Francoism and the Republican Exiles: the Case of the Composer Julián Bautista (1901–61)

Abstract

Exile studies in musicology have generally focused on Central European exiles fleeing from Nazism; at the same time studies of the Republican exile following the Spanish Civil War have tended to deal primarily with writers rather than musicians. This article intends to address both these areas of neglect by focusing on the composer Julián Bautista, who settled in Buenos Aires in 1940. In the late 1950s, after more than a decade of oblivion in his home country, Bautista, like other anti-Francoist exiles, started to become the object of interest again in Spain, an interest which continued after the composer's death in 1961. By exploring Bautista's presence in the Francoist musical press and in high-profile, state-sponsored events such as the Festivales de Música de América y España, I shall explore the reasons for his rehabilitation – reasons that, far from amounting to straightforward liberalization, seem to have been closely aligned with the strategies of the régime, and the cultural values and historical narratives that underpinned them.