Abstract
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>Federico Moreno Torroba (1891–1982) was a celebrated zarzuela composer, his greatest work being Luisa Fernanda (1932). A conservative, he fled Madrid during the Spanish Civil War to seek the relative safety of Navarre. After the war, he returned to Madrid and resumed composing and producing zarzuelas. In 1947, he took his zarzuela company on a tour of Mexico, which had supported the Republican government. During this tour, he composed a zarzuela rooted in Mexican regional folklore, El orgullo de Jalisco, which premiered in September. Despite public and critical acclaim of his stage works, Spanish expatriates denounced his tour as mere Francoist propaganda. Yet, upon Torroba’s return to Spain, the Franco regime showed no appreciation for his efforts, which he resented. Like many cultural figures of this period, Torroba does not fit into a tidy ideological category; in fact, he had good reason to feel estranged from all political factions.</jats:p>