The ‘Einaudi libel’: A battle of translations in the Cold War

This article takes as its starting point the Francoist ban of the songbook Canti della Nuova Resistenza Spagnola (Songs of the New Spanish Resistance, 1962) and the subsequent press campaign against its publisher (Giulio Einaudi) and compilers (the musicians Sergio Liberovici, Michele Straniero, and Margot Galante Garrone). Placing the Canti at the heart of a wider propaganda battle between Francoism and Italian anti-Francoist forces in the early 1960s, this article carefully reconstructs a transnational and multilingual network of anthologies and hybrid publications in which translation played a decisive role. Thus, the article illuminates the contribution of translation to the propagandist strategies of Francoists and anti-Francoists, as well as the ideological and historical ‘narratives’ (in the sense proposed by Baker 2006) supported by these translation practices. Finally, the article shows how translation strategies played a central role in the articulation of opposing, yet mutually interdependent narratives in the battle between Francoists and antiFrancoists, which were based on radically different understandings of the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War.


Introduction
In January 1963, the Spanish Francoist government's Dirección General de Información (Central Directorate for Information) issued a brief but stronglyworded statement forbidding Italian publisher Giulio Einaudi (owner of the eponymous publishing house) and musicians Sergio Liberovici, Michele Straniero, and Margot Galante Garrone from entering or staying in Spain. The reason for this severe measure was Einaudi's publication of a songbook entitled Canti della Nuova Resistenza Spagnola (Songs of the New Spanish Resistance, 1962), which contained a number of popular Spanish songs compiled, transcribed, and translated by Liberovici, Straniero and others during a fieldtrip to Spain in 1961. According to the Dirección General de Información, this 'libel' (libelo)as the book came to be consistently dubbed by pro-Francoist sourceswas merely a series of "blasphemous attacks against catholic religion", "vile and rude offenses against Spanish individuals and institutions" and "coarse insults to the Spanish people as a whole" (ABC, 1963)i.The ban i Unless otherwise noted, all translations from Spanish and Italian are mine. I would like to thank Joseph Lambert for his assistance in revising the English text. would be followed by a lengthy press campaign against the book coordinated by the Francoist state and even by legal proceedings in Italy, following which the publisher and musicians were sued by the Movimento Sociale Italiano, a neofascist party that received funding from Francoist institutions (Sergio, 2004, p.195). Although Einaudi and the authors were initially condemned for offenses against a foreign head of state and for 'obscenity', they were later acquitted after an appeal (Einaudi, 2009, p. 154). However, these Francoist endeavours generally backfired by ultimately attracting greater attention towards the publication and its content (see Carrillo-Linares, 2012 for an overview of the process and its aftermath), which was considered by many anti-Francoists at the time to be an important milestone in the process of international opposition to the regime (see Fernández de Castro and Martínez, 1963, pp. 332-335).
Approaches to the scandal surrounding the Einaudi 'libel' (Carrillo-Linares, 2012;Morán, 2014, pp. 343-352) have addressed a range of political and cultural implications, yet have mostly focused on the eventas a highly visible and remarkable clash between the Francoist state machinery and anti-Francoist agentsat the expense of its context. This article expands the frame of analysis to show how the Canti should be placed at the heart of a wider propaganda battle between Francoism and Italian anti-Francoist forces at a time the early 1960swhen Spain's international image was under dispute. As I will show, the Canti were the most visible and polemical output in a transnational network of anthologies and hybrid publications in which translation played a decisive role. Through a careful reconstruction of this context, this article aims to elucidate and highlight the decisive contribution that translation made to the propagandist strategies of Francoists and anti-Francoists. At a second level, it will trace and reconstruct the ideological and historical 'narratives' supported by these practices of translation. The notion of 'narrative' -"everyday stories we live by" (Baker, 2006, p. 3)is borrowed from Mona Baker's approach to the role of translation and interpreting in conflict. As Baker argues, narratives are paramount to the way in which societies function, yet they are also 'dynamic', which implies that at any given time it is possible to find "a variety of divergent, criss-crossing, often vacillating narratives" (ibid.) that coexist. At the same time, since narratives are fundamental to the legitimacy of the status quo, a central method of undermining a regime is to challenge "the stories that sustain [it]" through the articulation of "alternative stories" (ibid.). As I will show, translation strategies played a central role in the articulation of opposing, yet mutually interdependent narratives in the battle between Francoists and anti-Francoists, which were based on radically different understandings of the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War.

