Download 4 It Was What It Wasn`t: Translation and Francoism

Jeroen Vandaele 85
4
It Was What It Wasn't: Translation
and Francoism
feroen Vandaele
Francolsm and Spanish Fascism
It would be wrong to call Francoism a fascist regime (see Paxton 2004,
especially Chapter 6), though between 1936 and 1945 it bore many
features of fascism (see Richards 1998). Francoism (1936/39-75) was an
idiosyncratic mixture of (ultra-) Catholicism, fascism and other reaction-
ary ideologies or ingredients. Before the Civil War of 1936-39 and after
General Miguel Primo de Rivera's dictatorship, which ended with his
death in 1930, Spain's democratic Second Republic (1931-36/39) saw
two periods. In the first (1931-33), a left-wing government redistributed
wealth In drastic ways and engaged in anti-clerical action. In the next
(1934-36), a right-wing government suspended the social reforms. When
the Republic organized new elections in 1936, which were won by the
left-wing coalition Frente Popular, political polarization was complete. In
such a climate bonds were created between reactionary opponents of the
Second Republic: Spanish fascists, the Catholic Church, and other groups.'
Those who fought with Franco in the Civil War, including the fascists
and the Church (see Casanova 2005), were in fact fighting against the
Republic and the opportunities It had given to progressive forces. During
and after the Civil War, Franco managed to unify these anti-Republican
forces in a party called FET y de las JONS, which stood for Falange Espaf!Ola
Tradidonalista y de las J~mtas de O(ensiva Nadonal SindiCiliista.' It unified the 'Falangists' proper (Spanish fascists), monarchists (defenders of
Fernando XIII), Carlists (reactionary and Catholic defenders of a different
monarchic line of descent), military leaders, and formerly 'legalist' (that
is, non-revolutionary) ultra-Catholics (Preston 1998: 245).
FET y de las JONS was the result of many previous mergers. Alongside
the Uni6n Montlrquica Nacional (1930) of }os~ Antonio Primo de Rivera
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(the son of Miguel), Ramlro de Maeztu and Calvo Sotelo, there was the
proto-fasciSt group of Girn~nez Caballero, 3 Aparicio• and Ledesma' that
gathered around the review La Conquista del Estado. The latter group spoke
out against Marxism and Communism, against the 'liberal bourgeois'
state, against 'the pharisaical pacifism of Geneva' and in favour of
'hierarchical values', 'the national idea', 'Hispanic values', 'the Imperial
spread of our culture', 'the Intensified use of mass culture', 'nationalization of the large estates', 'syndicalism', 'revolutionary action', targeting
anyone who might obstruct the new State, and so on.• The paradox that
Spain's grandeur was to be re-established by means of the principles
of Italian Fascism was soon resolved by G\m~nez Caballero: Spain was
400 years older than Italy and Germany, and Catholicism was the
essence of Its true Imperial spirit (Cathajosa and Carbajosa 2003: 55).
In 1931 both Uni6n and Conquista joined forces with the leader
of Juntas Caste/lanas de Acd6n Hlsptlnica, the corporatist Catholic
On&lmo Redondo, to create the TONS, 'an overtly pro-Nazi organization' (Rodgers 1999: 173). It was a fascist organization, yet had a strong
Catholic component (Payne 1997). In 1933, a political meeting between
J~ Antonio Primo de Rivera, Franco's later ministers Rafael Sanchez
Mazas 7 and Ralmundo Fernandez Cuesta, and other para-fascist personalities resulted In the Falange Espaffola (FE), the programme of which
was centralist, Imperialist, Catholic, military, elitist, anti-Marxist and
anti-liberal (Ellwood 1984: 37; Payne 1984: 59). Though the FE was
less violent and fascist than the IONS (Ellwood 1984: 46), JONS and
FE united in 1934 to form FE de las JONS, with Jo~ Antonio Primo de
Rivera (conventionally abbreviated to Jose Antonio) as Its undisputed
leader. In the famous elections of 1936 which led to the Francois! uprisIng, FE de las JONS lost on all fronts (Ellwood 1984: 70). According to
Payne (1985), Spain was too rural and too regionalistic for fascism to
take root In Its population. FE de las JONS was all too willing to rise
against the Republic. When Franco seized power and Jo~ Antonio was
killed by Republicans, Franco transformed FE de las JONS Into FET y
de las TONS, with the T standing for Tradicionallsta. Francolsm's single,
'mixed bag' Party was now complete and could serve as a basis for
the Francolst doctrine of 'national-Catholicism', a mixture of all the
Ideological elements mentioned earlier. From the late 1940s onwards,
many of Franco's civil servants came to follow this somewhat nebulous
doctrine, whim blended traditional authoritarianism ('respect for the
CaudUio'), para-fascist ultra-nationalism ('respect for Spain, possibly as
an empire'), ultra-Catholic moralism ('respect for the Christian God and
the Pope') and opportunistic capitalism.
86 Translation and Francoism
Hence, although fascism was never very popular In Spain, the
viejofalangistas, or old-school fascists who had originally belonged to
FE de las JONS (without the T), did wield a good deal of Institutional
power before 1945, both In the Party (that Is, in FET y de las TONS) and
In the government. After Hitler's final defeat, however, much power was
transferred back from Party to government and both Party and government were presented as part of one Movimientv. In the words of Michael
Richards (1999: 364),
Franco's Movimlento was the body to which one had to adhere in
order to participate In the narrowly confined arena of official 'politics'
during the dictatorship. However, the use of the term 'Movlmlento'
came to be Interchangeable both with the name of the state party
itself[ ... ] and with the regime in a general sense. This ambiguity[ ... ]
permitted a grandiose falsifying terminology to be employed.
Indeed, when in 1958. the capitalist technocrat L6pez Rod6 wrote his
Declarad6n de Prindplos Fundamentllles del Movimientv Nadonal, he had
nothing to say about the FEr y de las JONS- ail had become Movimientv
(Preston 1998: 837-9; see also Paxton 2004: 149-50).
If there was one consistent feature from the 1933 Falange to the
1958 Movimlentv, this was their anti-Communism. On a national level,
Communism or Marxism would remain a useful enemy to unite
Francolsts and Francolst subldeo!ogies over many decades. A victim of the
leftist Second Republic, the Spanish Catholic Church shared anti-Marxist
feeling with the Faiangists proper and with any group which had lost Its
privileges after 1931. On an international level, Franco was able to use
anti-Communism to manoeuvre himself back into a position of geopolitical Influence, thanks to North American concerns during the Cold War.
There were evident links between Franco's international and domestic
politics. Franco could retain great personal power on a national level as
long as he was perceived to be the referee deciding which Francolst 'sul>group' (often cailed 'Ideological family') - fascists, ultra-Catholics, monarchists, and so on - was to have most Influence at any given moment
In any given matter; Franco sklifuily made this balance dependent upon
his own International survival. At any one moment he gave more power
to those who currently served the international image he needed. Thus,
when Germany and Italy lost the war, Spanish fascists lost much power In
Spain because Franco had to rebuild his Image as a non-fascist. More generally, the Ideological subperiods of Francois! politics often reflect or are
responses to political and soct~onomlc changes on an international
feroen Vandaele 87
level, however much Franco Isolated Spain from the rest of the world. In
terms of censorship, Francolsm can be tentatively periodlzed as foilows.
(1) Censorship during the Civil War (1936-39): This was necessarily a
nonsystematlzed and noncentralized affair because other-militarymatters were more urgent and because the whole of Spain was not
yet conquered. Franco's censorship boards employed a military
censor, a religious censor and other censors. This period of censorship needs much more research and is hard to study precisely
because It was not as centralized and systematic as subsequent
periods.
(2) Censorship during the Second World War (1940-45): In this period
the Spanish fascists who originaily belonged to FE de las TONS
gained influence in the censorship boards as In other spheres of
life; there was no longer a specific censor for the military.
(3) Censorship In transition (1945--50): The State censorship board
was transferred back from the fascism-dominated Party (FET y
de las TONS) to the more Catholic-dominated government (also
appointed by Franco). Fascists remained present In State boards
but they were losing power. It was a period of public and Internal
conflicts over moral Issues between Catholic censors (present in
the State board and In private Catholic censorship boards) and
para-fascist censors (In the State board).
(4) Censorship In the ultra-Catholic decade (1950-63): In this period
ultra-Catholic censors took power In the State board. Immorality
was their main concern -and it was everywhere. Censorship became
less political in the strict sense of the word, although Communism
and liberalism remained important concerns as well. In this period,
Francolst censorship alienated Itself completely from large sections
of the Spanish population, especially since new masses of tourists
showed glimpses of lifestyles which the Spaniards were not ailowed
to see represented In literary discourse and film.
(5) The period known as the Apertura, or 'opening' (1963-69): Franco
gradually lost his personal grip on the Francoist subgroups. A new
group of capitalist 'technocrats' now tried to renovate the Spanish
economy, stimulating tourism and admitting more flexible censorship criteria. In cultural policy, they were helped by ex-, post-, or
'liberal' fascists, who had also grown tired of Catholic moralism
(see Gracia 1996, 2004). The infamous Ley de Prensa [Press Law] was
passed In 1966. It abolished pre-publication censorship but reinforced post-publication censorship and self-censorship, because
88
authors were made 'responsible' for what they wrote (Abelhln
1980; Pegenaute 1999).
(6) Late Francolsm (1969-75): Church (private) censorship was abolIshed because it had lost all social relevance. State censorship
became anonymous. In terms of cultural policy, this period was
partly a continuation of the Apertura, though some liberal censors
strove for a relatively high degree of Uberty while others (disgusted
Catholics) wanted less flexibility than the Apertura allowed.
A future synthesis of research on translation and Francolsm may confirm,
refine or contradict the applicability of this chronology to translation, but
much more research on Francolst translatioft is needed before such a work
could be written. The present overview has a different structure. The first
section Introduces some general ideas from translation studies which will
be helpful to understand 'Francolst translation', that Is, translation as practised from 1939 until1975. The next section shows that It makes sense to
structure a discussion of Francolst translation In terms of discourse genres
or realms (press, philosophy, prose, theatre, film), and briefly indicates
which source languages were dominant In each discourse realm. In the
subsequent sections I summarize existing research In more detail, Identify
gaps and paths for research In a variety of discursive realms, and Indicate
whenever possible the degree to which research on Francolst translation may shed light on the fascist or non-fascist character of Francoism.
