Received: 18 September 2019 Revised: 19 December 2019 Accepted: 5 March 2020

DOI: 10.1111/nana.12621

ARTICLE

Nationalisation, banal nationalism and everyday

nationhood in a dictatorship: The Franco regime in
Spain

Claudio Hernández Burgos

Historia Contemporánea, Universidad de

Granada, Granada, Spain
Abstract
This article explores the nature of the process of nat-
Correspondence
ionalisation and the construction of nationality in Franco's
Claudio Hernández Burgos, Historia
Contemporánea, Universidad de Granada, Spain. Despite that nationalism constituted the principle
Granada, Spain. axis of the narratives and the policies of the Francoist State,
Email: chb@ugr.es
there has been scant research into the reach, the channels,
and the role of Spaniards in the process of nationalisation.
From a starting point of a complex conception of the Fran-
coist national project, this essay seeks to reframe its analy-
sis in light of the theoretical contributions of ‘banal
nationalism’ and ‘everyday nationalism’. As such, on the one
hand, I intend to make clear the heterogeneity and the
dynamism of Francoist nationalism and, on the other, to
include individuals within the scene and further, and in par-
ticular, to take into account the role of daily experiences
and the capacity for agency on the part of Spaniards on the
ground, as participants and constructors of the national
community.

KEYWORDS

agency, banal nationalism, everyday nationalism, Francoism,

nationalisation

1 | I N T RO DU CT I O N

Over the past 20 years, macrostructural explanations, which sought to respond to the origins of nation-states or,
indeed, to examine the capacity of modern nations to perpetuate themselves, have seen themselves relegated to a

© 2021 Association for the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism and John Wiley & Sons Ltd

Nations and Nationalism. 2021;1–15. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/nana 1

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secondary plane by the interest in a microanalysis centred on the everyday. This shift has been largely based on the
theoretical contributions of ‘banal nationalism’ and ‘everyday nationalism’. In the first instance, the everyday life of
the population is understood as a setting in which to measure the capacity of the state to mould the national com-
munity and establish small, daily reminders of the nation (Billig, 1995, p. 38). On the other hand, for those who study
‘everyday nationalism’, the ‘nation’ is not something invisible and ubiquitous, which permeates the daily life of its
‘subjects’ and reduced to passive ‘recipients’ ready to be ‘filled’ with nationalist content. On the contrary, such indi-
viduals actively construct, appropriate, represent and resignify the nation (Fox & Ginderachter, 2018, p. 547; Fox &
Miller-Idriss, 2008, p. 550; Thompson, 2001). Despite apparent differences, these two perspectives have contributed
to a shift away from ‘from above to below’ to a focus ‘from below to above’. At the same time, they have served to
make clear the need to view the daily environment to better understand nationalisation as a process of creation,
transmission and assimilation of identities associated with nationhood (Knott, 2015; Quiroga, 2014, p. 684).
Nevertheless, both perspectives still require further support from case studies (Breuilly, 2012, p. 24; Skey, 2018,
pp. 858–859). Billig has been criticised for the difficulties identified in proving whether the existence of banal
reminders of the nation translates into an effective nationalisation of the population and, moreover, if this takes into
account the fact that such elements operate on an unconscious level (Billig, 2009; Duchesne, 2018, p. 847). The anal-
ysis of the heterogeneous ways in which individuals participate in the daily construction of nationality also presents
a challenge. The sheer aspiration of attending to what ‘ordinary people’ do in their everyday lives is controversial to
the extent that such concepts—those of ordinary people and everyday life—are not clearly defined, and it is difficult
to delineate them vis-a-vis the ‘nonordinary people’ or the ‘nonquotidian’ (Fox, 2018, pp. 864–865; Fox &
Ginderachter, 2018, p. 548).
In order to contribute to a greater understanding of nationalisation processes and, specifically, the role played
therein by individuals and groups, it seems increasingly necessary to attend to the materialisation and practical func-
tioning of ‘banal’ and ‘everyday’ nationalism through specific studies. This article achieves this through a focus on the
Francoist dictatorship, which governed Spain from 1936 until 1975. The reasons for this are wide ranging. First, it
allows for an evaluation of how dictatorial regimes appropriate and use banal instruments for the nationalisation of
society. Second, dictatorships—and especially those arising from mobilisation in times of war—is a privileged site for
the exploration of the relationship between the resources of banal nationalism and hot nationalism, respectively, par-
ticularly in the context of the quotidian sphere where the borders between both were frequently blurred. Third, a
chronological framework of almost 40 years (1936–1975) facilitates an analysis of both the state's capacity to evolve
and adapt its nationalisation policies and discourses and the long-term transformation of national identities. Finally,
it allows us to better understand the deployment of nationalism as a source of political legitimation and a hegemonic
narrative while simultaneously shedding light on how such narratives and policies were received, accepted, con-
tested or resignified.
The fact remains that nationalism and nationalisation have not received due and necessary attention despite
them constituting one of the essential pillars of the dictatorships born in interwar Europe. In particular, the construc-
tion of everyday nationalism and nationalism ‘from below’ has remained neglected in the context of these regimes,
the reason for which lies in the very dictatorial nature of these political systems. In emphasising their violent charac-
ter, policies of ideological indoctrination and mechanisms of formal socialisation, scholars have analysed nat-
ionalisation exclusively from the point of view of the state and in terms of an explicit and visible nationalism. This
article seeks to shift this perspective in favour of privileging a bottom–up approach and contribute empirically to the
study of nationalisation and the evolution of national identities during Francoism. To this end, a combination of
‘banal nationalism’ and ‘everyday nationalism’, alongside other perspectives, like Alltagsgeschichte (‘the history of
everyday life’), draws attention to the historical agency and experiences of individuals in the context of a
dictatorship.
The first section traces the state of the question concerning studies of Francoist nationalism. In the second sec-
tion, I focus on the Francoist regime's diffusion of banal nationalism, examining its dynamism and efficacy in different
sociohistoric contexts. Finally, I explore the agency of Spaniards themselves in the process of nationalisation and the
 
HERNANDEZ BURGOS 3

forging of their own national identity, with emphasis on their capacity to consolidate, resignify and reject policies
and discourses emanating from the state.

