Whatever the reason, the truth is that most citizens are not aware that in Spain there are still cultural works with Francoist censorship in full democracy.
The Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory has been warning of this situation for some time and has even formally asked the Spanish government to act to end what it considers an "aggression against freedom of expression".
Dr Jordi Cornellà-Detrell, senior lecturer in Hispanic Stuides at the University of Glasgow's School of Modern Languages and Cultures, has seen how literature is still affected by this problem and, in fact, he says that it is still common to find Spanish and foreign novels in circulation in their version censored by the Franco regime.
"I wanted to see what had happened before, and I realised that censorship was affecting the present," Dr Cornellà-Detrell.
His speciality is English-speaking authors, such as Ernest Hemingway and James Baldwin. The academic has located works with Francoist censorship both in Spain and in Latin American countries, such as the novels Across the River and into the Trees (Hemmingway) and Nada Personal (Baldwin), respectively.
Dr Cornellà-Detrell said that in some cases the censorship consisted of eliminating allusions to the civil war or certain comments that were considered offensive or contrary to the values of the regime, but in other cases this intervention could completely change the spirit of the work.
And he warns that, as in the case of cinema, it is very difficult to reverse this situation, since censored versions are still available in public libraries and, even when a work is republished, it is usually done from the version altered by the Francoism.
Ferrán Alberich, winner of the 2022 National Prize for Film and Audiovisual Heritage, is perfectly aware of this reality, as he has been dedicated for decades to the recovery, restoration and dissemination of Spanish film heritage through his work at the Spanish Film Archive and the Film Archive of Catalonia.
"Almost all the Spanish films that were censored are still censored. In other words, the censorship cuts have not been replaced in the films," Mr Alberick said and gives as an example the case of 'Sister Citroën', which continues to be broadcast without a scene in which the actress Gracita Morales recites the highway code with the rest of the nuns in the refectory instead of their prayers.
The case of foreign films that were censored is different because, as Mr Alberich explains, it is usual for distributors interested in re-broadcasting them to import the complete versions from their respective countries of origin.
However, with most Spanish films mutilated during the Franco regime, censorship continues, mainly because at the time "there was no practice of systematically saving the cut scenes" and only in some cases did the frames with the original scenes survive.
"We would have to do reconstruction work, restoration, which many companies are not interested in for economic reasons," says the filmmaker.
These technical and economic difficulties make it very difficult to see films censored by the Franco regime without cuts, although there are exceptions such as 'Spanish Fury', by Francesc Betriú, recently restored at the Filmoteca de Catalunya by Alberich and his team in its complete version.
Sources from the Spanish Film Archive confirm the difficulties in putting an end to censored versions of Spanish films, as in most cases it would be necessary to do an investigation "for months" until the original frames are found and the work is recomposed in its entirety.
And they add that the situation is more complicated to reverse considering that most of these film productions affected by Franco's censorship are not owned by the State, so "they are totally beyond public control".
However, in some cases the distributors go directly to the Spanish Film Archive to request certain films from their collection and here, at least, the centre itself tries to avoid providing a censored version and always opts for the original, if it exists.
This is also usually complicated because there is still a lot of work to be done in this regard and, at the moment, only a third of the films on which censorship cuts are maintained are identified in the Spanish Film Archive.
Both Dr Cornellà-Detrell and Mr Alberich agree on the difficulty of solving this situation, but the Glasgow academic believes that it would be much simpler if measures had been taken in the first years of democracy.
"It would have been necessary to have a public debate to solve this issue earlier, for example in the 80s, and we would be in a much better situation ...but in the transition it was not discussed," he said
For his part, Dr Cornellà-Detrell believes that in the world of cinema there is not much will to solve this situation because the films that continue to be broadcast in their censored version "work perfectly" among a "nostalgic" audience that does not even know that there is an original version, so they do not miss it or claim it.
The 2022 Democratic Memory Law does not address the reality of the survival of the censorship, a problem that is not present in the public debate and on which the Government does not plan to adopt any measures for the time being.