Backstage, waves and transistor radios: construction of the Golden Age canon during the first Franco regime through the radio drama of Radio Nacional de España (1939-1959)

Abstract

Since its origins as a mass media, radio has been one of the fundamental institutions for the maintenance of social order. During the Franco dictatorship, it played an important role, as an ideological apparatus, in the ideological production and reproduction of the regime. Therefore, the study of the contents of its programs helps us reveal how the dictatorship tried to legitimize certain values and discourses to implant a dominant common sense. The aim of this article is to analyze the image projected by Radio Nacional de España during the first Franco regime (1939-1959) of the Hispanic literary canon of the 16th and 17th centuries, that of a supposed glorious past, product of a partisan interpretation of history and culture, vindicated by the dictatorship.