Art and culture in Francoist Spain

Artists active in Francoist Spain include the writers José María Pemán, Agustín de Foxá and Luis Rosales, the painters Carlos Sáenz de Tejada and Fernando Álvarez de Sotomayor, architect and sculptors of the Valle de los Caídos, and the music of Concierto de Aranjuez, Quintero, León y Quiroga, the films of José Luis Sáenz de Heredia and Luis Lucia Mingarro. Prominent cultural figures included the psychiatrists Antonio Vallejo-Nájera and López Ibor,^[2] as well as the social scientists Melchor Fernández Almagro, Ramón Carande and Luis Suárez Fernández).

A lot of the Spanish artistic and cultural production of the time was made by authors ideologically opposed or indifferent, or who had aesthetic criteria completely unrelated to a Fascist aesthetic: writers Carmen Laforet, Antonio Buero Vallejo, Vicente Aleixandre; visual artists Dalí, Joan Miró, Antoni Tàpies; sculptors Paul Serrano, Eduardo Chillida, Jorge Oteiza; architects Saenz de Oiza, Miguel Fisac; composers Bernaola Luis de Paul; filmmakers Luis García Berlanga, Juan Antonio Bardem, Carlos Saura; and researchers in natural sciences such as Large Covián, Michael Sanudo Catalan, George Francis Taylor, Antonio de Zulueta, and social scientists such as Jaume Vicens Vives, José Antonio Maravall, Antonio Domínguez Ortiz, Julio Caro Baroja, José Luis Sampedro, Fabian Estapé, Juan José Linz. Some of these artistic and cultural figures were situated more or less precisely in the so-called internal exile. The list of those belonging to this category is not easy to determine. The literature often refers to Vicente Aleixandre and Dámaso Alonso, but in the case of Alonso, 'internal exile' can only be attributed to the period prior to integration in institutions (Royal Academy). Also frequently included are Juan Gil Albert and Rafael Cansinos-Asséns among the literati, and Joan Miró among the visual artists. The Epistolario del exilio (Letters from Exile) of Max Aub, referring to internal exile, collects the letters of Gabriel Celaya, Luis Landinez, Gloria Fuertes, Aleixandre, José Agustín Goytisolo and Luis Goytisolo, Gil Albert, Jose Luis Lopez Aranguren, José Carlos Mainer, Roman Gubern, Ana María Matute, and others. Others included as internal exiles may be Blas de Otero, José Hierro, Eugenio de Nora, and José Ángel Valente.

Jorge Tello Francisco, Antonio de Zulueta and Miguel Catalan Sañudo survived in internal exile, but in a significantly reduced capacity for scientific work due to the hostility of the new authorities, the lack of communication with the outside world, and the postwar economic hardships.(José Manuel Sánchez Ron, Un siglo de ciencia en España, Residencia de Estudiantes, ISBN 84-95078-88-0). Many artistic and cultural figures, whether or not from the beginning, eventually reaching a high social and even official recognition, as the regime struggled to maintain an inclusive attitude towards cultural products that were not identified as a direct challenge by the opposition to Franco (especially after the appointment of Joaquín Ruiz-Giménez as education minister, replacing José Ibáñez Martín in 1951).^[3]

Spanish art forms not only developed in the interior of Spain, but outside it, given the extraordinary cultural power of the Spanish Republican exiles, to which belonged figures of the stature of Juan Ramón Jiménez, Pablo Picasso, Julio González, Pablo Casals, Luis Buñuel, the architects of GATEPAC, José Ferrater Mora, Zambrano, Américo Castro, Claudio Sánchez-Albornoz, Juan Negrín Blas Cabrera, and many others.

A leading Falangist, Ernesto Giménez Caballero, was the main theorist of the art of Francoist Spain. In 1934, after attending a conference in Italy, Ernesto Giménez Caballero had been published in an F. E. magazine article, Art and State, which became a book in 1935. Caballero identified the Monastery of El Escorial as "the epitome of all the virtues of Spanish art" and a "symbol of what art should be fascist", while the most prestigious Spanish art theorist of the time, Eugenio d'Ors, strove to create an artistic environment related to the regime but open and assimilative (Salón de los Once, Academia Breve de Crítica de Arte, 1941-1954)), including the avant garde, which increased over time to even be a hallmark of the regime, increasingly interested in showing, both internally and externally, a contemporary image.

Artists and writers related to Franco have suffered from a general underestimation by historians, art critics and literary critics. As Andres Trapiello stated, Francoists "won the war and lost the history of literature".^[4]

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In accordance with the ideas advanced by influential Spanish scholar and historian Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo (identification with Catholic Spain and opposition to "anti-Spanish sentiment," coming from outside or inside), the government intended to create a new cultural and educational initiative in 1939, which would focus on Spanish nationalism and nacionalcatolicismo religion. The Franco regime failed to impose as intended a totalitarian culture consistent with other exclusionary cultural, and historical sources often termed "traditionalist," "authoritarian" and "dictatorial".^[5] This meant, especially during the years immediately after the Spanish Civil War, a culture of imposition, reconquest attitudes, or imperialism.^[6]

Franco's regime brought about a strong political repression in Spain, the widespread and systematic 'cleansing' of the education system, through the D-Commission, responsible for academic appointments; the C-Commission to control changes in secondary schools; and the A- and B-Commissions to oversee universities. The government implemented an ideological and moral censorship and propaganda apparatus that effectively used modern means of mass communication (No-Do, Prensa del Movimiento (Movement Press), strict control of radio and television from 1956).

