«De la miseria al bienestar». La memoria del hambre en la construcción y recepción del discurso del «progreso» durante el franquismo (1950-1975)

The progressive improvement in living conditions, together with the time elapsed from the Civil War, allowed the Franco dictatorship to create a new legitimizing narrative with which it sought to extend its popular support. The «progress» discourse underlined the Francoist material achievements since the end of the war, as well as the welfare supposedly enjoyed by the Spanish people two decades later. This article argues that the memory of the post-war hunger was a key element both in the construction of this «developmentist» narrative and in its reception ‘at ground level’ by the population. On the one hand, the memory of the post-war misery was essential to draw the «developmentist» outlines and to attempt to attribute to the dictatorship and the dictator the progress made over the years. On the other hand, the experience of hunger and shortage lived by many families conditioned the complex reception of the official discourse which, in some cases helped to extend the conformist and depoliticized attitudes, while in others raised criticism and mistrusts that showed the limits of the «progress» narrative