Literatura, sexo y censura

In Franco’s totalitarian state, censorship became from the start an efficient mechanism to control artistic production — and by extension, ideas — which was conceived to maintain and enhance the values of Francoist regime. But its violent and ruthless measures did not prevent it from being considered by some as arbitrary and inconsistent. The present article argues that Francoist censorship was a rigid and normalised system with fixed criteria that guided and determined censors’ decisions. The study carried out here compares three novels sharing the theme of sexuality, which were originally written in English and French and translated into Spanish under Franco’s dictatorship: The last of the wine, by Mary Renault (1961); Safo, by Alphonse Daudet (1964); and The anti-death league, by Kingsley Amis (1967). It aims to identify examples of censorship manipulation and establish translational patterns by analysing — both quantitatively and qualitatively — the strategies or censorship mechanisms detected in the translated texts. The results of the study illustrate the influence that Francoist censorship exerted upon the translation of novels with sexual content, contributing to unveiling the reasons behind their alterations.