2014 Alejandro Jose Gomez-del-Moral ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

323 Pages·2014·13.37 MB·English

© 2014
Alejandro Jose Gomez-del-Moral
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
BUYING INTO CHANGE:

CONSUMER CULTURE AND THE DEPARTMENT STORE

IN THE TRANSFORMATION(S) OF SPAIN, 1939-1982

By

ALEJANDRO JOSE GOMEZ-DEL-MORAL

A dissertation submitted to the
Graduate School-New Brunswick
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
In partial fulfillment of the requirements
For the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
Graduate Program in History
Written under the direction of
Temma Kaplan
And approved by
________________________________
________________________________
________________________________
________________________________

New Brunswick, New Jersey
October 2014
ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION
Buying Into Change: Consumer Culture and the Department Store in the
Transformation(s) of Spain, 1939-1982
by ALEJANDRO JOSE GOMEZ-DEL-MORAL

Dissertation Director:
Temma Kaplan

This dissertation examines how the development of a mass consumer society
during the dictatorship of Generalissimo Francisco Franco (1939-1975) inserted Spain
into transnational consumer networks and drove its democratization. As they spread,
Spain’s first modern department stores, supermarkets, consumer magazines, and
advertising helped create a public sphere when the Franco regime had curtailed
opportunities for public life. In these stores, Spanish consumers encountered foreign
products and lifestyles that signaled cosmopolitanism and internationalism, undermining
the dictatorship’s foundational discourse of Spanish exceptionalism. With these products
came subversive ideas on issues like gender equality, which undercut Francoist
patriarchy. Despite these emancipatory tendencies, Francoists also used Spain’s new
mass consumption politically: premier Spanish department store Galerías Preciados,
owned by a conservative Franco supporter, continued to govern its workers according to
Francoist precepts well into the 1970s. Yet in the end, the consumer society forged in
Spain’s department stores and magazines eroded the integrity of the Franco regime’s
sociopolitical project and helped set the stage for the nation’s transition to democracy in
the late 1970s and integration into the European Economic Community in the 1980s.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Completing a Ph.D. is a long, daunting, and difficult process that would have
been impossible without the advice and support of a number of individuals, especially the
members of my dissertation committee. I would like to thank Temma Kaplan, my
advisor, for her guidance at all stages of my coursework, exams, and the researching and
writing of this dissertation. Her efforts to refine my arguments and most especially my
(often verbose) prose, as well as her kind encouragement, consistent support for my ideas
and intellectual growth, and considerable help during the job application process have
helped me produce a better dissertation, and made me a similarly better (and employed)
scholar. It was under Seth Koven’s direction that I first considered the role that retailers
could play in transmitting social and cultural notions across borders, and his early
encouragement to remain aware of class as a factor in Spain’s consumer revolution has
stayed with me throughout the writing of this dissertation. Jochen Hellbeck likewise
pointed me to concepts of biopower that have helped shape the way I have envisioned the
Franco regime’s sociopolitical project. Finally, Aurora Morcillo’s historiographical and
research advice as I began my research, particularly in directing me to the FOESSA
institute, has been similarly useful, as has her ongoing encouragement.
Beyond my committee, I would like to thank Phyllis Mack for guiding the
research that began this dissertation, Dawn Ruskai for her incalculably extensive help
over seven years of graduate study, as well as several scholars in Spain who have helped
me, including Javier Muñoz Soro, as well as José Álvarez Junco, Stephen Jacobson, and
Pilar Toboso Sánchez for kindly providing me affiliations with Spanish universities as I
applied for a Fulbright grant to Spain. Lastly, I would like to thank Igor Cacho Ugalde at
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the Archivo General de la Universidad de Navarra, Javier Tébar at the Fundació Cipriano
García – Arxiu Històric de CC.OO. de Catalunya, Antonio Mingo at the Fundación 1o de
Mayo – Archivo de Historia del Trabajo, and the archivists and librarians at the Archivo
Regional de la Comunidad de Madrid, the Archivo General de la Administración, the
National Libraries of Catalonia and Spain, and the Rockefeller Family Archives for their
help as I conducted my research.
The research for this dissertation would have similary been impossible without
the support from several generous funding organizations. These include the Program for
Cultural Cooperation Between the Spanish Ministry of Culture and United States
Universities and the Mellon Foundation, which provided me travel grants at crucial
points in my research. They include the Rutgers University Graduate School – New
Brunswick, which similarly made it possible for me to research in Spanish archives with
a Pre-Dissertation Travel Award, and by subsequently granting me a Louis Bevier
Dissertation Completion Fellowship, allowed me to devote 2012-2013 exclusively to my
dissertation. I would also like to thank – again – the Rutgers Department of History, who
generously permitted me a second year of dedicated dissertation-writing through the
award of a Warren and Beatrice Susman Memorial Dissertation Completion Fellowship,
and for various small grants that eased the financial strain of research and conference
travel. I would like to thank my alma mater, Amherst College, for the award of a Forris
Jewett Moore Fellowship for Graduate Study in History. Finally, I would remiss if I did
not thank Teresa Delcorso and the Rutgers’ GradFund office for their invaluable help in
putting together the applications for these grants and fellowships.
Most of all, I have to thank my family and friends, whose support has on a
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personal level been most important of all. I thank my colleagues, Arnout van der Meer,
Steve Allen, Adam Zalma, Annie Kinkel, Elizabeth Churchich, Patrick Zimmerman,
Allison Salazar, Lauren Saxton, and Matt Friedman for their moral and professional
support. Arnout, Adam, Steve – I will miss our Hungarian Pastry Shop sessions. I would
also like to thank my friends, Joke van Oers and Peter Bulmer for their solidarity over the
years. I cannot thank my parents, Al Ritchie and Maria de Lourdes Guerra, enough for
their love and support during this process – impossible to fully describe here – as well as
for encouraging me to pursue graduate study in the first place. I thank my father- and
mother-in-law, Jack and Colleen Mahaney, for their understanding as I spent too much of
several Christmases perched on their couch organizing documents and writing, and would
like to thank my many relatives in the Guerra family for bearing with my work-induced
silences. I extend a sincere “gracias” to my family in Spain, including my grandmother
Maria Luisa Peire, my uncles Carles and Luis Gómez del Moral, and my aunts and
cousins for the affectionate welcome they have always extended me during my trips to
Barcelona, and add special thanks to the Gómez del Moral-Buisán family for providing
me a copy of my great-uncle Alfonso Buisán Pérez’s personal memoirs, which was a
valuable material for my discussion of Sears of Spain in Chapter Four.
Finally, and most of all, I would like to thank my wife, Kat Mahaney, for her
immense love, support, forbearance, and valiant (if mostly unsuccessful) attempts to keep
my sane during this process, as well as the many revisions and advice she has provided
me over the years as a respected colleague. There are no words to encompass how much
you have done for me. This dissertation is dedicated to you, to my mother, and to baby
Gomez-del-Mahaney.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

