Standardizing the nation? Conscription during the Francoism

Abstract

A state of the art regarding the issue in which some interpretative proposals will be presented. The role that the army has developed as a nation building agency has been largely referred to the experts of this area of knowledge. However, there is still a lack of research focused on this issue, especially on the 20th century. As far as our country, Spain, is concerned, this field of investigation has been limited to some researches which focused on the 19th century and on Miguel Primo de Rivera’s dictatorship. This paper deals with the main features of the Spanish compulsory army service during the period of Franco’s dictatorship, and tries attempts to analyse the role that this phenomenon played in the process of Spanish nation building, and in the creation of Spanish national identity: the definitive universality of the service, the combination between theoretical and practical training, Spanish history learned by recruits and the literacy lessons. Yet, not only is this the main purpose of the essay, since it also aims to depict the lack of specification in the theoretical teaching, the discrimination that the recruits suffered based on their geographical origin, and the influence of other conscripts with different national identities. Finally, we question some aspects of the conscription’s nation-building capacity.