2 | T H E C O M P L E X I T I E S OF F R A N C O I S T N A T I O N A L I S M

Despite affirmations that Francoism constituted ‘the greatest nationalist experience’ and ‘the most ambitious pro-
gramme of integral nationalisation’ of the Spanish 20th century (Saz, 2003, p. 48), it is surprising that there deep
research into the banal and quotidian dimensions of nationalism and national identity remains scarce. In contrast to
the 19th century, the military dictatorship of Primo de Rivera (1923–1930) and the transition to democracy
(1975–1982) (Quiroga, 2007; Quiroga & Balfour, 2007), Franco's regime has remained relatively marginalised from the
historiography of nationalism. One reason for this neglect is paradoxically the centrality of nationalism to the Francoist
project. The importance of nationalism is taken for granted and appears not to demand extensive research beyond
recognising its existence (Moreno Almendral, 2014; Núñez Seixas, 2017, p. 18). The resulting image of the Francoist
nationalist project is overly simplified and homogeneous, but it can be enriched and rendered more complex.
First, rather than speaking of Francoist nationalism, we should refer to Francoist nationalisms. Different national
projects existed behind the state monopoly on the Spanish nation. Although united around a reactionary
conceptualisation of Spain strongly linked to Catholicism, these projects were not always in agreement. This was par-
ticularly in evidence in the struggles between the members of the Falange (the Spanish fascist party) and the most
conservative Catholic groups over the definition of national symbols, control of the platforms for nationalisation and
the very model of the state (Box, 2010; Box & Saz, 2011, pp. 381–388; Cruz, 2005). However, it would be simplistic
to reduce the configuration of Francoist nationalisation to the struggles between a reactionary, ultra-Catholic and
conservative model on the one hand and a fascist, modern and revolutionary model on the other. After all, there
existed many other nationalist sensibilities, the boundaries between both projects were fluid, and the agreement
between them outnumbered their disagreements (Gallego, 2012, p. 161).
Second, the complexities of nationalism under the dictatorship cannot hide the desire for uniformity. Francoist
nationalism was not homogeneous, but it was homogenising (Molina, 2017). From its beginnings, the political and
social construction of the dictatorship ran parallel to the production of new national narratives, the creation of new
symbols, the definition of national spaces and landscapes and the development of policies destined to (re)nationalise
Spanish society (Box, 2016; Moreno Luzón & Núñez Seixas, 2017). This process was similar to that undertaken in
fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, yet the Francoist national project is distinguished by its origins in the violence and
extremism generated by the Civil War. Nationalism—as well as religion—became an essential component of military
mobilisation, a central motif of the widely diffused image of a ‘nation armed’ against Republicans depicted as foreign
invaders and an important part of conceiving military occupation as renationalisation. The conquest of a given local-
ity thereby enabled it to regain ‘Spanishness’ and return to the national fold (Hutchinson, 2017, pp. 59–62; Núñez
Seixas, 2006, pp. 26–27).
Francoist nationalism was always marked by the footprint of armed victory. Once the war was over, the new
state gained a monopoly over Spanish nationality, and nationalism became one of its principle sources of legitimacy
(Gellner, 1983; Goode & Stroup, 2015, pp. 725–726). This allowed the regime to disseminate an official narrative,
which was uniform in appearance, activating a process of sedimentation by means of one which excluded the ene-
mies of the nation in as much as they constituted threats to its unity and independence (Skey, 2011, pp. 11–12). In
tune with the processes of ethno-national homogenisation spread throughout the Europe of the time, the Francoist
dictatorship resorted to mass violence in order to annihilate those components associated with Republican, liberal
and democratic cultures and identities, gathered together under the diffuse category of ‘anti-Spain’ (Hall, 2003;
Molina, 2017, p. 132). This implied, in turn, the elimination of laws, institutions and representatives—even the ways
of life and habits—of the Republican nation at the same time as it aided in the confection of a lasting representation
of the ‘antinational other’ (Richards, 2013, pp. 13–23).
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Nevertheless and third, the Francoist national project cannot be conceived merely in negative and excluding
terms. From its ethno-cultural conception of the Spanish nation, the destruction of Republican identities constituted
but the first step in resolving the national ‘insufficiencies’ afflicting Spain (Brubaker, 1996, pp. 9, 79–106). To this
end, the dictatorship constructed a new national culture as a means to foster its assimilation and naturalisation on
the part of the population (Archilés, 2013, p. 112; Löfgren, 1991, pp. 107–109). Symbols, ceremonies, festivities, offi-
cial memory and narratives of the past were all submitted to a profound renationalisation (Humlebæk, 2015). This
was made possible thanks to the monopoly over the formal channels of nationalisation such as schools, the army,
party organisations and other instruments of popular control and socialisation (Velasco Martínez, 2017, for example).
But the resignification of the nation also included the less explored informal and quotidian instruments affecting
even the definition of ‘the private’ and ‘the public’, social attitudes and the ways of life and daily routines of Spanish
society (Edensor, 2006; Palmer, 1998, pp. 182–183).
Fourth, it must be taken into account that the transmission of national content is generally produced in a manner
parallel to the creation and dissemination of discourses and policies around matters of class, gender and religion
(Beyen & Ginderachter, 2012, p. 14). In this sense, the Francoist national project implied the redefinition of the
parameters by which social relations and masculine, feminine and familial models would be governed. This especially
affected women, who the dictatorship confined to the private sphere in contrast to the Republican model of the
feminine and the familial. In the home, it would be women who were charged with educating their children in accor-
dance with the new national values and the most traditional Catholic principles (Blasco, 2013). In particular, in the
case of the Francoist dictatorship, it becomes difficult to separate the structure of the new national identities from
that of the religious component (Rieffer, 2003). On many occasions, the regime itself defined its ideology as ‘national
Catholicism’. This concept reflected the consubstantiality between Spain and the Catholic religion, reinforced during
the Cruzada nacional (‘national Crusade’), which had ‘redeemed the Fatherland’ (Botti, 1992). Understood in these
terms, the re-Christianisation of the public space, and of societal customs as a whole, constituted an essential pillar
of Francoist nationalism. In consequence, religion did not represent an obstacle to nationalisation, rather the oppo-
site; it contributed to its success thanks to the capacity of action on the part of its agents (the church, religious con-
gregations, Catholic associations, etc.) in the control of society and in the defining of the daily life of ordinary
Spaniards (Louzao, 2013, pp. 69–71; Quiroga, 2014, p. 688).
As a consequence, analysis of Francoist nationalism requires a recognition of flexibility and dynamism as essen-
tial components of its complex nature. Nationalism and the policies of nationalisation need to be flexible in order to
accommodate the aspirations of different social groups (Edensor, 2002, p. 6). National discourses must be capable of
adapting to different audiences and admit, despite its homogenising purposes, a certain diversity if they seek to be
accepted and naturalised by part of the population (Wodak et al., 2009, pp. 24–27). Franco's regime demonstrated
its efficacy in disseminating its national project amongst heterogeneous levels of society. This flexibility was also
essential in order to combine Spanish nationalism with other subnational identities. Although it is true that alterna-
tive national projects such the Basque and the Catalan were a challenge to the homogenising intentions of the Fran-
coist State, this state showed its capacity to integrate other subaltern identities and to disseminate the image of
Spain as a ‘nation of regions’ (Geniola, 2015; Núñez Seixas & Storm, 2019).
Finally, chronology cannot be overlooked. Nations are ‘open to contest, to elaboration and to imaginative recon-
struction’ (Cubitt, 1998, p. 6; Brubaker, 1996), and as such, discourses and policies of nationalisation need to be
dynamic and malleable in order to retain their relevance with the passage of time (Quiroga, 2014, p. 686). The
nationalism of the regime was a project, rather than an essence (Reicher & Hopkins, 2001, IX). Accordingly, it should
be understood as a process in motion, a fluid field subject to changes, adjustments and adaptations with the passing
of time (Paasi, 1999, p. 8; Quiroga, 2014, p. 691; Reicher & Hopkins, 2001, IX). As a cultural phenomenon, nationality
is unpredictable and dynamic and subject to interferences, displacements and interactions. To reduce it to something
simple, unitary, visible and formal would suppose neglecting its complexities (Eley & Sunny, 1996, pp. 7–8). As a
result, attention has to be paid to the different phases of Francoism and, in particular, the changes that emerged at
the end of the 1950s, which were also palpable in the nationalist discourse of the dictatorship. The Francoist nation
 
