Historical Memory Law Research Articles

Franquismo y memoria democrática: el continuo reto de la formación ciudadana en Secundaria

Promoting political education in young people, along with instilling democratic values, is essential in our students' classroom training. However, fifteen years after the implementation of Spain's law of historical memory and amidst years of debate on the necessity of building a democratic memory around our recent history, teachers continue to face challenges when teaching recent Spanish history, encompassing the Civil War, Franco's dictatorship, and the Transition. How do students interpret present-day events in relation to the historical curricular contents they have studied during Secondary and Baccalaureate education? This paper presents an approach to understanding the perceptions of students in the 1st and 2nd years of the Baccalaureate regarding current issues related to Francoism and democratic memory. The students had been exposed to the conceptual contents of this historical period during their 4th year of ESO and 2nd year of the Baccalaureate when the study was conducted. Our research relies on the analysis of three specific questions in a questionnaire designed to elucidate their perception of a pressing social problem, exemplified by the exhumation of Franco from The Valley of the Fallen. This approach seeks to shed light on key aspects of the teaching and learning of history, particularly in the context of secondary education.

Modernist heritage and memory politics in Spain: shifting values for the adaptive reuse of Seville’s former police headquarters

The political significance of modernist heritage architecture continues to be an unsolved question, particularly its identification and conservation. In Spain, the chronology of modernism stretches through the whole of the Spanish Civil War and Franco’s dictatorship. The passing of legislation on memory politics in Spain (i.e. the 2007 Law of Historical Memory and the 2022 Law of Democratic Memory) offers a unique opportunity to address this unsolved question by discussing two uncharted heritage debates: namely, the motivations for the heritagisation of modernist architecture in Spain and the challenges in the adaptive reuse of modernist buildings with controversial histories. The former police headquarters in Seville exemplifies the complexities of both debates and to what extent conflicting views about heritage architecture may determine debates about its reuse. Through a documentary review of the heritagisation of Seville’s former police headquarters, a discourse analysis of intervention proposals and press articles and interviews with relevant stakeholders, this study explored how the rise of memory politics in Spain has changed the interpretation of the former police headquarters’ significance in the last two decades and influenced the choices for its adaptive reuse.

“Martyrs for God and Spain”. National Martyrdom in Spain from the Civil War to the Historical Memory Law

The article considers the ideology of national martyrdom in 20th century Spain, especially the cult of “martyrs for God and Spain” spread during the period of Spanish Civil War (1939–1939) and the reign of caudillo Francisco Franco (1939–1975). The author reasons that, as a mechanism for legitimization and mobilization, the idea of martyrdom for the nation was one of the integral parts of Francoist regime. The origins of this idea are traced back to several sources: “old” national martyrdom of 19th century Spain, associated with its struggle for independence from France, the sacrificial culture of local groups such as the Carlist and Jesuits, the ideology of the fascist Spanish Phalanx and some theological concepts put forward by distinguished Roman Catholic bishops in Spain. Particular attention is given to the discourse of José Antonio Primo de Rivera, the founder of Spanish fascism, who cultivated a “spirit of sacrifice” and promoted the veneration of dead Falangists as martyrs. Theory and practice of martyrdom in the Civil War are examined in relation to its conceptualization as a “Crusade”, which contributed to the junction between the images of military hero and martyr. After the end of war, this militaristic ideology became routinized and more peaceful, although preserving its unifying force. The article's final section examines the issues associated with the Valley of the Fallen memorial and the recent politics of “demartyrization” as part of overcoming the legacy of dictatorial rule. The author concludes that as long as José Antonio's body remain at the center of the Valley, state policy on “historical memory” and the cult of martyrs would remain conceptually incomplete.

Neither oblivion nor reconciliation. An analysis of post-Francoist Spanish historical memory and Transitional Justice

Authoritarian regimes seek their preservation through the systematic repression of any dissidence, leading to the perpetration of crimes against anyone who might challenge the regime's values and legitimacy. Thus, when transitioning from an authoritarian regime to a democratic system, implementing a comprehensive transitional justice process is imperative to close old wounds and ensure reconciliation and reparation between the parties. Francoism, like every authoritarian regime, was not exempt from committing serious crimes against its enemies for more than three decades. Nonetheless, when Spain transitioned from a dictatorial to a democratic model, democratization was prioritized over justice. Despite the Spanish reluctance to adopt all necessary transitional justice measures during the democratization process, the Spanish Transition has been claimed to be an exemplary case to follow and study. This article aims to overview the three legal documents that were supposed to guarantee transitional justice to the victims and the Spanish society: the 1977 Amnesty Law, the 2007 Historical Memory Law, and the recently passed 2022 Law of Democratic Memory. This article concludes that although the 2022 Law of Democratic Memory has solved some of the flaws of previous legislation, there are still some key aspects of transitional justice which remain unaddressed.

