Feud and Love

This chapter examines the censorship exacted on the Spanish translations of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, due to the censors’ disapproval of the moral messages delivered through the stories. Particularly, this chapter answers the following questions: What were the particular moral issues in the translations of Mark Twain’s works that prompted the censors’ criticisms? What was the role of moral teaching during the Francoist years? In what ways were the moral messages in Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn deemed incompatible with those promoted under Francoism, and why could such incompatibility not be tolerated? Through the analysis, this chapter demonstrates that the regime largely relied on the regulation of the moral messages in children’s literature to gain control of children’s emotions, and in this way, to strengthen its nationalistic discourse.