ABSTRACT
Jean-Francois Lejeune assesses the construction of narratives around the rural and urban world under Francoism and the associated political and economic strategies that derived from them. This was a deeply ideological programme and any attempt at reform in the countryside was jettisoned by the new coalition governing Spain. Even so, the countryside was framed as the repository of certain values of the regime. The dictatorship used the countryside as symbol for the economic reconstruction and the modernization of the State during the period of autarchy. The goal was to achieve a new economic model. Pre-war narratives, including Regenerationist, were incorporated and we are shown how dam and other infrastructure building reflected these themes. This project was believed to be central to state ordering, as well as aiming to achieve cultural and material homogenization. The regime exhibited an ambivalent relationship to the rural and urban worlds that it was unable to resolve.