What translation studies offers to Franco studies
The following is a set of research questions which are typically asked in
comparative literature and translation studies:
Which Ideas and practices (repertoires) circulate In a given culture?
Where do they come from? Are they the result of tradition(s), importation and/or translation? Who Is responsible for the Importation
and translation of new repertoires and for the continuation of traditional repertoires, and why?
o Which ideas and practices do not circulate? Why not? Are they inhibited or prohibited? How? By whom? Why?
• Which ideas and practices are stimulated? By whom? How? In which
parts of a culture?
• Which repertoires are neither stimulated nor prohibited and die a
silent death?
(see Lambert 1980; Even-Zohar 1990; De Geest 1992)
o
Jerorn Vandaele 89
Translation and Francolsm
Within translation studies, the Tel Aviv School of Poetics (ltamar EvenZohar, Gideon Toury) has been particularly Influential in framing these
questions and proposing concepts for partial answers. Specifically, EvenZohar's (1990) general cultural theory emphasizes the role of translation
In the shaping of cultures.'
For the study of Francoist culture, a focus on translation offers two
maJor advantages. First, what makes translation special among other
interpretive 'acts of meaning' Is its relative explicitness. In translation,
a written or spoken end product bears testimony to the interpretation
that has taken place; for a researcher in cultural studies a translation has
the advantage of constituting a materialized trace of Interpretation not
provided by other forms of cultural production. The original text offers
an explicit point of comparison against which to measure cultural (In
this case, translational) practice.
Secondly, translation allows us to study what does not exist in a given
system, although It could in principle have existed. Translation is a
means to study the non-dlt, the cultural unsaid. This is especially relevant
for Francoist culture, since Francoism's continued inability to formulate
an affirmative cultural proJect Is well established. If we are interested in
the 'Implicit' or 'negative' ideological practices of Francoism, we must
study how Francoism used translation (see Pegenaute 1999 for a similar
argument). While this can also be done by studying Francoist censorship of Spanish ('lntrasystemic') cultural goods, translation research has
something extra to offer: whereas Spanish artists and non-fiction writers
had to practise private, mental self-censorship from the very start, the
International repertoires were already fully developed cultural products. The International democratic repertoire was not restrained by the
politics of fear that dominated the Spanish cultural field, and Francois!
reception and censorship had to Intervene in a different way. At the
same time, once their Immigration was authorized, the fully elaborated
repertoires obviously had a stronger Innovative potential than the Internal goods because they could build on many liberal, freely Inventive
traditions outside the Francois! system. I will return to these Ideas In
the Conclusion of this chapter.
Realms of discourse, countries of origin
As Abellm ( 1980) has already noted on an intrasystemic level, Franco's
cultural agents feared innovation to different degrees according to the
realm of discourse. Reality-bound discourse (press, academic writing)
immediately came under strict control. As for translated fiction, the
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90
Jeroen Vandaele 91
1tanslation and Francoism
regime's fear was greater for film than for performed theatre (see, e.g.,
Vandaele 2006), it was greater for modem literature than for the classics
(see, e.g., Bandin 2007), it was greater for performed theatre than it was
for written theatre (Merino 1994: 60), and it was probably greater for
prose than for poetry. These divisions, which will structure my chapter,
find their origins in what I will call the 'neoplatonlc' - and generally
patronizing or paternalistic- idea that some parts of the population (the
uneducated masses, children, often women) are more easily influenced
than members of the elite (educated males) and that, therefore, some
dangerous realms of discourse should be restricted to the elite. For each
realm of discourse, I will summarize the insights of existing translation
research and, if appropriate, indicate paths for future research.
The 'neoplatonlc' fear of film and spectacle was certainly more typical
of Catholiclsts9 than of Falanglsts. On an international level, Catholics
had early on becOme aware of the power of film, as can be seen from
the 1936 encyclical Vlgilanti Cura. In 1940, the Falanglst Garda Vlflolas,
who had become a leading member of the Party's Subsecretarla de Prensa
y Propaganda [Under Secretariat for Press and Propaganda] two years
earlier, created the popularizing film review Primer Plano as a response
to Catholic views on film (Diez Puertas 2002: 134, 153; Monterde 1997:
188). The Falanglst Primer Plano and the Catholic film critics developed very different poetic norms and views regarding Hollywood (see
Vandaele 2006). Spanish fascists participated In the creation of Francolst
Institutions from 1936 onwards, and Catholicists used the Institutions
for new ideological purposes from the late 1940s until 1962-63, when
cultural countermovements (including 'liberal neo-fasclsts' or ex-fascists) forced them to apply their criteria In a more flexible manner (see
Gracia 2004). In the early days of Francolsm, certain Falanglst censors
also had different nationalist sensibilities to those of the Cathollcists.
What were the main source languages and cultures from which
discourse types were imported under Francolsm? As the TRACE
(Translation and Censorship) project of the universities of Le6n and
the Basque Country demonstrates statistically, the anglophone dominance is overwhelming in all discourse realms except philosophy,
where translations from German are dominant almost until the end of
Francolsm (Uribarrl 2005, 2007b, c). There were various reasons for the
anglophone hegemony in flcrion, and often these reasons reinforced
each other. In the 1940s Spanish fascists were attracted to Hollywood's
violent and sexy film noir. More generally, in Francoist times Hollywood
escapism was an easy, tacit modus vivendi between large parts of the
population and the Francolst bureaucrats, since the regime's culture
Itself was unable to satisfy the cultural appetite of the Spanish people.
Furthermore, it was fortunate for the Spanish regime that Hollywood
applied Its own Catholic censorship code, the Hays Code, between 1930
and 1966 (see Black 1998). Less fortunately for the intransigent censors,
Hollywood's lobby exerted Institutional and economic pressure on an
Impoverished Spain, forcing Francoists to Import American repertoire
In large quantities even when It did not comply with Spanish norms
(Vandaele 2006).
As for written fiction, twentieth-century Spaniards were not very avid
readers, as Behlels (2006) notes. Most popular under Francolsm were
escapist genres, where translations held a strong position. This even led
to a flourishing market of pseudotranslations: escapist novels In special
collections ('Extra Oeste' and 'Selecdones FBf, for example) written by
Spanish authors using pseudonyms such as 'Lou Carrigan', 'Silver Cane',
'Mortimer Cody', 'linda Malvlll' or 'Curtis Garland' (RabadAn 2000b;
see also Santamaria L6pez 2007). In the realm of theatre, Perez L6pez
de Heredia's excellent thesis (2004) shows that the wave of 'anglophilia'
had already reached Spain In the years before the Spanish Civil War.
Regarding philosophy, Uribarrl (2005, 2007a, b, c) reminds us that
German Influences were part of the well-studied cultural phenomenon
of Krausismo. After studying for two years with Christian F. Krause of
Heidelberg. the Spanish philosopher Julian Sanz del Rio (2005: 366)
had returned to Spain In 1844 and translated this minor German philosopher's work In a conscious attempt to modernize Spanish thinking,
making Krause much more important for Spain than for any other
country- including Germany. This event reoriented the Spanish philosophical scene, away from France and towards Germany.
The hidden realm: 'Private' translations
Some translations were not meant to be published. They only circulated within limited groups. For instance, the State censorship files
kept In the Archivo General de Ia Admlnlstracl6n (In Alcala de Henares,
Madrid) sometimes contain translations of conservative film reviews
from the US, so that the State Censorship Board could assess the supposed danger of a film from an International conservative point of
view. These translations could be documents typed on separate sheets,
often Including the film rating by the US-based Legion of Decency.
According to my research, they were especially frequent after the cultural Apertura of 1963. It Is possible that the Legion of Decency actively
provided this data to the Spanish board; more generally, It Is very likely
feront Vandaele
92 Translation and Francoism
::~
that InstitutiOnal connections existed between the CathoUc Leston of
Decenct and Franco's State and Chutch censorship - whether via translation or other forms of communication.
The Francois! elites often enjoyed personal and Intellectual privilegesthe opportunity to travel, read expensive Intellectual books, or tie members of boards who could view unauthoriZed films. Rich, regime-aligned
artists such as the writer, film director and critic Edgar Neville were relatively free to travel abroad. Eminent 'liberal' thinkers, such as Luis Diez
del Corral, lived wealthy lives and could afford limited editions - both
originals and translations. In this context, one potentially valuable type
of research would tie to try to map how these national Spanish elites
used their international networks to cltrulate foreign information In
private circles. To pursue research on this important area would mean
working with personal testimonies (Interviews, diaries, memoirs, and so
on) rather than on officially archived documents, since the circulation
of foreign intellectual works was often a clandestine matter (see Behiels
2006). Certainly, though, the clandestine nature of much International
literature will not have prevented it tieing used by Francois! elites of different ideological families as a way to position themselves on a domestic
level. For example, Spanish fascists- followers of J~ Antonio Primo de
Rivera, Gimenez caballero, Aparicio, Redondo and Ledesma- were very
powerfol between 1936 and 1945 but simply lost their international
connecrlons In 1945, at a time when Catholicism was highly organized
on a global scale. 10 One could study whether (or to what extent) the
Ideological shift ftom falanglsmo to ultra-Catholicism between 1945 and
1950 was supported by the agents' power to Import, translate and quote
international discourse in private circles or In the corridors of power.
Other Francolsts were national-catholiclsts ftom the onset, In the sense
that they combined Ingredients ftom fascism with nltra-Catholiclsm
without a clear preference for either fascist or catholic Ideas or lifestyles.
Nevertheless the ideological discourse of national-Catholic Individuals
may have evolved over time. The ultra-Catholic Jesuit Ortiz Muiloz,
for Instance, was a high-profile censor ftom 1939 until 1962 In several
discursive realms. He had already served as a censor when State censorship first answered directly to the government (1938-0ctober 1941) but
also operated between 10 October 1941 and 27 July 1945, when State
censorship came under control of the Vicesecretarfa de Eduald6n de FET
y de las TONS. A study of Ortlt Mulloz might cast light on the influem:e
of CatholiCism under fascist rule. Was he more present and Influential
In 1939-41 and 194~2 than In 1941-45? Did his discourse change
over time? Of course, there was much osmosis between Falangists and
93
Cathollcs - Gabriel Arias Salgado, a reactionary catholic, was the head
of State censorship In the ultra-catholic decade (1950-62) but also
when the FET y de las TONS was In control of censorship (1941-45).
