A Spanish association calls for an investigation into the enduring legacy of the censorship system Free system More than forty years after the death of the dictator, censored versions of books and movies are still circulating.
Emilio Silva, president of the Spanish Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory, sounded the alarm earlier this week after stumbled upon different versions of the 1946 film. It is a wonderful life on television.
“Suddenly, I heard something I had never heard of before,” Silva said. “That’s a scene that I didn’t see in the version I’ve seen 10 times before.”
He quickly realized that there was still a censored version in the catalog of the Spanish TV channel where he watched the movie regularly. It is seven minutes shorter than the original, and it omits several scenes that mention housing cooperatives.
He was not surprised. “In Franco’s time, anything that sounded like a cooperative was considered almost pro-communist,” he said.
But to his shock, the abridged version Frank Capra The movie is still showing in Spain, which shows that the French-era censorship system is still effective in that country. “About 45 years since Franco’s death, no one-not even the Ministry of Culture-said let us see what was censored during the regime, and we will solve this problem.”
During Franco’s 36 years in power, the country’s scissors were systematic and strict, tailoring references to the Spanish Civil War and dictatorship, as well as explicit material and any references that contradicted the strict Catholic values ​​advocated by the country.In Ernest Hemingway’s “Across the River and Into the Trees” (Across the River and Into the Trees), the use of “lesbian” is replaced with “good friends”, and references to birth control are From James BaldwinGo to the mountain and tell it. Few works survived, and the reviewers targeted everything from musicals to magazines.
This week, Silva’s organization called on Spanish Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez (Pedro Sánchez) to instruct the Ministry of Culture to conduct an investigation to determine the full scope of the censorship system, and then restore the original version of the censored work. The association’s request highlights a clear gap in Spain’s transition to democracy: Although the laws supporting censorship have been repealed, no agency is responsible for preventing the spread of censorship.
Silva compared the unabated dissemination of these works with his association’s long-term push to eliminate Spanish statues and other public symbols that beautify the regime, some of which distorted people’s perceptions of the civil war and its aftermath. “We can say James Baldwin, Hemingway Or Frank Capra was also a victim of the dictatorship because someone censored their work, and Spain did not have a democratic government to repair the damage. “
Much of the known information about the censored works in circulation today comes from years of research by Jordi Cornellà -Detrell, a Lecturer in Hispanic Studies at the University of Glasgow. “We are talking about one of the most enduring but intangible legacy [Franco’s] Regime,” Cornellà -Detrell said.
He cataloged dozens of examples. More than 20 different Spanish versions of Ira Levin’s Rosemary’s Baby, including an e-book, is based on a cut-down version, omitting passages that are believed to be the glory of Satan. In the case of George Orwell’s “The Burmese Years” and Ian Fleming’s “Thunderbolt”, the censored version continues to be published even after the new translations of both works. More than 90% of William Faulkner’s Soldiers’ Pay (Soldiers’ Pay) loaned out at the Spanish Public Library has been vetted.
The scope of the examiner’s influence is not limited to Spain. Last year, a publisher in Argentina released a censored version of “Soldier Pay”, suggesting that works censored by the Franco regime are also entering Latin America.
Cornellà -Detrell says that publishers usually don’t know that works are being censored. “There is an ethical issue here, because the words of these authors are manipulated against their will. In most cases, they don’t even know how their work has been affected.”
