ideas about human evolution, societies, and ethnography (Díaz-Andreu, 80).The evolution of Spanish archaeology into a vehicle for fascist ideology was only hampered by the Franco regime's preference for the Middle Ages, but it nonetheless dutifully occupied its role under the fascist government. 

The emphasis on prehistoric archaeology was no coincidence. Some archaeologists used their expertise to argue for a prehistoric unified Spain, in order to support the work of Franco to diminish ethno-nationalist movements and to encourage the superiority of a Spanish national identity. While the Franco regime spoke of a deep interest in the Middle Ages, their interest was more deeply rooted in self-interest, as the Francoist story of the Spanish Middle Ages was better adapted to support Spanish nationhood. For Francoists, the Spanish nation was created when the last Christion monarchs in the north began a series of conquests, pushing Muslim leaders further and further south. These efforts culminated in the reign of the Catholic Monarchs, Isabel and Fernando, and their conquest of Granada, the last Muslim taifa. The story of conquest, or reconquest (reconquista) became a popularized method of understanding Spanish history and nationhood. Francoists were entirely uninterested with the Muslim kingdoms, which were present for the majority of Spain’s medieval history, and therefore, did not fund excavations or archaeological studies on the topic. For Spanish archaeologists, the prehistoric time was far more likely to receive funding or attention, whereas anything after the Islamic conquest in 711 was unprofitable (Valor and Gutiérrez, 6). 

Under the Franco regime, Spanish archaeology was heavily centralized and focused on Spanish prehistory, in order to support Francoist ideas of national identity. It remained isolated until the 1970s, when universities began expanding. More positions became available, allowing some new ideas and theoretical frameworks to be introduced, although no institutional changes occurred until after the end of the regime. The introduction of new perspectives was slow, as author Margarita Díaz-Andreu remarks in her 1993 article Theory and Ideology in Archaeology: Spanish Archaeology under the Franco regime, “We will still have to wait for Spanish archaeology to show an effective change in the theoretical field”.

Citations:

Díaz-Andreu, Margarita. “Theory and Ideology in Archaeology: Spanish Archaeology under the Franco Régime.” Antiquity 67, no. 254 (1993): 74–82. doi:10.1017/S0003598X00045075. (requires subscription)

Julio Martínez Santa-Olalla. (n.d.). Real Academia De La Historia. https://dbe.rah.es/biografias/27622/julio-martinez-santa-olalla

Mederos Martin, Alfredo. “The National-Socialist Mirage. The Relationship between Two Professors of Prehistory, Oswald Menghin and Julio Martínez Santa-Olalla (1935-1952).” Trabajos de Prehistoria 71, no. 2 (2014): 119–220. doi:10.3989/tp.2014.12131. (requires subscription)

Valor, M., & Gutiérrez, A. (2014). The study of Medieval Archaeology. In The Archaeology of Medieval Spain, 1100-1500. Equinox Publishing Ltd. (requires subscription)

[alanfromrochester]

Reminded of people saying Mussolini made the trains run on time, when he didn't.

I think fascists are trying to argue it's effective if you can get over squeamishness about the methods, but it doesn't work anyway.

Whenever I hear fatxas saying that in Franco's time everybody had good food on their table my blood boils.

Being around 7, granny had to survive solely on turnips for a whole year. She hated them with her soul.

The other gran used to recieve an orange as a Xmas gift.

Granpa had a relative who would go house by house offering a tiny ham bone so the housewife could give her pot of water some flavor. He charged by the time the bone was inside the water, then took it and went onto the next client.

There was rationing.

People would eat leather belts and shoes.

Who exactly had food on their table?

[yuri-alexseygaybitch]

Liberals live in another fucking universe

[nando161mando]

Anarchist anti-Francoist guerrilla Quico Sabaté firing a mortar loaded with propaganda leaflets over Barcelona in 1955.

[underrlume]

Marta Torres

Alt vers

[whenlovepassesby]

just saw a tumblr post referring to pan's labyrinth as a WWII movie and while that might technically be true (set in 1944) its also set in spain therefore its a francoist spain movie before its a WWII movie. i know it might some dumb to most of you but its really not hsdfhs

[lower-east-side]

i think those pictures are from a movie bc look how fucked this car was lmao

shinzo abe day was incredible. still not over seeing all the rumours about what happened, joining everyone in wondering how the fuck a shotgun assassination could have happened in japan, and then seeing the first photo of the doohickey

[apas-95]

anarchy is like the most frustrating thing to argue against because anarchists fully lean into the 'not real communism' stereotype they project. with fascism you can use the examples of nazi germany, of francoist spain; with liberalism you can detail the myriad abuses of the USA; in defence of communism we can point to the successes of the USSR, PRC, et al; but when arguing with an anarchist you don't get to discuss the rail policies or banditry of Makhnovia, you don't get to discuss the industrial output of Aragon, you don't even get to discuss the broad lack of anarchist projects to discuss -- instead, it is demanded that you argue, in the realm of imagination, the anarchism that exists within the individual anarchist's head.