Abstract………...….....………………………………………………………...…….........ii

Acknowledgements......………………………………………………………...…….......iii

Table of Contents….....………………………………………………………...……........vi

List of Tables…...……...………………………….…………………………...…….......vii

List of Illustrations...............………………………….…………………………...…….viii

Introduction……...……………………………………………………………...……........1

Chapter

1 The Department Store and the Formation of a Spanish Mass Consumer Society
Under the Early Dictatorship, 1939-1957……………………………..…….....38

2 Emerging Mass Consumption, Gendered Consumer Magazines, and the First
Rumblings of Boom-Era Cosmopolitanism, 1937-1956………….......……….88

3 Modernity, Cosmopolitanism, and Sociocultural Change in the Initial
Expansion and Professionalization of the Grocery and Mass Advertising
Fields, 1956-1966……………....................................………………..……...151

4 “On That Day, Borders Did Not Exist”: The Department Store, the Consumer
Press, and the Social Liberalization of Spain, 1960-1975………….....……...212

Conclusion and Epilogue: “The Future is Already Here”……………...…………...….275

Bibliography…...……………………………………………………………………….291
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LIST OF TABLES

Page

Expansion of Galerías Preciados, 1939-56….…………………….…………...…….......44

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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Page

“Treason Against the [Commercial] House”…………………………………...……......61

“Four Recruits, Four [Store] Resignations”….........…………………………...…….......65

Comic Strip, “Boliche, El Gato del Estudio” (“Boliche, the Studio’s Cat”)………….....75

“No, Mama, nobody’s here; Pepito and I are playing house”…………………...............79

“No Comment”……........……………...………..……………………………...……..... 79

Las Muchachas de Azul, Movie Poster (1957)………..………………………..……......82

“Un cutis terso y nacarado…[como] Shirley Johns”….........………...............…...........113

“Para poner el pelo como Marilyn Maxwell…use siempre Marinalba”……….……….113

Table of Ideal Female Proportions, Funcionarias…………………..………….............119

“Your Husband Does Not Dare Tell You…”…..………………………...…….............127

“Stop Worrying and Doing Numbers, Darling: with Almacenes Jorba’s
Credit Service, I’ve Bought Everything We Need This Winter, and
We’ll Pay The Regular Retail Price in Comfortable Installments”……………….........135

“Don Antonio’s Chat”…...……….…………………………………………………….171

“Learn Economics with the Story of the Day”………………………………...…….....171

Model of a well-signed and renovated SPAR autoservicio……….…………...…….....180

Autoservicio SPAR-Amancio Ortuña, Oviedo, 1962……………..…………...…….....180

Agency Logo and Entrance, Ruescas-McCann-Erickson, S.A………………...…….....203

IPRA Flier,“Here at last is your passport to joy!”……….……………..……...…….....207

Don Quixote, Logo of the 1966 IPRA Annual Meeting………………..……...…….....207

Sears-Barcelona’s “Confederate High Command”…….……………………....…….....213

Puerta del Sol, 1971……………………………....................................................….....225

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Hotel Florida, Plaza de Callao, 1964…………………………...............……...…….....225

Nuevas Galerías and Galerías Preciados - Callao ………............…………...…...….....225

Don Magazine Model Steals Reader’s Suit, Emasculating Him ……...........…....….…255

“Terlenka Proclaims Freedom of Fashion”……………............…………...……...........257

“Copan Satisfies”……………….............................................………………...…….....257

Noti-Sears Cartoon, “Nudist Beach”………………………………..................…….....270

Noti-Sears Cartoon, “Christmas 1976”………………………………...............…….....271

Noti-Sears Cartoon, Santa and the Magi at High Noon…………......................…….....287

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