HERNANDEZ BURGOS 5

was built on a number of immovable pillars, yet it also had to adapt to different circumstances, generational changes,
socio-economical transformations and emerging desires and attitudes in Spanish society.

3 | B A NA L N A TI ON A LI SM WI T HI N A R E GI M E O F ‘ H O T N A T I O N A LI S M ’

One of the principle criticisms of Michael Billig's writings on banal nationalism has been that of attending exclusively
to the ensemble of ideological habits, which allow for the reproduction of nations in the Western world (Skey, 2009,
p. 340). In particular, he has been accused of having ethnocentric pretensions and of paying attention solely to ‘dem-
ocratically established nations’, generating a dichotomy between these and other geographical realities and over-
looking that which occurred in dictatorial systems (Billig, 1995, p. 48; Foster, 2002, p. 16; Slavtcheva-Petkova, 2014,
pp. 43–44). Tracing the banal components of nationality in the interior of a dictatorship such as Franco's presents, at
least, two fundamental problems. On the one hand, when explicit nationalism has such a relevant role as in the Span-
ish regime—to the point of becoming the central element of its discourses and policies—the banal seems to become
obscured. On the other hand, it is precisely the centrality of the nationalist component that makes it difficult to
clearly separate the national content from the Francoist content and, in consequence, banal nationalism from the
very banalisation of the dictatorship (Fuertes Muñoz, 2012; Hernández Burgos, 2018).
These difficulties are probably the reason why, in comparison with the formal instruments employed towards
the nationalisation of the Spaniards, the banal and informal aspects have received less attention. However, and still
keeping in mind the particularities of each national reality, dictatorships make use of these elements in order to pro-
pitiate the identification of the citizens with their concept of nation. Indeed, and precisely, one of the functionalities,
which has been attributed to banal nationalism, is that of working for the legitimacy of the idea of the nation-state:
Why would the Francoist regime do without this in developing the homogenising national project to which it
aspired? (Hearn & Antonsich, 2018, pp. 594–595). The unconscious reproduction of nationality in the daily life of
the citizens to which Billig alludes speaks of banal nationalism and contributes to its dissemination and its perpetua-
tion beyond the moments tied to an intense exaltation of the national community (Duchesne, 2018, pp. 842–843).
Moreover, the line that separates hot nationalism from banal nationalism is not so defined and becomes especially
blurred when we pay attention to everyday life (Closs Stephens, 2016, p. 184; Hutchinson, 2006; Jones &
Merriman, 2009, p. 172). Cold nationalism and hot nationalism not only can appear simultaneously but also can,
respectively, experience processes of ‘heating’ and ‘cooling’ according to determined circumstances and contexts
(Billig, 2017, p. 314; Skey, 2009, p. 340).
It should not be surprising that the nationalist mobilisation, which accompanied the Civil War from the start,
already presents banal components. Wars open up extraordinary contexts for the exaltation of the national through
rites, ceremonies, propaganda and other instruments linked to military mobilisation. At the same time, they make
possible the redefinition of the national community and of the models of masculinity and femininity tied to the war
effort (Aresti, 2017; Del Arco Blanco, 2018; Núñez Seixas, 2005). Yet, even within contexts propitious to manifesta-
tions of hot nationalism, this adopts banal and everyday forms. On the front, alongside the patriotic speeches of their
officials and ceremonies of national and religious exaltation, the soldiers listened to talks broadcast on the radio and
read publications in which explicit nationalism existed alongside another more veiled. The magazine La Ametralladora
(The Machine Gun), which came to surpass 100,000 copies annually, made use of graphic humour and satirical articles,
which combined the dissemination of an informal nationalism with the humoristic denationalisation and
stigmatisation of the national enemy. This same purpose was pursued by comic strips, which appeared in the rebel
press or in the creation of the radio programme, which narrated the adventures of a Republican militiaman who
appeared represented as a prototypical exponent of scant patriotic traits in accordance with the definition of his like
deployed by the insurgents (Matthews, 2012, pp. 72–73). In the same manner, in the rearguard—where nationalist
mobilisation was especially intense—the public space was filled with new symbols and national referents, which
resignified the daily life of the citizenry. As Calhoun (2017, p. 19) has defended: ‘nationalism is available for political
6 
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purposes and dramatic moments of mobilization only because it is produced and reproduced in banal and everyday
