Since 1989, Spain has gone through a process of re-emergence of the memories of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) and Francoism (1939-1975). These newly produced memories challenge the official reading of the civil war, as established during the transition to democracy, as a “collective insanity.” As part of this process, the last three decades have produced numerous novels, documentaries, and journalistic accounts that have brought to the fore the untold stories of the repression during the civil war and its aftermath.

This dissertation offers an analysis of the influence of transnational frameworks on the reconfiguration of the cultural memory narratives of the Spanish Civil War. The selection of post-Cold War Spanish cultural texts – narrative fiction, documentary film, photography and journalism – being analyzed in this dissertation, is framed by three emblematic “spaces of transnational memory.” These are: the wars in former Yugoslavia; Forced Disappearance in the Southern Cone; and the remembrance of the Holocaust. Each of these spaces highlights a different contemporary site of agency in the production of memory, namely contemporary civil war, mass grave exhumations, and testimony. In addition, this dissertation posits affect and emotion as important mechanisms in the production of transnational memories.

This research argues that these transnational contexts of remembrance serve to reimagine Spain, proposing alternative and more “inclusive” forms of national memory and identity, often in opposition to the current Spanish “constitutional patriotism.” Transnational memory is located within the margins of the nation-state, a space of entanglement between the national and the transnational, and inhabited by those who were excluded from Spanish national identity through the forging of the Spanish nation-state.

Edited by Universitaire Pers Maastricht

Abstract: “This dossier displays a selection of the work presented during the last six years in the permanent international seminar Faces and Traces of Violence/Rastros y rostros de la violencia held monthly at ILLA-CCHS-CSIC. […] Since its beginning, the seminar has been a space for public and academic debate, and its main objective has been the development of critical, comparative and interdisciplinary analyses of different manifestations of violence (especially political and war-related violence) both historically and in the present moment, as well as the development of careful reflections regarding the intricate memory politics that have emerged as a result the contingent reactivation of these violent acts, both in the past and the present. […] The seminar sessions have witnessed lively debates on topics including the following: militaristic representations of the world; memory and mourning in Argentina and Chile; the role of forensic science in the investigation of political violence; the connections between memory, philosophy and theater; the cinematographic recycling of political violence; the forms and meaning of poetry in post-war contexts; the “transnationalization” of forced disappearances and other victimhood models; the use of media in peace-building; the gray areas of the Gypsy Holocaust; the effects of transitional justice policies in post-war Bosnia; the structural violence affecting border crossings in Northern Mexico; how material objects elicit memory in traumatic contexts; the evolution of contemporary memory politics in Spain and Latin America; transnational memory practices and identity politics in contemporary El Salvador; the social and political effects of confessions of perpetrators in the framework of truth commissions; the development of a memory “market” in Latin America; the relationship between human rights and copy rights; the painful re-elaboration of Nazism and the horrors of the Second World War in Austria and Germany; the role of the new media in the creation of new modalities of witnessing and victimhood; the contemporary management of the corpses of mass violence; the role of ruins in the making of national memories; the bureaucratic aftermath of massacres in Colombia; and the memorial processes linked to exiles, diasporas and genocides. Or, as displayed in this dossier’s selection of articles, the seminar has also touched upon other equally diverse topics such as the configuration of cosmopolitan memories on a global scale after the Holocaust; the critical analysis of the tropes and narratives used both in historiography and public debates to define Europe’s violent twentieth century; the shocking aftermath of the experience of the Soviet Gulag for some Bolshevik loyalists; the emergence of global memoryscapes in France; the politics behind the non-remembrance of the Holocaust in Hungary; the attempts to deal with the legacy of the dictatorship in Portugal; the impact of mass grave exhumations from the Spanish Civil War in the reactivation of conflicting memories of the conflict; the difficulties in accessing and making sense of the archives of violence in the aftermath of Spanish dictatorship; the tensions between memorial places and national heritage in post-Pinochet Chile; and the enormous power of forced disappearances to disrupt the social fabric in contemporary Mexico. […]”

Francisco Ferrándiz (ILLA-CCHS, CSIC)

Culture & History Digital Journal

Resumen : A pesar de la abundante literatura existente sobre las víctimas del nazismo, el drama de la deportación de los republicanos y antifascistas andaluces a los campos nazis sigue siendo un tema muy desconocido. Todavía es predominante la idea de que los campos de concentración fueron ideados para el exterminio del pueblo judío en exclusividad. Y genera contrariedad, estupor y sorpresa que en esos siniestros recintos hubiera personas vestidas con raídos trajes a rayas que hablaban con acento andaluz y soñaban con sus pueblos.
La obra ofrece un impactante documental y una serie de textos de carácter divulgativo donde se desgrana, desde distintas disciplinas, la trayectoria de estos republicanos andaluces y españoles y la perversa naturaleza del universo concentracionario nazi. El testimonio desgarrador, tanto de los deportados supervivientes, como de los familiares, especialmente de las mujeres, que quedaron sumidos en la más absoluta incertidumbre y desolación ante la falta de noticias de sus seres queridos, adquiere un valor fundamental como herramienta pedagógica que favorezca el debate y la enseñanza de ese episodio de nuestra historia para la promoción social de los valores éticos y la cultura de paz.

Editorial: Aconcagua Libros.
Ciudad: Sevilla.
ISBN: 978-84- 96178-93-9
Páginas: 224