In 1939, when the Spanish civil war had recently ended, avant-garde humorists Miguel Mihura and Tono published an absurdist propaganda ‘novel’, María de la Hoz[María of the Sickle], about the republican zone during the conflict. Unlike other Francoist propaganda pieces of the time, it did not focus on the violence or the alleged moral degeneracy of the ‘reds’ but ratheron what its authors perceived as the absurdity of egalitarianism and the progressive ideals. The novel, while not contradicting the emerging official ideology, conspicuously overlooked some of its key tenets, particularly those related to nationalism, Catholicism and Franco’s leadership. This article contextualises María de la Hozin the development process of Spanish avant-garde humour and in Francoist propaganda fiction duringand immediately afterthe civil war in order to analyse the ideological stance it represented and, potentially, reinforced. As a political piece, the book seems to convey the position of an affluent middle class who did not enthusiastically believein Francoism but preferred it to the republican alternative, caricatured as a communist regime by nationalist propaganda.