Francoist Spain at a crossroads
At the start of the 1960s, Spain was undergoing a process of profound change due to both internal and external pressures. General Franco's coup and subsequent victory in the Spanish Civil War (1936)(1937)(1938)(1939) had been followed by a period of autarchy and international isolation after the defeat of Fascism in the Second World War (Portero & Pardo, 2007, pp. 307-313). Yet in the anticommunist context of the Cold War, the regime was gaining international acceptance (Fusi, 1995, pp. 142-143;Portero & Pardo, 2007, pp. 317-323) after its bilateral pacts with the USA (1953) and its admission to the United Nations (1955). Equally, due to growing demand for Spanish agricultural products within the European Economic Community (EEC), diplomatic relationships had resumed between Spain and other European countries (Portero & Pardo, 2007, pp. 328-336). Indeed, in 1962 Spain made an initial attempt to become a member of the EEC, although the application process failed to start due to opposition from trade unions and Socialist parties across various countries (Portero & Pardo, 2007, p. 334). As part of its attempts to become an accepted member of the new international system, Francoism also started transforming its image and official discourse, placing particular emphasis on its role as a provider of 'rights', 'stability', and notably 'peace' (Sesma Landrin, 2006, pp. 45-46), which culminated in 1964's celebration of the "25 Years of Peace" (Castro Díez & Díaz Sánchez, 2017) that marked the 25th anniversary of the end of the Spanish Civil War.
At the same time, however, internal tensions were mounting, and a significant wave of unrest had developed at a number of levelsamong workers, students, and clergy (Fusi, 1995, pp. 189-194) lasting until the final years of the dictatorship. It was 1962 in particularthe year in which the aforementioned Canti della nuova resistenza spagnola were publishedthat would play a vital role in this new phase due to two major events (Bernecker, 2002). On the one hand, an important series of strikes took place across the country, most notably in the coalmines of the industrial region of Asturias where the intensity of the strike and the subsequent heavy-handed repression by the government would elicit both national (Vega García, 2002) and international (Gordon, 2002) expressions of solidarity with the miners. On the other, a range of anti-Francoist forces including members from both camps of the Civil War (with the notable exclusion of the Spanish Communist Party), gathered at a conference in Munich to reopen the potential for a process towards democracy in Spain (Amat, 2016). Like the miners' strike, the Munich meeting was also met with a harsh response from the government. As a result, 1962 came to be considered a decisive moment in the evolution of Francoism, both at the time (Fernández de Castro & Martínez, 1963;Ridruejo, 1963a), and in later historiography (Morán, 2014, pp. 37-45). As Dionisio Ridruejoa former supporter of Fascism who became a key name in the opposition to Franco and played an important role in the Munich meeting (Amat, 2016(Amat, , pp. 13-28)claimed, in 1962 "the contradictions of the system […] changed from being latent to becoming patent" (Ridruejo, 1963a, p. 22).

Translating solidarity and resistance among Italian anti-Francoists
The perception that Francoism was undergoing a decisive mutation was shared by many Italian politicians, intellectuals, and artists who turned Italy into a central hub for anti-Francoist activities at the time. For those who had opposed Fascism and Nazism, supporting anti-Francoist activists was a logical consequence of their political commitment to democracy (Bottai, 2015, pp. 140-220), and prompted them to set about influencing international opinion on Spain at a decisive moment for Franco's regime.
One of Europe's most significant anti-Francoist gatherings was the international meeting Libertà per il popolo spagnolo (Freedom for the Spanish People), which took place in April 1962 to mark the 25th anniversary of the beginning of the Spanish Civil War. Hosted in Rome and Genoa, attendees included international figures such as Clement Attlee, Lázaro Cárdenas, Picasso, and Bertrand Russell, among many others (Archives historiques de l'Union Européenne, n.d.a, pp. 4-11). The meeting was organized by the Comitato italiano per la libertà del popolo spagnolo (Italian committee for the Freedom of the Spanish People), which brought together notable figures from the political fieldsuch as Pietro Nenni (Socialist) and Luigi Longo (Communist)and from the realm of culture, with novelist Elio Vittorini, poet Giuseppe Ungaretti, historian Aldo Garosci, and hispanist Dario Puccini involved, as well as publishers Alberto Mondadori, Giulio Einaudi, and Giangiacomo Feltrinelli (Archives historiques de l'Union Européenne, n.d.b, pp. 4-9). In its first meeting after the Libertà conference, held at the Einaudi bookshop in Rome, the Committee set itself the task of analysing "the most efficient means of translating the solidarity of Italian anti-fascists into the most concrete, immediate and prompt help possible to Spanish workers and intellectuals" (n.d.b, p. 7; original underlining).
