Introduction: The Future of Memory in Spain

Abstract

Memory as 'un proyecto de futuro'In La literatura en la constuccion de la ciudad democratica, Manuel Vazquez Montalban states of his theme (1998: 10), 'no aludimos estrictamente a un determinado sistema urbanistico materializado, sino a la organizacion misma de la vida y a una espectativa de historia, de proyecto de futuro'. This sense of the role of cultural production within the democratic construction of society is highly appropriate to the experience of memory in contemporary Spain, for the recent 'boom' in memory has become entangled with discussions about the strengths and weaknesses of Spanish democracy in recent years. Memory, in this sense, is closely linked to arguments over projects for the future, yet memory studies are frequently seen as focused on the past, as Ribeiro de Menezes argues in her article.Glancing backwards, this Special Issue marks not only ten years since the 2007 'Ley de Memoria Historica', as Spain's most recent memory legislation is commonly known,1 but almost two decades since the latest upsurge in memory debates. Then again, anniversaries in the recent past are easy to find. In 2017 we are 25 years from Spain's hosting of the Olympics in Barcelona, the World Exhibition in Seville, and the European Capital of Culture in Madrid. We are also 25 years from the controversial commemoration of the 'discovery' of America in 1992, an anniversary that, since it also marked the Catholic Monarchs' Edict of Expulsion against Jews, posed uncomfortable questions about exclusion within Spanish society that might be seen as the early seed of the current memory discussions. We are 35 years from the first Partido Socialista Obrero Espanol (PSOE) victory in 1982; 39 years from the approval of the 1978 Constitution; and 40 years from the Moncloa Pacts that transformed the economy at a time of crisis. Looking further back, it is 60 years since Opus Dei technocrats joined the Francoist government in 1957, heralding an earlier economic turning point. Seventy years ago witnessed the Law of Succession, which named Franco Caudillo for life, and 80 years ago saw the Barcelona 'May Days'. Finally, it is exactly a century since the 1917 crisis, with its social and constitutional upheavals. Significant dates, in short, abound, and one could begin to weave a historical narrative linking several of these dates. The question is, though, to what purpose? What might certain dates mean at any particular point in time? What is the significance, and what are the consequences, of linking them in a coherent narrative? Such concerns for the discursive construction of the past and its implications for the present are characteristic of the emerging field of Memory Studies. What is less acknowledged at times is the extent to which such a narrative is not just a reading of the past, but also a projection of the future.When, in the opening chapter of La literatura, Vazquez Montalban speaks of 'memoria historica' he is referring to history in a fairly traditional sense as an objective glance backwards, 'desprendida de cualquier posibilidad de falsificacion' (1998: 48). However, in the second chapter he moves on to speak of memory - both personal and collective - as a form of desire, designating the process of memory's reconstruction a 'propuesta de futuro' (1998: 77).2 Vazquez Montalban is discussing the so-called mid-century generation of writers (such as Blas de Otero, Gil de Biedma, Juan Goytisolo) and their response to living under a regime that had effectively abolished memory, yet his words are prophetic for the role of literature, and particularly narrative fiction, in the emergence of new memory debates in Spain since the turn of the millennium. If that mid-century generation forged a critical voice that was essential in the construction - albeit somewhat indirectly, in that they were writing under a dictatorial regime - of an oppositional vision of reality, Spain's new authors of memory have, over the course of the past two decades, articulated a series of at times combative responses to the memory horizon of the Transition, setting their works the moral task of giving voice to perspectives that were either silenced or given little credence in civic discourse. …