obverse and reverse of the nation: the discourse of the antiespañolada during the early forties

During the immediate postwar years, different voices from the new francoist 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 España de pandereta. This look supposed a distortion and mystification of Spain as a picturesque nation that resulted in the españolada. The aim of this article is to explore this discourse —named in the text as the antiespañolada discourse— proposing a hypothesis: these critics did not expect to eliminate the clichés 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 españolada was a hierarchy, serious and a straight Nation.