Exhuming Violent Histories: Forensics, Memory and Rewriting Spain’s Past by Nicole Iturriaga, and: Exhuming Franco: Spain’s Second Transition by Sebastiaan Faber

Reviewed by: Exhuming Violent Histories: Forensics, Memory and Rewriting Spain’s Past by Nicole Iturriaga, and: Exhuming Franco: Spain’s Second Transition by Sebastiaan Faber Omar G. Encarnación (bio) Nicole Iturriaga, Exhuming Violent Histories: Forensics, Memory and Rewriting Spain’s Past (Columbia University Press, 2022), ISBN 9780231201131, 256 pages. Sebastiaan Faber, Exhuming Franco: Spain’s Second Transition (Vanderbilt University Press, 2021), ISBN 9780826501738, 286 pages. William Faulkner’s aphorism “the past is never dead, it’s not even past” could not be more appropriate in suggesting how the past looms over contemporary Spanish politics. As Spain entered democracy in 1977, it pointedly and conveniently turned its back on the painful history of the Spanish Civil War (1936–39) and the ensuing dictatorship of Generalissimo Francisco Franco (1939–75).1 The [End Page 161] most infamous chapter in this history is what historian Paul Preston has called the “Spanish Holocaust,” a killing campaign undertaken by Franco in the years following the Civil War to eradicate all left-wing influence in Spain.2 It resulted in the execution of thousands of people because of their political beliefs. Thousands more were sent to concentration and labor camps. Most of these victims were supporters of the Second Republic (1931–1936), Spain’s first real experiment with democracy and the losing side in the Civil War. “Let bygones be bygones” was the mantra of the architects of Spain’s new democracy. This overt lack of reckoning and accountability stood in striking contrast with the contemporaneous transition to democracy in Portugal and Greece, where the old regime was held to account for its political sins. In Portugal, those who had collaborated with the Salazar dictatorship were purged from their jobs in government, universities, and even businesses. Greece’s military junta regime was put on trial for a wide range of charges, including high treason and insurrection. Instead, Spain’s political elites embraced the so-called “pact of forgetting.” Contrary to what is implied in the name, the pact of forgetting did not entail actual forgetting or censorship. Rather, this informal agreement called for avoiding public policies that would rekindle the memory of the events that drove the country into a bloody carnage during the interwar years, which historians estimate cost the lives of close to one million Spaniards, and for staying clear of using the past as a weapon during political deliberations and campaigning. The pact of forgetting also encouraged Spaniards to disremember the past and to focus on the future. Driving Spain’s project of willful political amnesia following the demise of the Franco dictatorship was the desire to avoid confrontation and seek consensus while democratic institutions, including a brand-new constitution (enacted in 1978), were under construction. To that end, a newly elected Spanish parliament enacted a sweeping amnesty law in 1977 that was supported by all the major political groups, the general public, civil society organizations, and the national media. El País, a liberal newspaper, hailed the law as “the best possible of amnesties.”3 Remarkably, the pact of forgetting proved amazingly resilient, at least in the early years of the new democracy. Indeed, it appears that for many years after Franco’s death the only reason that merited talking about the past was to stress the need to not talk about it. In 1986, on the fiftieth anniversary of the start of the Civil War, there were no official public events to mark the occasion, save for a brief statement by Prime Minister Felipe González noting that the war’s “fratricidal character made it unsuitable for commemoration . . . the Civil War is history and no longer part of the reality of the country.”4 The two books under review in this essay document and explain in separate but complementary fashion the unraveling in recent years of the pact of forgetting, and the emergence of the memory of the past as a prominent feature in contemporary Spanish politics. More specifically, these books deal with the two major political blows to the pact of forgetting. Iturriaga’s [End Page 162] Exhuming History deals with the first and most significant blow: the Law of Historical Memory. Enacted in 2007 by the Socialist administration...