The strong presence of intellectuals and publishers within the Italian anti-Francoist camp was also demonstrated by a string of publications that expressed a moral duty towards Spain. In 1959, Einaudi had published Aldo Garosci's highly influential book Gli intelettuali e la guerra di Spagna (Intellectuals and the Spanish War), which was motivated "by the way in which the unresolved Spanish problem still weighs on [European] conscience, even if there is a certain will to forget it" (Garosci, 1959, p. xi). Similarly, in 1961, historian Angelo del Boca published L'altra Spagna (The other Spain), based on a trip to the country and various meetings with anti-Francoist activists. In his preface, del Boca claimed that he had "the foreboding (and maybe more than a simple foreboding) that things are about to change" and that Europe would soon "abandon its cautious and egoistic attitude to acknowledge that Spain exists and requires its solidarity" (1961, p. 27). In that same year, a special issue of the left-wing journal Resistenza was devoted entirely to Spain (Bottai, 2005, p. 166); its editorial, strongly titled Un cancro per l'Europa (A cancer for Europe), claimed that "democracy will never be safe in the West", as long as the Iberian peninsula lived under the regimes of Franco and the Portuguese António Salazar. "Helping the Spanish Resistance (la Resistenza spagnola)", it went on, "is not only a duty, but also a wise political move for democrats of every country" (as cited in Bottai, 2005, p. 166).
It is in this intellectual and political context that two relevant books appeared, sharing the common goal of translating the Spanish reality for Italian readers: Dario Puccini's Romancero della Resistenza spagnola (Ballads of the Spanish Resistance), published by Feltrinelli in 1960, and the aforementioned Canti della nuova resistenza spagnola (Songs of the New Spanish Resistance), published by Einaudi in 1962. In spite of their numerous differences, the books are united by two key notions. Firstly, they share an appeal to the popular character of the struggle they represent through their references to the romancero (the popular, often anonymous ballads that were compiled in the Middle Ages) and, more generally, the songs. Secondly, both books make use of the strongly historical sense underlying the concept of resistenza ('resistance'), the "truly founding myth of the [Italian] Republic" (Tuccari, 2011), which would immediately elicit in an Italian reader a historical parallel with opposition to Fascism and Nazism. As Puccini concedes (1960, p. 12), it could seem anachronistic to apply a concept that was only linked to the antifascist struggle from the Second World War onwards to the Spanish Civil War. At the same time, however, Puccini defends the usefulness of the concept in describing "the full arch of the sometimes open, sometimes hidden, sometimes repressed and sometimes simply sad and desperate opposition of the Spanish people and writers to the arms and the dictatorship of Franco" (1960, p. 12). In this sense, Puccini feels that the concept "admirably embodies […] the various aspirations of freedom of three or more generations of Spanish poets" (1960, p. 12).
The very structure of the book also emphasises this link between past and present, war and resistance. The first section -Romancero della Guerra Civile (1936)(1937)(1938)(1939) [Ballads of the Civil War (1936)(1937)(1938)(1939)]deals strictly with the war and includes poems written by authors from the older generations, such as Antonio Machado, José Bergamín, Rafael Alberti or Manuel Altolaguirre. However, the second -L'esilio e la resistenza   [Exile andResistance (1939-1959)]expands its scope by translating both exiled poets of previous generations -Juan Ramón Jiménez, Jorge Guillénand contemporary authors like Blas de Otero, Gabriel Celaya, José Agustín Goytisolo, or José Ángel Valente, who started publishing under Francoism. Finally, the third section -L'omaggio del mondo [The World Pays Homage] emphasises the transnational relevance of the war through the inclusion of translated poems from English, German, Russian, Czech, Bulgarian, Danish, and Norwegian.ii The continuity that the notion of 'resistance' provides between both books is clearly expressed in the title and subtitle to Liberovici and Straniero's compilation. As in Puccini's book, the temporal frame  implies that resistance to Fascism in Spain did not end with the Civil War, but had extended over time. Meanwhile, the addition of the adjective nuova ('new') suggested it might have gone through certain transformations that made it differ from resistance in the Second World War. In their foreword, the authors emphasise this continuity, but also their political commitment and solidarity, by claiming that the one element that provides coherence to the heterogeneous materials that they gathered during their 1961 trip to Spain was the shared fact of expressing "popular opposition to the Fascist regime established by Franco in Spain in 1939", which was also "the only reason for our compilation work" (1962, p. 5).
