9 Functions of Irreverent Comedy in Franco’s Alternative Exhumation

The Sala Trono in Tarragona is presenting a new production titled Francisco Frasco, described as an absurd comedy that offers an alternative ending to the exhumation of the dictator Francisco Franco.

The play utilizes irreverent comedy to explore the events surrounding the removal of Franco’s remains. This theatrical approach aligns with a broader trend in Spanish cultural production where humor and the grotesque are used to navigate the legacy of the dictatorship.

The Role of Comedy in Addressing Dictatorship

The use of humor regarding the exhumation of Francisco Franco serves multiple functions in the public’s retroactive evaluation of his regime. In academic analysis of such portrayals, humor is identified as a tool for coping, cohesion, and criticism.

By presenting the image of Franco as a comedic character, these portrayals can further arguments that the dictatorship was genocidal. Such humor often fosters solidarity and can function as a form of activism, helping to establish the dictator as a genocidaire in the public eye.

While some scholarship suggests that dark or self-deprecating humor in the context of genocide is used to dispel the trauma, the specific humor surrounding Franco’s exhumation often pushes the audience toward the conclusion that Francoism constituted a genocide.

Context of the Exhumation and Public Reaction

The exhumation of Francisco Franco from the Valley of the Fallen took place at the end of 2019. This action followed an announcement by Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez in 2018 and was carried out in compliance with the Historical Memory Law approved in 2007.

The decision generated significant social debate and polarized reactions across the media and the general public. Social media reactions, in particular, highlighted the humour factor as a primary method of public response to the event.

The Grotesque in Post-Franco Cultural Production

The absurd nature of Francisco Frasco fits into a larger aesthetic tradition in post-1975 Spain. Film directors and writers have frequently resorted to the grotesque to unveil contradictions in the political narratives of the Transition to Democracy.

This artistic strategy is used to challenge the perception of Spain as a paradigm of democratic transformation and to question the negative effects of the Pact of Forgetting in the twenty-first century.

Examples of this aesthetic include the work of Luis García Berlanga and Pedro Almodóvar, who have used the grotesque to present the survival of Francoism and traditional Spain as a contradiction to the presumed modernization of the period.

Similarly, the use of grotesque satire has been applied to subvert visions of national identity, such as those propagated in Catalonia following the death of the dictator.