Nonetheless some censors were dearly more Catholic and others obviously more para-fascist, and It would be Interesting to see if foreign
repertoires helped to shape their domestic discourse. Possibly their discourse was itself a personal 'translation' of foreign repertoires.
Reality-bound discourse: The press
Beyond the occasional anecdote In general historiographical works, very
little seems to be known about the role of translation In the Francois!
press. The translation or nontranslation of International political
speeches tor the Spanish press may nevertheless be a very Important
reseatch topic. When Preston (1998: 7~). for example, discusses the
Janus-faced nature of Franco's political discourse after the Second World
War, he explidtly refers to the nontranslation In Spain of a pro-American
Interview Franco gave the New York Trmes In 1948. In times of uncertainty and Isolation, after Hitler's defeat, Franco spoke out for America In
English, but made sure his words were not translated Into Spanish for the
Spanish newspapers. Did selecrlve and manipulated translations of foreign press articles, or even pseudotranslations In the Spanish press, play
a significant role In the propaganda of State and Chutch? Interesting as
these questions may tie, I do not know of any research into the role of
press translation in Spain between 1936 and 1975.
From my own archival research It Is clear that specialized catholic
film journals tried to lend ctedlblllty to their views via well-chosen
translations and references to foreign authors. In the 1950s, for
Instance, the Revlsta Interrradmral de Cine, which was also published In
other languages (at least French, Italian and English), regularly featured
Spanish tranSlations of foreign conservative essays and 'studies' on the
Influence of film (Vandaele 2006). A comparative study of the different
versions of this magazine could Well yield Interesting results. Similar
research agendas could be specified for the Falangist press too, and such
researcH could be especially promising If focused on high-profile foreign
news sources quoted In a variety of Francois! newspapers.
Reality-bound discourse: Philosophy
Philosophy Is also non-fictional, llke journalism, but unlike journalIsm It Is written exclusively for the educated. This Is very clear In the
94
reception of Jean-Paul Sartre (Beh!els 2006) and Immanuel Kant (studies
by !bon Uribarri, e.g. 2005). Uribarrl (2007b, c) notes that philosophy
came under tight Francolst control, but also that Kant was not a thinker
who caused the regime too much concern because he was so difficult
that he was only accessible to the Intellectual elite. Similarly, Sartre's
existentialist but hermetic L'~ et le ntant was less problematic than his
more accessible literature and theatre (Behiels 2006).
Behlels and Uribarrl remind us that Neothomlsm was the official
philosophical docrrlne under Franco but that deviant thinkers were
sometimes tolerated for the spedallzed reader. Here are some examples
of the censors' positive dedslons on work by Kant:
1957: On an Argentinian translation of Kritik der Reinen Vermmfl:
'Some copies may be Imported for the use of learned persons
who have the ability to read forbidden books' ['Se puede permltir Ia lmportac16n de algunos eJemplares para uso de las personas estudlosas que tienen facultad para leer Ubros prohlbldos1
(Urlbarrl 2005: 373).
1957: A new Spanish edition of Kritik der Urtrilskraft Is acceptable for
two reasons: It does not contradict Scholastic philosophy In
'dogmatic matters' ['cuestiones dogmaticas1 and It Is a work
that Is 'only within the Intellectual range of the educated' ['s6lo
esta al alcance lntelectual de personas formadas1 (Ibid.).
1962: A Spanish translation of Kritik der Praktischen Vernrmft Is authorized because It Is a 'text for spedallsts In philosophy, known
throughout the world' ['texto para espedalistas de la dlsdpllna
ftlos6ftca, mundlalmente conocldo'] (Ibid.).
,..
:
,,.,
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Jeroen Vandaele 95
'Iranslation and Francoism
Before 1969 the authorization of Kant was always requested (and
granted) for a very limited number of copies, as may be seen from
Table 4.1. One censor was 'concerned' when In 1969 Allanza requested
permission to print 10,000 copies of Kant's ReligiOn derrtro de los /(mites
de Ia raz6n pura (Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blofjen Vernrmtf)
but authorization was given (Ibid.).
Only two Kant translations were directly censored. In 1955 a translation of Ober eine Entdeckung, nach der aile neue Kritik der reinen Vernrmft
durch eine altere entbehriich gernacht werden soli was not Imported, but the
file does not state why. More Interestingly, a translation of Zum ewigl!ll
Friede (by Rivera Pastor) was banned In 1943 (Uribarrl 2007b) because,
according to the censor, Kant was 'Influenced by the French Revolution'
when he stated that the constitution of any state should be republican.
Table 4.1 Numbers of copies permitted for Kant translations
Year
1939
1945
1957
1957
1962
Title
ICritillkr Prakttschen Vemunft
ICritillkr Relnen Vemunft
Kritlk lkr Urtellskraft
ICritil der Relnen Vemunft
Krltik der Prakttschen Vemunft
Copies
1,500
200
1,000
50
1,000
Sot.nre: Based on Urlbarri 2007a: 183-7.
In fascist times -Period (2) of my categorization, the years of the Second
World War - censorship of Kant thu$ became overtly political.
No less Interesting are Uribarri's remarks on the Spanish reception of
Kant In the 1920s and early 1930s, when new translations were made by,
for example, Manuel Garcia Morente and the logician and Republican
President of Parliament (1931-33) JulUin Bestelro. In Spain, all maJor
Intellectuals at last started to reflect on Kant In that period, whether
Ortega y Gasset, Bestelro, Unamuno or Antonio Machado. Another
reader of Kant was Ramiro de Maeztu. By 1930 Maeztu had abandoned
his SOcialist and liberal ideas and, with Jo~ Antonio and Calvo Sotelo,
founded the Unl6n Monarqulca Nadonal against the Second Republic
(Ellwood 1984: 23; Payne 1985: 49), spreading the Idea of 'Hispanldad',
the 'solidarity among ffispano- and Lusophone nations under the guidance of Spain' (Rosendorf 2006: 405). As Aguilar and Humlebaek write
(2002: 136):
In the 1930s the ultra-right-wing writer Ramlro de Maeztu popularIzed the concept of Hlspanldad, linking It to the fascist Imagery
an<( emphasizing the Ideas of 'historical destiny' and Volksgeist.
Hlspanldad Is conceived of as the community of Hispanic nations
founded on the religious spirit of Spanish colonization, a specifically
anti-liberal and traditionalist Idea that was adopted by the Francolst
regime as one of Its Ideological pillars. The concept was lnstrumentallzed to exalt the heroic Image of the old Spanish empire and the
period when Spain was amongst the most Important powers of the
world, stressing the religious and political aspects much more than
the cultural and literary ones.
Strange as It might seem, Maeztu writes, he owed to Kant the 'the rocksolid foundation of my religious Ideas' ['fundamento lnconmovlble de
ml pensamlento rellgloso1 (quoted In Uribarrl2005: 379). The existence
96 Translation and Francoism
of a priori synthetic knowledge showed him that truth Is found in the
soul [espfrltu] not in matter [naturaleza material]. This Idea would return
in Kant's reception during the late Franqulsmo (1969-75, Period (6) of
my categorization).
Behiels quotes a 1948 essay on Sartre which illustrates that phenomenology was only recommended If it concerned good existentialism Heidegger's:
The greater analytic capadty of our present era is one of the reasons
why our times are different from previous ones. Proof of it is found
in phenomenology and its consequences (such as, for Instance, the
teaching of good existentialism - that is, Heidegger's, not Sartre's
stupid version}, the atom bomb and so on.u
(Alonso del Real, quoted in Behlels 2006)
Given Heldegger's spectal relation to Nazi Germany, it would certainly
be interesting to study Francois! translations of this 'good phenomenologist'. Was he promoted (via translation for example} by fasdsts
and/or national-Cathollctsts? Maeztu's notion of Hispanidlul (1931} can
certainly be interpreted as an instance of Heidegger's Ur-sprung, 'a historically origlnary decision or founding act that provides a people with
its "dt!$tiny" or truth' (In Galt Crowell's paraphrase; 1999: 291). Uribarri
(2007a) notes that there are only ten censorship flies on Heidegger
(compared with the 45 on Kant}, most of which came rather late.
Piileiro's 1956 translation of Das Wesen der Wahrhelt was controvenlal,
because It was done into Galidan (Da esenda da verdade). Urlbarri does
not explain, however, If the controversy was somehow antidpated or
reflected In the censorship file. More generally, Uribarri writes (2007a:
189) that Heidegger was unproblematic for Franco's State censon.
Although jean-Paul Sartre was considered a pemictous Influence for
Catholics (La nausee had been banned by the Vatican}, he was nonetheless tolerated in Spain as a philosopher for the spectalists -just like Kantand especially as time passed: although unsympathetic to Sartre, one
censor observed In 1964 that 'the Church condemned the book in
1948. Perhaps existentialism was considered more dangerous at that
time'." According to Carlos Dlaz (1983; quoted by Behiels 2006) Sartre
was known as an existentialist in Spain, and hardly as a Marxist; his
Communist ideas became available only In the late 1960s. The reception of existentialism deserves further research, Including translational
analysis of its basic philosophical teXts. What happened, for Instance,
to Camus' more popularizing anti-religious humanism?
feroen Vandaele 97
Even after the 1966 Press Law, offidally presented as being a relaxation of the rules, many Intellectual works were banned after they
had been printed and distributed. Cisquella, Ervlti and Sorolla (1977}
mention several works that were censored after publication (known
as 'secuestro'): Humtmlsmo y terror by Merleau-Ponty, El valent soldat
Schweilc by jaroslav Hasek, Sobre poUtica y lingtlistica by Noam Chomsky,
Sobre el hachfs by Walter Benjamin, El pensamiento de Lenin by Henri
Lefebvre, Filoso(fa y pol£tica by Antonio Gramsci, El pensamiento de Hegel
by Roger Garaudy, Dlccionarlo fllost!(lco by Voltaire and La cuesti6n meridional by Gramsct. Sodologfa de Marx by Lefebvre was authorized in 1969,
Intmducdt!n II Ia fllow(fa de Ia praxis by Gramsct In 1970, Materlalisme
diaJectic by Leo Apostelln 1971, Espodo y polftica by Lefebvre in 1976.
Iharo (2005b) further mentions selective. translations of Orwell's literary essays, which will be discussed later.
Marx himself remained absent from 1936 until 1966. In the last decade of Franco's rule, however, 200 censonhlp flies were opened on him.
