De familia nacional a nación familiar: Cultura e ideología en la España de Franco, 1939–1975

My dissertation studies the cultural representation of the family in both film and literature during the Franco Regime. I argue that the family is the primary social institution privileged by Francoism and that it represents the process of nation (re)building as stated in Franco\u27s ideological manifesto, Raza (1942). Specifically, I show how the nationalist discourse of this film script establishes a new mode of social behavior rooted in gender roles and supported by the hierarchical structure of the patriarchal family. Such social hierarchization is based on its ideological interpellation. Thus, the family is conferred the power to “engender” and monitor the national and cultural identity of familiar-national subjects by controlling everyday social and cultural practices. As a result, a new concept of “españolidad” tailored to the Regime\u27s ideology prevails throughout the Francoist era. The Regime\u27s notion of Spanishness and is to be ideologically contested by intellectuals with different political agendas. By narrating the nation through the everyday practices of individuals subject to the discipline of the family/State, the texts I study (Nada (1944), Los Abel and the film trilogy La gran familia (1962–1979) propose new conceptions and alternatives to the regime\u27s idea of the nation and of national identity already explicit in Raza and based on terms of the gendering of familiar-national roles and the supremacy of the center over the periphery. During the transition to democracy, much of the cultural production in Spain deals with the nation\u27s struggle to overcome the Francoist concept of national identity. My dissertation extends to the moment in which the past is being revisited in order to reinterpret Spanish cultural values under the light of Spanish democracy