A “tale of two countries”: Narratives of hearts, patients and doctors in the Spanish press

Abstract

In this article we explore how the Spanish written press--ABC, La Vanguardia, and Blanco y Negro--and the official newsreel No-Do, created and disseminated a narrative about heart transplantations at the end of the 1960s. We consider how Franco's regime used Christiaan Barnard's heart transplants to legitimize the Spanish dictatorship and as a means of signifying scientific progress, modernization and national pride. The Spanish press created the plot of the first transplantations like that of a television series, presenting daily installments on the patients' progress, dramatizing the stories and ensuring the public's emotional attachment. The three main characters in the story: donors, patients and surgeons, formed a symbolic, indivisible narrative triangle endowed with singular meaning. This Spanish narrative of organ transplant technology was deployed through what we have called "a tale of two countries", that, emulating the South African's success, constructed in Martínez-Bordiú, Franco's son-in-law, a home-grown, masculine scientific personality capable of performing heart surgery and endorsing Franco's investment in scientific modernization.

An Interpretive Approach to Religious Ambiguities around Medical Innovations: The Spanish Catholic Church on Organ Donation and Transplantation (1954–2014)

“…On one hand, organ transfer enjoys a peculiar cultural salience in Spain, and has done so since its early days (Herrero Sáenz 2022 ). The Francoist regime made a considerable effort to publicize Spanish surgeons’ achievements in transplantation, with the intention of counteracting negative perceptions of Spain and signaling development to both domestic publics and the international community (Danet 2013 ; Danet and Medina-Doménech 2014 , 2015 ; Herrero Sáenz 2020 ). Later, successive democratic governments have made a substantial investment in building an effective organ procurement system and in encouraging the population to donate their organs (or, more often, their relatives’).…”

Donación de sangre y medicina transfusional en la prensa española

“…Existen diversos estudios que analizan la efectividad de las campañas de promoción de la donación de sangre, entendiéndolas como un determinante más en la motivación de los donantes (Harrington et al, 2007;Gaston Godin et al, 2007;Nilsson Sojka y Sojka, 2008), o que abordan su relación con el conocimiento y actitudes frente a la donación que circulan entre la población de un lugar determinado (Alam y Masalmeh, 2004;Zaller et al, 2005). Sin embargo, aunque en el caso de la donación de órganos sí que hay estudios que analizan simbólicamente los temas abordados en prensa, su contenido discursivo o las narrativas que generan (Feeley y Vincent, 2007;Quick, Kim, y Meyer, 2009;Danet y Medina, 2015;Feeley, Mally, y Covert, 2016), no parecen existir estudios similares que analicen los contenidos simbólicos de la cobertura en prensa sobre donación de sangre, ni en España ni en otros países.…”

Inhaltsverzeichnis

“… Bonah/Laukötter 2015; Bonah 2015;Danet 2015; Laukötter 2015; Winkler 2015;Bonah/ Cantor/Laukötter 2018. 15 Borge 2017 Dow 2019; Gregory 2015; Olszynko-Gryn 2017; Parry 2013.…”