The years 1967-8 saw an avalanche of requests (Urlbarri 2007b). In the
1970s, offlctal requests were made to re-edit Marx translations from
the period between 1872 and 1936, a period In which the Communist
Manifesto had been published In Spanish In 4 7 different versions.
Uribarri has discovered only one or two censorship flies on Lessing,
Flchte, Schelling, Schopenhauer, Feuerbach and Hegel, an absence
which he flnds especially conspicuous for a philosopher of Hegel's
stature. NlettSche Is the other German philosopher subject to as many
cenSOTShlp flies as Marx. but NlettSche's reception has a different
chronology (Urlbarri 2007b). Like Marx, Nietzsche had been translated
before 1936- and even before 1900- but unlike the pre-Francolst Marx
translations, some NlettSche translations were republished between
1939 and 1942, when the falanglstas had control In large sectors of Party
and government. Between 1942 and 1964 all attempts to publish the
Infamous author of the phrase 'Gott 1st tot' failed; between 1964 and
1970 NlettSche was tolerated In limited and expensive editions; and
between 1970 and 1975 drculatlon became more democratic, even creating a short-lived neo-NiettSchean countercultural movement. Censors
justified this shift by labelling NlettSche as an 'existentialist' rather than
an anti-Christian (Urlbarri 2007b).
There Is qUite a difference, I believe, between this Inaccurate categorization among the censors (NiettSche the existentialist) and similar categorizations txtnl muros (In published prefaces, prologues, Introductions to
works, and so on). A censor's own categorization Intra muros can readily
be understood as his (not often her) way to defend a controversial author
feroen Vandaele 99
98 Translation and Francoism
,:\
.J1!!i
' 1:
'I
.il
In the terms given by the Francolst regime, even though the censor knew
that the author was In fact much more complex (or even controversial)
than was suggested In his report. It Is even possible to Interpret these
moves and the prominence given to framing prefaces or Introductions as
'open-m!ndedness', as a will to publish. Thus, when a second censor of
Kant's Religi6n dentro de los /(mites de Ia raz6n pura commented that 'the
translator's prologue Is very good In the sense that It frames the work
within the thought of Kant'" (quoted In Urlbarr12007a: 185-6), he may
have been trying to ease the process of publication as much as expressing
a genuine opinion on the accuracy of the 'frame'.
It Is more difficult, on the other hand, to Interpret these framlngs as
acts of resistance U they were actually published. As Urlbarrl (2007a)
argues, in the late 1960s Franco's agents tried to domesticate Kant In an
attempt to protect Catholic Ideology from the constant Invasion of the
materialist world, which reminds us of Maeztu's musings on the Importance of Kant for his own conservative Ideas. Furthermore, In 1964 and
1967 the Aguilar house published La paz perpetua (Zum ewigen Friede),
which had been forbidden In 1943. In his approval, the censor quoted
the final words of the Introduction to the edition, which explained that
Kant really preferred monarchy to democracy (Urlbarrl 2007a: 185).
One element Is missing from Ur!barrl's current work: he does not
reveal the Identity of the censors discussed. It Is unclear to me whether
their names have been omitted because their signatures were illegible,
the reports were anonymous, or as a conscious decision by Urlbarrl (In
line with some existing research on (i"anquismo). I would argue that Identity Is Important when we try to make sense of words as cultural speech
acts, that is, as discourse endowed with agency. As Foucault (1982: 187)
explains, disciplinary power 'Is exercised through Its lnvtslblllty; at the
same time It Imposes on those whom It subjects a principle of compulsory vtslblllty'. If we want to understand Francois! censors, we have to
do what they attempted to avoid: we have to make them vtslble.
Thus, I welcome Behiels' (2006) note that the 1964 censor of La
nausee is Father Satumlno Alvarez 1\trlenzo, an eminent Augustinian
and prior of El Escor!al in 1964 who two years later became professor of
ethics at the Unlversldad Pontlflcla de Salamanca. For one thing. this
information contributes to our understanding of the otherwise lnvtslble
players and networks of Francolsm. For another, It shows that Abellin's
(1980: 110) distinction between a first 'epoca glorlosa' and 'academlca'
of censorship and a subsequent era of med!ocrlty 14 should be called
Into question- Alvarez Turlenzo belongs to Abelian's second period, yet
he was 'gloriously academic'. Behiels' Information also casts doubt on
the claim that censors were merely 'ruedecitas' [tiny wheeis]in 'Ia gran
maquinarla' (Neuschllfer 1994: 52)."
Fiction film
It would be wrong to think that only non-fiction was (or Is) felt to be
a threat by censors. To different degrees, fiction Is also considered a
reality-bound type of discourse. The classical formulation goes back to
Plato's Republic: 16
Then the first thing will be to establish a censorship of the writers of
fiction, and let the censors receive any tale of fiction which Is good,
and rejecl the bad; and we will desire mothers and nurses to tell their
chlldren the authorised ones only. Let them fashion the mind with
such tales, even more fondly than they mould the body with their
hands; but most of those which are now In use must be discarded.
(Plato, The Republic, trans. Benjamin Jowett)
In Por»qUoi Ia fiction, Jean-Marie Schaeffer (1999) points out that this
platonic Idea usually returns whenever a new medium Is Introduced to
groups which are considered vulnerable. The Invention and circulation
of narrative fflm fiction met with strong paternalistic resistance among
Catholics around the world -and especially In Francois! Spain (see also
Vandaele 2006).
A first Illustration of this fear Is the Spanish decision of 23 April 1941
to Impose dubbing by law, a practice Franco had copied from Mussollnl
(Gubem et al. 1995: 454; Avtla 1997: 73). This measure was taken In
'Falangist' times and, although the law would be rescinded In 1946
(Gubem et al. 1995: 456), from 1941 until the present day, dubbing has
been the standard technique In commercial film translation In Spain:
once a choice of either dubbing or sublttllng has been made, the option
chosen tendS to Impose and replicate Itself as the obvtous practice. Even
though decisions in favour of dubbing have typically been Inspired by
nationalism (Danan 1991, 1994), Spanish Catholics would soon make
use of dubbing In a battle Inspired by extreme moral paternalism. From
1945 onwards, and especially between 1950 and 1963 (what I have
called Periods (2) and (3)), they promoted the 'Ideal film' and banned
anything counter to dogma - very effectively In the Catholic decade
(Period (3)).
In this decade, a feeble counterculture would begin to grow, In the
'Cine-Clubs' of the SEU (the Falangist Slndicato Espaffol Universitario),
J
100 Translation and Francoism
which were created in 1951 (Gubern 1980: 19). The SEU's Salamanca
Cine-Club organized the 1955 COIIll!?rSadones de Salamanca, a watershed
conference that would eventually contribute to the establishment of
the more tolerant censorship code and practice of 1963. In turn, this
new code and practice would lead to the creation in 1967 of officially
'mlnoritarian' Salas Espedales, which showed original (but censored) versions with subtitles (Gutierrez Lanza 2007: 228). Unlike the membersonly Cine-Clubs, the special theatres were in principle open to all adult
audiences. This reveals, once more, that (ex-)Falangists were Important
countercultural agents In ultra-Catholic times, as Gracia (2004) argues.
Before and during the Second World War (Periods (1) and (2)), the
Falangists had more official power due to their presence in central
administrative institutions, although the Church was also represented
in all relevant institutions. During the Clvll War, censorship was
centralized first in Seville and La Corolla, then In Salamanca (Diez
Puertas 2002; Gubern et al. 1995: 454). Nominally there was no censorship board until.1938, but In practice the Departamento Nadonal
de Cinematogra(fa (headed by Falanglst Garcia Vlllolas) of the Dlrecd6n
General de Propaganda (headed by the vieiofalangista Rldruejo) worked as
a film board. The Comisi6n de Censura and the funta Superior de Censura,
created In 1938, merged in 1940 into the funta Superior de Orlentad6n
Cinematografica. As mentioned earlier, this junta had to answer to the
Party between 1941 and 1945. To my knowledge, film translation for
these periods has not yet been studied.
My own research on Billy Wilder (Vandaele 2002, 2006, 2007) shows
that there Is a significant difference between pre- and post-1951 film
censorship In Spain. Not only did the number of Catholicist Junta
members Increase between 1946 (the year the first Billy Wilder file was
opened) and 1963 (the year of the Apertura) but the Catholictsts steadily grew more confident in the debates. Before 1951 Billy Wilder's films
were reviewed by two administratively and Ideologically different State
boards- the first In 1946 and the second in 1947. In 1946 The Major
and the Minor (1942) was authorized by State censorship, while external Church censorship found it morally dangerous for Catholics. The
ultra-Catholic State censor Ortiz Muftoz did not complain about the
junta's decision (at least not In writing). Alfonso de Ia Rosa, the official
representative of the army, who would disappear from the files the next
year, had nothing negative to say about the sexual issues in Wilder's
Hollywood debut.
The next Francois! period (1946-51) was one of great conflict between
fascist and Catholiclst film poetics. The notorious fascist censor David
{eroen Vandaele
101
Jato, for example, believed that Wilder's Double Indemnity (1944), a
violent and sexy film nolr, was 'suitable for the masses' (preview of
11 February 1947).11 Although the Spanish Church forbade the film,
and though a 1946 decree lent more power to the ecclesiastic censor
In moral matters (Gubern 1981: 98), Double Indemnity was authorized
In a dubbed version, as Perdid6n. Jato was backed by Joaquin Soriano,
the first director of Franco's Nazi-oriented news service NO-DO, and
by Dominguez de lgoa, a rum director working with Bardem (Vandaele
2006: 122-3). Many other foreign films caused a stir between 1947 and
1950. For Instance, Gilda (1946, Charles Vidor) was a wonderful film
according to the Falanglst Primer Plano (28 December 1947) and a veritable scandal for the external Church censorship.
Paxton (2004: 17) reminds us that fascism's 'deliberate replacement
of reasoned debate with Immediate sensual experience transformed
politics, as the exiled German cultural critic Walter Benjamin was the
first to point out, Into aesthetics'. This penchant for aesthetics and
sensuous experience can also be Identified in Falangist discourse on for·
elgn repertoire. The Spanish Falangists loved the Hollywood aesthetic
that brought sex, speed and violence to Spain. They hated Hollywood,
however, when It produced anti-German propaganda films like Wilder's
Fiw Graves to Cairo (1943). Jato's verdict was that the film was 'worthy of a shopkeepers' nation, without a shred of spiritual elegance' 18
(2 September 1947). Here, spirituality or the spirit of a nation suddenly
turns out to be the paramount criterion.
