It’s an allegory depicting Spain as a family torn apart by war but eventually reunited through the acts of a chosen son. As a film, it’s hardly original. But as propaganda shaped by Franco himself, it contains accidental depths: it reflects his intent, and betrays his vanities.

Shaping an image

The Churruca family is a rather favourably revised version of Franco’s own – and the hero José Churruca is a fictional alter ego for Franco himself. Both families are Galician. Both have a history of naval service but José, like Franco, served in the army. Both José and Franco saw action in Morocco and have a Republican brother who is eventually redeemed. Both put off marriage until they had finished their military duties. In short, Raza presents a narrative in which Franco, thinly disguised as José Churruca, portrays himself as the Spanish national family’s divinely ordained son.

But Raza was more than just a vanity project: it was an early attempt to shape public memory through film.

Franco wrote Raza in 1940, just after the end of the civil war. By some estimates half a million people had been killed. Both sides had committed atrocities as they purged their enemies; after Cambodia, Spain has the second largest number of mass graves in the world. Although Franco railed against foreign influence in Spain, he had received vital assistance from Italian and German fascists. And, crucially, he had toppled a democratically elected government. In other words, the war was complex. Franco wanted to provide a simpler narrative to serve his purposes: Raza would be the official version of the war.