"El monumento conmemorativo como dispositivo histórico-crítico. Problemática a raíz de la aplicación de las leyes de memoria histórica, memoria histórica de canarias y memoria democrática"

"This article traces the influences that both the Law of Historical Memory (LMH) exercised as the Law of Historical Memory of the Canary Islands (LMHCan) and the Law of Democratic Memory (LMD) (Law 52/2007, Law 5/2018 and Law 20/2022) implement on the Law of Spanish Historical Heritage (LPHE) and the Law of Cultural Heritage of the Canary Islands (LPCCan) (Law 16/1985 and Law 11/2019) regarding the conception of the memorial monument that, as a result, assumes the condition of problematic heritage in those cases where, due to its historical significance, activates the reasons for removal and relocation. As a result, there is a process of redistribution and reduction in the axiological heritage hierarchy that leads to the establishment of a paradigm of myopic interpretation of the monument that we have divided into three moments. It is proposed, under an exegesis that attends to the complexity of the figure of the monument, neither removal nor relocation in favor of the same objectives that the memorial laws defend."

기억의 정치학과 정동(情動) -에스테르 투스케츠의 『우리는 전쟁에서 승리했었다』

Esther Tusquets’ autobiography, Habíamos ganado la guerra was published in 2007, the year that the Law of Historical Memory was passed by the Spanish Congress. Claiming that the vanquished’ perspective on the Civil War and early Francoist period has attracted great attention in memoirs and fiction, Tusquets calls for more reflective writings from the victors’ perspective. Tusquets was born into the an upper-class bourgeois family that was affiliated with the Francoist band, however she had more in common with the vanquished. This study examines the aspects of trauma representation based on the politics of memory and affect in Tusquets’ Habíamos ganado la guerra. As a way of overcoming the limitations of Post-structuralist trauma criticism, this study analyzes the subjective, eccentric experiences and trauma of everyday life based on affect theory. Through the transition of affect that is transferred in the mother-daughter relationship, it is demonstrated that Franco’s patriarchal system of violence penetrates into women’s daily life at a microscopic level. Fear and shame transferred in the mother-daughter relationship are presented not as the emotional and psychological state but as an affect that crosses the mother’s body and is transmitted to the daughter’s body. Tusquets’ trauma narrative presents the ethic of empathy and consideration based on the potential of the resonance of affect.

Spain is Different?: Historical Memory and the "Two Spains" in Turn-of-the-millennium Spanish Apocalyptic Fictions by Dale Knickerbocker

Reviewed by: Spain is Different?: Historical Memory and the "Two Spains" in Turn-of-the-millennium Spanish Apocalyptic Fictions by Dale Knickerbocker Sara Martín (bio) SF as Historical Allegory: Apocalypse and Democracy in Spain. Dale Knickerbocker. Spain is Different?: Historical Memory and the "Two Spains" in Turn-of-the-millennium Spanish Apocalyptic Fictions. U of Wales P, 2022. 288 pp. $82 hc & ebk. Dale Knickerbocker is a professor of Hispanic Studies at East Carolina University and one of the US's most active specialists in the Spanish-language fantastic. His new book Spain is Different? is published in the Iberian and Latin American Studies series of the University of Wales Press and follows the publication of his edited volume Lingua Cosmica: Science Fiction from around the World (U of Illinois P, 2019), a fascinating tour of the many linguistic domains in which sf thrives. In contrast, Spain is Different? focuses specifically on six sf novels published in Spain between 1990 and 2005 by noted names in the field. According to Knickerbocker, these novels express in their (post-)apocalyptic plotlines anxieties regarding the history of Spain between the end of General Francisco Franco's regime (1939-1975) and the passage of the Law of Historical Memory in 2005 by José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero's Socialist government. This legislation intended, among other aims, to end the drama of the missing war victims still buried in mass graves. The title Spain is Different? alludes to the slogan that Franco's Minister of Information and Tourism, Manuel Fraga Iribarne, used in the 1960s to publicize the attractions of Spain among tourists. Knickerbocker's question is [End Page 574] whether Spain really is different—and hence the uniqueness of its apocalyptic turn-of-the millennium sf—or if it demonstrates the same preoccupations that currently articulate sf at an international level. The inevitable conclusion is that Spain is indeed different, yet it is also similar to other nations in which sf plays a similar allegorical function as a vehicle to discuss the tensions brought on by history. The novels Knickerbocker examines are Rosa Montero's Temblor [Tremor, 1990], Javier Negrete's Nox perpetua [Perpetual Night, 1996], Juan Miguel Aguilera's La locura de Dios [God's Folly, 1998], Enrique del Barco's Punto Omega [Omega Point, 2004], Eduardo Vaquerizo's Mentes de noche y hielo [Minds of Night and Ice, 2001], and José Miguel Pallarés and Amadeo Garrigós's Tiempo prestado [Borrowed Time, 2005]. Of these, only Temblor and La locura de Dios have been translated (into German and French respectively). It is to be hoped that Knickerbocker's monograph will interest prospective publishers and will result in more translations. Among the authors analyzed, all well-known in sf circles, Rosa Montero stands out as one of the most accomplished writers in Spain, as a journalist and as a novelist working in diverse genres. Knickerbocker introduces each author adequately, but readers might miss the fact that sf still occupies a marginal position in Spain beyond fandom circles. Knickerbocker also proficiently presents the theme of the "two Spains" and the historical situation of the nation at the turn of the millennium. Any minimally informed Spaniard can perceive a deep division between the more progressive, left-wing half of the country and the more backward, right-wing half. This is usually attributed to the Civil War (1936-1939) caused by Franco's coup against the legitimate democratic Republic (1931-1939), but readers of Benito Pérez Galdós's marvelous series of 46 novels, Episodios Nacionales [National Episodes, 1872-1912], will understand that the Civil War was yet another "episode" in this constant warfare between the two Spains. Knickerbocker dates this split back to King Philip V, crowned in 1700, the first monarch of the current Borbón dynasty and the man responsible for importing into obscurantist Catholic Spain the ideas of the French Enlightenment. Knickerbocker proposes that in these six sf novels the narrative about the two Spains resurfaces in a fantasy version shaped as much by the old tension between illustrated modernity and repressive religion as by current sf themes, with a special incidence of questions related...

