Cinematic representations of medical technologies in the Spanish official newsreel, 1943–1970

Abstract

NO-DO, the Spanish official newsreel produced by Franco's dictatorship (1939–1975), held a 30-year monopoly over audio-visual information in Spain from 1943 to 1975. This paper reports on an analysis of the coverage of medical technologies by the Spanish Cinematic Newsreel Service, NO-DO, from 1943 to 1970. The study focuses on the changing roles played by cultural representations of medical technologies deployed in NO-DO. Our analysis shows how these representations offered a new space for the legitimization of the regime and, more importantly, played a key role in the attempts to construct and enforce a hegemonic national identity after the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939). During the period of isolationist autocracy that ended in the mid-1950s, the images of medical technologies reinforced the idea of a self-sufficient “national space” and deepened the break with the historical past. Once the international isolation of the regime was overcome in the late 1950s and the 1960s, the representation of medical technologies contributed to establishing a Spanish national identity that mirrored the outside world, the foreign space. Finally, gender representations in NO-DO are also explored.