Spain enjoyed a Shakespearian revival that led to the first systematic attempt to translate Shakespeare directly from the original. This task was undertaken by Jaime Clark whose translations appeared during the First Republic. Clark's renderings were closely followed by Guillermo Macpherson’s who published during the Restoration period. In this paper the author seeks to draw the contours of the political, social and cultural situation in Spain during the First Republic and the Restoration. The author also analyses the translators' choice of plays when rendering Shakespeare and also how those plays were received by audiences and critics. Nevertheless, the main interest is to examine the ways in which the translators' political awareness influenced their work. Therefore the author has chosen Measure for Measure, a complex play full of moral, religious and sexual conflicts, and whose political resonance was either stressed or muffled in accordance with the translators' experience of the current political situation. The Shakespearian text can thus be said to have undergone a clear political manipulation.