The humour factor

This article analyses the social reaction to Francisco Franco’s exhumation from his burial place in the Valley of the Fallen at the end of 2019. This decision was taken by virtue of compliance with the so-called Historical Memory Law approved in 2007 and generated a great social debate. Apart from opinions in favour and against that decision coming from the political spectrum of the left and right, respectively, we observed a new attitude, that of humour, present in tweets and memes. By analyzing a collection of memes that circulated in Twitter and WhatsApp groups, our research shows that the new media have brought in content and symbolism that ridicule the late dictator, trivialise the treatment given to the “Caudillo” [Leader] of Spain for nearly four decades and contribute to an uninhibited interpretation of memory policies.

Spain, the Second World War, and the Holocaust. History and Representation ed. by Sara J. Brenneis and Gina Herrmann

Reviewed by: Spain, the Second World War, and the Holocaust. History and Representation ed. by Sara J. Brenneis and Gina Herrmann Ellen Mayock Brenneis, Sara J. and Gina Herrmann, eds. Spain, the Second World War, and the Holocaust. History and Representation. U of Toronto P, 2020, 913 pp. ISBN: 978 1487505707. With their co-edited collection titled Spain, the Second World War, and the Holocaust, Sara Brenneis and Gina Herrmann have compiled an outstanding body of work that addresses important gaps and lags in Spanish historiography caused in part by the comparatively late passage of the Law of Historical Memory (2007) and in part by the significant archival discoveries that were yet to be made. The subtitle, History and Representation, signals the deep dive Brenneis, Herrmann, and their contributors take to provide full historical accounts of Spaniards’ involvement in the Second World War and the Holocaust and to examine with a critical eye cultural products (memoirs; novels; newspaper articles; documentary and fictional films; posters; etc.) from the 1930s through the 2010s. The cover photo, featuring Francisco Franco at his desk, telephone and a framed photo of Adolf Hitler to his right, invites readers to rethink the snarled entanglements of the Franco regime with Hitler and Nazi Germany, a point reinforced in the volume’s numerous considerations of Spain’s political involvements in the early part of World War II, when the Axis powers appeared to be moving towards victory. In the introduction, Brenneis and Herrmann state their aims for the book: “This book is the first to engage critically with the interdisciplinary implications of the two key paradoxes that mark our understandings of Spain during the Second World War and the Holocaust: that Spain declared itself neutral yet played a role in the Second World War; and that Spain has long promulgated the myth of the Franco regime as saviour of Jews, when in fact Spain also hastened the destruction of European Jewry” (3). The editors cite Haim Avni, who invokes the infamous Expulsion of 1492 and the long centuries of Inquisition as important touchstones for understanding the history and representation of Sephardic Jews. The volume offers nine sections, or “parts,” that contextualize the history of antisemitism in Spain, Spain’s links to Jewish communities, Spanish exiles in France, Spanish Republicans in the Nazi camps, propaganda, the Blue Division, Nazis in Spain, representations of the Holocaust in contemporary Spanish and Ladino culture, and Holocaust appropriation in Spain. Brenneis and Herrmann guide readers through these major themes by usefully conceptualizing them as “a series of interlocking dramas that develop simultaneously on different stages” (14). In fact, while the volume’s 711 pages might suggest the need for some skimming, each one of the “stories” (14), or chapters, is so compelling that readers will want to absorb every word. Doing so yields an enhanced understanding of the history of Spanish Jewry and of the vexing reasons for the long silences on the topic. The Prologue, by Haim Avni, sets the stage for understanding the “points of convergence” (31) of Jews and Spaniards and highlights in particular Francoist Spain’s complicity in the bombing of Guernica, the nation’s geographical stretch in Morocco and Tangier, and its connections to Germany and Italy (44). Each