[useless-catalanfacts]

I have added English subtitles to this video posted by Helena Sotoca on Instagram. She's from Madrid (Spain) but has been living in Catalonia for 7 years. As she explained in another video, she didn't learn any Catalan the first 3 years she lived here, but then realised how she was imposing Spanish on her group of Catalan friends and how important it was for her friends to keep their language, so she learned it. She is very happy about this decision which has allowed her to integrate more in Catalan society and culture.

In this video, she gives her personal opinion on why languages are not only "a way to understand each other". This sentence is something that we speakers of discriminated languages have to hear all the time (in fact, I was reminded of this video a few days ago because @beautiful-basque-country got that comment). Many times, they'll say: "why are you so annoying about wanting to be able to speak your language? A language is only a tool to understand each other, so if you speak both [the local language and the imperial language], why not just always speak [the imperial language]?".

This mindset is what leads to language extermination. First of all, because it assumes that our languages are less worthy of existence and thus that the language's community is less worthy of existence. If I stop speaking my language, I stop being a part of me. If all my culture stops speaking our language, we stop existing. Language is deeply tied to culture, it's through language that we think and transmit our worldview, and there are many aspects of our culture and our landscape that we can only describe in our language, because only we have the specific words to describe it or because the translation loses nuance, context, and connotations. Remove language, and the rest of the culture will soon follow.

Secondly, it erases the reason why we speak the state's language, which is usually because of imposition through violence, and justifies this imposition because the imperial violence of the past that made the imperial language more widely spoken is now the reason why speakers of the imperial language deserve more rights than those who suffered the imposition.

But besides these more social reasons, I like how Helena explains her personal relation to the language in this video. She also shows us one of the reasons why it's so important to promote discriminated languages to be used in public (and not only hidden at home): when you meet someone speaking a language, you form a bond with them in that language and it can be difficult to change. Speakers of minoritized languages often meet each other in contexts in which they're socially pressured to speak the state's language, and so we find the situation where a group of friends who are all native speakers of the minoritized language will form a bond in the state's language. Thus, slowly, because of the state's language imposition in the public sphere (this is what the "speak the state language if there's even 1 person who might not speak the local language! Languages are only a tool for communication!" mindset pushes us to), the local language gets pushed aside more and more, until we can't have a normal life in it and the state's language imposition becomes absolute, and the local language dies, taking with it its culture, history, and connection to the land and ancestors.

With some work, it can be reversed. I've explained this before but I'll say it again because it's relevant. My parents met in Spanish, because they met in high school and back then speaking Catalan in schools was strictly forbidden and punished. They were speaking in Spanish even when they started dating, but they realised how absurd it was that two native Catalan speakers spoke Spanish to each other and how it was a result of Francoist policy. They decided they don't want Francoism to infiltrate our personal lives, so they made the effort and switched. Maintaining the language of their surroundings, their culture, their land, they became even closer. And, thanks to their decision, when I was born I had the luck of being a native speaker of the language too, because it's what we've always spoken at home. But they did it because they had a political antifascist conscience, many people don't think much about it and just go with what is easier. If they had done that, the language would have lost them and also me. Multiply this for how many people meet each other in settings where social pressure or social rules promote speaking the imperial language instead of the local one that is closer to their hearts.

So no, a language is not only a tool to understand each other. It's also what allows us to speak according to our own understanding of the world (instead of assimilating into another's worldview), it gives meaning to our surroundings (both nature, the names we give to places, etc), every word is an unbroken chain with all of those who came before us, it allows us to understand our ancestors whether that be through their writing or songs they passed down or legends, it's an integral part of the human relations we establish, and so much more. Every language is worth everything. Every language has the right to exist and to thrive.

[chainmail-butch]

Fascism is the political and economic arrangement that enables imperialism. It is not an ideology. It is a material process supported by any ideology that can be used to justify imperialism. That's why it's so hard to define.

If your benchmark for fascism is Nazi Germany or Francoist Spain then you will never find fascism in the modern world. Those states, and their material/ideological circumstances are extinct and will not reappear.

Do not define fascism by its ideology. Define it by what it does.

[dramatic-dolphin]

calmed down a little now but i was still blinking back tears at the bus stop. holy shit guys. jesus fucking christ. watch the film 'the teacher who promised the sea' (2023).

coming out of the cinema like someone who is normal and definitely didn't start crying multiple times

[leidensygdom]

Okay, I will try to explain this topic as well as I can. I will preface this with the fact this comes from personal experiences, and that they may not apply for everyone who has ties to this culture, but let's get to it:

What's the issue with Fortune tellers / "Exotic" circus performers, sexualized belly dancers and other forms of orientalism/Romani depictions?

