The Baroque Sensorium: Cinematic Architecture and National Identity in Francoist Spain, 1936-1970

José Val del Omar, Filming of *Fuego en Castilla [Fire in Castile]),* circa 1957-1960.

This dissertation addresses the new discourses on architecture, media, and spatial perception emerging in Francoist Spain during the Cold War. It explores how such new modes of viewing and inhabiting spatial environments were entangled with new theorizations of the sensorium—that is, the composite action of all sensory faculties—jointly constructed by architecture, art, and techno-scientific institutions. I argue that these new theories on psychological and bodily perception governing the spaces for media consumption were enmeshed with discourses on national identity in Spain.

Mariano Velasco Durántez, Pasado y Presente del Radar y Sus Aplicaciones (Zaragoza: Tip. Heraldo de Aragón, 1948), sheet VI.

My work analyzes, for the first time, the set of interdisciplinary discussions among Francoist institutions and artists, architects, and filmmakers—all working with new electronic media in different capacities, from radar research to televisual broadcasting.

First view of Earth taken by a spacecraft received at the NASA tracking station at Robledo De Chavela near Madrid, Spain, 1966.