Laughter as resistance of the defeated in the face of power. The laughter of a submissive and oppressed people who also found a trench in humor. The jokes that one day could only be heard in whispers and that they launched against Francisco Franco are resurrected this November 20, the starting signal 50 years after the death of the dictator in 1975 and the beginning of the return of the Bourbons to the leadership of State. Jokes against Franco is the theatrical action commissioned by the conceptual artist Eugenio Merino and the actor Darío Adanti, whose premiere will take place at the Teatro del Barrio in Madrid, and for which they are seeking support through a crowdfunding.
Here, the underground of the past occupies public space with a single objective: to demonstrate that making fun of the powerful is an act of opposition, rebellion and strength. Merino explains that the aim of Jokes against Franco is “to justify the political character of this specific humor, an anti-Franco humor in which the dictator is the object of public ridicule.”
This anniversary leaves no doubt. On November 20, 1975, just the day this cultural object would be made public, Franco died. The same year, Juan Carlos I assumed the presidency of the state, thus following the tight and well-defined parameters of the dictatorship. “We want this action to be a counter-narrative to the official version of Francoism and the Transition, especially at a time when there is a wave of historical revisionism linked to far-right discourse,” underlines Merino.
In total, there are more than twenty jokes that cover the reality of the Franco regime: from the harshness of the post-war period and the famine to the succession of the Bourbons, including the torture carried out by the regime, the omnipresence of the leader, the assassination of Carrero Blanco. and the lack of freedoms in Spain.
Humor with memory
In any case, this theatrical action will not only remain in the possible internal laughter that arises in the audience when listening to these jokes from the mouth of Adanti. The creators of the work contextualized them all to account for the bloody nature of a dictatorial system like the one that governed Spain for four decades and which left strong ramifications that permeate today.
Therefore, the voice in disabled by Olga Rodríguez, journalist and human rights expert, is heard after each joke to deliver a new blow to the audience thanks to historical data that sets the tone for each of the jokes. It is not a question of moving from laughter to tears, but from grace to conscience.
“We cannot forget that under the Franco regime, people risked their lives to tell a joke and that caricatures remained in exile,” explains Merino. For this reason, the words that will soon resonate at the Teatro del Barrio are as anonymous as they are collective. “We don’t know who created these jokes, we just know that they were told at the time and that they put Franco in the wrong,” adds Adanti.
To arrive at this script, the documentation phase was essential. Merino, intellectual author of this idea of theatrical action materialized after several years of incubation, began his research on the book published in 1977 by PGarcía, artist of the mythical The quail and titled Franco’s jokes. Then he did the same with the 2010 monograph When we laughed in fearby Gabriel Cardona, and the Autobiography of General Francowritten by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán and published in 1993. According to the artist, jokes related to the regime and the dictator appeared in all these books, which is why they “selected the best ones so that through them the different forms of repression and propaganda carried out by the Franco regime. »
Emilio Silva, president of the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory, collaborated in the selection of the texts. In addition, historians and archaeologists such as Miguel Ángel del Arco, Alfredo González Ruibal, Paul Preston, the journalist Rebeca Quintáns and the Franco political prisoner Pablo Mayoral participated in the texts. The Teatro del Barrio and the magazine Mongolia, of which Adanti is co-editor, also collaborated on the project.
In addition, those who contribute via crowdfunding can obtain a book that they will publish for the occasion, a sort of missal of Jokes against Franco. They will also be able to obtain a cassette, as was the case in the past, to revive those purchased at gas stations and which were part of the humorous ecosystem of hundreds of families.
Rise of popular anti-Franco humor
The landscape is not trivial either. Black background and ground, and Adanti expanding in space. “We want to give the comedian his place in history and the danger represented by the creation of political humor in this black Spain,” illustrates Merino. His writing partner, Adanti himself, adds that they chose the best jokes that talk about the stages of the dictatorship “to create this concept of counter-power, where tragedy meets comedy.”
From his point of view, Jokes against Francoalthough it speaks of reprisals, murdered people and torturers, is “a great exercise in historical memory which elevates popular and anonymous humor to a level it has never reached”. As an example, Adanti mentions nicknames, a way of placing oneself above others. They don’t skimp: Paca la culona, Miss Canarias, Cerillito, Franquito, Pacorro or Sapo.
Franco could choose between those who referenced his physique, his height and even his penchant for jumping from swamp to swamp. “They went after him because there were people who doubted his sexuality, for example, which still has certain homophobic connotations. However, in a dictatorship, giving a nickname to the dictator and his entourage, like “La Collares” or “La nietísima”, is a kind of catharsis, one of the greatest transgressions that can be committed”, defends the actor.
From cancellation to execution
Adanti also discusses the particular cultural war waged by the far right, which counts in Meloni, Abascal, Milei and Trump some of its best-known faces in the world. “These people also talk about jokes, jokes and cancellation. They think the cancellation is the work of a group of historically oppressed people complaining that a joke made from a position of power goes against the individuals in that group, but that’s not the case.” , declares the Mongolian co-founder.
He himself answers: “Cancellation means being put in jail, fired from your job and your family punished for making a joke, like what happened with Franco. » A particular case illustrates this position. On June 28, 1940, the cartoonist Carlos Gómez Carrera “Bluff” was shot on the wall of the Paterna cemetery. His crime was publishing caricatures of Franco and satirical caricatures against the rebels during the civil war.
Celebrate the death of the dictator
It is for this reason that, although Merino and Adanti are aware of the magnitude of their words, both defend that “the death of Franco must be celebrated as he deserves”. The actor underlines: “And not because we wish the death of an individual as such, but because of what Franco still means in Spain and, above all, because the history of the Transition which ended up being established is the one that the Francoist elites were looking for.”
For all this, Jokes against Franco He is also born with a spirit of permanence. Although the premiere will take place next Wednesday, November 20 at the Teatro del Barrio, the idea of Adanti and Merino is that the play can tour throughout the country throughout this year, which will mark the half-century of the death of the dictator. Thanks to the two creators, it will be a little easier for us so that at least the last breath we have left is to expel a laugh full of memory.
