Irregular adoptions and infrastructures of memory in Spain: remnant practices from the Franco Regime

Childhood ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 090756822110614
Author(s):  
Diana Marre ◽  
Hugo Gaggiotti
Keyword(s):  
Spanish Civil War ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Franco Regime ◽  
Secret Societies ◽  
Ductile Metals ◽  
Francisco Franco ◽  
Erosion Mechanism ◽  
Displaced Children ◽  
Contemporary Spain ◽  
Franco Dictatorship

The irregular adoption of displaced children during the Spanish Civil War, the Franco dictatorship and the early years of Spanish democracy remains silent and unrecognised. The difficulty in recognising these irregular practices is linked to remnant infrastructures of memory (Rubin (2018) How Francisco Franco governs from beyond the grave: An infrastructural approach to memory politics in contemporary Spain. American Ethnologist 45(2): 214–227). We propose that the time to speak openly about irregular adoptions of forcibly disappeared children in Spain is arriving, and doing so could be a way of exposing a series of ‘unknown knowns’ (Simmel, (1906) The sociology of secrecy and of secret societies. American Journal of Sociology 11(4): 441–498; Bellman R and Levy A (1981) Erosion mechanism in ductile metals. Wear 70: 1–27; Taussig M (1999) Defacement: Public Secrecy and the Labor of the Negative. Stanford: Stanford University Press).

scholarly journals Francisco Franco and Social Policy in Spain in the 1960-1970s

2020 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 165-185
Author(s):  
Filatov Geogriy ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Policy ◽  
Social Security ◽  
Social Services ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Social Spending ◽  
Social Programs ◽  
Franco Regime ◽  
Francisco Franco ◽  
The Social ◽  
The 1960S

Social policy has been an important part of Francoist ideology since the early years of the regime. However, it was only in the 1960s, when the social security system in Spain appeared. During this time, the country experienced high economic growth, which allowed the Franco regime to increase social spending. For Francisco Franco himself, social policy in the 1960s became an important source of legitimacy of his rule. At the legislative level, the term "social services" appeared, and the state rather than private enterprises was made responsible for their provision. As a result, over the last 15 years of the Franco regime in Spain, a number of laws sought to unify the system of social services and gave more people access to them. Despite the progress, Franco's social policy preserved some previous shortcomings, i.e. a number of special social programs for certain categories of the population, as well as the fact that a significant part of social security was funded by the employees themselves.

Stumbling over History: Stolpersteine and the Performance of Memory in Spain's Streets

2020 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 4-21
Author(s):  
ALÍCIA HERNÀNDEZ-GRANDE
Keyword(s):  
Spanish Civil War ◽  
Past History ◽  
Local History ◽  
Concentration Camp ◽  
History And Memory ◽  
Francisco Franco ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Urban Topography ◽  
Individual Marker ◽  
Franco Dictatorship

The Stolpersteine (‘stumbling stones’) memorial project commemorates victims of Nazi violence and the Holocaust through an individual marker installed outside the last willing residence before deportation and execution. The Stolpersteine project has spread throughout Europe, providing an urban topography of sites where traumatic events occurred. Because Stolpersteine are placed in public streets, they create performance possibilities, inviting passing pedestrians to engage in past history and trauma. As the project grows throughout Europe, however, the universality of the stones abuts with the specificity of local history and memory. This article considers the Stolpersteine installed in the Catalan city of Manresa. These stones, representing twenty-eight Spanish Republicans who were interned at the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp, are framed by a Catalan-language audio guide that directly points to the collaboration of the Francisco Franco dictatorship with Nazi Germany. In so doing, the stones in Spain also stand for violence meted out during the Spanish Civil War and the Franco dictatorship.

scholarly journals Francisco Franco Is Back: The Contested Reemergence of a Fascist Moral Exemplar

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-30
Author(s):  
Francisco Ferrándiz
Keyword(s):  
Spanish Civil War ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Mass Graves ◽  
Francisco Franco ◽  
Moral Exemplars ◽  
Moral Exemplar ◽  
Sharp Focus ◽  
Military Victory ◽  
National Reconciliation

