Permission to be modern? The Francoist censorship in Spanish pop cinema (1960-1969).

Abstract

The censorship of pop music during Franco's regime has been little studied at the phonographic level; the bibliography has only a handful of works. The situation worsens when the object of study is transferred to cinema. The reflections on censorship and pop cinema in the sixties deal with the subject in an oblique way, from the surprise for its permission, in search of reasons why this union could have taken place. For this work we have reviewed the censorship files of the General Administration Archive of the 10 most relevant pop/rock films, from the initiation of La corista (José María Elorrieta, 1960) to the acidic Un, dos, tres...al escondite inglés (Iván Zulueta, 1969). The results lead to conclusions that differ from the common premise about the protest character of sixties pop/rock. In general, these films were more commercial than subversive, which made them comply with the Regime's censorship requirements without posing critical horizons that implied political-social tensions. Consequently, and contrary to popular belief, this musical genre of Spanish pop cinema had few run-ins with censorship. The films that went beyond these mercantile horizons did suffer problems, but they were minority projects.