Unearthing Franco's Legacy

Description

Unearthing Franco's Legacy: Mass Graves and the Recovery of Historical Memory in Spain addresses the political, cultural, and historical debate that has ensued in Spain as a result of the recent discovery and exhumation of mass graves dating from the years during and after the Spanish Civil War (1936-39). The victor, General Francisco Franco, ruled as a dictator for thirty-six years, during which time he and his supporters had thousands of political dissidents or suspects and their families systematically killed and buried in anonymous mass graves. Although Spaniards living near the burial sites realized what was happening, the conspiracy of silence imposed by the Franco regime continued for many years after his death in 1975 and after the establishment of a democratic government.

While the people of Germany, France, and Italy have confronted the legacies of the repressive regimes that came to power in those countries during the 1920s, '30s, and '40s, the unearthing of the anonymous dead in Spain has focused attention on how Spaniards have only recently begun to revisit their past and publicly confront Franco's legacy. The essays by historians, anthropologists, literary scholars, journalists, and cultural analysts gathered here represent the first interdisciplinary analysis of how present-day Spain has sought to come to terms with the violence of Franco's regime. Their contributions comprise an important example of how a culture critiques itself while mining its collective memory.

Sujets

• 20th Century
• Modern
• HISTORY
• Histoire
• Spanish Civil War
• Culture of Spain
• Modern history
• General officer
• Politics of Spain
• Spain
• History of Spain
• History of Europe
• Spain (groupe)
• General
• European
• Obermodern-Zutzendorf
• Europe

Informations

• Publié par: University of Notre Dame Press
• Date de parution: 15 avril 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780268083526
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 7 Mo

