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Paper short abstract

The paper examines the resurgence of hispanidad in Spain and Latin America through documentary film. Drawing on the anthropology of nationalism, it links audiovisual productions with far-right networks and communities that mobilize ethnic and religious identities.

Paper long abstract

In Spain and across much of Latin America, the narrative of hispanidad has made a marked comeback. Hispanidad (only partially translatable as “Hispanicness”) emerged in early Spanish fascist movements and is particularly associated with Ramiro de Maeztu, the dictatorship of Miguel Primo de Rivera, and later with the “Falange Española” political party.

The aim of this article is to connect audiovisual productions from the Spanish film industry with social groups disseminating this narrative through events and communities, both in-person and online. We use as case of study the documentary serie of the director López Linares and the groups associated for the production and distribution of those three documentaries.

Our approach draws on social anthropology, specifically the anthropology of nationalism. Following recent work on the cultural construction of nationalism (Lomnitz 2001; Boyer and Lomnitz 2005; Gómez-Pellón 2023), we trace connections between the work of intellectuals (here, filmmakers collaborating with historians and writers) and far-right movements. From this vantage point, we analyse how products of “high culture”, such as films, are central instruments for the emotive mobilization of ethnic and religious identities of far-right populism, feeding into networks for the circulation of emotions through content dissemination and its translation into mass-culture formats, such as short-form videos for social media (primarily TikTok and YouTube).

The paper is based on ethnographic fieldwork, netnography, and in-depth interviews with key actors, including the film director López Linares.