THE REPRESSION OF THE GALICIAN LANGUAGE AS A POLICY OF LITERACY SUPPRESSION DURING FRANCOISM

Abstract

This article aims to analyze the repression of the Galician language during the Francoist regime as a policy of literacy interdiction, considering its effects on the conditions of production, circulation, and recognition of social practices of reading and writing. The study is based on the understanding of literacy as a historically situated social practice shaped by relations of power and ideology, guided by the research question of how the repression of the Galician language during Francoism can be understood as a policy of literacy interdiction. The investigation adopts a qualitative methodology, grounded in bibliographic research, with a historical-discursive approach, articulating academic texts, historical studies, and two central empirical records: a linguistic propaganda leaflet distributed in A Coruña in 1942 and a doctrinal poster from the early 1940s. The analysis shows that the imposition of Castilian as the exclusive language of institutional life was not limited to administrative standardization, but took the form of a strategy of symbolic hierarchization that associated linguistic correctness with moral and political values, relegating Galician literacy practices to spheres of low legitimacy. The results indicate that interdiction was mainly carried out through the naturalization of the norm, the moralization of language use, and the induction of self-censorship, reducing the need for direct coercion. It is concluded that the repression of Galician functioned as a technology of government that regulated access to literacies, produced structural exclusions, and reaffirmed the centrality of language in the organization of sociocultural inequalities in authoritarian contexts.