F.ven In ultra-Catholic times, however, Francois! Catholicism remained
national-Catholicism, Franco's strange blend of Falangist nationalism
and moral reactionary Catholicism. Thus, Wilder's anti-Nazi PoW
comedy Stalag 17 (1953) was banned by State censorship. Although
Catholicists were by now more powerful in most Issues, other censors
had not completely forgotten their fascist roots and they were able to
press their point. Falangist Mourlane Mlchelena explicitly asked for a
'revision' of the film's 'deformations', 'preJudices' and 'caricatures'. 19
According to PloGarcfa F.scudero,20 a nationai-Catholiclst who was more
Catholicist than nationalist, such camps 'should be Russian' Instead of
Gen!lan - a comment which shows how Francois! Catholiclsts and
nationalists found common ground in anti-Communism. The journalIst and otherwise relatively moderate censor Mariano Daranas and VIcePresident Alonso-Pesquera, who had spent much time In Germany and
Italy between 1933 and 1940 (CILEH 1990: 38), made similar remarks,
while Father Garcia del Flgar and Father Vlllares simply acknowledged
the reasoning of the other members that evaded comment on German
102
Translation and Francoism
atrocities. In a positive 1964 re-evaluation, the revisionism Implicit In
the 1953 ban- which alluded to the allegedly over-negative representation of Germans In the film - would finally fade but some of the film's
political satire would still be censored (see Vandaele 2007).
Whereas State censorship gradually changed Its criteria, the translators' habitus, their way of doing things, 21 remained very similar from
the beginning. The translators- the film-script translators, the synchronizers, the dubbers, the Import and distribution companies - wanted
to achieve commercial success and do the best job they could In the
circumstances, and they knew what kind of norms circulated In the
Francois! system: God, Franco and Spain. Furthermore, they communicated with each other on previous problems with cultural products.
Gutierrez Lanza's (1999) study of five scripts22 and my study (Vandaele
2006) of 23 Bllly Wilder films show some common findings. Firstly, the
translators were very skilled at negotiating between target and source
norms. They knew how to execute constant linguistic manipulations,
which were often hardly visible. Ideological translation was clearly part
of their habitus as translators. Their dubbing made political and religious shifts wherever necessary, and exhibits several constant features:
If the 'good guys' of the film are also those of Francois! ideologies, then
they are made even 'better' In the Francois! translation; Ideologically
negative sides are erased and Ideologically positive elements emphasized (Vandaele 2006: 454ff.; Gutierrez Lanza 1999; see also Ballester
2001). Careful attention Is paid to language, with dialects, sociolects,
slang and any type of Indecent language avoided. Finally, film titles
are changed for moral reasons (even In pre-Catholicist 1947, Double
Indemnity became Perdld6n)
Gutierrez Lanza takes a quantitative approach (that Is, systematically
tagging translation units with labels such as 'Image Improvement',
'reduction of sexual content', 'euphemism', 'enhancement of the socio-
I
political and/or moral values of the regime', and so on) and shows convincingly that subtle manipulation pervaded the five specific Francois!
film script translations. My own work (Vandaele 2006), In contrast, has a
qualitative focus on narratively and culturally relevant fragments, examIning the Implications of certain tiny adjustments In crucial moments of
the projected film narrative such as rewrltings of the morally Important
endings and subtle shifts In the translation of subversive humour (ultraCatholic and fascist censors had different senses of humour).
On the other hand, even manipulated dubbings were potential
forces of Innovation at any time In the period between 1939 and 1975.
Gutierrez Lanza writes that her five translated film scripts, all authorized
feroen Vandaele 103
during the Apertura (1963-9), offered 'a range of Infidelities, adulterous
love affairs, broken marriages, broken families, etc.' (Lanza 1999: 412).
She argues that quite often they were finally authorized precisely because
they were foreign and thus demonstrated the spiritual nobility of Spain
(Ibid.). Ex negatlvo they Illustrated Franco's lifelong mantra that Spain
was 'Europe's spiritual sanctuary'. For Wilder's The Apartment (1960), the
ex negatlvo argument was specifically adduced In a letter of appeal by the
Import and distribution company CB Films (Vandaele 2006: 227), and
the film was accordingly subjected to a range of thematic cuts (Ibid.:
260). Regarding the censors' response to films of this kind, I argue that
we should distinguish between conservative censors, who banned as
much Immoral film material as possible, Irrespective of Its origin, and
more tolerant censors who used pretend, pseudo-Francolst arguments
to authorize high-quality film repertoires (a similar case was discussed
eatlier, for the case of Kant). This distinction between authentic and
dissimulated commentaries crucially depends on the censor's Identity
as extrapolated from other sources.
When film distributors pointed out the 'Inherently comic nature' of
the film, or the 'unavoidability' of a character's behaviour In certain
circumstances, moderate or tolerant censors were happy to accept these
explanations. In the case of humour, moreover, even the more conservative censors found It difficult to ban a film that they themselves had
laughed at (Some Like It Hot, for Instance). Another extenuating circumstance could be that the things represented were merely nightmarish
recollections (Repulsion, Gutierrez Lanza 1999: 317) or far-fetched
daydreams (The Seven Year Itch, Vandaele 2007) In a fictional world,
even If these scenes were 'crudely' represented, as some ultra-Catholics
complained. And although this was hard to accomplish for film, distributors even suggested framing the story by adding a prologue (The
Fugitive Kind, Gutierrez Lanza 1999: 213). Conversely, Wilder's original
prologue to The seven ~ar Itch was found too obscene and therefore cut
(Vandaele 2007). It jokingly drew a parallel between the male sexual
obsessions of modem New Yorkers and similar erotic preoccupations of
precolonial Native Americans.
The more tolerant censors of the Apertura (1963-9), who laughed and
played along with the distributors' pretences, generally had a Falanglst
background: FernAndez Cuenca, G6mez Mesa, jose Maria Garcia
Escudero, Arrolta-}Auregul, Auz Castro (director of the Thatro Espal!ol
Universitario and the Teatros de Cdmara y Ensayo; see later In the chapter).
Some Falanglst censors of the natlonal-Catholictst era (1951~2) were
noticeably more tolerant In moral Issues than their ultra-Catholic
104
Translation and Francoism
colleagues, but they lacked internal power. Interestingly, in 1960 the
old-time fascist macho Patricio G. De Canales was the only one who
dared to find Sidney Lumet's and Tennessee Williams' The Fugitive Kind
acceptable, despite its adulterous theme (Gutierrez Lanza 1999: 209,
referring to Canales' vote in November 1960). In January 1961, however, Some Like It Hot's cross-gendered and homosexual overtones were
completely unacceptable for Canales, who condemned the two main
male characters as 'poofs' [maricas].
It is well known that a new surge of moral 'integrism' or ultraconservatism arose from 1969, when Minister sanchez Bella took over
power from the aperturista Fraga Iribarne (who had, in turn, succeeded
Arias Salgado). The Billy Wilder files also became much more anonymous in the 1970s. Furthermore, according to Abellim (1980: 10), one
of the first researchers to gain access to the censorship files, between
1975 and 1977 much information seems to have been deleted. In this
sense it is fortunate that Gutierrez Lanza was able to present a full list
of censors for a 1974 evaluation of Repulsion. Some names are familiarGOmez Mesa, 23 Fernandez Cuenca 24 - but others are new: Father
Eugenio Benito, Saenz de Heredia (director of Raza [Race], 1942), 25
Jose Maria Ramos, Rafael Gil, 26 Guillermo Fernandez Lopez Zuftiga and
Pablo Martin Vara. The Hays Code had been abolished in 1966, so that
more violent and erotic films were now being produced in the US and
exported. During the five years 1962-66, the film censorship norms of
the Francois! state and Hollywood's poetics had converged, but between
1969 and 1975 they started diverging more than ever before. More
research is required on the translation dynamics of this period which
was full of norm conflicts between agents who wanted to increase,
maintain, halt or even reverse the Apertura. These conflicts may have
been a source of retrospective embarrassment for the more reactionary
censors, who later wanted to avoid their names being associated with
conservative norms and the conflicts surrounding them.
In any event, it is clear that Francoism was never able to create a successful repertoire of its own. Culturally and economically, it was too poor
to cater for the first Spanish generation born after the Civil War, who
reached adulthood around 1960. State censorship fought the symptoms,
but could not address the underlying cause of the demand for 'undesirable' repertoire, which was a cultural hunger tor creative products.
Even ex-fascists preferred American films to national-Catholic austeriry. Unsurprisingly, then, 3107 foreign films were shown in the period
between 1951 and 1975, of which 73 per cent were North American,
22 per cent British, and 4 per cent from other countries (Gutierrez Lanza
feroen Vandaele
lOS
1999: 411; 2000). It remains to be verified whether the figures are very
different for the war years (1941-45) and the post-war autarkic years
(1945-51). However, since the wave of anglophilia in theatre had already
reached Spain in the years before the Spanish Civil War (Perez Lopez de
Heredia 2004), it is quite likely that anglophone film also dominated in
periods before 1951.
Theatre
Around the First World War, Perez Lopez de Heredia (2004) argues,
American works gradually replaced French as the most dominant foreign presence in the Spanish theatrical system. Political factors were not
irrelevant to this cultural reorientation. When Spanish modernists sided
against the Germans, they also sided with the English-speaking allies
(Perez Lopez de Heredia 2004: 38). Perez shows that the US provided
Spaniards with two different sorts of theatre, conservative and innovative, because Francoism could not offer audiences what they wanted.
Thus, on the one hand, the regime's first main theatres (Maria Guerrero
and Espallol) were meant to serve the nation, as Ridruejo said (ibid.: 49),
as well as its moraliry, as Nicolas Gonzalez Ruiz stated (ibid.: 50).2' Also,
theatre had to be performed in Spanish, and not in Catalan, Galician
or Euskera (Basque) - this fascist decision was taken in 1941, when
film dubbing into Spanish was also imposed by law (ibid.: 54-S). On
the other hand, translations gradually imported innovative elements.
