Jonathan Meades’ latest documentary is blatantly uncensored and brutal. It exposes totalitarian Francoist Spain’s use of architecture and engineering as a tool for the creation of narratives and structures that supported their power and legacy. Starting with representational architecture and its shameful construction, only possible through exploitation of people, as it was built primarily by Republicans and other dissidents imprisoned in labour camps, he moves to the ‘Brainwash project’, where orphans and stolen Republican children were placed into specially-built orphanages such as the today’s building of Luis Moya’s Gijon, built on the model of the Italian Il Complesso Del Buon Pastore and used by the Technical University instead. Whilst Meades’ visual trademarks such as the gimmicky use of green-screen and low-fi photoshop imagery create an impression of light-heartedness, the subject could not be more serious. Children’s names were changed, they were indoctrinated through religious teaching and in some cases they became victims of paedophile priests.
Meades moves from one fascist social and urban engineering to another. The construction of more than 500 dams and a system of canals created a full redesigning of Spanish climate and benefited the wealthy latifundistas or landowners who supported the Franco regime from the start. Making the wealthy wealthier, it also ingrained poverty, as the lack of access to water created arid landscapes where agriculture was not a possibility. Surprisingly, Franco did not only shape architecture, he also promoted the importance of football, adding political agendas to the pitch by promoting Real Madrid and oppressing FC Barcelona, who stood as symbol for the formerly Republican Catalonia. Even mass tourism was shaped by Nazi ideology – the architecture of Benidorm was inspired by Prora, a Nazi holiday resort on the island of Rugen promoting ‘Kraft durch Freude’ or ‘Strength Through Joy’.
As always, Meades presents a research that is beyond the superficial history often presented through official channels and reveals a heritage of dictatorship and oppression standing in the middle of Spanish cities. His eloquent language is provocative and his juxtapositions are politically daring – it is a point of view that is ever so needed in today’s unstable political climate.
- Franco Building with Jonathan Meades (BBC 4) - 28th August 2019