When the doorman of the building did not even say “good morning”: a "dehumanized" figure of the literature of red terror

Abstract

The article focuses on analyzing, through a representative sample of texts published during the civil war by novelists and intellectuals of the national side, the figure of the doorman and the process of dehumanization and animalization that would be carried out with regard to one of the characters of the rearguard that was most stereotyped in the literature on the Red Terror. Likewise, it is intended to highlight how, behind the pejorative image offered by such authors as Tomás Borrás, Agustín de Foxá, Wenceslao Fernández Flórez, Alfredo Marqueríe, Félix Cuquerella, Edgar Neville, or José-Vicente Puente on the doorman’s profession and functions within the framework to annihilate the fifth columnist enemy, a reactionary, elitist, misoneist, and misogynist ideology was hidden, for whom the doorman symbolized social anarchy and the disappearance of the hierarchical pyramid of the old regime.

Keywords

• portero
• literatura falangista
• guerra civil española
• propaganda franquista
• terror rojo
• madrid