Shadows of the Past in Spain: Historical Policy and Collective Memory of Civil War and Francism

Abstract

The article is devoted to the study of the phenomenon of public memory about the civil war of 1936 – 1939 and the Francoist dictatorship in Spain. Another focus of the research is an analysis of the difficulties and contradictions associated with the transformations of the Spanish state historical policy, including the problems resulting from the adoption of a new law on democratic memory in the country. For twenty years, issues of memory have invariably been present in the Spanish political discourse and affect the daily life of Spaniards. This situation has been accompanied by significant media attention and wide media coverage. Numerous references to the themes of memory and the difficult past are often superficial and do not reveal the essence of the problem, forming a horizontal informational reflection that gives the illusion of saturation. The authors, analyzing the relationship of the Spaniards with their past, apply the comparative method in the context of four historical stages — the period of the Francoist dictatorship, the stage of democratic transition, democratic Spain in the 1980s – 1990s, and Spain of the 21st century. The conducted research allows us to assert that one important characteristic of the Spanish case is the lack of social consolidation and acceptance of the policy of public memory on a democratic basis. This reveals the difficulty of building a social and political consensus around the policy of memory. Turning to the history of the issue of the return of memory and noting the desire of the left political forces for a historical revenge, the authors of the article conclude that it is impossible to present a single correct presentation of democratic memory. Using the example of the denial of both the Francoist memory and the revolutionary memory of the anarchist movement, the article argues the specific character of democratic memory as a cultural phenomenon: democratic memory is multiple, it reflects and presents various interests of many social actors and does not have an exclusively liberal-democratic character.