Girona City Council publishes a book on the history of the city during the Franco dictatorship

Monday, November 24, 2025

The book Francoism in Girona is a collective work that explores the history of the city during the Franco dictatorship, fifty years after the dictator's death

The work, coordinated by Lluís Serrano Jiménez, has the participation of several specialists in local history and culture such as Josep Clara, Maximiliano Fuentes Codera, Pere Guanter Subirà, Joan Vicente Rufí, Narcís Selles Rigat and Xavier Carmaniu Mainadé. Together they analyze different aspects of Francoist Girona, from political repression and the ideological construction of the State to urban planning, art and education.

Girona, as the provincial capital, was a nerve center of power for the new regime that emerged from the Civil War, where civil, military and ecclesiastical power was concentrated. The dictatorship was imposed there with a combination of repression, social control, symbolic loyalties and political clientelism, while the ruling classes and certain sectors of Catalan society participated, in many cases normally, to guarantee the continuity of the social order.

The book also addresses the cultural and linguistic impact of Francoism, paying special attention to the role of the Catalan language and the first outbreaks of dissidence, both within the cultural sphere close to the Church and from the political underground. It also analyzes the effects of the economic development of the 1950s and 1960s, with the urban growth known as the “Greater Gerona” and the internal migrations that transformed the city.