Ungodly Subjects: Protestants in National-Catholic Spain, 1939–53

Abstract

This article examines the little-known history of the Protestant minority in Spain in the years after Franco’s victory in 1939, looking at the reality of Catholic ‘unity’ and the position of the internal ‘other’ under National-Catholicism – the hegemonic ideological expression of Franco’s Spain. Arguing that, rather than substituting for fascism, National-Catholicism in fact served as a transitional rhetoric, the article examines the anti-Protestant campaigns of the late 1940s, illuminating the position of religious minorities and their paradoxical position in post-Civil War Spain. Excoriated as a ‘foreign’ enemy, Protestantism was discriminated against but its adherents were never treated with the savagery meted out to the political opposition and, in some cases, they received legal and police support. The ecclesiastical authorities promulgated the language of anti-Protestantism but there is little evidence that they convinced the public that Protestants were a real and immediate danger, even before the move towards toleration and religious freedom in the 1960s.