Francisco Franco and the Gothic kings: The Legitimation of Usurped Power through Ceremony and Music

Abstract

This article examines the use of music in the manipulation of the historical past. Specifically, it studies the Francoist political and symbolic use of Hispanic chant and the Hispanic liturgy to justify access to power obtained in an illegitimate way. The Francoist regime’s system of propaganda often resorted to imperial symbology in state ceremonies as one of its main representations of power. The first of these ceremonies was the celebration of the victory in the Civil War, which culminated in May 1939 with a lavish thanksgiving in which the Visigoth ritual was used to anoint kings, a ritual filled with symbolism employed to try to depict Franco as an “anointed king” and emphasise his continuity with the Spanish historical monarchy. Symbols, gestures and liturgical-musical repertory from the coronation ritual of the Visigothic kings were used during the ceremony. This repertory was taken from Medieval manuscripts whose melodies cannot be transcribed as their music notation does not indicate pitch. For this reason, and as occurred with other reconstructions of the time (architectonic spaces, relics, fonts, etc.), several suposed Visigothic melodies were recreated in order to transmit a message of tradition and continuity with historical royalty.