Laughter as resistance of the defeated against power. Laughter from a subjugated and oppressed people who also found a trench in humor. The jokes that one day could only be heard in whispers and that they shot at 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 Head of State . Jokes against Franco is the theatrical action commanded by the conceptual artist Eugenio Merino and the comedian Darío Adanti that will premiere at the Teatro del Barrio in Madrid, and for which they are seeking support through a crowdfunding.
Here, the clandestine of the past occupies the public space with a single objective: to demonstrate that laughing at the powerful is an act of opposition, rebellion and strength. Merino explains that the purpose of Jokes against Franco is “to vindicate the political nature of this specific humor, an anti-Franco humor in which the dictator is the object of public ridicule.”
The anniversary leaves no room for doubt. That November 20, 1975, just the day this cultural artifact will be released, Franco died. The same year, Juan Carlos I assumed the Head of State, thus following the tight and well-bound parameters of the dictatorship. “We want this action to be a counternarrative to the official version of Francoism and the Transition, especially at a time when there is a wave of historical revisionism linked to extreme right-wing discourses,” Merino emphasizes.
In total there are more than twenty jokes that cover the reality of Franco’s regime: from the harshness of the postwar period and hunger to the Bourbon succession, passing through the torture exercised by the regime, the omnipresence of the leader, the murder of Carrero Blanco and the lack of freedoms in Spain.
A humor with memory
In any case, this theatrical action will not only remain in the possible internal laughter that is born in the audience when listening to these jokes from Adanti’s mouth. The creators of the work have contextualized all of them to give a good account of the bloody nature of a dictatorial system like the one that ruled Spain for four decades and that left strong ramifications that permeate today.
Therefore, the voice in off by Olga Rodríguez, journalist and Human Rights expert, is heard after each joke to produce a new blow to the audience through historical data that sets the tone for each of the jokes. It is not about going from laughter to crying, but from grace to consciousness.
“We cannot forget that during the Franco regime people risked their lives to tell a joke and the cartoons remained in exile,” says Merino. For this reason, the words that will soon reverberate in the Teatro del Barrio are as anonymous as they are collective. “We don’t know who created those 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 has been essential. Merino, intellectual author of this idea of theatrical action that materialized after several years of incubation, began researching 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 linked to the regime and the dictator appeared in all these books, so they have “selected the best so that through them the different forms of repression and propaganda exercised by the Franco regime.”
Emilio Silva, president of the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory, has collaborated in the selection of texts. In addition, historians and archaeologists such as Miguel Ángel del Arco, Alfredo González Ruibal, Paul Preston, the journalist Rebeca Quintáns and the Francoist political prisoner Pablo Mayoral have participated in the texts. Both Teatro del Barrio and Mongolia magazine, of which Adanti is co-editor, have also collaborated on the project.
In addition, those who contribute through 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 get a cassette tape, as was the case in the past, to revive those purchased at gas stations and that were part of the humorous ecosystem in hundreds of families.
Elevation of popular anti-Franco humor
The scenery is not trivial either. Black background and floor, and Adanti expanding in space. “We want to give the comedian his place in history, and the danger that creating political humor meant in that black Spain,” Merino illustrates. His writing partner, Adanti himself, adds that they have chosen the best jokes that talk about the stages of the dictatorship “to create that concept of counterpower, where tragedy meets comedy.”
From his point of view, Jokes against Francodespite talking about reprisals and murdered people and torturers, is “a great exercise in historical memory that elevates popular and anonymous humor to a level it has never had.” 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 that referred to his physique, his height and even his penchant for jumping from swamp to swamp. “They picked on him because there were people who doubted his sexuality, for example, which still has certain homophobic overtones. However, in a dictatorship, giving a nickname to the dictator and his close circle, such as ‘La collares’ or ‘La nietísima’, is a kind of catharsis, one of the greatest transgressions that can be committed,” defends the comedian.
From cancellation to execution
Adanti also mentions the particular cultural war waged by the extreme right that has in Meloni, Abascal, Milei or Trump some of its best-known faces worldwide. “These people also talk about jokes, jokes and cancellation. They believe that the cancellation is a group of historically oppressed people complaining that a joke made from a position of power goes against the individuals of that group, but that is not the case,” says the Mongolian co-founder.
He himself responds: “Cancellation means being put in jail, fired from your job, and your family being punished for making a joke, like what happened with Franco.” A specific 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 having published caricatures of Franco and satirical cartoons against the rebels during the Civil War.
Celebrate the death of the dictator
For this reason, although Merino and Adanti are aware of the magnitude of their words, both defend that “Franco’s death must be celebrated as he deserves.” The comedian points out: “And not because you wish death on an individual as such, but because of what Franco still means in Spain and, above all, because the story of the Transition that ended up being established was the one that the Francoist elites wanted.”
For all this, Jokes against Franco It is also born with a spirit of permanence. Although they will premiere next Wednesday, November 20 at the Teatro del Barrio, Adanti and Merino’s idea is that the play can tour throughout the country throughout this year, which will mark half a century since the death of the dictator. Thanks to the two creators we will have it a little easier so that at least the last breath we have left is to expel a laugh full of memory.
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