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A diabolical plaything: empty signifiers and the construction of Francoism’s long-lasting historical myth in Spain

ABSTRACT This article examines the construction of the most influential myth crafted by the Spanish dictatorship during its last decades. Through its metaphorical construction of the word “development” (desarrollo) and its catachrestical use of “peace” (paz), the Francoist regime naturalised a contradictory understanding of history which conflated the economic development that Spain underwent in the 1960s with political liberalisation. Additionally, by analysing Spanish hegemonic discourse, this article maintains that the ideology embedded within the Francoist myth continued to operate during the so-called “transition” (transición) through the conceptualisation, this time, of Spanish “democracy” (democracia). “Democracy”, very much like “peace”, became an empty signifier that named the absence it totalised, and in the process presented – and still presents– Spanish history as forward-looking yet unchanging, while disguising the weight of the Francoist past upon the present.