forms’. As such, renationalisation had to affect all aspects of life, including the apparently insignificant such as dress,
food and other aspects of daily life. In the pages of magazines such as Alimentación Nacional (National Food), articles
appeared suggesting ‘Spanish recipes’ to women, alluding to the ‘Spanish manner’ of feeding oneself or the renaming
of a dish as popular as ensaladilla rusa (Russian salad) as ensaladilla imperial (imperial salad) to avoid any association
with Soviet communism (Alimentación Nacional, January 1944 and October 1946). A number of institutions, busi-
nesses and organisations also joined in with this type of initiative with the aim of collaborating with rebel side—for
example, an Andalusian factory took the decision to decorate the wrappers of their sweets with images of historical
Spanish exploits so as they could be collected by children (Ideal, October 3, 1936, p. 5).
With the end of the war, the nationalist revival reached its high point, and the transmission of a uniform dis-
course of the nation was articulated around all the formal channels of socialisation while alternative national concep-
tions were excluded. Nevertheless, banal nationalism was also an essential resource for reaching the objective of
reespañolizar hasta el último rincón de la patria (‘re-Spanishising’ the Fatherland to last corner) (La Vanguardia, June
2, 1944, p. 8), changing ideas, attitudes, patterns of behaviour and even the routines of the population. In this man-
ner, the Francoist dictatorship sought to create the necessary discursive and symbolic structures, which would guar-
antee the daily reproduction of nationality, and ensured that part of society would naturalise the new ways of life
and national habits and integrate them into their daily life (Edensor, 2002, pp. 89–90; Sumartojo, 2017, p. 202).
Moreover, in the atmosphere of nationalist mobilisation created during the post-war years, these banal elements
could turn out to be more effective within the project of nationalisation than the official mechanisms responsible for
the task.
Perhaps, it was for this reason that the field of leisure was one of the areas most employed for the diffusion of
Francoist banal nationalism. At the end of 1942, the regime created the Noticiario Cinematográfico Español (Spanish
cinematographic news service), known as No-Do. These news reels comprised brief audiovisual reports, the projec-
tion of which was compulsory in every cinema in the country and whose content, in general, was kept at a distance
from the grand political discourses and ideas. In their stead, the No-Do mixed costumbrist images of the country and
activities, which were cultural and folkloric in character, with references to national sporting successes and exalting
plans of economic progress under the rule of Franco. This image apparently distanced from any political content,
united with the fact that the cinema had become one of the principle forms of entertainment for the majority of
Spaniards, turned the No-Do into an efficient instrument of nationalisation (Sánchez Biosca, 2015).
Something similar occurred with radio. Although, during the war, radio had constituted a mechanism of propa-
ganda, the regime did not delay in realising its enormous possibilities as a mechanism of informal nationalisation. The
radio audience data during the 1950s itself are evidence of the efficacy of banal nationalism amongst a part of soci-
ety, which showed its predilection for programmes such as musical galas, competitions, soaps and serials over those
programmes dedicated to purely political matters (Gómez García & Cabeza, 2013, pp. 110–111). Furthermore,
programmes such as radio soaps and ‘agony aunt’ formats—which had the highest audience ratings—transmitted a
determined national model of femininity via trivial elements tied to the daily lives of Spanish women (Blanco
Fajardo, 2016). The banal component present in these programmes became the perfect complement for the church,
Catholic organisations and the Sección Femenina (the women's branch of the Falange) in their intention of implanting
a prototype of Spanish womanhood based on values such as motherhood, morality and the subordination of the
female to the male (Carbayo Abengózar, 2001; Morcillo, 2000). In the same way, popular novels, radio and comics
such as El guerrero del Antifaz (The Masked Warrior) and El Capitán Trueno (Captain Thunder) demonstrated their effi-
cacy in the implicit transmission of official nationalism and the definition of a model of masculinity amongst the
infant and juvenile public (Fernández Sarasola, 2017).
Although the regime never renounced ‘hot nationalism’, ‘banal nationalism’ gained ground with the passing of
time, from the 1960s in particular. Its components fitted better with the social, economic and cultural changes expe-
rienced by the country and with the diffusion of a renovated image of Spain, both internally and externally. Under
the slogan ‘Spain is different’, the dictatorship represented a nation in which tradition and modernity coexisted in
 