section and chapter offers a compelling historical overview of the theme and, for this reviewer, new information and analyses that have greatly complemented [End Page 143] my research and approaches to questions of historical memory in Spain. Particularly illuminating chapters include but are not limited to: Jacobo Israel Garzón’s examination and archival review of Spain’s treatment of Jews from the mainland peninsula, Northern Africa, and Nazi Europe; Tabea Alexa Linhard’s “Routes of the Renowned and the Nameless: Clandestine Border-Crossing at the Pyrenees, 1939-1945,” with its references to Anne Frank, Mercè Rodoreda, Walter Benjamin, and “stateless” Jewish refugees (the “stateless” are also examined in many other chapters, including Juan M. Calvo Gascón’s on Mauthausen); and Geneviève Dreyfus-Armand’s chapter, which studies Spanish Republicans exiled in France and highlights Neus Català’s work on Spanish female resistance fighters, a topic examined in careful detail in Gina Hermann’s essay on Ravensbr...

“A Forgetting for Everyone, by Everyone”? Spain’s Memory Laws and the Rise of the European Community of Memory, 1977–2007

Historians and other scholars of memory have worked extensively on European memory politics, especially around transnational issues such as the Holocaust, as well as on Spanish memory politics, most recently in light of the exhumation of former dictator Francisco Franco. Yet there has been little scholarship to date on how nationally specific incidents, such as the Spanish Civil War and Franco regime, fit into wider trans-European narratives. This article reveals the entanglements between these local and supranational developments by examining the evolution of Spain’s memory laws and discourse, from the 1977 Amnesty Law that followed the end of the Franco regime to the 2007 Law of Historical Memory, in relation to contemporaneous European memorialization patterns. It argues that the shift from a discourse of forgetting in the Amnesty Law to one of commemoration in the Law of Historical Memory is a response to the rise of a European culture of memorialization rather than reflecting an evolution in Spain’s memory regime. By analyzing the development, text, and application of these laws, along with the political and cultural debates surrounding them in Spain and throughout Europe, this article reveals how the 2007 Spanish Law of Historical Memory, despite appearing to espouse European discourses of memorialization and amends-making, perpetuates a system of disremembering that predates most contemporary European memory politics. Ultimately, the article argues that the Law of Historical Memory suppresses the voices of victims of the Franco regime in order to bolster a narrative of Spanish national unity and European belonging.

Основные тенденции мемориальной урбанонимии Испании периода диктатуры Ф. Франко в XX–XXI веках

The paper studies urban place names of the era of the Spanish Civil War (from 1936 to 1939) and the dictatorship of Francisco Franco (from 1939 to 1975) in the context of the historical memory in contemporary Spain. The material included academic articles on historical memory, publications in the mass media, pieces of legislation, and data from the National Statistics Institute (Spain). Turning to toponyms allows us to provide insights into the problem of historical memory in Spain after the end of the dictatorship in 1975. The 1977 Amnesty Law (Ley de Amnistía de 1977) stipulated the oblivion of the events of the Franco period so as not to provoke conflict in society. In the late 20th century, the history of the Civil War and Francoist dictatorship needed to be re-examined. The research demonstrates that the current legal framework for memory in Spain is based on the Historical Memory Law (Ley de memoria histórica), adopted in 2007. The paper found that the number of urban toponyms containing symbols of the period under study, such as the names of participants in and events of the Civil War and Francoist dictatorship, has decreased significantly in recent years. However, changes in Francoist toponyms are inevitably accompanied by discussions and polemics at the level of local legislatures as well as public commemorative organizations, which are often covered in the media. Thus, the process of renaming continues to be a topical problem for Spain.