Unlike Puccini's selection, which mostly relied on well-known poets, all texts in Liberovici and Straniero's book were anonymous. However, this 'anonymity' does not imply an 'anonymous' composition of every piece, but rather a determination on behalf of the editors to protect informers and contributors to the book. In a personal conversation (May 2, 2015), Emilio Jona, one of the surviving members of the fieldtrip, described the atmosphere in Spain at the time as "a heavy layer of police lead" (una pesante cappa di piombo poliziesca). In this context, anyone involved in the book could have faced severe punishments from the government and its repressive apparatus, which certainly encouraged discretion from the compilers. In fact, in the same conversation, Jona explained that they did not only meet "with many obscure anti-Francoists", but also with "some amongst the most important intellectuals of the time", including the poets José Bergamín, Jesús López Pacheco and José Agustín Goytisolo, the playwright Alfonso Sastre, publisher Carlos Barral, and the brothers Antonio (painter) and Carlos Saura (filmmaker). This is also evidenced by the diversity of the collection. Indeed, while a certain number of the songs comprised parodies on Franco and his allies based on traditional tunes and mainstream hits -Fusi notes (1995, p. 16) that jokes and parodies on Franco circulated widely throughout his dictatorshipothers had more literary leanings and were later credited to authors such as the singer-songwriter Chicho Sánchez Ferlosio, the Galician-language poet Celso Emilio Ferreiro, or the aforementioned Goytisolo and López Pacheco (Carrillo-Linares, 2012, pp. 201-202).
In this way, beyond their specific differences, these anthologies used translation for political purposes and in the support of an alternative narrative to use Baker's formulation once again (2006, p. 3)that aimed to undermine the mainstream narrative of Francoism. In a political context whereby Francoist Spain was starting to regain international acceptance (US pacts, UN admission, EEC exchanges), editors of both compilations aimed to translate testimonies of repression, censorship, and ongoing popular resistance to Franco. In this way, translation became an evidence against Francoism, highlighting its anti-democratic character, which could have been whitewashed under changing geopolitical circumstances. At the same time, placing these translations under the highly-charged concept of resistenza connected opposition to Francoism with the pan-European struggle against Fascism in the Second World War, emphasising continuity between past and present while reminding Europe of its moral duty towards Spain, as other anti-Francoists like Garosci and del Boca (quoted above) also argued. In this interaction between testimony and memory, translation became a means of remembrance, in the Benjaminian sense argued by Bella Brodzki (2007, p. 5): a response "to political and cultural persecution, to the threat of erasure of the voices of resistance" under a non-democratic regime.

Translation as authority: Francoist responses
Further to banning the book and the measures set out against its publisher and authors earlier in this article, the response of the Francoist administration to the publication of the Canti also saw the publication of two interrelated books (Servicio Informativo Español, 1963a, 1963b aimed at discrediting Italian anti-Francoists. A third one (1963b), although unrelated to the Einaudi case, was also part of the overarching narrative. Despite not being credited to any particular authors, these books were produced at the Ministry of Tourism and Information (Morán, 2014, p. 346), led by the newly appointed minister Manuel Fraga Iribarne, former director of the Francoist think-tank Instituto de Estudios Políticos (Institute for Political Studies) between 1961 and 1962 (Sesma Landrin, 2013, p. 255). As I will show in this section, these textual responses and their frames of analysis have a three-fold relevance: they demonstrate an awareness of, and concern for, the damage that Italian publications meant for Spain's international image; they evidence an understanding of the Canti as part of a wider movement of antagonism to Francoism; and they deploy translation as a tool of legitimation in support of their arguments.
