"Culpa de la guerra, culpa de Franco"la hambruna española en la Andalucía oriental rural de posguerra (1939-1953)

Abstract

The «years of hunger» refer to an authentic famine that took place in Spain in the 1940s, with special incidence between 1941-1944 and 1946. The post-war Spanish famine was caused by the autarky voluntarily adopted by the Franco regime, despite the fact that the dictatorship tried to justify the misery and need of its population based on the consequences caused by the Civil War and the Second World War, the republican legacy, the persistent drought or international isolation. In this way, the autarchic project led to the consolidation of Francoism and the social domination of the population. The 1940s were for Spain a time of hunger, famine, rationing, black market, disease and death. Oral memory takes us back to a time marked by a poor diet based on poor quality products such as black bread or watery milk. Such a situation had enormous consequences for the society of the time, not only because of mortality, but also because it allowed the spread of diseases caused directly or indirectly by hunger, such as hypovitaminosis or infectious diseases. The Spanish famine did not affect the entire territory in the same way, but rather had a deeper impact on Andalusia and Extremadura and the provinces of the peninsular southwest. In this sense, rural Eastern Andalusia was one of the regions where hunger had a greater impact, due to its socioeconomic and hygienic-sanitary conditions.