Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of maps and tables
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Maps
- Introduction: cultural trauma in Spain
- Part I Setting the scene
- Part II Memories of war during the Franco years
- Part III Memories of war after Franco
- Conclusion: the history of war memories in Spain
- Glossary and abbreviations
- Sources and select bibliography
- Index
Preface
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of maps and tables
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Maps
- Introduction: cultural trauma in Spain
- Part I Setting the scene
- Part II Memories of war during the Franco years
- Part III Memories of war after Franco
- Conclusion: the history of war memories in Spain
- Glossary and abbreviations
- Sources and select bibliography
- Index
Summary
The origins of this book lie in an invitation several years ago to produce ‘a social history of the Franco years’. There exists no broad such history and it seemed that a study of society during the Spanish dictatorship would fill a significant gap in the historiography and map a future agenda for research. Several substantial problems beyond the normal questions about the identification and selection of themes, the location of source material and the weighing of evidence quickly became obvious. The first problem was how to establish the chronological parameters of the project: at which point should the story begin and where should it end? The simplest solution was to begin with Franco's victory in 1939 and work forwards, more or less letting the civil war take care of itself as a looming but relatively undelineated backdrop to what came after. Both the dictator as focus and 1939 as starting point felt instinctively unsatisfactory, however, being essentially political points of departure for what was projected explicitly as a social history. This unease was significantly reinforced by the phenomenal surge in the recording of memories related to the civil war since the late 1990s and current debates in Spain over assimilation of testimonies of ‘ordinary Spaniards’ into the history of the country's often painful twentieth century. To many of the public it seemed that the civil war could not easily be left behind, primarily because much of the conflict's violence was intimate, occurring within communities and leaving a distressing legacy. It also seemed to many that this legacy had not been broached at the end of the Generalísimo's regime and therefore that Franco's death in 1975 marked a more problematic demarcation point than had usually been assumed. For these reasons, this study begins with an account of the Second Republic and civil war (the ‘event’ remembered) and includes a substantial final section on the era running from the transition to democracy in the late 1970s to ‘the return of memory’ since the 1990s.
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- After the Civil WarMaking Memory and Re-Making Spain since 1936, pp. xi - xiiiPublisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2013