While conservative American theatre entered Spain from the 1940s, the
more realist and transgressive sort of performances had to wait ten more
years. Using Robyns' terminology (1994), Perez Lopez de Heredia calls
the Spanish theatre system 'defective' in the sense that it consciously or
unconsciously sought abroad what it lacked at home. In the aftermath
of the Civil War, given the paper shortage, it even had to search for
publishable translations abroad- in Argentina (ibid.: 6lff.). In Merino's
(2004: SO) corpus of Spanish theatre translations from the English, only
nine per cent of the editions come from Argentina, but this may be
partly due to her choosing the period 1958-85, that is, including ten
post-Francoist years. 28
The historical links between theatre and film are very relevant here.
Around the First World War, Broadway became an inventor and exporter
of repertoire rather than an importer of European bourgeois comedy
and detective melodramas (Perez Lopez de Heredia 2004: 35). The new
repertoire (Eugene O'Neill, Elmer Rice, Maxwell Anderson, Thornton
Wilder and later Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams and Edward Albee)
feroen Vandaele
106 Translation and Francoism
was based on a new hero, the common man, and was spoken in a
more spontaneous register. The most successful pieces were automatically adapted by the Hollywood studios, which also meant that they
were censored according to the Hays Code. In Spain both conservative
and modern theatre would profit from the Hollywood connection.
Hollywood had a very strong lobby in Francois! Spain because Spain
always remained one of its ten most important markets worldwide (see
Vandaele 2006). Much more than Broadway, it was an institutional
lobby that spoke in one voice and could thus impose its products. In
the case of Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, the film version
that had been censored by Hollywood was used as an extra source text
to help create a (necessarily domesticated) Spanish theatre version. By
means of this one specific example, Perez LOpez de Heredia argues that
authorization of a text in the realm of film was a strong argument for
an administrative nihil obstat in the realm of theatre.
It seems that Francoism generally applied the same normative codes
to film and theatre (Merino 2001: 235), although Catholics feared the
former more than the latter. Thus, even though the Church's extra
muros censorship showed a special fear of film (urged by the 1936
encyclical Vigilanti Cura), the code it published in 1950 applied to the
performing arts in general (Instrucciones y Nonnas para Ia Censura Moral
de Espectaculos). The 1963 code of the Apertura also applied to both dramatic art forms. From the beginning of Francoism, there were a special
Departamento, Junta and Comisi6n for film, but they all answered to the
same Direcci6n General de Propaganda. In the Party (1941-45) there was
a Delegaci6n Nacional de Cine y Teatro (headed by Fernandez Cuenca, see
n. 24) including a Junta, which worked tor the Vicesecretaria de Educaci6n
Popular headed by Arias Salgado (see Chueca 1983: 229).
This structure for film and theatre (that is, a Delegaci6n and a Junta)
was transferred back to the government in 1945. From 1951 onwards,
the Delegaci6n became a Direcci6n but its competences remained the
same. Unfortunately, neither Perez LOpez de Heredia (2004) nor Bandin
(2007) mention the censors' names, which makes it difficult to see if
there were many members common to the theatre and the film board,
although it may be safe to assume that this was the case. We know that
Victor Ailz (born 1935), for example, was an aperturista on the 1963
film board, a theatre director of TEU (Teatro Espafiol Universitario)
and a TEU official in 1966 (Vandaele 2006: 512). The Director General
was automatically President on both boards. Shakespeare translator
Nicoliis Gonziilez Ruiz occasionally worked as a film censor too (e.g.,
for Wilder's Sabrina in 1955). The moderate Florentino Soria (censor of
107
Irma La Douce) censored Fernando Arrabal's El gran ceremonial (Arrabal
in Tiempo; 6 March 1995).
The connections between dnema and theatre do not stop here. As in
the realm of film, but earlier perhaps, a special circuit was created for
more progressive theatre, the Teatros de Camara y Ensayo. Perez Lopez
de Heredia (2004: 59) says in this respect that a 1955 decree merely officialized a practice that had been in existence since the late 1940s. And
as in film translation, self-censorship - the translational habitus - was
so effective in the theatrical realm that the Board did not often have to
impose its own 'external' censorship. 71.5 per cent of the works submitted for censorship were authorized for adults over 18, and only eight per
cent were prohibited (ibid.: 125). For the period studied by Perez Lopez
de Heredia (1936-62), Table 4.2 shows the 11 most requested plays in
translation, some of which were clearly innovative.
Of what Perez L6pez de Heredia calls the 'conservative scene', only
one play was banned: Romance by Edward Sheldon (1913) was impossible to authorize in 1943 and 1949 because it was about a protestant
bishop falling in love (Perez Lopez de Heredia 2007: 191). Although the
ecclesiastic censor had no qualms about the plot (because the bishop
does not succumb to his passion), others decided that Catholic audiences might misinterpret the play as a tale of inappropriate lust. As for
innovative theatre, A Streetcar Named Desire was severely criticized by the
1950 Board (which called it an almost eschatological play about social
decay) 29 yet one year later a re-written version was authorized in which
Table 4.2 The translated plays most frequently presented to the censors,
1936-{;2
Files
Title
Author
10
8
6
6
6
5
5
Angel Street
The Trial of Mary Dugan
Patrick Hamilton
Bayard Veiller
Margaret Mayo
Thornton Wilder
Tennessee Williams
Eugene O'Nei\1
Tennessee Williams
Tennessee Williams
Arthur Miller
Michael Gazzo
Robert A. Anderson
4
4
4
4
Baby Mine
Our Town
A Streetcar Named Desire
Desire Under the Elms
The Glass Menagerie
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Death of a Salesman
A Hatful of Rain
Tea and Sympathy
Source: Based on Perez LOpez de Heredia (2004: 120).
108
feroen Vandaele 109
Translation and Francoism
the final scene between Blanche and Stanley was deleted, and references
to homosexuality became negative (Perez LOpez de Heredia 2004: 163).
Generally speaking, it seems that theatre was easier to mould than
film because it did not come with pictures on celluloid 30 Thus, the
(already censored) Hollywood version of Streetcar (directed by Elia
Kazan) was not authorized by the Spanish Board in 1952 (ibid.: 166)although it would be in 1956. Yet in spite of the drastic rewriting of the
stage version and the other types of censorship, Perez L6pez de Heredia
argues, Un tranvia /lamado deseo pushed the limits of what could be
shown in theatres at the time. Perez L6pez de Heredia also points out
that North American drama - especially Miller's Death of a Salesman strongly influenced the Spanish theatre (ibid.: 174) 31 American works
were as omnipresent on the stage as they were in film. From the mid19S0s there were nine or more American premieres per year in Spain:
17 in 1957, 19 in 1959, 14 in 1960, 12 in 1961 and 15 in 1962 (ibid.:
122). One major difference between film and theatre, however, was the
apparent influence of theatre directors and producers on the Censorship
Board's decisions. In 1941, 1942 and 1945, for example, the Board did
not find a translation of Jimmy Samson by Paul Armstrong (1914) suitable for the stage, yet still in 1945 its performance was authorized when
another company with better connections submitted the same translation to the same board (ibid.: 131).
Regarding the relation between theatre and book, Perez Lopez de
Heredia (2004: 123-4) has calculated that 35 per cent of the staged versions in her corpus were also published, and that almost 90 per cent
of all published versions had previously been staged (in other words,
65 per cent of the performances were not published and 10 per cent of
the book versions were not performed). Sandin (2007), like Perez Lopez
de Heredia a researcher on the TRACE project, moreover explains that
classical theatre belonged more to the written circuit, whereas modern
theatre was almost exclusively geared toward performance. She shows
that classical English drama - perhaps even classical works in general were considered less disruptive than modern theatre.
Unsurprisingly, in classical English drama Shakespeare accounts for
by far the most database entries, with performances of Hamlet, Romeo
and Juliet, Macbeth, Othello, The Merchant of Venice, King Lear and Julius
Caesar. A Shakespeare translation was presented over 500 times to the
State censorship authority in Francois! times. Sandin affirms that all of
these requests were authorized without any kind of restriction, except
Troilus and Cressida, translated by the brilliant, anti-fascist, homosexual
poet Luis Cernuda and submitted by Insula in 1953 (Sandin 2007: xvii).
As for staged versions, nine per cent of the plays were censored from a
conservative point of view (ibid.: xviii), often targeting eroticism and
'indecent' language (ibid.: xxxi).
Bandin's English summary of her work 32 does not offer textual
analyses, but it does include one culturally important example, relating to Hamlet. Shakespeare's masterpiece was translated in the period
by Astrana Marin (1940), Enrique Guitart (1945), Jose Maria Peman
(1949), Nicolas Gonzalez Ruiz (1960) and Antonio Buero Vallejo (1961).
Sandin writes that the critics would not accept that 'Buero sent Ophelia
to a brothel'. However, there is in fact still widespread disagreement as
to whether nunnery was also slang for 'brothel' and whether such innuendo was intended by Shakespeare (see, e.g., Evans 1986); translator
Buero Vallejo's choice may thus not have broken any prevailing norm'
(as Sandin claims, 2007: xxxv). The fact, for example, that a word like
hideputa (from hijo de puta) was acceptable in 1945 (Guitart's version)
and not acceptable in 1961 (Buero's translation) may hint at a censor's
personal antipathy toward a translator or at idiosyncratic decisions yet
simultaneously also at a change in normative poetics (from Falangist to
Catholicist).
In fact, Bandfn's study (2005) of Ben Jonson's Volpone may testify to
a similar normative conflict between the poetics of its translator, the
rightwing humorist Tomas Borras (author of the anti-Republican novel
Chekas de Madrid), and the norms of some Catholic censor who banned
the word comudo from the Borras translation (Sandin 2005: 34). In 1942
Borras was certainly more of a Falangist than a Catholicist. The founder
of the Sindicato Nacional del Espectaculo, he believed that by nationalizing the playhouse Teatro Espafiol he had taken 'the right course' in 'the
Spain of the Falange' because 'theatre is an art for the people' (Borras
1942 quoted in Wahnon 1996: 208).
1
Literature
Written literature was considered less dangerous than visually performed fiction, though perhaps not when the literature was meant for
children, as Fernandez Lopez's (2000, 2007) research shows. More than
half of the books translated for young Spanish people in the period
were originally written in English. Worldwide, and until the 1960s, such
writings were restricted by taboos on violence-for-fun, death of children
or parents, divorce, alienation, and killers (Fernandez L6pez 2000).
