Burying your Dead in Franco’s Spain: Thanatopolitical Power and José María Pemán’s Antigone (1946).

Abstract

Considering the Spanish political context of the period, Antigone’s myth could become an ideological offence against the regime. However, Pemán’s version emphasized the emotional aspect of the play. It was a Catholic reconfiguration of the classical myth, in which family love and divine right were displayed as the main features of a traditional society, where Christian order prevailed over civil rights. The heroine became a Christian martyr who sacrificed herself not because of the tyrant but because people hesitated to save her. Antigone’s concern about burying her brothers also reminded the audience about the right and legitimation of burial in early Francoist Spain. During a period when Franco’s detention camps and prisons systematically filled unmarked mass graves of republican adversaries and civilians, assuming the right to decide on the enemy body, another circumstance showcased the regime’s thanatopolitical power that cynically marked the dead bodies’ political life beyond the grave.