The first book published was La Marsellesa de los borrachos. Datos para la historia del libelo [The Marseillaise of Drunkards. Facts Towards a History of the Libel] (Servicio Informativo Español, 1963a), which dealt strictly with the Canti. An initial section presents a series of scathing criticisms of the book, which is described as a great offense "to the name of God, the name of Spain and the Spanish people as a whole" (p. 1) that is based upon "three political weapons" (p. 5): "lies", in reference to the image of policemen restraining a mass of people on the cover of the book; "insult", exemplified by a poem in which General Franco is dubbed a cabrón, which literally means a male goat but can be loosely translated as 'bastard'; and, finally, "blasphemy", for a song in which a statue of Christ is depicted as being continuously sodomised by the clergy, in a probable allusion to the historical support given by the Church to Francoism. iii In the final part of this critique, publisher Giulio Einaudi was linked with Communist forces, with his bookshop presented as a frequent point of activity for "fellow travellers" (2), that is, sympathisers of Communism, as well as prominent members of the Spanish Communist Party.
Most of La Marsellesa is devoted to a compilation of press clips on the scandal from Spanish and international sources. In line with the stated aim of the book to offer "facts", these clips are presented in facsimile, thus emphasising their original character. In the case of the international press, original texts appeared in their language first -17 in Italian, 5 in German, 2 in English, and another 2 in Frenchaccompanied by translations into Spanish. In this way, the combination of facsimile and translation exerts a role of legitimation over distance: criticisms of the book are not developed by Spanish authorities, who assume the position of a neutral conveyor of a range of foreign sources. Certainly, what is obscured in this process is the ideological framework underpinning the choice: many of the articles were published by journals with conservative and right-wing agendas, such as Il Giornale d'Italia or Il Secolo d'Italia, close to the neo-Fascist party Movimento Sociale Italiano (Treccani, 2018), or with strong religious links, like the Vatican's L'Osservatore Romano.
Beyond this caveat, the relevance of this technique of legitimation could be described by borrowing Andrew Rubin's concept of 'replication' (2012, pp. 57-59). Rubin applies it to the diffusion of writers in the new transnational cultural field of the Cold War, which was "undergoing a major upheaval, partially as a result of the expansion of the transnational magazines of politics and culture" (Rubin, 2012, p. 58). In this transnational context, 'replication', that is, the rapid accumulation and translation of the same texts into various languages by different publishers, became a means of conferring authority to a given author or text. It could be argued that the method of La Marsellesa partly relied on the power that 'replication' was achieving in this new transnational context: in a historical period where the diversity of publications was emerging as a central characteristic of the intellectual landscape of the Cold War, the accumulation of foreign sources focusing on similar arguments across a variety of languages would contribute to the generation of authority around the Francoist position.
The use of translation as a distancing element designed to enhance legitimacy was also at play in the second book published (Servicio Informativo Español, 1963b): Un cacique para España [A Despot for Spain], which had more ambitious aims than La Marsellesa from a narrative perspective. In its opening pages, the book claims that "Spaniards fail to understand why Italy has become the major theatre for frequent and violent attacks against Spain and its institutions" (p. 7), particularly at a time when "systematic opposition to the Spanish Government has become outmoded in every country, with the iii Although this article is not specifically concerned with the quality of the Italian translations, it should be noted that both pieces were poorly translated, probably due to lack of familiarity with the language. On the one hand, the cabrón insult is translated as cornuto ('cuckold'), which blurs the sense of the criticism (Liberovici and Straniero 1962: 106-107); on the other, due to an obvious misunderstanding of the subtle syntax of the original, the statue of Christ is portrayed as sodomising priests instead of being sodomised by them, thus obscuring the reference to the way in which the Church had betrayed its pastoral role (1962: 103). exception of the Communist ones" (p. 8). Most of the book aims at answering this initial question by focusing on the career of Palmiro Togliatti, leader of the Italian Communist Party from 1938 until his death in 1964, and on his involvement in the Spanish Civil War, in which he played a major role as a representative of the Comintern. According to the authors, Togliatti had retained "a particular inclination for Spain" (p. 51) from his participation in the war, which he was attempting to re-exert in the 1960s.
In the concluding section of the book, it is claimed that Togliatti's new strategy towards Spain (pp. 53-55) was based on relying upon "useful idiots" (tontos útiles), that is, non-Communists who would believe the Communist propaganda and subsequently try to "draw the attention of public opinion to an inexistent problem, the supposed opposition between the people and the government of Spain" (p. 55). Among the "conferences, committees, and manifestoes" that the book considers "orchestrated by Togliatti" with the help of those "useful idiots", emphasis is placed upon the Comitato italiano per la libertà del popolo spagnolo, whose activitiesfrom its constitution to its various meetings and protestsare included in the list, which also accords great importance to the publication of the Canti and other actions by Einaudi,. The ominous conclusion of the book is that those "useful idiots" would continue helping communists through "the publication of books" or "the use of the public spaces"a clear reference to Einaudiwithout realising how this could result in the triumph of Communists and the creation of "the Soviet Spanish Republic", whose "despot" would be "the well-known assassin called […] TOGLIATTI" (capitalisation in the original; 66).
