Abstract
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>The most successful Spanish films during the Spanish Civil War were made at the UFA studios in Berlin, where director Florián Rey filmed Spanish folkloric musicals with the Argentinean/Spanish diva Imperio Argentina. These films involved transnational interests around the diplomatic relationships between Franco and Hitler, as well as the possibility of a German film market in Latin America. This chapter contextualizes Spanish cinema in the 1930s, with special emphasis on the key role of folkloric musicals and the importance of the transnational actress, singer, and dancer Imperio Argentina. It then focuses on Rey’s La canción de Aixa (1939), which projects a colonial vision of Spain over Morocco, as an extension of an idealized and nostalgic union between both countries that found support in Francoist Spain. The chapter also argues that this film was the breeding ground for Franco’s propagandistic “crusade” cinema, filmed in Spain during the immediate postwar period.</jats:p>