Cuando lleguen los amigos de Negrín… Resistencias cotidianas y opinión popular frente a la II Guerra Mundial. Almería, 1939-1947.

Abstract

This article provides a history of everyday life, a socio-cultural history, looking into the problems of tracing popular opinion during the forties and the process for destroying working-class culture. Its central analysis focuses on everyday acts of resistance to this process, which are seen more as a way of re-creating forbidden political identities than as irrational, violent outbursts or ill-fated escape valves. The regime and, above all, those who supported it in the society, denounced and severely reprimanded such attitudes. Thus, certain protected social spaces –those in which hidden discourses could be expressed- were destroyed. This destruction became possible because Spain became a society willing to watch over its own members and punish them. This transformation managed to push Spaniards out of the public sphere, taking refuge in the private. This was probably Franco’s greatest victory.