This disparaging depiction of Italian anti-Francoism as a mere puppet of Communist forces is certainly one of the major points of interest in the book, demonstrating that the Francoist administration clearly saw the Canti as part of a wider movement of opposition. A second element of importance in understanding its underlying ideological framework is the use and presence of translation. The book opens with a "warning" (advertencia), where the process of legitimacy through distance deployed in La Marsellesa is once again raised. In this "warning", it is stated that "in the writing of this text, only informative materials entirely unconnected to the Spanish regime have been used" (p. 6). Among them there are texts originally written in Spanish, like those by Communist leader Dolores Ibárruri and former Communist agent Jesús Hernández, as well as translations from various sources, such as the memoirs of a former Soviet agent and a French edition of a book of conversations with Togliatti.
The most relevant of these was the Spanish translation (Bolloten, 1961) of Burnett Bolloten's The Grand Camouflage, which had appeared in a publishing house with strong pro-Fascist affinities, the Barcelona-based Luis de Caralt (Rocha, 2018), and was prefaced by Minister Fraga Iribarne. In his preface, Fraga praised Bolloten for showing how the Spanish Republic was firmly controlled during the Civil War by the Communists, to the extent that "only the victory of the National forces [i.e. the Francoist camp]" prevented Spain from becoming communist (Fraga Iribarne, 1961, p. 10). The consequences of a "Communist Spain" for Europe, concluded Fraga, "do not need to be explained here, at the time of Cuba" (ibid.; the Cuban Revolution had triumphed in 1959).
Therefore, the choice of Bolloten's book as a neutral source once again relied on obscuring the ideological character of the whole publication. First of all, the book has been strongly criticised from a historiographical perspective due to its use of dubious sources (Glondys, 2012, pp. 127-128). Secondly, it was translated into Spanish with funding from the Congress for Cultural Freedom (Glondys, 2012, pp. 129-130), "one of the most influential cultural institutions funded by the United States during the Cold War" (Rubin, 2012, p. 9), which had been nurtured and supported by the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) as part of its cultural battle against Communism. Finally, both the publisher (Caralt) and the author of the introduction (Fraga) had contributed to the 'branding' (marquage; Bourdieu, 2002, p. 4) of the book, that is, its insertion into a new reading frame that was clearly oriented towards a certain pro-Francoist interpretation.
Although not strictly linked with the Einaudi scandal, a third book published by the Ministry of Information andTourism in 1963 (Servicio Informativo Español, 1963c) contributed to refining the narrative developed in the previous two. El caso Grimau o la guerra civil permanente [The Grimau case, or the permanent civil war] was a response to international protests that took place after the execution (April 1963) of Julián Grimau, a member of the Spanish Communist Party who was engaged in underground propaganda. According to Francoist sources (Servicio Informativo Español, 1963c, pp. 6-9), Grimau had been involved in political crimes as a Republican officer during the Civil War, which were the basis for his trial and sentence. Importantly, El caso Grimau showed clear similarities to the two books discussed in this section, in terms of both strategy and narrative. It relied upon the same use of translation and 'replication' as a source of authority that appeared in La Marsellesa, as most of the book (1963c, pp. 31-115) is composed of facsimile press clips. On this occasion, Spanish-speaking sources are limited to newspapers from Latin America (Chile, Peru, Argentina, Costa Rica, and Mexico), which are intercalated among other clips from a variety of languages (German, French, English, Italian, Dutch, and Portuguese), accompanied by Spanish translations. Secondly, the narrative presented in its foreword is clearly connected with the one mobilised in Un cacique: international criticisms of the trial and execution of Grimau are yet another example of the "spiteful campaigns against our people", "the insistence in deceit and hypocrisy", and the "sinister deformations" of Spanish reality are part of "the anti-Spanish conspiracy" (pp. 10, 17) promoted by Communists.
