The Struggle for a History Without Adjectives: A Note on Using Oral Sources in Spain

Abstract

gressive historians, even in the seventies, the only years worth studying were the 1930s, those of the mythic and desired Republic and Social Revolution just before the establishment of Franco's dictatorship (1939-1975). The hardships imposed on a majority of the Spanish people, at least since 1939, made it very difficult to interview. Besides, the official historiography tried to prevent the development of a history told and written in freedom. Since people were forced to keep silent, oral sources as such were forbidden and many archives were under the custody of the police and not open to the public. Probably the persistence of the dictatorship and the fear of it was in great part responsible for the retardation in the creation and proliferation of oral sources. The opposition to Franco was not able to create its own history like the resistance movements against Nazism in other places. The difficulties of the underground and afterwards