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GUILLERMO MARÍN INTRODUCTION As for the general political environment, I will only note the great influence that the course of the current war exerts on it, to the extent that it has improved due to recent favourable events for the Axis.[...] The influence of the international situation on the atmosphere is palpable. Alfonso Sanz Gémez. Provincial chief of the Falange in Vitoria (Alava). February, 1941! This paper approaches the impact that, in a traditional Spanish city like Vitoria, the presence of Nazi Germany had between 1936 and 1944. One of the fundamental goals of this work is to gauge the degree of effectiveness of the different pro-German initiatives which, during this period, were promoted both by local authorities and by Germany itself, through its solid contacts with the Francoist front during the Spanish Civil war and with the Franco regime afterwards. In other words, we have tried to measure the success of the pro-German propaganda in its project to create a completely new sense of identity for the population of this city of about 40,000 inhabitants at the height of 1936’, based on affinity towards Germany, through a ,,micro” study that made this work accessible: the case of the city of Vitoria. For this purpose, we have analysed several different sources. The most important source has been the local press, which describes in detail during the chronology proposed a whole series of initiatives designed to build and promote this ,new way of understanding the world” that was sought to be implemented: tributes and parades, German products, a clearly pro-German narrative of the Second World War (especially until 1943), and so on. We have combined this source with an analysis of others with the aim of trying to model an approach that could balance the logical subjectivity of the local press in a context of totalitarian / authoritarian dictatorship. And in this sense, sources such as abundant photography from the period, official sources intended for state-internal use, or oral sources, have also been very important and useful. 1 Translated from the original “En cuanto al ambiente politico, inicamente consignaré la gran influencia que en él ejerce el rumbo de la actual guerra, por lo que aquel ha mejorado al producirse los ültimos acontecimientos favorables para el Eje [...]. Se deduce la influencia que en el ambiente deja sentir la situacidn internacional”, Alfonso Sanz Gémez: Jefe Provincial de Falange en Alava. Febrero de 1941: Archivo General de la Administracién, Madrid, Alcala de Henares, sign. 51/20545. ? Antonio Rivera: La ciudad levitica. Continuidad y cambio en una ciudad del interior (Vitoria, 1876-1936), Vitoria, County Council of Älava, 1992. + 92 +
