In the absence of a free press that could publicize the economic and social misery of the “años de hambre” in the 1940s and of Spain’s lethargic and uneven recovery in the 1950s, cultural practices attained an important role in social commentary. What emerges ultimately in Otero’s poetry is a subtle critique of Francoism forged through an appropriation and subversion of the linguistic tools of the oppressor. Working within the strictures of state censorship, Blas de Otero usurps the linguistic idiosyncrasies and thematic tropes characteristic of Francoist discourse and redeploys them in a distorted form in his poetry of protest. This article examines the work of one of Spain’s most celebrated poets of the period, Blas de Otero, with the aim of illustrating how this poet crafts a discordant voice by alluding to, mimicking, and subverting the very myths and rhetoric of Franco’s regime. It was not until the 1950s that Spanish poets began truly to take stock of and to protest against the desperate social realities surrounding them. In Spanish poetry, the revival of classical metrical forms and the vogue of garcilasismo heralded a return to traditionalism that was in harmony with the founding myths of National Catholicism. Footnote 1 The literary vanguard had been associated with the Republican side in the conflict, and the loss of those artistic luminaries who were either dead or in exile was aggravated by the endeavour to amputate the remnants of their legacy. Spain’s cultural landscape in the aftermath of the civil war was desolate.
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