"Mistress of her own silences": The transatlantic poetry of María Acuña

In 2006, the Congress of Deputies in Spain presented a contentious bill: the Law of Historical Memory – it would be passed a year later. A long time in coming, the law sought to redress the wrongs experienced by victims of both sides of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), offering rights to the victims of the war and to victims of the close to forty-year dictatorship of General Franco. Likewise, the law condemned the Franco regime. Since then, exhumation of the repressed past, in the form of unearthing of mass graves, the granting of citizenship to those who fought on the losing side, or scholarship in fields ranging from political science to history, literature to sociology, has witnessed a burgeoning. The attempt to restore “forgotten” or “hidden” narratives that progressively become part of academic inquiry ought to include not just the notables but also the unsung voices that played a quiet yet equally relevant role in that past. Within this context of historical memory recovery, I propose a study of the unpublished poetry of María Acuña. Throughout her lifetime, Acuña would experience not only Franco’s dictatorship, but the bloodless political transition to democracy in the peninsula, as well as two violent insurgencies in Central America, where she lived for a number of years (and met an early death). First, in El Salvador during the Civil War (1979-1992), then in Nicaragua as the Sandinista Revolution unfolded from the late 1970s into the 1980s. The starkly different phases of María Acuña’s life are reflected in a poetry of great precision, passion, and, above all, a musical fluidity that merges Spanish and castúo (her regional dialect), Europe and the Americas.

A Pragma-Dialectical Approach to Memory Politics: Spanish Contemporary Memory Politics, Populism Studies, and Argumentative Dialectics

Abstract This paper establishes a dialogue between populism studies, typologies of reconstruction of the past, and argumentative dialectics. The paper analyzes what types of argumentative strategies are employed in the context of the discussions regarding Spanish memory politics and how those strategies can be associated with typologies of re-elaboration of the past (Caramani and Manucci 2019). Building from argumentative dialectics (Van Eemeren and Grootendorst 2004), the paper studies argumentation structures uttered after the endorsement of the 2007 Spanish Historical Memory Law and the proposal of the 2021 Draft Democratic Memory Law. Departing from the distinction between diverse strategies of re-elaboration of the past, namely, heroization and cancellation (Caramani and Manucci 2019), the paper questions if Spanish decision-makers’ rhetorical strategies and political decisions in the field of memory politics disclose the adoption of particular types of populist behavior. The paper claims that the argumentative tactics used, in the domain of memory politics, by Spanish left-wing leaders reveal the adoption of a heroization strategy. In contrast, the rhetoric of Spanish right-wing leaders favors a strategy of cancellation. The paper also claims that, in the Spanish case, mainly from 2018 onwards, the adoption by Spanish left-wing leaders of a heroization strategy had two consequences. First, it did not reduce the cultural opportunity structure for right-wing populism. Second, it fostered a cultural opportunity structure for the affirmation of left-wing populism. The paper selected argumentative dialectics as a methodological framework (Van Eemeren and Grootendorst 2004). The paper discusses the scientific significance of analyzing memory politics through the lenses of populism studies.

A Legacy of Violence: The Lack of Transitional Justice in Post-Franco Spain and its Impact on Victimhood