In Spain the legislation was ambiguous until 1955 (Fernandez Lopez
2007: 20), yet censorship actually decreased once the procedures were
110
Tran.dation and Francoism
officialized - what Fernandez calls the 'bureaucratization' of children's
literature censorship (ibid.: 44). Fernandez found 118 censorship files
for the 1940s (12 of which dealt with cases which were morally and/or
politically 'problematic'), 48 for the 1950s (with 4 'interventions'),
20 for the 1960s (no problems) and 8, all unproblematic, cases for the
1970s (ibid.: 26). Of three British bestselling authors (Blyton, Dahl,
Crompton), only Crompton encountered problems in Spain (7 bans;
see also Craig 1998). Regarding genre, until late in the 1960s adventures
and moralizing books written by members of the clergy were particularly widely distributed (ibid.: 21).
Distinguishing three different periods -Autarquia (1940-54), desarrollismo ('developism', 1955-69) and late Francoism (1970-5) 33 - Fernandez
Lopez's 2000 study surveys the editorial and administrative landscape
and the often drastically adaptive translation strategies. Similarly, Craig
(1998: 157) claims that the censorship was 'harsher than Francois! literary censorship generally'. Original gender roles were confirmed, racist
stereotypes were enhanced, and some types of irony were forbidden
(Fernandez Lopez 2000). Fernandez Lopez finds that the values underlying Francoist censorship more closely resembled Italian Fascist poetics
than German Nazi aesthetics, because Francoism focused on family and
gender roles. 34 In future research, this claim may need to be refined and
substantiated. As always in Francoist Spain, translators were supposed
to accept the moral guidance of the Roman Catholic Church (Fernandez
Lopez 2007: 29). The 'grand Inquisitor' of children's literature was
Enrique Conde. Other readers included Valentin Garcia Yebra, Leopoldo
Panero and Dario Fernandez Florez (ibid.: 41).
As a censor, Daria Fernandez Fl6rez did not limit himself to children's fiction. A 'university friend of the prominent Falangists Antonio
Tovar, Dionisio Ridruejo (... ] and Pedro Lain Entralgo', he was 'less
firmly Falangist', Jacqueline Hurtley writes (2007: 63). Fernandez Florez
censored D. H. Lawrence's story 'None of that!' because it contained
such sentences as 'He was not clever at all, he was not even clever
enough to become a general', or 'She is as easy to embrace as an octopus, her gate is a beak. What man would put his finger into that beak?
She is all soft with cruelty towards a man's member' (ibid.: 66). Yet at
the same time he used his knowledge to write a 20-page review of the
story for the pro-Falangist Escorial (1942). 35
Fernandez Florez worked for a long time at the De/egaci6n Nacional
de Propaganda but gradually became alienated. In Catholic times, he
yearned for 'flesh and blood characters' (quoted in Hurtley 2007: 69).
Hurtley hypothesizes that this lost- but still lingering- poetics originally
Jeroen Vandaele
111
led Fernandez Florez in 1945 to authorize Rosamond Lehmann's The
Weather in the Street (1939), a novel about divorce, adultery and even
abortion (translated as Intemperie; note that even in 1945, divorce
and abortion would have been impossible in film, and any adultery
would have had to be severely punished). It was the Janes house which
published Lehmann's work, as part of its constant challenge to the
regime (Hurtley 2007: 73). In 1942 another highly adapted translation
promoted by Janes, Charles Morgan's Retrato en un espejo (Portrait in a
Mirror), was authorized by the Falangist Patricio G. De Canales - who
would later say that Some Like It Hot was about 'pools' - and praised in
a press article by Fernandez Florez.
A study by Alberto Lazaro (2005b: 123) also stresses the role played by
Janes in bringing Huxley, Joyce, Woolf and many more writers to Spain.
In 1951 a censor rejected Janes' proposal to publish Orwell's Down and
Out in Paris and London because the language was too crude, despite 'the
literary and thematic interest' (to wit, class exploitation). Four years
later, however, an Argentinian translation of the book was authorized without restrictions, perhaps because only 300 copies were to be
imported or because the censors considered it a work of fiction. Lazaro
rhetorically asks if these censors were actually aware that Orwell had
been a member of the Marxist POUM (Partido Obrero de Unificacion
Marxista) and had fought Franco's forces on the Aragon front (ibid.:
124). Yet, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, his collections of essays
could not be published until the pieces on the Spanish War and the
'Notes on Nationalism' had been deleted, and until 'fascist' had been
replace by 'francoist', 'loyalist' by 1government-supporting', and 'revolt'
by 'uprising' (ibid.: 127ff.).
Discussing the Francois! reception of James Joyce, Lazaro (2001)
quotes the Spanish novelist Torrente Ballester, who explained that it
was hard to get hold of Argentinian versions of Joyce in the 1940s
because private purchasers were not allowed to share them (Lazaro
2001: 40). Actually, Lazaro explains, Joyce's work encountered relatively
few problems with Spanish censors. Ulysses came late to Spain (1947),
in an Argentinian translation, but was favourably received. It was the
Argentinian translation of Stephen Hero (as Steban heroe) that led to negative reports because it was about 'a rebel against the ideas, traditions
and religious feelings of his homeland, Ireland' (Lazaro 2001: 47; his
translation of a 1960 report).
The treatment of A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man gives us an
unflattering picture of the Franco administration. On 13 February 1963,
Editorial Biblioteca Nueva was allowed to publish an unabridged second
II<
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
112
Translation and Francoi.~m
edition of the 1926 translation, whereas three months later Editorial
Vergara was obliged to make deletions before publishing its version of
the same translation (an example was the sentence 'Did the idea ever
occur to you, Cranly asked, that jesus was not what he pretended to
be?' ibid.: 52). It is unclear whether pure chaos, administrative discontinuity or a change of guard was the cause of this incoherent stance.
After Francoism, Spanish cultural producers often complained about
the supposed arbitrariness of Francoist censorship criteria, which generally diminished confidence in the publication process and hence the
desire to produce. While this claim is truthful as an insiders' account
of Francois! production, it should be handled with caution in a scholarly study of macrocultural processes: in fact, Francoist censorship
norms were much more robust and predictable than cultural criticism
in pluralist societies (or, indeed, than in the regimes of Fascist Italy
and Nazi Germany; see Rundle's and Sturge's chapters in this volume).
However, since the Francoist norms determined the very presence of
particular repertoires, whereas criticism in open societies could at most
contribute to determining their success in certain sectors, any deviance
from absolute predictability could be experienced under Francoism as
a personal and financial trauma, whereas in a democracy it might be
merely a surprising or disappointing (or even negligible) part of a work's
reception. Cristina Gomez Castro (2009) finds a high degree of predictability in the censorship criteria applied to translations of US bestsellers,
at least towards the end of the period. And for film, too, reception under
Franco is remarkably consistent.
However, much remains to be discovered in the literary field. Apart
from important work by Behiels (2006), for example, translations from
the French are conspicuously absent from current investigations.
Conclusions
9.
10
Many have warned against sloppy use of the terms 'fascism' and 'fascist'.
In Spain Rodriguez Pufrtolas has been severely criticized for calling his
volume on Francoist literature Literatura fascista espafiola (1986). On the
other hand we should not avoid these terms if they are useful. Fascism
was not a movement for export, Paxton (2004) argues, yet fascism also
allowed (or obliged) each 'people' to choose its own 'destiny'. Some
sectors of the Falange had clearly chosen religion as the destiny of the
Spanish but the Falange was also imperialist, anti-Marxist, corporatist,
male chauvinist and violent. It copied Italian laws and institutions, and
modelled its translation and language laws on Mussolini's politics. In
feroen Vandaele
113
this sense, the early Falange was at least 'para-fascist'. The Falange was
unsuccessful in the 1936 elections but it took part in government in
early Francoism (1940-45) and harboured fascists and religious parafascists who exerted much control over the importation of foreign
repertoires.
It is perhaps too early to say how Spanish para-fascism differed from
(national-) Catholicism in its treatment of the foreign. But Falangist
censorship of foreign repertoires certainly seems to have been less
moralizing and more political than Catholicist poetics. The period
between 1945 and 1950 shows many examples of these conflicting
'poetics of importation'. While Catholicists feared modernity (especially
in 1950-62), Falangists loved it if it had 'good origins' or if it did not
attack them or their friends- remembering Eco's (1995) claim that perceived humiliation-by-enemies is an essential trait of ur-fascism. As a
paradoxical result of these norm conflicts, old or 'converted' or 'liberal'
fascists contributed to the formation of a counterculture in the 1950s
which would lead to a relative broadening of the repertoires during the
Apertura (1963-69).
Biographies of censors and of agents in general - their ties and their
religious affiliations - help us understand their cultural agency; conversely, their cultural acts throw light on who they were - despite the
apparent circularity of such hermeneutics. As Paxton (2004) argues, we
should study what (para-) fascists did, not just what they said they would
do. What Francoist censors did in matters of translation and importation seems to have been determined by their ideological affiliation:
Falangist or Catholicist (or both, as national-Catholics). Or, inductively:
what Francois! censors did may tell us more about their ideology.
By studying translational acts (translation, selective translation,
translation for a selective audience, and nontranslation) we begin
to see differently the 'negativities' or non-dits of Francoist cultural politics. Francoist culture in general was what it was not, but
Catholicists excluded more and different repertoires than Falangists or
ex-Falangists. Different exclusions were, arguably, based on different
ideologies.
Notes
1. To be more precise, the Second Republic was installed after elections organ-
ized by King Alfonso XIII in a vain attempt to find democratic support for a
monarchy.
2. The 'Spanish Traditionalist Phalanx and [Phalanx} of the Assemblies of the
National Syndicalist Offensive'.
114
116
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a
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~
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A
M.~
p
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~
re
~.M
A
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ru
~.A
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27. G
D. A
a
I'
w
d
~
~·,
~.Ir
tl
31.
~
D. A
~
33.G
ti
~
b
n
M.A
tl
e
"p
~
•
~.C
feroen Vandaele
Tramlaffon and Francoism
3. Invited to Rome in 1928 for a series of academic lectures, the writer and
diplomat Gimenez Caballero found in Fascist Italy what the humiliated,
ex-colonial Spanish nation needed: an athletic appeal, a Duce and disciplined enthusiastic masses (Carbajosa and Carbajosa 2003: 53, paraphrasing
Gimenez Caballero).