Abstract Based on long-term ethnographic research on contemporary exhumations of mass graves from the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), as well as analysis of the exhumation of Francisco Franco from the Valley of the Fallen, this paper looks at the ways in which the dictator’s moral exemplarity has evolved over time since his military victory in 1939. During the early years of his dictatorship, Franco’s propaganda machine built the legend of a historical character touched by divine providence who sacrificed himself to save Spain from communism. His moral charisma was enriched by associating his historical mission with a constellation of moral exemplars drawn from medieval and imperial Spain. After his death, his moral exemplarity dwindled as democratic Spain embraced a political discourse of national reconciliation. Yet, since 2000, a new negative exemplarity of Franco as a war criminal has come into sharp focus, in connection with the exhumation of the mass graves of tens of thousands of Republican civilians executed by his army and paramilitary. In recent years, Franco has reemerged as a fascist exemplar alongside a rise of the extreme right. To understand the revival of his fascist exemplarity, I focus on two processes: the rise of the political party Vox, which claims undisguised admiration for Franco’s legacy (a process I call “neo-exemplarity”), and the dismantling in October 2019 of Franco’s honorable burial and the debate over the treatment that his mortal remains deserve (a process I call “necro-exemplarity”).

Schumania and Spain’s Heavy-Industry Supply

2021 ◽  
pp. 31-51
Author(s):  
Fernando Guirao
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
European Integration ◽  
Spanish Civil War ◽  
Democratic Consolidation ◽  
Standard Of Living ◽  
Political Regime ◽  
The Political ◽  
Franco Regime ◽  
Francisco Franco ◽  
Social Modernization

The title of this book -The European Rescue of the Franco Regime- intends to draw the reader’s attention away from traditional narratives. The thesis widely sustained by scholars and reflected in public opinion is that the institutionalized pattern of European integration contributed to isolate and weaken the political regime that generalissimo Francisco Franco established after his victory in the Spanish Civil War (1936-9) and headed until his death in November 1975. In Spain, during the struggle for democracy under and immediately following Franco’s dictatorship, membership in the European Communities became emblematic of a collective desire for democratic consolidation and social modernization, as well as the fastest route to elevate the Spanish standard of living in line with Europe’s most advanced societies. This notion of the Europeanization of Spain has made it difficult to conceive the Spanish policy of the European Communities during the Franco era as anything other than a significant element in the combat against Francoism. It is indisputable that the Axis stigma prevented Francoist Spain’s membership to the European Communities. Yet the absence of membership constitutes neither the beginning nor the end, nor even the most important component of the story. From exclusion, a multiplicity of possibilities sprouted, including active support. Although the rescue concept emerged from the analysis of the Six, it could be extended to Franco Spain. The purpose of the Spanish EEC strategy was to generate material prosperity in Spain to maintain the dictatorship’s grip on the country, not to advance the arrival of democracy.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Montse Feu
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Spanish Civil War ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
The United States ◽  
Francisco Franco ◽  
Cultural Legacy ◽  
National Catholicism ◽  
Democratic Elections ◽  
Franco Dictatorship

At the turn of the twentieth century, Spanish workers arrived in the United States already imbued with radical traditions rooted in the socialism or anarchism of their homeland. These radicals would play a critical role in the broader antifascist political efforts of the coming years during the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) and the Francisco Franco dictatorship (1939–1975). About two hundred workers’ and immigrant associations came together under the Sociedades Hispanas Confederadas (Confederation of Hispanic Societies, SHC) and published the bilingual periodical España Libre (Free Spain) in New York from 1939 to 1977, when democratic elections were held again in Spain. The confederation grew to 65,000 members at its height. Mainly composed by workers, the Confederadas understood Spanish fascism as a complex and adapting interlocking of fascist, extreme-right, and capitalist values. Franco fascistized Spain with a culture of National Catholicism and cult of military power that enforced social cleansing of dissenters and terrorized the population. España Libre continued an antifascist, progressive, and radical political and cultural legacy in the United States while Franco intended to destroy it in Spain. It constituted an alternative progressive path to modernity, albeit an exiled one.

scholarly journals Deans of humanitarianism and perfidy. The collaboration of the Diplomatic Missions of Argentina and Chile with the Francoist cause during the Spanish Civil War (and after), 1936-1969

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. e010
Author(s):  
Carlos Píriz
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Spanish Civil War ◽  
Franco Regime ◽  
The Right ◽  
Good Number

During the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939, some thirty Diplomatic Missions opened their doors and create new sites for the reception of persecution victims under the protection of the right of asylum. However, beyond the humanitarian role, a tendentious collaboration of some of their delegates with the rebels could be seen from the beginning. Argentina and Chile, which held the Diplomatic Deanship in those years, were two prime examples of this. A good number of their representatives used various strategies to help the coup plotters of 1936, such as the refuge, care and irregular extraction of people or espionage. At the same time, they played a role that alternated between searching for consensus with other Diplomatic Missions (mainly the Latin American ones), which really meant demanding that those other legations follow their lead, and denouncing the excesses of the consolidated republican rearguard, especially on the international scene. A situation which tarnishes the image of the legitimate Spanish governments. Once the contest ended, many of those collaborators were praised and rewarded by the Franco regime, and other fascists regimes. This research focuses on demonstrating, based on original documentation and providing new and compelling data, that close (and proven) relationship.