HERNANDEZ BURGOS 7

harmony and in which Spanish nationalism was reduced to a whole series of stereotypical and banalised traits
(Pack, 2006; Storm, 2017). In this sense, Flamenco was turned into a fundamental exponent of banal Spanishness to
be promoted by the regime in order to show the exotic and likeable features of the national culture (Holguín, 2019;
Washabaugh, 2012). Bullfights and popular festivals contributed to this same end, in that they symbolised—perhaps
better than any other ambit—the permanence of the traditional features of Spanish identity and their compatibility
with the modernisation of the country (Cavazza, 2003; Edensor, 2002, pp. 16–17; Núñez Florencio, 2017). The
instrumentalisation of popular culture on the part of the Francoist State implied, furthermore, the subordination of
other substate nationalisms and the ‘Spanishisation’ of a number of regional identities, such as those of Andalusia
and Castile, which saw the dilution and banalisation of their cultural traits (Geniola, 2015). Along these lines, some
research has argued the importance of taking into consideration ‘banal regionalism’ and even ‘banal localism’, which
not only have no reason to turn out to be obstacles to nationalisation but also might act as a catalyst for it
(Confino, 1993; Déloye, 2013, pp. 622–623; Szejnmann & Umbach, 2012). This was the case with the Franco's
regime, which sheltered the development of a regionalismo bien entendido (well-understood regionalism), which, in
clear contrast with the substate nationalist movements, encouraged the cultivation of popular folklore and of broth-
erhood between Spanish territories within a proscribed diversity (Colomer Rubio, 2012; Ortiz, 1999).
On the other hand, these banal elements allowed Franco's regime to adapt its national project to a new
internal context. The authorities confected a rhetoric of ‘peace’ and ‘progress’ according to which the ordinary
Spaniards could stop concerning themselves with political questions and trust in the government as the guaran-
tor of economic and social development: a more optimistic, cheerful and modern version of Spain in which the
nation itself seemed to occupy a secondary plane and in which the citizenry found new elements with which
they could identify (Fuertes Muñoz, 2012, p. 284). This discourse was linked to the development of a cultura
de la evasión (culture of escape), which presented an apparently depoliticised reality. The rise and spread of
mass media in Spain from the 1960s onwards were a fundamental element in the transmission of this culture
and, as such, in the very banalisation of the nation. The number of viewers increased rapidly, and the number
of television sets increased from 3,000 to 1.5 million between 1956 and 1965 (Palacio, 2008, p. 57). Conscious
of this fact, the Francoist State did not underestimate the nationalising potential of television and took notice
of the eager reception, which entertainment programmes such as football matches and bullfights had amongst
the Spanish (Billig, 1995, p. 125; Eriksen, 1993, pp. 9–11; Quiroga, 2013, 2015). These were complemented by
a quotidian television, tied to the daily life of the viewers and sought to disseminate social norms and values,
which supposedly defined the Spanish community: respect for authority, depoliticisation, political stability and
national unity (Bonner, 2003; Rueda Laffond, 2014, pp. 256–258).
In the final years of Francoism, the preponderance of ‘banal nationalism’ was so evident that the very official
institutions charged with nationalisation found themselves partially banalised. El Frente de Juventudes (The Youth
Front), union organisations and the Sección Femenina of the party all favoured this recreational aspect and sought to
project an image of brotherhood between the different Spanish regions by means of informal nationalisation such as
dances, typical dress, the encouragement of national tourism, festivals and sport. The explicit nationalist manifesta-
tions and ‘hot nationalism’ never disappeared, but even the Francoist authorities realised the greater nationalising
efficacy of the informal elements, in detriment to those perceived as more politicised on the part of the population.
This was the case, for example, of the Coros y Danzas (literally, ‘choirs and dances’); groups formed in every province
to rescue and conserve the traditional dances of every Spanish region (Martínez del Fresno & Vega Pichaco, 2017).
In reference to its activities, the head of the Sección Femenina—the institution that these groups depended on—affi-
rmed, with a certain resignation that como se mete mucho por la vista, hay personas que creen que esto es lo único que
hace la Sección Femenina y no se dan cuenta de la labor que hacemos (despite the evidence before their eyes, there are
people who believe that this is the only thing the Sección Femenina does, and they do not realise the work we under-
take) (Ya, November 24 , 1964, p. 12). For a society still marked by the memories of the Civil War and reticent
towards political participation, the more informal elements of Francoist nationalism became more attractive than the
messages transmitted from the formal platforms of nationalisation.
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4 | F R O M B A NA L T O EV E R Y D A Y N A T I O N A L I S M : BR I N G I N G B A C K
ORDINARY SPANIARDS