So, as someone in the TTRPG world (specifically, the DnD community), this sort of trope is seen quite a lot. From the portrayal of Vistani (which has been tried to be fixed, but not... too well), to player characters in home games, as well as popular canon characters and podcasts, it's got quite normalized. Most of these tropes are based on Romani, which is a widespread ethnicity present all across the globe. Now, it feels almost strange to call it orientalism, given how Romani have been in Europe since the Middle Ages, even though they do have roots outside of Europe.

Romani face one of the biggest diaspora in the world: You will find Roma people under many names in very different countries, with cultures and traditions that can clash heavily. Their numbers can range from few hundred in some countries, to over a million in those they have a biggest presence. My own experience is tied to Spanish Roma, known as Gitanos, which is where my mother's side family comes from.

Gitanos are a widespread group, although they're most numerous in the southern part of Spain, Andalusia, where their presence has shaped the culture. Flamenco is thought to have been born from Gitano culture, and it has been adopted as a staple of the Andalusian identity, and the whole of Spain. Gitanos are hard to understand as their own ethnicity in Spain: There's been centuries of Gitanos and Spanish people mixing, and the average Andalusian is quite tan to start with (given Muslim presence there has also been pretty firm). It means it can be hard to "clock" a Spanish Romani person from a non-Romani one. It means you can find Romani people most would consider white, at least by Spanish standards. Most of the discrimination Gitanos face is cultural (and the whole ordeal can be a bit harder to explain from a more US-centric view).

Now, even when Gitanos have influenced Spanish culture a lot, they still face plenty of discrimination. They are one of the most marginalized groups out there. Laws have discriminated against them for centuries, on and off, which have put them in poverty. And poverty often develops into criminality, which has only seeded the idea that Gitanos are criminals, "lowlies", the bottom of society, "uncivilized", etc. Now, here comes a bit of my own experience with this.

My entire family is Andalusian, but both sides moved from there (the south) to Catalonia (north-east) in order to find a job during the Francoist (fascist) dictatorship. I won't get much into the specifics of the Catalan vs Andalusian beef because that's a bit of a massive topic too, but the important thing here is: My mother's side is Romani. My grandma faced some horrifying forms of discrimination, including the theft of her first child during the fascist dictatorship, which was taken from her by nuns (who ran hospitals at the time) to be placed into a "proper" family. (This is something that happened repeatedly at some hospitals during these times).

Now, she had two other children: My mother and my aunt. My aunt remained closely knit to Romani culture, and took part in it, which included marrying a Romani guy. She always did her best efforts to be part of it. I know she was into some culturally-related dances, which included some forms of bellydancing (which is also partially tied to Roma culture). But my mother decided she'd rather cut ties with her culture and become "civilised", by abandoning said culture.

This isn't too uncommon for Gitanos, to be honest. I've met a few people who come from similar backgrounds through my life. One of them was in university, where a fellow classmate gave an oral exposition about how his family had done a great job at "becoming civilised" by cutting ties with their own Roma roots. My university was a fairly progressive space, but no one batted an eye at that: The sheer hatred of Roma culture runs so deep even people who normally abhor racism and xenophobia consider Gitanos to be worth the hate.

There's a social pressure to do that, too. Everyone "knows" Gitano are criminals. I can't really even begin to explain how deeply does this sort of discrimination run. Roma are amongst the most hated minority groups in all of Europe (as well as most of the world). You will find that even in very leftist circles. People will try to erase the fact Roma have their own culture, and just make the world equal to "criminal", call them gy***** (which is a slur, btw), and detach them from being an actual culturally (and often racially) distinct group.

Now, this is only empowered by how media has taken our culture (it is almost hard for me to call it "our", given how much my mother ensured to take that away) and made it into a bad trope. Growing up, I was told my aunt was a sexual deviant who partook in indecent dances. Bellydancing is often seen as something very sexual (Wasn't, in origin), very unfitting. In media, bellydancers veer on the side of being a f*tish, and the common trope is the "bellydancer who seduces people in power for their own benefit". There's also the whole idea of shady fortune tellers and other magical tropes, that sort of weird mysticism that falls rapidly into orientalism. The idea that Roma will hex you, curse you, place an "Evil Eye" on you. And also the idea of travelling circus, people who perform in them being again full of that alluring exoticism, but beware! For they will enchant you, steal from you and run some massive criminal schemes on the way.

Now, when every tie a culture has on media is portrayed in a negative light, it's much harder for that culture to recover any sort of respect from the general populace. And that includes even people who are part of said culture, or people who have been removed from it. It has taken me so many years to unlearn a lot of these biases and realize where it has come from, and now I'm far too distant and far away from my grandmother to actually ever significantly connect to my heritage.

