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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Un dispositif réglementaire au service d'une politique d'unification culturelle et linguistique : les modalités de la répression anticatalane sous le régime franquiste

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When in March 1938, the Francoist troops entered the Catalan territory, one of Franco’s priorities, was the abrogation of the Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia through a law passed on 5th April 1938. Catalonia then experienced one of the most tragic periods of its history; in the first years, the regime displayed a very severe anti-Catalan policy. The Francoist retaliates were massive and systematic. In line with the executions and the imprisonments, a wide cultural repression also started. The main objective was wiping out the Catalan identity, attacking the language and the different expressions of culture. An important set of laws and regulations are in the origin of what historians qualify as “true cultural genocide”. This article attempts to clarify the fields of application of these texts and shows how these legal measures, becoming political instruments at the service of the authoritarian power, allowed the persecution of the Catalan language and limited its influence by eliminating it from the public life.