Despite the usefulness of the approach followed by Michael Billig for the study of nationalism, he perceives nat-
ionalisation as solely a top–down process in which an absolute protagonism is conferred upon the state in detriment
to the ordinary individuals (Brubaker, Feischmidt, Fox, & Grancea, 2006, pp. 10–11; Skey, 2009; Thompson, 2001).
This approach presents at least two important problems. On the one hand, Billig's emphasis on state institutions runs
the risk of overlooking the nationalising role of other organisations not directly linked to the state. These entities
could contribute not only to the reproduction of official nationalism by means of formal and banal instruments but
also to the development of divergent national projects (Hearn & Antonsich, 2018, pp. 597–598; Martigny, 2010,
pp. 11–12). On the other hand, reference to those everyday reminders of nationality, which operate in a hidden and
imperceptible manner, annuls individual agency, relegating subjects to a merely passive role (Fox, 2017;
Hearn, 2007, p. 679; Martigny, 2010, pp. 9–10).
Nevertheless, these critiques have not always signified a doubting of the utility of the concept nor of the possi-
bilities opened up by banal nationalism for the study of the processes of nationalisation. Rather, they have demanded
a shift in the focus of analysis from the state to society, placing attention on the agency of the individual. In this way,
the question of the reception of nationalising discourses and policies—which Billig (2017, p. 316) himself acknowl-
edges that he was not concerned with—returns to the forefront alongside the well-known problem derived from the
analysis of the social construction of identity and the processes of national identification. However, at the same time,
it has been made clear that nationality and nationalism not only are solely driven ‘from above’ but also are (co)pro-
duced ‘from below’ (Fox & Miller-Idriss, 2008; Moreno Almendral, 2018).
Both elements—the reception of nationalism and the ordinary reproduction of nationality—have driven the
recent development of the approach of ‘everyday nationalism’, which held up by the path laid down by Billig ‘diverts
in its focus on human agency, to understand the meaning and experiences of nationhood from the perspective of
those on the ground’ (Knott, 2015, p. 1). This has lent special attention to the ‘common people’ and to the way in
which they receive and reproduce nationality in their daily lives (Fox, 2018, p. 864). From this point of view, nat-
ionalisation no longer appears as a vertical and bidirectional process, rather a horizontal and multivocal one, given
that it is also produced in interactions between individuals and groups and established institutions on a microlevel
(Kaufmann, 2017, pp. 7–8). Nationality is found to be linked to individual and collective experiences forged in daily
life. These are the bases upon which individuals construct their view of the world and give form to the processes of
national identification in which subjects actively participate (Archilés, 2013, pp. 94–95; Brubaker & Cooper, 2000,
p. 14; Skey, 2011, pp. 15–16).
The attention paid to daily life and the interest in the experiences of, and the importance granted to, individual
agency represent a point of connection with the theories of the history of everyday life (Lüdtke, 1995). Its practi-
tioners have been putting forward a more fluid conception of the relation between structure and agency in which
society would not be understood as a referential framework, which deprives persons of any capacity for action. On
the contrary, these structures are permeable realities and, in practice, negotiated. They are negotiations developed
on the quotidian level, which need to be analysed at ground level, at ‘the level of experience’, given that only in this
way will the necessary connections between the ‘micro’ and the ‘macro’ be established (Bergerson, 2017;
Lüdtke, 1995, p. 14; Steege, Bergerson, Healy, & Swett, 2008). The proposals of the Alltagsgeschichte have turned
out to be highly and successfully applicable to the study of questions such as the attitudes and behaviours of the
ordinary people, especially in dictatorial settings (Lüdtke, 2016). However, they have scarcely been employed to
explore the processes of nationalisation, and it is at this point where the convergence with ‘everyday nationalism’
becomes necessary.
The processes of nationalisation cannot be analysed in detail if we focus exclusively on the state. Doing so, we
leave the actors out of the scene, and we ignore their capacity to perform significantly within its structures (Moreno
Almendral, 2018, p. 649; Skey, 2011, pp. 13–14). Even within dictatorial regimes, the individual has a certain room
 