I've had the opportunity to witness what Romani culture is actually about, as I used to live with my grandmother during summers. A lot of the "mysticism" she took part of was actually about wards and protection. A lot of them were actually medicinal in nature, even if others were more superstitious. Red thread in the forehead for sickness and protection to curses, parfums (which contained alcohol or other antiseptics) on wounds, that stuff. My aunt was never a "sexual" deviant, she was keen on recovering and partaking on traditions from a culture that is slowly disappearing. The entire "promiscuous" idea is bullshit, Gitanos place a massive amount of power to marriage and loyalty. I had the luck to witness my cousin's marriage, which was a festivity like none other I had seen in my life, a colorful spectacle full of the most delightful attires, and my mother was whining the entire time over about how it was all an "uncivilised circus".

Now, this is why representation in media is key. Roma culture is broken into a thousand pieces and lost with every passing day. When someone decides to write an ambulant circus performer/fortune teller clad in exotic clothes full of golden jewellery, writes them as a criminal and makes the entire thing extremely sexual, they are feeding into the negative stereotypes about Roma.

Now, there's a lot of people who aren't even aware what culture does that trope even actually come from. I've seen people draw characters clad in Romani attires (often in, uh, rather pin-up or sexual contexts) and claim they're inspired by "x piece of media", where the trope is portrayed in the first place. I literally saw someone make a drawing in that way and call it "inspired by x (non-Roma) artist" instead of acknowledging where does all that come from.

I'm not asking people to not portray Roma people in media. Far from that. I just wish representation was better. Good representation is key towards making a culture seen in a more positive light, and teaching other peoples about it, and making people from said culture resonate with it. The very few times I've seen positive representations of Roma I've felt a bit of that connection with something that was taken from me. I want people to do a bit of research before giving a try to a Roma-coded character. Make an effort to not make Roma always the morally dubious fortune teller, the exotic alluring circus traveller, the bellydancer seductress. It's hard for Romani to produce widespread mainstream media because of how impoverished most communities are (because of the systematic discrimination Roma face all around the world), so the least non-Roma people can do is to be kind when they use their voice to talk or represent us.

I know this is a massive post, and I'm tagging it as "long post" for that reason, but I hope it is helpful for people. Feel free to ask or add your own experience if this is something that resonates with you too. Ask away if you want. I've been wanting to tell a bit my own personal experience, as this has always been a hard spot for me, and even if just a handful of people read this and understand what is this all about, I think it will have been worth it.

[deadhorsepress]

But then, one learns about Nazism in school. Even as an AP Euro student, I can’t recall learning much of anything about Francoist Spain or Fascist Italy, but the horrors of Nazi Germany still consume America’s attention. Pop history books about Nazis crowd library shelves. Countless fact-free torture-porn stories about the Holocaust like The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas are required reading. And all the same, when pressed to define “fascism,” your average American just starts describing their opponents. 

In spite of the popularity of fascism as a signifier, what it signifies isn’t clear. And that’s hardly the fault of the public education system. Even academics like Umberto Eco and Ian Kershaw have struggled to contain a definition to a few sentences, instead creating lists any nascent fascist can be measured against, like legal tests enshrined in statute. 

Lots of ink has been spilled measuring Trump against these lists. It’s useless. Academic definitions of “fascism” first must assume that “fascism” is coherent enough to be defined. If Mussolini’s rapid redefinition of his ideology into something that gelled better with Hitler’s proves anything, it’s incoherence.

[centrally-unplanned]

The money graph:

Many grains of salt on this one, since the methodology definitely biases towards the 'online' and dissident and there are limits to how you can adjust for that. It aligns with the qualitative evidence though, so I roughly believe it.

"Marrying your church into the state ruins the church" is one of those increasingly iron laws of modern politics - Francoist Spain had the same dynamic, rapidly accelerating the trendline of secularization. The logic makes sense - by becoming "the state" the church descends into the real & accountable; all of the mistakes of the Iranian government are errors of Islam itself, and the idea that your religious leaders are divinely inspired becomes laughable the eighth time they blunder on regulating the financial system. It is amusing though in that church-state marriage was far and away the method through which most major religions were spread to begin with; modernity flipped a switch and it went from huge asset to mortal liability.

Maybe not that much of a liability, everyone is secularizing after all; its just an impotent cure for that fundamental issue.

[manessha545]

Cerro Lambare Monument, Asuncion, Paraguay: Lambare Hill, situated on the banks of the Paraguay River within Asunción's urban landscape in the Jukyty neighborhood, rises 136 meters above sea level. This volcanic rock formation is notable as the highest point in Asunción. At its peak rests the Victorious Peace Monument, reminiscent of Spain's Valley of the Fallen, commissioned after Paraguay's dictator Alfredo Stroessner encountered the Francoist structure. Wikipedia