ABSTRACT
The chapter revisits the attitudes of the Franco regime towards regional languages. Castilian was imposed as the sole official language in all administrative and education matters. However, different nuances persisted within the anti-Republican coalition regarding the place of regional cultures. Basque and Navarrese Carlists were sympathetic towards some limited recognition of Basque in the public sphere. The same applied for those Catalan conservatives and regionalists who joined the Francoist side, as well as for some Galician Catholics. However, the attitudes of the Franco regime through the early 1950s oscillated between limited paternalism, seeing regional languages as sheer dialects, and open persecution of their public use. During the 1950s and the 1960s, the attitudes of the Franco regime steadily evolved from persecution to limited tolerance in cultural affairs. The dictatorship hoped that sociodemographic change and the exclusion of regional languages from the education system would definitely erode the social use of languages other than Castilian. However, some state strategies had to be nuanced during the 1960s, as regional languages became a banner of the anti-Francoist opposition and a symbol of resistance. From the mid-1960s, the Catholic Church, as well as some regional institutions controlled by traditionalists, also backed this cause.
