A Filmed War. Cinema and the Spanish Civil War in the Basque Country

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Published 22-11-2011
Santiago de Pablo

Abstract

The Civil War had special characteristics in the Basque Country, mainly because it was a conflict among Catholics, as the Basque Nationalist Party decided to be on the Republican side. The propaganda cinema filmed by both Republican and Francoist sides from 1936 to 1939 reflected this peculiarity. The documentary cinema made by the Basque Government focused on the special nature of the Basque people (peaceful, Catholic and democratic), who had suffered from a foreign attack. The bombing of Guernica (April 26, 1937) was the symbol for this aggression and, accordingly, it appeared in almost all of those documentary films. These documentaries reflected the Basque Nationalist point of view about the Spanish Civil War. On the contrary, the Francoist propaganda movies insisted on accusing the Catholic Basque Nationalists of betrayal to their religion. We can thus see in the Basque Country that military confrontation went hand in hand with a special cinematographic war.

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