HERNANDEZ BURGOS 9

for manoeuvre in order to appropriate norms, practices, discourses and policies, which proceed from the state. This
does not imply a calling into question of the objective reality of the structures nor of the power of dictatorships to
condition the lives of the people, but, rather, it implies an underlining of the capacity of subjects to understand the
social and political frameworks of their existence and to adjust their behaviour accordingly (Ghisleni, 2017, p. 535).
There is no doubt that under a regime such as Franco's, the agency of the individual was profoundly limited by the
regulations established by the state. Nevertheless, just as occurred within other ambits, the Spaniards found ways to
accept, adapt, reject and resignify the national project, which the dictatorship offered them (Mäilander-Koslov,
Reuveni, Steege, Sweeney, & Bergerson, 2009, pp. 559–560; Núñez Seixas, 2017, p. 21).
During the Spanish Civil War, the experiences of the rebel combatants were fundamental for the definition of
the emergent national Francoist community. Amongst them, there were many who were convinced that Spain was
waging a war for the salvation of the Catholic nation and expressed this sentiment in their correspondence with the
so-called madrinas de guerra (literally, ‘godmothers of war’) (De Ramón & Ortiz, 2003). Moreover, from the trenches,
they contributed to the dissemination of Francoist nationalism by way of mechanisms, which could be qualified as
banal. This was the case with the patriotic villancicos and fandanguillos (carols and popular songs), which were publi-
shed in the press, and through which the combatants recreated and reproduced the nation ‘from below’ (some exam-
ples in ABC, December 29, 1938; Ideal, December 19, 1937, and February 13, 1938). Nor can the demonstrations of
‘hot nationalism’, which took place in the rearguard, be understood without the active participation of the people.
The renationalisation of the public space was not exclusively in the hands of the state nor circumscribed by official
depositions. In many localities, it was the ordinary citizens who substituted Republican street names with those dedi-
cated to the new national heroes and achievements. In the same way, the construction of monuments in honour of
the caídos y mártires (‘the fallen and the martyrs’) was also produced by private businesses, organisations and even
neighbourhood groups (Del Arco Blanco, 2018).
This ‘re-Spanishisation’ evidences, in a particular way, the capacity for individual agency and the need to exam-
ine the impulse ‘from below’ in order to understand its materialisation in daily life. The struggles between the Falan-
gists and conservative Catholics over the drawing of the contours of the Francoist nation were reproduced at a local
level and translated into symbolic battles, which were visible in the public space (Box, 2010), although the ordinary
citizen did not always perceive such complexities. The nationalism seen by Spaniards in their daily lives was much
more uniform and homogeneous. The political instrumentalisation of a festival as popular as Holy Week, for example,
demonstrates the way in which the fascist and Catholic elements came perfectly together on the streets, combining
patriotic hymns and military uniforms with religious images and incense. Furthermore, during the 1940s, it was habit-
ual that the people perform a fascist salute as the image passed by, rousing mistrust and suspicion on the part of the
church, which considered other gestures, such as kneeling or maintaining silence, as more appropriate
(Vincent, 2009). Actions of this type show the capacity of the people not only to participate in national ceremonies
‘from the margins’ but also to endow them with new significances, often the opposite of those of the authorities
(Thompson, 2001, p. 27).
Obviously, these actions were unusual and difficult to perceive, in a context dominated by ‘blatant nationalism’
disseminated through formal channels of nationalisation such as schools, the army, the media, party organisations
and the church (Benwell, 2014), but the focus on the everyday reveals a great diversity of attitudes and practices on
the microlevel, which show the inherent complexity in all individual agencies. Of course, the Francoist authorities
had to confront actions opposed to its nationalising will such as lowering the flag in Town Squares, refusing to sing
patriotic hymns, insulting the head of state and preserving the Republican culture. However, the relationship of the
Spanish with the national project driven by the regime was much more heterogeneous and imprecise. The reception,
reproduction and practical realisation of nationalism in the everyday were tied to individual and collective experi-
ences and to the social contexts in which they took place (Hearn & Antonsich, 2018, p. 599). Through such experi-
ence, individuals conferred their own meanings on nationalism: they identified with the officially delineated nation,
and they rejected certain aspects of the same and adapted the nation to their circumstances, making it personal
(Cohen, 1994, pp. 161–163; Moreno Almendral, 2018, pp. 654–657). On the other hand, more than evaluating the
10 
HERNANDEZ BURGOS

role of individuals in terms of acceptance or resistance, it is necessary to investigate the ‘ways of making do’ of sub-
jects and to recognise their capacity to ‘reappropriate’ nationality and to create autonomous spaces and their capac-
ity for self-distancing, which could challenge the will of the state to make the nation uniform and, at the same time,
contribute to the (co)production ‘from below’ of official discourses and policies (De Certeau, 1984, XV;
Lüdtke, 2016; Mäilander Koslov et al., 2009, p. 562).
In this sense, the study of nationalisation during Francoism requires placing the focus on the ‘experiences of the
nation’ constructed on the everyday level and analysing the creative and heterogeneous ways by which individuals
personalised the nation (Archilés, 2013, p. 105). This we should do by studying not only the practices, which allowed
for the materialisation of the nation, but also the emotional dimensions and questioning individual intentions and the
subjectivity of experiences moulded by the social, familial, educative and ideological frameworks within which they
unfolded (Hearn & Antonsich, 2018, p. 596; Molina, 2013, pp. 56–57). Only in this way will it be possible to under-
stand the efficacy and the survival of the most relevant narratives, which articulated Francoist nationalism: the myth
of Franco as the guarantor of national independence in the face of ‘foreign interference’ (Cazorla, 2013), the neces-
sity of the permanence of the regime to maintain the ‘peace’ and to avoid a repetition of the Civil War, the efficacy
of the dictatorship in promoting the economic progress of the nation and the stigmatisation of Republican national
culture and its most prominent features, such as laicism and democracy (Aguilar, 2002; Richards, 2013). Sociological
polls carried out in 1960s, for example, showed the penetration of values such as ‘peace’, ‘order’ and ‘progress’
(FOESSA, 1966). This was a perception confirmed by foreign observers and by the personal testimonies of ordinary
Spaniards who assimilated and translated into their daily lives the principles of the ‘culture of escape’ disseminated
via informal channels and the banal elements of nationalisation (Cazorla, 2010, pp. 173–175; Fuertes Muñoz, 2017,
pp. 158–159).
Nevertheless, it is attention to these everyday experiences, which also allows the limits of Francoist nat-
ionalisation to be observed in a clearer manner. Alternative identities arose in workplaces, in spaces of leisure and in
neighbourhoods, and horizontal networks of solidarity were established around values such as liberty and
democratisation (Fuertes Muñoz, 2017, pp. 257–263; Groves, 2012). These spaces were also the principle route for
the diffusion of the rising nationalist movements in the Basque country and Catalonia and the progressive rejection
of Spanish nationalism in these regions (Molina & Quiroga, 2017). As such, the demands of a nation more diverse
and heterogeneous than the official nation occurred within the everyday life and were likewise fragmentary, multi-
vocal and contradictory (Antonsich, 2016, p. 33; Bergerson, 2017, p. 5). For this reason, they also adopted forms,
which allowed individuals to ‘navigate’ and to ‘dodge and duck’ around the imposed structures (Corner, 2017,
pp. 416–417; Goode & Stroup, 2015; Lüdtke, 1995). In the relationships between individuals and in their experi-
ences, lay the success and the failure of the Francoist national project.

