Abstract
Indice (ie ‘index’) is a bi-monthly review of political literary and intellectual affairs with a readership of about 30,000. Its aim is to keep Spaniards informed of developments in cultural and social fields in and outside Spain, and a typical number contains reviews of translations, interviews with foreign or national authors or political figures, analyses of trends in art and editorial comment on Spanish and world affairs, etc.
Indice has been in existence for more than twenty years, during which time it has several times collapsed and been reborn with new policies and attitudes adjusted to changed circumstances. This built-in resilience makes it difficult to talk of the review as a single entity. In its present stage, which has lasted about five years, it is in Spanish terms distinctly radical and often daringly critical of the régime's policies, and in this critical attitude it has been consistent, always testing the censors’ patience to its limit, though usually careful to avoid confrontation.
In politics it has inevitably been obliged to avoid defining itself in terms of right and left, since to be identified as a left-wing review is, in Spain, to invite instant suppression. Editorials tend to reject the concepts of socialism and capitalism in favour of vague appeals to morality and civic responsibility. This approach has earned Indice attacks from several quarters for its ’ confusionism ‘; but the charge presupposes an alternative which does not exist in Spain.
In intellectual and cultural affairs Indice has consistently attacked the idea of censorship and drawn attention to the serious lack of information in the country about Spanish society and politics. Consequently Indice sets itself the task of educating its readers in a way slightly unfamiliar to British readers. The effect is an impression of dilettantism — articles on, say, Yugoslavia, drugs, Sartre, how computers work, current French affairs, etc. — familiar in Spanish journalism, and produced by a crying need for news about technological, intellectual and political events.
By caution, compromise and cunning Indice has survived, and with Triunfo is the most liberal and courageous high-circulation periodical in the country. Journalism aimed at the intelligentsia is allowed certain liberties forbidden to mass-circulation newspapers, and the, authorities will tolerate a learned study on Debray or Fanon where they will cut comment on popular issues like divorce or the role of the clergy. Indice is obliged, then, to pitch its articles just over the heads of what the censor would call the masses but low enough to keep a readership which extends at least some way beyond the educated middle classes.
The recent suspension of Triunfo for six months for an article advocating divorce was a warning for this sort of review. So was the suppression of the daily newspaper Madrid at the beginning of 1972. The censors in Spain are careful to remain arbitrary and whimsical lest journalists imagine they have rights. It is unlikely that Indice will avoid the attention of the censors in the future, or possible suspension or even suppression if the regime feels public debate is becoming too specific or too heated.
In the meantime, however, Indice is insisting on its rights and recently took the bold step of publishing a complete list of articles that had been censored in the period since 1954. The list is impressive both as a demonstration of Indice's independence of viewpoint and, more important, as a catalogue of the Spanish censors’ tastes and idiosyncracies. We republish it below as a guide to the development of the censorship in Spain in the post-war period. It is prefaced by Indice's editorial comment on the subject and a note explaining the background to the list, which appeared in the issue for November/December 1971.