Thirty years after the death of Francisco Franco, Spain has yet to come to terms with its dictatorial past and the ghosts of its civil war. This pioneering volume explores comic cinema of the earliest and most repressive period of the Francoist regime and maps its evolution through to the mid-1960s. Largely ignored by critics who have misread cinematic production of the period as propaganda, the films discussed in this book suggest that the cultural agenda of the regime was weakened by the very same popular practices it sought to foster. Popular Spanish Film Under Franco adopts an original and innovative theoretical approach to the competing ideologies at work within Francoist culture (with regard to those in favour of the regime as well as its critics), while seeking to avoid simplistic Manichean clicȟs, and offers a sustained critique of today's cultural arbiters from both within Spain and abroad.