Everyday resistances to fascism: The Falange and modern popular dances in Franco's Spain (1939-1947)

Abstract

The 1940s were one of the darkest, most dramatic and ill-fated times of contemporary Spain. After a long and fierce civil war, the Franco regime achieved institutional stability and political hegemony through measures of extremely harsh physical and psychological repression. The purges, summary trials and executions destroyed the last of explicit resistance and served as a warning to the population. Along with the memories of war and economic hardship, these acts meant that any explicit dissent was extremely difficult. However, as has been discussed for some years now, between collaboration and passivity, between consensus and conflict, there were a set of examples of discontent and even resistance that, in the long term, would erode the regime but, at the same time, made it bearable for millions of Spaniards. This article adds a practice to the list of these daily resistances that has gone unnoticed by most historians, sociologists, and musicologists: modern popular dances. The period analysed runs from the end of the Spanish Civil War, in 1939, to the beginning of the Cold War, in 1947.