Foreign literature was a threat to Franco’s Spain. Translations produced at that time were subjected to a thorough vetting aimed at identifying subversive content. Censors were free to redact or even rewrite entire passages of works considered potentially dangerous. Through the study of literary translations published during this period, it is possible to observe the extent to which dissident or anti-establishment ideas could be neutralized or transformed into discourses that were benevolent to the ruling power. Most of these foreign works have been re-translated since the end of the dictatorship; others, however, still circulate in the censored form in which they were published. This is the case of Émile Zola’s La Terre: the novel, which attracted the wrath of critics and authorities in Paris, London, and Rome for its supposed immorality, even obscenity, was translated twice into Spanish during Franco’s dictatorship. However, in these versions, the most problematic passages are those with religious content. The anti-religious feelings characteristic of the peasant community depicted in this novel from the Rougon-Macquart series is significantly distorted, and the accompanying phenomenon of de-christianization at times gives way, in the two translations, to a strengthening of Christian values. Through the analysis of these versions in line with Francoist orthodoxy, this study aims to reconstruct the micro-history of Zola’s great peasant novel in the context of its importation into the literary system framed by the Spanish dictatorship, by examining the processes of reception, censorship, and appropriation to which it was subjected in order to ensure its ideological conformity.