4. An Andalusian journalist and politician, Aparicio wrote for Gimenez
Caballero's Gaceta Literaria (published between 1927 and 1932). He was also
the person who later proposed that the Falange adopt the yoke and arrows
as its main symbol (Carbajosa and Carbajosa 2003: 53). See note 10 for the
link between Francoist censorship and Gimenez Caballero and Aparicio.
5. Ledesma (2003: 47), the author of ;_Fascismo en Espana? (1935), was in
Carbajosa and Carbajosa's view 'the most genuinely fascist', Germanyoriented and revolutionary of the leaders of Spanish fascism. He was executed by the Republicans in 1936.
6. The group's manifesto in La Conquista del Estado, 14 March 1931, No. 1,
pp. 1-2, was published one month before the elections which would force
the King into exile and install the Second Republic. The manifesto is available at www.filosofia.org/hem/193/lce/lceOllb.htm.
7. The writer, ex-reporter of the Rif War (like Gimenez Caballero), and (later)
politician sanchez Mazas was a correspondent for the monarchic newspaper
ARC in Rome between 1922 and 1929, where he also fell for Mussolini's
Fascism (Carbajosa and Carbajosa 2003: 44).
8. Even-Zohar speaks of 'system' rather than 'culture'. His cultural theory is
known as Polysystem Theory (or Polysystem Hypothesis). There are at least
two reasons why Even-Zohar prefers 'system' to 'culture'. First, the notion
of system comes with the assumption that there are always important
links between the elements (here: cultural repertoires) of a system (e.g. a
'hispano-fascist' system), and that there are possible links between systems
(e.g. fascism, ultra-Catholicism) of a broader polysystem (e.g. the Francoist
polysystem). Polysystem theory is thus a working hypothesis of manifold
relatedness - an initial assumption to be tested empirically. Although
I will not always use 'system' for 'culture', in this essay culture is generally
intended in a similarly systemic way. Second, unlike 'culture', the concept
of 'system' is less prone to exclude political, economic and social issues from
scholarly investigation into cultural products. In other words: as a cultural
theory, system theory is contextual.
9. I will use 'Catholicist' in the following to refer to persons or practices that
turn Catholic religion into an active state ideology. A person can be Catholic
or ultra-Catholic without being Catholicist. Conversely, under Franco a
Catholicist was usually an ultra-Catholic.
10. Among these followers I count high-profile personalities who strongly
influenced the importation (or not) and translation (or not) of foreign
films. The following are among the most important of these: Dionisio
Ridruejo (in 1938 a fascist and the first director of the Direcci6n General de
Propaganda, answerable to the Minister of Internal Affairs Serrano SU.iier),
Augusto Manuel Garcia Viflolas (director of the Departamento Nacional de
Cinematograffa, answerable to Ridruejo), the viejofalangi.~ta or 'old-school
Falangist' Patricio G. de Canales (first director in 1936 of Falange Espanola
[Payne 1985:1431), Javier de Echarri (director of the Falangist journal Arriba
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
115
between 1939 and 1949), Carlos Fern<indez Cuenca (who in 1942 wanted
to model the film review Primer Plano on the Italian Cinema, lead by
'none less than Vittorio Mussolini, the son of the Duce'; Primer Plano, s.n.,
1045, 23 October 1960), Luis GOmez Mesa (film censor representing the
Falange between 1938 and 1942; a critic writing for Gimenez Caballero's
La Gaceta Literaria), David Jato ('hist6rico fundador del Sindicato Espafiol
Universitario' [Gracia 1996: 39], 'Escuadrista de Ia Vieja Falange' [Primer
plano 290, May 1946]), Pedro Mourlane Michelena (writer for Vertice. Revista
Nacional de Ia Falange; one of the literary predecessors of Spanish fascism
(Rodriguez Puertolas 1986: 75); very close to Rafael SAnchez Mazas, founder
of the Falange; after the Civil War Mourlane Michelena had 'una sucesi6n de
cargos en los medias mas relevantes del periodismo falangista y del Regimen'
(Carbajosa and Carbajosa 2003: 257]), JesUs Suevos ('Participa en 1933 en el
mitin de Villagarcia, allado de (=standing next to] Jose Antonio'; Suevos was
considered 'uno de los oradores clcisicos de Ia Falange' by Primer Plano and
as a Galician youngster he was the 'primer jefe territorial de Ia regi6n, con Ia
camisa azul de combatiente de Ia guerra de Ia Liberaci6n' (Primer Plano 543,
11 March 1951]). These agents would not necessarily remain fascist but most
of them did not become ultra-Catholic after 1945.
'Una de las casas en que nuestra epoca se distingue de las anteriores es por su
mayor capacidad analitica. La fenomenologia y sus consecuencias (por entre
elias, si quieres, Ia instrucci6n del buen existencialismo, el de Heidegger, no
el del imbecil de Sartre), Ia bomba at6mica y todo lo demas, son una prueba
de ella.' All translations from the Spanish are my own unless otherwise
noted.
'La condenaci6n de Ia Iglesia es del afio 1948, quiza entonces Ia filosofia
existencialista se consider6 m<is peligrosa.'
El pr6logo del traductor est<i muy bien en el sentido de encuadrar esta obra
en el pensamiento del autor.
Abell<in's otherwise groundbreaking study of Francoist censorship (1980)
suggested that the ultra·Catholic and other censors of 1950--75 were somehow intellectually mediocre compared to the gloriously academic censors
operating before 1950.
See Vandaele 2006 for a critique of these frequently quoted views.
In fact, not even Plato was free from Francoist suspicion. Uribarri (2007a:
156) mentions that Ditilogos de Plat6n (Ediciones Ibericas) were manipulated
(file 3209-68). However, no date or further details are given.
File number 36/3279 in the AGA, Archive General de Ia Administraci6n.
'digna de un pueblo de tenderos, incapaz de Ia menor elegancia espiritual'.
See File number 36/3453 in the AGA, Archive General de Ia Administraci6n;
board 'preview' of 28 April 1953.
Not to be confused with the more important Jose Maria Garcia Escudero (see
later) .
In Bourdieu's sense (1972: 178-9). Translators also have such a habitus, a disposition to follow certain norms in practice- in Simeoni's words, a servitude
volontaire (1998: 23).
Sidney Lumet's The Fugitive Kind (1959), Henry King's Beloved Infidel (1959),
Marc Robson's From the Terrace (1960), Marc Lawrence's Nightmare in the Sun
(1965), and Roman Polanski's Repulsion (1965).
116 Tramlation and Francoi.'im
23. G6mez Mesa was a high-profile censor and journalist with strong Falangist
connections. Film critic of the Falangist Arriba and La Gaceta Literaria, deputy
of Falangist Garda Vifiolas in the Junta Superior de Censura Cinematogrdfica,
and a censor from 1939 onward, GOmez Mesa is praised for his 'militante
pluma' (militant pen] in the Falangist film journal Primer Plano (286, April
1946). He also worked for the non-Falangist press, such as the newspaper
ABC and the ultra-Catholic Revista lntemacional de Cine (Vandaele 2006).
24. Fernandez Cuenca was a very high-profile censor, journalist, writer and
professor at the Escuela Oficial de Cinematografia. From March until june
1942, he was the director of the Falangist Primer Plano. In 1954, he became
director of the lnstituto de Investigaciones y Experiencias CinematogrOficas, and
remained an important censor during the Apertura.
25. Raza is a celebration of Francoist Spain, based on a scenario by 'Jaime de
Andrade', the pseudonym of Francisco Franco. The para-fascist symbolism
of its 1942 version (including fascist-inflected greetings) was censored in a
new 1950 version.
26. A prolific Spanish filmmaker (1913--86) whose repertoire was clearly acceptable for Francoism.
27. Gonzalez Ruiz was also a film censor.
28. Francoist censorship was abolished between 1976 and 1978 (Gonzalez
Ballesteros 1981: 195--8). Nonetheless the TRACE project includes the period
1975--85 because- according to project leader Rosa Rabadcin- some 'control'
was still exerted until 1985 (Rabadfm 2000a: 9). I believe, however, that a
clear distinction should be made between the practice of censorship and
some irrelevant administrative remnants of it.
29. 'pieza casi escatol6gica y de descomposid6n social'.
30. In Francoist theatre adaptations, a crucifix might, for instance, be added to
the set.
31. See also Merino (1994: 96) on Miller's A View from The Bridge (1955)_
32. At the time of writing, the full Spanish version of Sandin (2007) was not yet
available.
33. Fernandez' periods follow Francoism's economic evolution. The periodization offered in this paper (and Vandaele 2006: 46-7) is slightly different,
focusing on censorship ideology. Although culture is of course connected
to the economy, the evolution of Francoist cultural ideology is not a mere
reflection of economic changes.
34. According to Paxton (2002: 215), however, '[t)he macho restoration of a
threatened patriarchy [ ... \ comes close to being a universal fascist value',
even though 'Mussolini advocated female suffrage in his first program, and
Hitler did not mention gender issues in his 25 Points'. Although their gender
policies were comparable in many respects, a cardinal difference between
Nazism and Falangism was the latter's insistence on female shame. Girls and
women were to be modest and shameful (Richmond 2003: 26).
35. On Francoist censorship of D. H. Lawrence, see also Lazaro (2004).
5
Translation in Portugal during
the Estado Novo Regime
Teresa Seruya
Introduction
The Invisibility of Portugal in translation history
Without denying responsibility on the part of Portuguese scholars, it is
a fact that the history of translation in Portugal remains non-existent
to most translation studies experts. The most striking example are the
two editions of Mona Baker's Encyclopedia of Translation Studies (2009),
in the second part of which, 'History and Traditions', Portugal is totally
absent. The present brief study aims to help fill this gap in the world
map of relations between cultures and traditions, although on the
relatively small scale of a four-decade period. Research on translation
and censorship in fascist systems started several years ago without a
Portuguese contribution, although some work has now begun to make
up for this conspicuous absence. 1
In view of the lack of existing research, l will first outline the political and cultural frame of the study, before moving on in the second
section to a general survey of the translation of literature published in
book form between 1940 and 1970, including the status of translation
and translators in the period. The third section addresses the censorship
system and its impact on translation in general, including the legal
framework and the modus faciendi of the Censoring Commission. I will
offer an overview of banned books and discuss the criteria applied by
the censors, based on the findings of former studies (Seruya and Moniz
2008b) and argue that these convey a realistic picture of the period's
dominant values. Some comments on the efficacy of censorship in the
Estado Novo will close the chapter.
117