Extrait

JEREZ-FARRÁN | AMAGO
UNEARTHING FRANCO’S LEGACY
Jerez_cover:Layout 1 2/1/10 10:19 AM Page 1
C O N T E M P O R A R Y E U R O P E A N P O L I T I C S A N D S O C I E T Y
Anthony M. Messina, Series Editor
U N E A R T H I N G F R A N C O ' S L E G A C Y
Mass Graves and the Recovery of Historical Memory in Spain
edited by C A R L O S J E R E Z - F A R R Á N a n d S A M U E L A M A G O
“For anyone interested in understanding the lasting impact of the Spanish Civil War
on contemporary society, Unearthing Franco’s Legacy is required reading. The editors of
this book have brought together, and placed in constructive dialogue, a comprehensive
group of international authors whose contributions result in a sweeping and devastating
account of the war’s deep wounds on individual lives and collective histories. Meticulously
studying Franco's policies, their impact on the war's victims, and representations of the
war’s stories, both those unearthed and others that continue to be buried, this book makes
terribly clear that the Spanish Civil War and its memory continue to teach us lessons about
the responsibility of scholarship in deciphering the complexities of the past.”
—JORDANA MENDELSON, New York University
“Unearthing Franco’s Legacy is a timely contribution to a subject that has provoked serious
discussion both in Spain and abroad. The scholars and practitioners whose work is
represented in this volume address the issue of historical memory from different disciplinary
angles, and the interdisciplinarity of the approaches adds much to the book’s value and to
the debates that persist regarding this topic.”
—DAVID T. GIES, Commonwealth Professor of Spanish, University of Virginia
This collection of essays addresses the political, cultural, and historical debate that has
ensued in Spain as a result of the recent discovery and exhumation of mass graves dating
from the years during and after the Spanish Civil War. The unearthing of the anonymous
dead in Spain has focused attention on how Spaniards have only recently begun to revisit
their past and publicly confront Franco’s legacy.
C A R L O S J E R E Z- FA R R Á N is professor of Spanish and S A M U E L A M A G O is associate professor of
S panish, both at the University of Notre Dame.
CONTRIBUTORS Samuel Amago, Montse Armengou Martín, Julián Casanova, Ignacio Fernández
de Mata, Francisco Ferrándiz, Soledad Fox, Antonio Gómez López-Quiñones, Anne E. Hardcastle,
Gina Herrmann, Carlos Jerez-Farrán, Jo Labanyi, Paul Preston, Hilari Raguer Suñer, Joan Ramon
Resina, Michael Richards, Antonius C. G. M. Robben, and Giles Tremlett.
UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME PRESS
•Notre Dame, Indiana 46556 [e-mail]
Cover imagery: Photograph of mass grave, Villamayor de los Montes
(Burgos) © Francesc Torres; Image composite of Francisco Franco edited byand mass grave is reproduced from a poster for the conference
“Franco’s Mass Graves: An Interd isciplinary International Investiga- CARLOS JEREZ-FARRÁN | SAMUEL AMAGOtion,” courtesy of the volume e ditors, composite by Chantelle Snyder.
Cover Design: Faceout Studio; Tim GreenUNEARTHING FRANCO’S LEGACYCONTEMPORARY EUROPEAN POLITICS AND SOCIETY
Anthony M. Messina, Series EditorEDITED BY
CARLOS JEREZ-FARRÁN AND SAMUEL AMAGO
Mass Graves and the Recovery
of Historical Memory in Spain
University of Notre Dame Press
Notre Dame, IndianaCopyright © 2010 by University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, Indiana 46556
www.undpress.nd.edu
All Rights Reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Unearthing Franco’s legacy : mass graves and the recovery of historical
memory in Spain / edited by Carlos Jerez-Farrán and Samuel Amago.
p. cm. — (Contemporary European politics and society)
Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
isbn-13: 978-0-268-03268-5 (paper : alk. paper)
isbn-10: 0-268-03268-8 (paper : alk. paper)
1. Franco, Francisco, 1892–1975—Influence. 2. Political violence—
Spain—History—20th century. 3. Murder—Spain—History—
20th century. 4. Mass burials—Spain—History—20th century.
5. Spain—Politics and government—1931–1939. 6. Spain—Politics and
government—1939–1975. 7. Spain—History—Civil War, 1936–1939.
8. Collective memory—Spain. 9. Spain—Social conditions—1975–
I. Jerez Farrán, Carlos, 1950– II. Amago, Samuel, 1974–
dp264.f7u54 2010
946.082—dc22
2010001660
∞The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and d urability
of the C ommittee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council
on Library Resources.To those who fought and continue to fight for justice
and the defense of democratic rights, arduously gained,
perilously maintained.Contents
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction 1
Carlos Jerez-Farrán and Samuel Amago
Part I
Franco’s Mass Graves and the History of Forgetting
Violence and Silence: The Repressed History of
the Franco Regime 30
Soledad Fox
The Theorists of Extermination: The Origins of Violence
in the Spanish Civil War 42
Paul Preston
The Spanish Church and the Civil War:
Between Persecution and Repression 68
Hilari Raguer Suñer
The Faces of Terror: Violence during the
Franco Dictatorship 90
Julián Casanova
Grand Narratives, Collective Memory, and Social History:
Public Uses of the Past in Postwar Spain 121
Michael Richardsviii Contents
Part II
Documentary Filmmaking and the Recovery of Historical Memory
“El documental es un arma cargada de pasado”:
Representation in Documentary and Testimony 148
Anne E. Hardcastle
Investigative Journalism as a Tool for
Recovering Historical Memory 156
Montse Armengou Martín
Mass Graves on Spanish TV: A Tale of Two
Documentaries 168
Gina Herrmann
Testimonies of Repression: Methodological and
Political Issues 192
Jo Labanyi
Part III
Speaking for the Dead: Literature and Memory
Toward a Pragmatic Version of Memory: What Could
the Spanish Civil War Mean to Contemporary Spain? 208
Antonio Gómez López-Quiñones
The Weight of Memory and the Lightness of Oblivion:
The Dead of the Spanish Civil War 221
Joan Ramon Resina
Speaking for the Dead: History, Narrative,
and the Ghostly in Javier Cercas’s War Novels 243
Samuel AmagoContents ix
Part IV
Unearthing the Past: Anthropological Perspectives on
Franco’s Mass Graves
Memory Politics among Perpetrators and Bereaved
Relatives about Spain’s Mass Graves 264
Antonius C.G. M. Robben
The Rupture of the World and the Conflicts of Memory 279
Ignacio Fernández de Mata
The Intimacy of Defeat: Exhumations in
Contemporary Spain 304
Francisco Ferrándiz
The Grandsons of Their Grandfathers: An Afterword 327
Giles Tremlett
Works Cited 345
About the Contributors 372
Index 375Acknowledgments
We would like to express our gratitude to all those who made the
publication of this book possible. Foremost, we wish to thank our
contributors not only for the articles and commentaries that now
comprise this volume but also for their generosity and patience
through all stages of the editorial process. We thank them
especially for taking time to share their thoughts and reflections on
this important theme. Our thanks are also due to the Program for
Cultural Cooperation Between Spain’s Ministry of Culture and
United States Universities for financial support offered to do the
necessary research work to write the introduction, and to the
Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts and the College of Arts
and Letters at the University of Notre Dame for the grant support
that has made this book possible.
Thanks are also due to Juan Sanchez for editing support; to
Doris Bergen for her encouragement, pointers, and intellectual
generosity; to Char Prieto for the interesting and inspiring
conversations held about this topic; to Scott Mainwairing for taking
an interest in the conference that served as the starting point for
this book and for referring us to the present publisher; and to the
anonymous external readers for their ideas, concerns, and
suggestions. We are grateful to Harry Karahalios, Bryan Scoular, and
especially Roger Tinnell for their generous help with translations.
Elizabeth Van Jacob and the reference staff of the Hesburgh
Library deserve our gratitude for their invaluable bibliographic sa -
voir faire. We are indebted to our colleagues and students at the
University of Notre Dame with whom we have discussed many
key issues that now form a crucial part of this book. In
particular, Samuel Amago wishes to thank his students from the senior
xixii Acknowledgments
seminar of fall 2008 for their enthusiasm and fresh insights into the
theme. He is also grateful to Amy Keenan-Amago for her acute critical
eye and companionable interest in Spain’s recent history and its
cultural representations.
This volume was inspired by a symposium organized by Carlos
JerezFarrán, held at the University of Notre Dame, October 28–29, 2005,
entitled Franco’s Mass Graves: An Interdisciplinary International
Investigation, which was made possible by the generous support of the Henk els
Lecture Series at the Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts, the
History Department, the Nanovic Institute for European Studies, the
Of fice of Research of the Graduate School, and the Helen Kellogg
Institute for International Studies at the University of Notre Dame. As
org an izer and main editor of the present book, Carlos Jerez-Farrán is
also grateful to the Embassy of Spain in Washington, DC, and the
Program for Cultural Cooperation Between Spain’s Ministry of Culture and
United States Universities for assistance in promoting and supporting
the symposium.Introduction
Carlos Jerez-Farrán and Samuel Amago
In a lecture he delivered in Buenos Aires in 1933, Federico García
Lorca, Spain’s most celebrated poet and playwright, observed that
“a dead man in Spain is more alive when dead than anywhere else
1in the world: his profile hurts like a razor’s edge.” Although the
remark was made somewhat flippantly, it carries more irony today
than Lorca could ever have imagined. Mor