Even more relevant is how the book's subtitle -"the permanent civil war" echoes an article written by Dionisio Ridruejo on the Grimau case: La guerra continuada (The Ongoing War). In this piece, Ridruejo claimed that General Franco, in order to protect his position of power and prevent his regime from breaking up, depended on an "ongoing war" against a political opponent that posed a significant threat to the status quo that his regime had built since the Civil War (Ridruejo, 1963b, pp. 342-343). In the light of "international pressure" and internal infighting (342), Franco had sought, in Ridruejo's eyes, to revitalise the feeling of threat by presenting "the activity of a communist militant [i.e. Grimau] as a continuation of such a war" (343). The authors of El caso Grimau, for their part, responded to Ridruejo's claim by turning it on its head: in their view, "the "activists" of the exile" (Servicio Informativo Español, 1963c, p. 14), and "especially Communists" (p. 17), are those who "do not accept the 1939 defeat, who live for revenge" (p. 18). Failing to acknowledge that "our civil war ended as it ended" and that it is "an immutable, irreversible event", exiles and Communists are accused of "keep[ing] a permanent state of civil war" (pp. 18-19).
In this way, the extended context surrounding these three Francoist publications -La Marsellesa de los borrachos, Un cacique para España, and El caso Grimauprovide clear evidence of both Francoist anxieties and objectives. Firstly, the Francoist regime was well aware of the existence of a strong anti-Francoist front in Italy, which the Ministry of Information tried to discredit by emphasising its links with Communism in order to present anti-Francoists as puppets and "useful idiots" in an international Communist conspiracy against Spain. Secondly, it shows a clear awareness of the importance of international opinion for the future of the regime, which was in turn manifested in a belief in the probatory role of translation, which is used in all three books as a means of enhancing neutrality and gathering support. Indeed, criticisms, facts, and arguments against anti-Francoists and, more generally, Communists are mostly drawn from a variety of foreign publications even if this frequently happens, as I have shown, at the expense of hiding the ideological choice of sources that precedes the translation process itself.
Ultimately, both the Francoist narrative and its strategy mirror those developed by the Italian compilers of the Romancero della Resistenza spagnola and Canti della nuova resistenza spagnola. While Italian anti-Francoists used translation as a means of revealing to public opinion the reality of oppression behind the narrative of progress and stability mobilised by the regime, Francoists deployed it to prove how a range of international sources supported their political and ideological stance. In this way, translation played a fundamental role in the articulation of two competing narratives that relied on a similar trope with completely different meanings. On the one hand, anti-Francoists aimed to show that the Spanish Civil War was not over, because its consequences were still felt in the present through the interaction of oppression and resistance. Meanwhile, the Francoist regime tried to counteract this narrative by presenting itagain with the help of translation, among other toolsas a mere fabrication from Communists and their allies, who believed that the Civil War was still ongoing because they had not yet come to terms with their defeat.

Conclusion
Through the reconstruction of the context and strategies of this battle of translations between Francoist services and Italian anti-Francoists, it has been possible to understand the intense activity of both camps in the early 1960s. The central role that both accorded to culture as a tool for political engagement was aligned with the increasing perception of the cultural field as a central battleground in the struggle between Communist and anti-Communist ideas at the height of the Cold War (Rubin, 2012, p. 9).
As my analysis has shown, the virulence of Francoist opposition to the publication of Canti della nuova resistenza spagnola was influenced by two factors: the acute perception that the Canti did not constitute an isolated event, but rather a significant element within a wider front of opposition to Francoism, and an evolving context in which Spain's position was shifting (US pacts, UN access, EEC application), internal problems (Miners' strike, Munich meeting, Grimau case) were mounting, and Communist activities were widespread across the world (Cuban Revolution).
Equally, both antagonist camps were aware of the decisiveness of public opinion in the development of Franco's regime, and of how translation could influence this opinion through denouncement (in the anti-Francoist case) and support (for Francoists). Detailed analysis and close reading have highlighted the way in which translation contributed decisively to the elaboration, articulation, and circulation of 'narratives' and 'alternative narratives' (as understood by Baker, 2006, pp. 2-3). The anti-Francoist narrative that presented Spain as a country in which popular resistance against its government was still active relied on the value of the translated poems and songs as testimonies of injustice. Meanwhile, the official Francoist narrative that emphasised how peace in Spain was only disturbed by Communist conspiracies sought the perceived 'neutrality' of foreign, translated sources. In this way, it has been possible to trace the way in which translation can become a multifaceted political tool through its influence in "circulating and resisting" narratives (Baker, 2006, p. 2; original italics) within different ideological frames.