The Front Line and the Occupation of Madrid through the Cinemato/ Graphic Propaganda in National Faction in the Civil War

Abstract

The film production developed during the Spanish civil war is one of the most peculiar aspects of the intense media and propaganda battle that the conflict produced. Parties, syndicates and official organisms used cinema as an ideal tool to coordinate information and agitation. In National faction an effective team created in the first administration of Franco in February 1938 would try to dictate from the phalangist organs a plan to indoctrinate the population in all the fields. This plan would favour the integration between different media, specially the printed journals and the cinematographic news service. So the line developed by the weekly journals Vertice and Fotos would have their correlate in the production of the National department of Cinematography (1938-41). This close link could be proved in a central subject in national propaganda: the occupation of the cities (with two main cases, Madrid and Barcelona)