Manuel Deniz Silva, researcher, Coordinator of the NOVA FCSH branch and President of the Institute of Ethnomusicology – Centre for Studies in Music and Dance (INET-md), is the co-author, together with Igor Contreras Zubillaga, of the chapter Music and Fascism in the First Years of Salazar’s and Franco’s Dictatorships, published in The Cambridge Companion to Music and Fascism, edited by Nicholas Attfield and Ben Earle and released by Cambridge University Press in September 2026.
The chapter examines the relationship between music and right-wing authoritarianism during the early years of Salazar’s dictatorship in Portugal and Franco’s dictatorship in Spain, situating musical production, discourses and institutions within the ideological and cultural policy frameworks of both regimes.
The research focuses on four key areas: musical thought within authoritarian movements of the interwar period; the use of hymns and marches as instruments of political mobilisation and propaganda; the construction of cultural consensus through state policies; and the dynamics of musical exchange between Portugal and Spain.
The authors demonstrate how both regimes mobilised music to promote nationalism, discipline and social cohesion, incorporating musical life into systems of political and cultural control through institutions, artistic commissions and censorship. At the same time, they identify differences, tensions and competing ideological currents that prevented the complete homogenisation of musical life.
Included in the volume’s section devoted to case studies, the chapter contributes to a comparative understanding of the role of music in shaping authoritarian political cultures in twentieth-century Iberia.
Bibliographic reference:
Igor Contreras Zubillaga and Manuel Deniz Silva (2026). Music and Fascism in the First Years of Salazar’s and Franco’s Dictatorships. In Nicholas Attfield e Ben Earle (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Music and Fascism. Cambridge University Press, pp. 172–192.