Holidays under Franco: Relax in the sun, where there is freedom

Suddenly they appeared out of nowhere, the men in their green uniforms with the famous black paint hats and the shiny shaft boots of the Guardia Civil. They radiated pure authority. I was a bit queasy at the Placa Reial in 1971 in Barcelona.

They were interested in my old leather cartridge bag in which I had whistle and tobacco. An unpleasant encounter in a country where the dictator Franco ruled with a hard hand. This queasy feeling at the sight of the dreaded Guardia Civil is also reflected in the work of the artists, who show their childhood memories of the Spain vacation in the dictatorship in the remarkable exhibition “Vamos a la Playa. Holidays under Franco” in the museum of European cultures.

Catalan was prohibited

Anyone who traveled to Spain in the 1960s and 1970s hardly thought of taking a vacation in a dictatorship in which every striving for freedom was suppressed. Curator and artist Monika Anselment registered as a child on the family’s travels to Spain that she could speak Spanish with boys in the restaurant, but agreed with each other in a language that did not understand – in the forbidden Catalan, as she shows in a comic.

As a child, she did not question that. European tourists were looking for the inexpensive pleasure and the dictator promoted mass tourism because the country urgently needed foreign exchange and positive stories that travelers told at home about Spain’s beautiful landscapes, its friendly and pious people.

What really was behind this beautiful facade shows the impressive installation “The Street of Innocence” from ten video boxes by Christoph Otto, in which he compares the stories of the locals to those of German tourists. A Spaniard remembers his youth, in which he was not allowed to talk about politics, had to go to church and experience his parents’ detention.

© Stefanie Unruh (VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2025)/Photo: Carles Palacio

When he emigrated to Stockholm, he was amazed at the fact that people on the street talked normally with police officers. When he returned to his village after Franco’s death, he remained the stranger, because many of his neighbors thought that everything was better under Franco. A former tourist knows nothing about that, Sangria and Paella were just inexpensive, the dictatorship had not noticed anything, except in the newspaper.

Some suffer, the others enjoy

The oppression was also more subtle. “My friend’s grandmother gave me the advice not to wear the sleeveless dress on the evening,” recalls Ulrike Weiss. It shows in photos that are covered with embroidery and filigree patterns, phrases from advisors to the “Buena Esposa”, the “good wife”: “Be sweet and interesting”, “get your house in order!”

The vacation in the dictatorship was a vacation full of contradictions. Then the first hippies came from America to Formentera and Ibiza and fled from the Vietnam War, a free life lived in a country that suffered from lack of freedom. This experience speaks from the installation “Convivència” (coexistence) by Annette Riemann and Tom Theunissen, in which she combines historical images with the filmed holiday memories of Annette Riemann and her sister.

Jörg Zimmer is also overlooked space -high holiday photos in front of a huge mirror that includes the viewer. Drive or stay away? There are voices that say that the contact between the population and tourists is important, because a change usually only comes from the inside.

Stefanie Unruh documents the history of German emigrants who were looking for refuge in Mallorca and had to flee again after the victory of Franco and his German allies. An interesting exhibition about an almost forgotten episode of the emerging mass tourism in Spain in the Franco era, which would have been good, however, a somewhat more detailed lettering.