Catalan editions in resistance: The publication of testimonial narrative about French concentration camps in Catalan during Franco’s dictatorship

Abstract

As part of its repressive programme, Franco’s regime significantly limited the publication of literature in Catalan, a language that was pejoratively reduced to the category of dialect. In that context, the decision of writing and editing books in Catalan during the military dictatorship (1939–75) was itself an act of resistance. This article studies a series of testimonial narratives that were published in the late 1960s and early 1970s in Spain about French concentration camps, including Crist de 200.000 braços. Refugiats catalans als camps de concentració francesos (1968), by Agustí Bartra; El desgavell (1969), by Ferran Planes; and Cartes des dels camps de concentració (1972), by Pere Vives i Clavé. Testimonial narratives about French concentration camps already circulated in the countries where Spanish intellectuals were exiled. However, writers such as Bartra, Planes, Vives i Clavé (survivors of Argelès-sur-Mer, Saint-Cyprien and other French concentration camps) and some Catalan editors committed to the Republican cause were interested in telling their traumatic experiences to Spanish and Catalan readers living in Spain. Therefore, they undertook the task of editing these works although in many cases they were strongly censored. Taking this into account, the purpose of this article is to analyse some aspects of these editions in order to consider how their testimonial narratives remain in constant tension between two forces: Republican writers’ intention to show their own version of recent history and the Spanish government’s imposition of its own institutional and conservative official discourse.