In order for a country to transform from a society in which rights were severely repressed to a society in which rights are respected and protected, the violations of the past must be properly and adequately addressed. However, instead of using the transition to democracy to confront the country’s history of violence and repression, the Spanish government and society actively stifled the memory of the Civil War and forty-year dictatorship, failing to address the country’s legacy of violence and the victims left in its wake. Despite the Spanish transition being regarded as a remarkable success story, an institutionalized historical amnesia resulted in many oppositional counter-memories as forms of cultural resistance. This paper will demonstrate how repressing memory left the door open for the legacy of political violence to persist in Spain. Prioritizing processes of transitional justice and historical memory is crucial in working toward sustainable peace in Spain and the Basque Region today. This paper will provide an overview of transitional justice and historical memory and an analysis of the impact of Spain’s lack of transitional justice, specifically regarding the politicization of victimhood. It is important to examine the implications of the pacto del olivido (pact of silence) and the 1977 Amnesty Law in rendering Franco’s victims invisible and in sustaining Spain’s legacy of political violence. Furthermore, this paper will explore how the Basque terrorist group, Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA), carried on Spain’s legacy of political violence for another four decades following the end of the Franco dictatorship. The next section of this paper will analyze how the ‘memory boom’ of the early 2000s led to greater recognition of the victims of Francoism and to the passing of the 2007 Historical Memory Law. This analysis will show how the politicization of victimhood resulted in an inequity between the measures taken to recognize and protect different victims’ groups, subsequently providing more protection for victims of ETA violence. Overall, this paper contends that, in the case of Spain, a lack of transitional justice has perpetuated a long legacy of violence and a silencing of the victims of Francoism that remain unresolved.

La memoria indolora del videojuego de historia

La formación y la consolidación de la identidad nacional y de determinadas comunidades descansan sobre la memoria y el recuerdo del pasado. En la actualidad países como Estados Unidos, España, Polonia, Alemania, Francia o la República Checa mantienen una disputa memorística en su interior que provoca problemas sociales relacionados con las políticas y las leyes de la memoria. Sirva de ejemplo el caso de España y el caso de la Ley 52/2007, de 26 de diciembre, por la que se reconocen y amplían derechos y se establecen medidas a favor de quienes padecieron persecución o violencia durante la guerra civil y la dictadura conocida popularmente como Ley de Memoria Histórica que tantos debates y enfrentamientos ha generado en la política nacional. El videojuego es un medio que puede aportar, o no, a la cultura de la conmemoración. Para evidenciar la afirmación anterior analizaremos distintos videojuegos de historia que ayudan a entender el medio como parte de esa cultura de la conmemoración construyendo el pasado y ligándolo al presente y otros que no ayudan a dicha conmemoración y reconstruyen el pasado bajo el formato hiperespectáculo.
 Palabras clave:
 Identidad, memoria, historia, videojuegos, videojuegos de historia.

Las tarjetas postales como registro de la memoria histórica

The application of Law 52/2007, of 26 December, which recognizes and expands rights and establishes measures in favour of those who suffered persecution or violence during the Spanish civil war and the dictatorship, known as the Law of Historical Memory, has led to the dismantling, and elimination in some cases, of the monuments that the Franco regime had erected in honour of their fallen during the Second Republic and the armed conflict. In spite of this disappearance, however, it is possible to know the configuration of these monuments, their locations and urban settings thanks to postcards. This text deals with the possibilities of this graphic documentary source as a witness of an unpleasant memory.

