The Franco Regime and its Historiography: Spanish Historians Confronting Propaganda and Censorship

For two decades after the civil war the Franco regime applied systematic historical propaganda and imposed relentless repression of history professionals. In the 1960s and 1970s, however, the balance shifted from all-pervading propaganda to structural but flexible censorship. Gradually and reluctantly, the regime had to give back the initiative for explaining the recent past to where it belonged: to the professional historians, but not without oversee and livelihood threat.
In its efforts to keep control, the regime could count on historians who were willing to censor their more adventurous colleagues. But the outcome of this process was biased and uncertain. The main issue was always whether an author could be considered a friend of the regime. Personal interventions by Franco himself regularly played a decisive role. Historians fully loyal to the regime and its aims were published without difficulty; others took a reformist path, albeit without endangering the dominant interpretation that favored the tropes of inevitability and positive consequences of Franco's rebellion. Reformist historians avoided criticism of the personal integrity of the dictator and the army, and did