Raquel MERINO ÁLVAREZ (University of the Basque Country, Vitoria, Spain)

Publishers vs. Censors under Franco: a view from the TRACE project


This contribution will analyse the role of publishers and publishing houses under Franco (1938-1975) from the perspective of narrative and theatre catalogues, as compiled and studied by various researches who have worked in the context of the TRACE (Translations Censored) project (www.ehu.es/trace, http://trace.unileon.es/).
Spanish publishers, in this period, had to negotiate all potential publications with censorship authorities and, thus, a huge amount of documents were left as traces of that process of negotiation. In TRACE we have been studying all kinds of information held in censorship archives for a few years now. Every research project and dissertation has been planned and coordinated so that catalogues of translations have been completed and case studies analysed for the whole period under study. Drawing on such studies, the role played by anthologies and collections will be dealt with from a comparative perspective. Questions related to the amount of native vs. translated/imported narrative or to the type of readers targeted by publishing houses will be addressed.
The catalogue of translations of Washington Irving’s Tales of the Alhambra, compiled from censorship files, will serve as a starting point to delve into the multifaceted relationships established between the publishing industry and the authorities.