Mussolini, Benito (1883–1945)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Jones
Keyword(s):  
Spanish Civil War ◽  
Party Leader ◽  
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti ◽  
Benito Mussolini ◽  
Francisco Franco ◽  
Winston Churchill ◽  
Personality Cult ◽  
The World ◽  
Franklin Roosevelt ◽  
Second World

Known as Il Duce (the Leader), the son of a Marxist blacksmith, Benito Mussolini was the ruler of Fascist Italy (1922–43). A master of populist rhetoric, editor of the socialist newspaper Avanti! (1912–1914), Mussolini shaped the fascist movement as a party leader before rising to state power with his October 1922 March on Rome. He invaded Ethiopia in a brutal war for a new Italian Empire (1935–36), aided Franco’s Nationalists in the Spanish Civil War (1936–39), and fought on the side of Nazi Germany in the Second World War (1940–45). His fascist ideology made use of ideas offered by Italy’s ‘philosopher of fascism’, Giovanni Gentile (1875–1944), and manifestos written by the founder of Futurism, poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876–1944). Mussolini’s personality cult influenced dictators such as Adolf Hitler and Francisco Franco, and at times earned the admiration of Winston Churchill (Samuel) and Franklin Roosevelt (Schivelbusch, 2006, 31). On April 29, 1945, Mussolini was captured and executed, his body gruesomely displayed (‘Execution of Mussolini’). His legacy has spawned fascist movements throughout the world, from Oswald Mosley’s (1896–1980) English Blackshirts to Pierre Gemayel’s (1905–1984) Christian Phalange in Lebanon.

The New (Old) Order, 1936–1942

2019 ◽  
pp. 215-242
Author(s):  
Sasha D. Pack
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Jewish Community ◽  
Spanish Civil War ◽  
Western Mediterranean ◽  
Southern Spain ◽  
World War ◽  
Francisco Franco ◽  
Northwest Africa ◽  
Old Order ◽  
New Evidence

This chapter examines the fate of trans-Gibraltar region during Spanish Civil War and the early stages of World War II. Although the insurgent army of Francisco Franco quickly took control of northern Morocco and southern Spain and invited its Nazi and Fascist allies to the strategically crucial region, the Entente order of 1904 proved resilient. New evidence is introduced detailing the Franco movement’s success in marshaling anti-French, anti-Semitic, and pro-German sentiments to recruit Muslim support, promising the construction of a new Hispano-Moroccan bulwark in the western Mediterranean. Other new documents indicate how quickly this enthusiasm cooled, however, as it became clear that Nazi agents were preparing to seize a position in northwest Africa without giving consideration for Spanish interests, while the British and much of the Jewish community of Tangier remained supportive of Spanish interests in Morocco.

Spanish Fascist Women’s Transnational Relations during the Second World War: Between Ideology and Realpolitik

2018 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 834-857
Author(s):  
Toni Morant i Ariño
Keyword(s):  
Spanish Civil War ◽  
Active Role ◽  
Second World War ◽  
New Order ◽  
World War ◽  
Transnational Relations ◽  
Political Position ◽  
Franco Dictatorship ◽  
Second World ◽  
Practical Level

Spanish fascist women played a very active role in the Falange’s cross-border relations with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy during the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War. From the very beginning, fascist women took a preeminent place in these contacts and exchanges in order to see with their own eyes how both fascist models were at a practical level. These relationships between fascist women’s organizations were born out of deep ideological affinity and were especially fluid, firstly on a bilateral level and after 1940 on the ‘New Order’ Europe-wide multilateral, transnational collaboration. However, they lacked neither of political calculation nor could abstract from the wider frame of international politics in such an eminently war period. As this article will show, Falangist women used these fluid but less studied relationships to consolidate their own political position at home and explore other ways of political participation in a Nazi-Fascist New Europe, while at the same time trying to secure there a pre-eminent place for non-belligerent Spain. In the end, concerns about the own survival of the Franco dictatorship as the fate of war clearly changed in 1943, let ideological affinity succumb to the diplomatic conveniences they had once meant to overcome.

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