Now and Forever: Creating Knowledge to Honor People

Abstract

After the restoration of democracy in Spain, the victims of the dictatorship were never recognized and the murderers were never judged. Silence was the norm in reference to the Civil War, the dictatorship, and the people who fought for democracy. Only a few civil society organizations and other similar groups tried to reclaim the memory of the victims by looking for their remains in mass graves and ditches and telling a different history than the official one presented in the textbooks. One of these groups is adult learners in the adult education school M. R. in Seville, Spain. They try, from the stories of common people, to create new knowledge and to restore the memory of and honor the victims. They are doing this by recovering oral testimonies and biographies and publishing them as a collective history. In the article, I will present the research conducted by these adult learners. It can be considered participatory research because it enables individuals to restore their memories, to create new knowledge confronting the official narrative, and, through publications and public speeches, to disseminate this knowledge and organize community practices honoring the victims.