La represión franquista contra la mujer = Francoist Repression against Women

Resumen. La situación de las mujeres, en relación con los periodos históricos, siempre ha sido la de supervivencia. Tras el inicio de la Guerra Civil, y la involución en derechos, las mujeres republicanas sufrieron una doble victimización, la pérdida de derechos y seres queri­dos, y represión sobre su honor, su intimidad, o su cuerpo siendo ultrajadas, violadas, encarce­ladas, vejadas, “paseadas”, rapadas, obligadas a ingerir aceite de ricino, asesinadas, e incluso, fusilamiento en grupo, como fue el caso de las 13 rosas. El trabajo esclavo sufrido por ellas, en ocasiones, en condiciones más duras que el de los hombres.Por el bando golpista, ellas eran deshumanizadas o asesinadas sin responsabilidad para el asesino, y por el lado republicano, terminaban sus días sin el reconocimiento merecido de los compañeros de lucha o resistencia. Su situación en la dictadura posterior, fue de reducción a minoría de edad, con la cooperación de la Iglesia católica.Con la llegada de la democracia, las conquistas de derechos sociales fueron muchas, no así, los avances en feminismo. Prueba de ello es que, no será hasta abril de 2004, cuando en España se conozca la paridad en el Consejo de Ministros.La metodología de la investigación, parte del análisis de las fuentes o literatura científica, dividida en seis grandes bloques: Ley de Memoria Histórica; documentación de las comandan­cias de la guardia civil, y archivo General del Ministerio del Interior; jurisprudencia de Juzgados y Tribunales nacionales y europeos; los libros “Valientes”, de la periodista de El País Natalia Jun­quera; “San Marcos. El campo de concentración desconocido”, de las periodistas López Alonso y Gallo Roncero; así como de una entrevista al presidente José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, para la tesis doctoral del autor de esta candidatura, “procesos legales en memoria histórica”.Las heroínas fueron ellas, porque sobrevivieron.Palabras clave: mujeres, republicanas, derechos, reconocimiento, represión, asesinadas.Abstract. The situation of women, in relation to historical periods, has always been that of survival. After the beginning of the Civil War, and the involution in rights, republican women suffered a double victimization, the loss of rights and loved ones, and repression of their ho­nor, their privacy, or their body being outraged, raped, imprisoned, vexed , “Strolled”, shaved, forced to ingest castor oil, murdered, and even, group shooting, as was the case of the 13 roses. Slave labor suffered by them, sometimes, in harder conditions than that of men.For the coup side, they were dehumanized or killed without responsibility for the mur­derer, and on the Republican side, they ended their days without the deserved recognition of the comrades in struggle or resistance. Its situation in the subsequent dictatorship was re­duced to a minority, with the cooperation of the Catholic Church.With the arrival of democracy, the conquests of social rights were many, not so, the ad­vances in feminism. Proof of this is that it will not be until April 2004, when parity in Spain is known in the Council of Ministers.The methodology of the investigation, part of the analysis of the sources or scientific literature, divided into six large blocks: Law of Historical Memory; documentation of the com­manders of the Civil Guard, and General Archive of the Ministry of the Interior; jurisprudence of national and European Courts and Tribunals; the “Valientes” books, by El País journalist Natalia Junquera; “San Marcos. The unknown concentration camp “, by journalists López Alonso and Gallo Roncero; as well as an interview with President José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, for the doc­toral thesis of the author of this candidacy, “legal processes in historical memory”.The heroines were them, because they survived.Keywords: republicans rights, recognition, repression, murdered.

Símbolos religiosos y paradojas del franquismo a la luz de la Ley de Memoria Histórica

SUMARIO: 1. Planteamiento de la cuestion - 2. El catolicismo-nacionalista de ciertos simbolos evocadores de lo religioso - 3. ?Los simbolos religioso-franquistas pueden permanecer en ambitos publicos? - 3.1. Supuesto en que el simbolo religioso no ha de tenerse por vestigio franquista - 3.2. Supuesto en que el simbolo ha de tenerse por vestigio franquista - 4. Consideraciones conclusivas. ABSTRACT: The present article argues if, under the interpretation and application of the so-called Historical Memory Law, Franco’s regimen would have set the basis to divest itself as part of the Catholicism that characterized it, in terms of having some symbols that originally would have been considered religious and now they cease to be so, historically and inevitably, at least in a retrospective point of view. In other terms, for the current time to impose a type of victim, although final of Franco’s regimen in the manner of, as a paradox, for some religious symbols to cease to be, without any other possibility for its political use as far as ‘semel francoist semper francoist’ can no longer recover that religious value. This matter, whether it refers, principally to the “Cruces de los Caidos” it can also be argued for it to attain the crucifix and the Virgin Mary located in public places by order of the dictatorial regimen.

The death of historical memory? Javier Cercas's El impostor versus the legacy of Spaniards deported to Nazi camps

ABSTRACTJavier Cercas criticizes what he calls “the so-called memory industry” in his 2014 book, El impostor. While delving into the life story of Enric Marco, who was unmasked in 2005 as a false survivor of the Nazi concentration camp Flossenbürg, Cercas pronounces historical memory dead in Spain. This article retraces Marco's rise to fame against the backdrop of Spain's relevance to the Holocaust as well as seven decades of narratives by actual Spanish survivors of Nazi concentration camps published inside the country. These narratives have given increased visibility to Spanish deportees, forming a core aspect of Spain's historical memory. Countering Cercas's claim of morbidity, this article demonstrates that the recuperation of historical memory has moved from a grassroots movement to a legislative initiative and back again in Spain, particularly as concerns the legacy of Spanish Republicans deported to Nazi camps. Cercas's misplaced glorification of a false survivor and his narrow focus on the recuperation of historical memory as a collective memory of the Spanish Civil War and Franco dictatorship governed by the Law of Historical Memory notwithstanding, the movement has had a trickle-down effect on the visibility of the history of Spaniards deported to Nazi camps during World War II.