«A prisoner who is seeking truth in God is strengthened with thought to be helpful to his country»: the imposition of National-catolicism in the prisons in post-war

Abstract

The purpose of this work is to analyze the process by which the Church becomes hegemonic in the ideological control of the centers of imprisonment in the first half of the forties and the imposition of its doctrine on the inmates. We review the internal legislation and regulations that shape this hegemony and control during the first half of the 1940s. We come briefly to some of the statistics elaborated from the reports made by the chaplains and the propaganda that the regime develops around them. Finally, as an example, we analyze in some detail one of the religious practices that will be central in the life of prisons during the early 1940s, the «fulfillment of the paschal precept», for which we use the information that provide two detention centers of different categories located in the province of Ourense.

Keywords

• Franquismo
• Iglesia
• ideología
• adoctrinamiento
• represión
• cárcel