Most of the filters were merely symbolic sanctions, as many of those affected were either dead or in exile. Of those who remained in Spain some were also subject to criminal prosecution, such as Julián Besteiro, who died in prison, or John Peset, who was shot. Several of the victims of government reprisals had no special political relationship with the left, such as Flores de Lemus. Among high school teachers to be 'purified' by Franco's regime was Antonio Machado (despite having died in France); among Normal School teachers, there was Eliseo Gomez Serrano (shot), and among teachers Amos Steel and Vicente Moliner Nadal (both shot). Biescas and Tunon ( op. Cit., Pg. 16) put the figure of 7,000 teachers among the 270,000 total prisoners in concentration camps and prisons of the first Franco period, and the two-thirds of faculty exiles or dismissed. Of professors active in June 1936 at the University of Madrid (Complutense today), 44.3 percent were sanctioned. The figure is similar between teaching assistants and aides reaching 43.6 percent, although 7.6 percent of them have not found data. Complete listing of Complutense University reprisals after the Civil War.

Universities were restructured by the law of July 1943. University rectors had to be members of the Falange. The reality, both in secondary education as well as university and other higher level educational institutions, was that teachers and students, in opposition to the scientific spirit, were framed by the SEU and Servicio Nacional del Magisterio (National Teachers Service). Fascist ideals were also expressed through weekly publications, such as El Español published by the Deputy Secretary of Education and directed by Juan Aparicio. These devices were completed with the Instituto Nacional del Libro (National Institute of Newspapers), which was created in 1939 and led by Julian Pemartín, a leading ideologue of the regime. (Tunon de Lara, The Spain of the Crusade , op. cit., pg. 114).

All cultural institutions were impacted, including the Real Academia Española, from whom Ramón Menéndez Pidal resigned as director between 1939 and 1947; museums such as Museo del Prado; the Ateneo de Madrid; and others, among which were those previously identified with krausismo - Institución Libre de Enseñanza, Junta para la Ampliación de Estudios, Residencia de Estudiantes, Instituto Escuela - all of which were replaced by a new organization, the National Research Council (CSIC):^[11]

1. The National Research Council, as the supreme organ of Spanish high culture, which represent the elements of the most prestigious university academics and technicians enjoying the highest rank in the country's cultural life. This reaches to the pre-eminent position in the social and public manifestations of the national culture and relations with the outside scientific world.

2. The Supreme Council has as its spiritual patron all the glorious company of Saint isidore, Archbishop of Seville, which represents the first time our history imperial Spanish culture.

3. The emblem shall, following and adapting the Llullian tradition, an arbor scientiae, which represents a pomegranate, whose various branches in Latin, alludes to the scientific events that the Council grows. This emblem will appear on the medals and insignia of the Directors, the "ex libris" (frontispiece) of their magazines and publications and on the seal used in the official sanction of social relations.

— Order of March 8, 1940, Ministry of National Education - José Ibáñez Martín^[12]

While the pursuit of the peripheral nationalism fell short of a total ban on local languages and cultures (Catalan language and Catalan culture, Euskara and Basque culture, Galician and Galician culture), a policy of Castilianization was nonetheless implemented in education and in almost all public areas. (Luis Hurtado Alvarez: if you're Spanish, speak Spanish, May 18, 1937. Quoted in escueladesara.com Archived 2010-07-07 at the Wayback Machine) Even then policy was not always followed to the full extent, and with which not even all members of the regime agreed (as in the controversy between Carlos Sentís and Josep Montagut).

The allocation of areas of power between the familias del franquismo - nacionalcatolicismo, Falangist 'Blues', monarchists, Carlists (supporters of King Juan Carlos), 'Juanistas' (supporters of Juan de Borbón), military groups such as the Africanists, and other factions - corresponded to each of the areas including ministries, and did not always have well-defined functions: Catholics accounted for the Ministry of Education of Spain, which focused most of cultural policy, but the Blues had their share of political and social and apparatus in the nationalist Movement, which sought a totalitarian presence in all aspects of public life and even private. Each of the 'Blue' Francoist families controlled the country's communication media. The Church, in exchange for support for the uprising, the regime demanded control of the field that had traditionally considered theirs: education and teaching. For its part, the Falange as a single party would try to impose its support through the mass media. This explains the division of powers that the constitution made after the first administration by a law of January 30, 1938. In the Ministry of the Interior (National Service of Press and Propaganda) the Falangists had control; in Education, monarchists of Acción Española with Pedro Sainz Rodríguez in front, under the watchful eye of Cardinal Goma, primate of Spain. Colleagues appointed following the tactic of combining different ideological positions that had presided over the constitution of government. In the National Primary Education, the traditionalist Romualdo de Toledo y Robles, in Higher Education and Media, Joseph Pemartín, monarchist Acción Española, in the Technical Education and Vocational a technocrat, Augustus Krahe. Manager of Fine Arts, Eugenio d'Ors, and Archives and Libraries, Javier Lasso de la Vega.^[13]

Catholic clerical personalities were significantly elevated to positions of high influence in the ideological and cultural spheres of Spain: Justo Pérez de Urbel and other Benedictines in particular; Enrique Pla y Deniel, Isidro Goma, Leopoldo Eijo y Garay, Casimir Morcillo Gonzalez, and other bishops; or admitted to the clergy late in their careers, so-called late vocations (Ángel Herrera Oria, leader of the National Catholic Association of Propagandists, was ordained at age 53 and became a bishop; José María Albareda belonged to Catholic organization Opus Dei since 1937, was director of CSIC, and ordained a priest at age 57 years; Manuel García Morente, a leading philosopher, was ordained a priest at age 54 years), so that neo-Thomist thought (revived interest in Thomas Aquinas), or neo-Scholasticism, has been described as the dominant intellectual environment, based on the Vatican position prior to the Vatican II Council.