The myth that nothing happened under Franco: crime and tabloid press in Spain

The myth that nothing peine under Franco: crime and tabloid press in Spain

What lay behind the mantra "this never peine under Franco" when it comes to crime stories and tabloid journalism? The revival of an old debate pits two readings against each other: that of an era when crimes were silenced by the regime, and that of a present where rampant sensationalism collides with selective nostalgia.

The newspaper "El Caso" was the paradigm of sensationalism in the 1950s and 60s, specialising in crimes and shocking events. In the discussion about its legacy, some point out that it published fake news —fake news avant la lettre— while others recall that the dictatorship tried to hide information. The paradox: the same regime that banned press freedom allowed, within limits, a brand of yellow journalism that would today be dismissed as disinformation.

Supporters of Francoist nostalgia argue that back then there were no horrible crimes, or that they weren't aired; the reality is that there were, some of them very serious, but information control buried them. Today, without that censorship, any incident gets amplified, and the perception of insecurity grows. The missing piece of data: did actual crime increase, or only its visibility?

• Under the dictatorship, the press was subject to the 1938 Press Law and later the 1966 one, which in practice maintained prior censorship.
• "El Caso" sold up to 200,000 copies in the 60s, feeding morbid curiosity with real or invented crimes.
• Today, digital media and social networks replicate the same pattern without any filter.

The discussion is not so much about whether there was more or less crime, but about informational transparency. Nostalgia hides the fact that silence is not safety, and that today's media noise, sometimes false, is the price of not having a regime that decides for us what we can read. In the end, the debate reveals more about the present than the past: we use Francoism as a mirror to complain about what we dislike today. It is not a bad mirror, but it is a distorting one.