Title: Postmodern paletos : immigration, democracy, and globalization in Spanish narrative and film, 1950-2000 /
Authors: Richardson, Nathan E., 1968-
Publisher: Bucknell University Press ; Associated University Presses,
Year: 2002
Subjects: Spanish fiction History and criticism.; Rural-urban migration in literature.; Motion pictures Spain; Rural-urban migration in motion pictures.; Rural-urban migration Spain History
Abstract: "When Spanish dictator Francisco Franco legalized internal immigration in 1947 he unwittingly inaugurated the greatest period of urban expansion and rural de-population that Spain had known. During the next two decades, nearly four million citizens would move from Spain's traditional pueblos perdidos to overburdened urban metropolises. Along with wooden trunks and baskets of chickens, the immigrants (or paletos, as they were often called) bore on their journey the weight of centuries of ideological meaning tied to the geographic regions they were traversing. To abandon rural Spain had come to signify a rejection of manhood, wealth, Christian values, and even Spanishness itself. Paletos, however innocent they may have appeared, were not ideologically neutral.