5 | C O N CL U S I O N

On October 1, 1975, from one of the balconies of the Palacio Real in Madrid, Franco gave his last public speech
before his death on November 20 of the same year. Interrupted on several occasions by cries of ¡España, España,
España! (Spain, Spain, Spain) by some of the crowd gathered in the Plaza Oriente, the dictator appealed to the people
to demonstrate once more against intromisiones foráneas (‘foreign interferences’) and the ataques de la anti-España
(‘attacks of the anti-Spain’), concluding that evidentemente el ser español ha vuelto hoy a ser algo en el mundo (‘evi-
dently, the Spaniard has today returned to being something in the world’) (ABC, October 2, 1975). Almost 40 years
later, nationalism continued to be the backbone of the discourses of the regime and an effective instrument for
mobilising the population on occasion. However, such occasional demonstrations of hot nationalism were supported
by much more ordinary acts in which the nation is ‘routine and commonplace’ (Calhoun, 2017, p. 25).
In effect, the efficacy of nationalisation processes should also be evaluated in relation to the banal memories
located in people's everyday lives and the individual and collective experiences constructed at the quotidian level by
 
HERNANDEZ BURGOS 11

the ‘assumptions, hopes, needs, longings and interests of ordinary people’ (Hobsbawm, 1990, pp. 10–11). For all dic-
tatorships, which placed the nation at the centre of their discourses and policies—fascists, para-fascists, military or
communist dictatorships—the deployment of banal mechanisms and the impulse towards the quotidian identification
of the nation were fundamental (Polese, Seliverstova, Pawłusz, & Morris, 2018; Saz, 2019). Nationalisation policies
and the means of achieving it were evidently similar, to a degree, to those of nations in the Western world. But fac-
tors like the memory of war, the prominence of Franco and the prohibition of alternative nationalist projects meant
that the banal, daily nationalism of the dictatorship had a different quality compared to that observed in democratic
societies. The processes of nationalisation are neither unidirectional nor bidirectional. They are not static, nor are
they permanent. On the contrary, they are the product of fluid, changing and intermittent relations, of heteroge-
neous contexts and of interactions, which occur on different and, at the same time, simultaneous levels. In this sense,
an examination of the elements of nationalism, which run through daily life—explicit and banal—and of the role of
the individual as agent and constructor of nationality will offer a more complete panorama. If we only look at the sur-
face and the ‘hot nationalism’ employed by the Francoist regime, we could conclude that the nationalising project of
the dictatorship failed roundly. Proof of this would be the strengthening of national identities alternative to
Spanish—such as in the Basque country, Catalonia, Galicia and Andalusia—and in the denationalisation of many anti-
Francoist and leftist youths. However, if we explore the way in which the nation was lived on a daily level, the failure
of the regime's nationalising project must become more nuanced. To a great degree, the dictatorship generated a
negative nationalisation, which gave rise to the rejection of the ‘Spanishness’ constructed over four decades, but
some banal and quotidian elements came to form part of a way of understanding the nation for part of society, fram-
ing their attitudes towards the democratisation of the country and towards substate nationalisms.
If we leave out of the picture some of the elements which formed part of the Francoist national project and the
particular ways through which individuals accepted, rejected or resignified its components in their daily lives we lose
sight of part of the landscape. Everyday experiences of nation are, ultimately, those that allow us best to explore the
relationship between banal and hot nationalism, discourse and material realisations and structure and agency on the
microlevel and the macrolevel.

ACKNOWLEDGEMEN TS
The author wants to thank Alejandro Quiroga for his useful comments on this article and Matthew Kerry for his kind
help. I am also very grateful to my research group at the University of Granada for the support to this project.

ORCID
Claudio Hernández Burgos https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4582-3313

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How to cite this article: Hernández Burgos C. Nationalisation, banal nationalism and everyday nationhood in
a dictatorship: The Franco regime in Spain. Nations and Nationalism. 2021;1–15. https://doi.org/10.1111/
nana.12621