Nostalgia, ideology and Francoist symbology in ROJO: A Spanish Horror Experience

Abstract

In a social, political, economic and cultural context marked by a concatenation of crises and the polarisation of citizens, Spain is facing the rise of a far-right party and with it the memory and nostalgia of Franco’s dictatorship. For this reason and knowing that video games are important instruments for the transmission of ideologies, the main objective of this work is to relate the political, social and ideological context of the country with contemporary video games that deal with historical memory, as ROJO: A Spanish Horror Experience. This study object is a horror videogame that transports the player to the house of a Francoist nostalgic, who decides to torture and murder leftists. Through an interview with the creator and a critical analysis of the discourse, the work shows how the video game reflects the resurgence of the extreme right and how the Spanishadas are positioned as important symbols to contextualise the country’s political past and present. In the end, ROJO stands as a horror video game that uses satire to send an antifascist message, using symbols that, nowadays, are part of the image that extreme right-wing political parties, such as Vox, use for their own identification.