Anverso y reverso de la nación: El discurso de la antiespañolada durante los primeros años 40

Abstract

During the immediate postwar years, different voices from the new fran- coist regime produced a discourse relatively spontaneous but, at the same time, recognizable enough addressed to denounce what they considered as an unacceptable deformation of the Spanishness. Basically, and in spite of the ideological differences amongst its producers, the critic raised from a common and painful nationalism which pointed at the foreign look -specially, the French romantic look- As creator and supporter of what they called Espana de pandereta. This look supposed a distortion and mystification of Spain as a picturesque nation that resulted in the es- pafiolada. The aim of this article is to explore this discourse -named in the text as the antiespanolada discourse- proposing a hypothesis: These critics did not expect to eliminate the cliches linked to this image, but to restore them giving to them a new signification. Consequently, elements as typical as bullfighting, flamenco or Andalusia were claimed as deeply Spanish elements, but representatives of a Nation that far from being coloured with the stridency of the espanolada was a hierarchy, serious and a straight Nation.