Cultura na Segunda República Espanhola: uma questão de Estado

Abstract

This study is characterized by analyzing the performance of the Spanish State in the construction of cultural policies (TEIXEIRA COELHO, 1997; UNESCO, 1969) developed by the governments of the Second Spanish Republic regime, having as an articulating element the constitutional work and legislative production of the Ministério de Instrucción Pública y Bellas Artes between the years 1931 and 1939. Based on the new reading and approach to power (GIL PUJOL, 2006; DE LARA, 1967), as a theoretical-methodological axis, the relationship between legal mechanisms and the constructions of the symbolic field through the process of both the instrumentalization of culture by the field and political agents. As the concepts of hegemony, counter-hegemony (JACKSON LEARS, 1985; SCHLESENER, 2007) and culture wars (HUNTER, 1991) imply a constant negotiation of power and acquiescence in a general framework of domination and the desire to change popular consciousness around certain ideological issues, they contributed to highlighting our hypothesis that republicans and Spanish progressives used culture and education –that is, the symbolic and ideological field– to wage their dispute for positions against the elites that were opposed to them –represented by traditional groups such as the church, the army and large landowners–. We also sought to understand how these political and intellectual elites tried to respond to this ideological war, fought throughout the regime, and to that war, materialized from 1936 onwards. The work appears as a form of contribution to the advances that have occurred in recent decades in historiography about the period, especially regarding the focus of the analysis on the sociodynamics of culture. In this historiographical framework, the contributions of Tuñón de Lara (1987), Huertas Vásquez (1988) and Sandie Holguín (2003) stood out, whose reflections focus on the projects and initiatives emanating from the Spanish State in cultural matters in the 1930s and in the administrative organization through which they were channeled. In general, it was found that culture and education were used as an element of transformation and establishment of social consensus. The value that the Republican State gave to culture, as a fundamental element of national transformation, was so significant that it ended up becoming its very essence. This period of great cultural action by the State began a project of cultural revolution guided by the search for the development of cultural citizenship among the Spanish population, but in its final years it marked the rise of a cultural policy that pointed to authoritarianism, silencing and a strong intervention in cultural production through censorship. The successive failures and clashes of government designs caused the field of culture to experience a period of inaugurations, challenges and absences.