Musicology and/as Propaganda in the Nationalist Side during the Spanish Civil War

Abstract When the Spanish Civil War started, Catalan musicologist and priest Higini Anglés had a solid international prestige as a specialist in medieval music. Anglés fled Barcelona in the summer of 1936 to escape anti-clerical violence and settled temporarily in Munich. As Franco’s victory in the war started to become more certain, Anglés engaged in correspondence with another priest-musicologist, Nemesio Otaño—who had been put in charge of musical policy on the Francoist side—with a view to preparing for his return to Spain under the new regime. This chapter will explore this correspondence, analyzing what it reveals about the propaganda uses that the Francoist side envisaged for musicology—particularly concerning early music—as well as Anglés’s conflicted relationship with such uses.