SEFARAD - BIDRAG TIL EN FÆLLES EUROPÆISK ERINDRING

A CONTRIBUTION TO A COMMON EUROPEAN MEMORY | Since 1975 Spain has been engaged in the recuperation of the memory of the past. Yet there seems to be an agreement that it is only over the course of the last ten years that an open and genuine debate has started. The purpose of this article is to re-think the argument, stating that what is at stake is really a change of form in the memory debate. Drawing on theories from Astrid Erll (2011) and Michael Rothberg (2009), the article aims to show how the novel Sefarad by the Spanish author Antonio Muñoz Molina could be read as a literary manifestation of a multidirectional memory, in which different memory scenarios in dialogue inscribe the memory of the Spanish Civil War and the subsequent dictatorship into a common European memory context. Moreover, the article argues that Sefarad positions itself as a paradigmatic example of a global cosmopolitan memory discourse which tries to transcend traditional Manichean divisions between “us” and “them”. In the context of Spanish contemporary politics, it is hard to imagine how a cosmopolitan approach should be implemented without risks of political (ab)use. In that respect it will be argued that the literary discourse, seen as a reconciliatory discourse, takes precedence over other discourses in the ongoing memory debate by emphasizing a collective and transnational responsibility for the past.

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The novel of the Greek civil war in the twenty-first century: (post)memory and the weight of the past

Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies ◽

10.1017/byz.2020.8 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 44 (2) ◽

pp. 301-318

Author(s):

Vassiliki Kaisidou

Keyword(s):

Civil War ◽

Case Studies ◽

Civil Conflict ◽

First Century ◽

The Novel ◽

The Past ◽

Ethical Commitment ◽

Literary Market ◽

Twenty First Century

Between the years 2000 and 2015 novels on the Greek civil war (1946–9) flooded the Greek literary market. This raises important questions as to why the burden of the civil conflict weighs heavily upon generations with no experiential connection to these events. This article begins by offering an interpretation for the literary upsurge of the civil war since the 2000s. Then it uses Marianne Hirsch's concept of postmemory to illustrate the authors’ ethical commitment to ‘unsilence’ and redress the past through the use of archival evidence and testimonies. The case studies of ThomasSkassis’Ελληνικόσταυρόλɛξο (2000), Nikos Davvetas’ Λɛυκή πɛτσέτα στορινγκ (2006),and SophiaNikolaidou's Χορɛύουνοιɛλέφαντɛς(2012) serve to illustrate my argument.

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From Ideological to Humanistic Interpretations

Contemporary European History ◽

10.1017/s0960777320000211 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 29 (3) ◽

pp. 257-260

Author(s):

Antonio Cazorla-Sánchez

Keyword(s):

Cold War ◽

Civil War ◽

Spanish Civil War ◽

The Political ◽

The Past ◽

Cultural Paradigms ◽

The Cold War

The recent evolution of both the historiography on the Spanish Civil War, and even the general population's perception of the conflict, cannot be separated from the changes in the political and cultural paradigms in Europe since the end of the Cold War. By this I mean that Europeans, but not only them, have been evolving from a mostly ideological view of the past to an increasingly humanistic one.

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Memory and Politics in Democratic Spain

The Oxford Handbook of Spanish Politics ◽

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198826934.013.4 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 46-61

Author(s):

Omar G. Encarnación

Keyword(s):

Civil War ◽

Transitional Justice ◽

Spanish Civil War ◽

The Political ◽

Truth Telling ◽

Franco Regime ◽

Political Class ◽

Human Rights Abuses ◽

The Past ◽

The Right

This chapter explains the persistence of Spain’s ‘politics of forgetting’, a phenomenon revealed by the wilful intent to disremember the political memory of the violence of the Spanish Civil War and the human rights abuses of General Franco’s authoritarian regime. Looking beyond the traumas of the Civil War, the limits on transitional justice and truth-telling on the Franco regime imposed by a transition to democracy anchored on intra-elite pacts, and the conciliatory and forward-looking political culture that consolidated in the new democracy, this analysis emphasizes a decidedly less obvious explanation: the political uses of forgetting. Special attention is paid to how the absence of a reckoning with the past, protected politicians from both the right and the left from embarrassing and inconvenient political histories; facilitated the reinvention of the major political parties as democratic institutions; and lessened societal fears about repeating past historical mistakes. The conclusion of the chapter explains how the success of the current democratic regime, shifting public opinion about the past occasioned by greater awareness about the dark policies and legacies of the Franco regime, and generational change among Spain’s political class have in recent years diminished the political uses of forgetting. This, in turn, has allowed for a more honest treatment of the past in Spain’s public policies.

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Missing Millions: The Demographic Costs of the Mexican Revolution

Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos ◽

10.1525/msem.2003.19.2.367 ◽

2003 ◽

Vol 19 (2) ◽

pp. 367-400 ◽

Cited By ~ 13

Author(s):

Robert McCaa

Keyword(s):

Civil War ◽

Spanish Civil War ◽

International Conflict ◽

Mexican Revolution ◽

Demographic History ◽

The Past ◽

Human Cost ◽

History Of ◽

Age And Sex ◽

The Revolution

The Mexican Revolution was a demographic disaster, but there is little agreement about the human cost or its demographic components. Were the missing millions due to war deaths, epidemics, emigration, lost births, or simply census error or evasion? Reading the demographic history of the Revolution from a subsequent census, such as the highly regarded enumeration of 1930, yields more precise figures than those obtained from the usual benchmark, the census of 1921. The 1930 figures are of better quality and, therefore, more suitable for making an assessment by age and sex. This analysis shows that in terms of lives lost, the Mexican Revolution was a demographic catastrophe, comparable to the Spanish Civil War, which has been ranked the ninth deadliest international conflict over the past two centuries. La Revolucióón Mexicana fue un desastre demográáfico; sin embargo, no existe consenso en el monto de la péérdida demográáfica ni de sus componentes. ¿¿Los millones perdidos fueron por la emigracióón, la mortalidad por epidemias, las muertes por la guerra, la caíída en el núúmero de nacimientos, o simplemente error estadíístico? Leyendo la historia demográáfica de la Revolucióón de un censo posterior, como por ejemplo el de 1930, ya que goza de reconocimiento por su calidad y confiabilidad, puede llevarse a cifras, por sexo y edad, mejor fundamentadas. En téérminos de las péérdidas de vidas, las nuevas estimaciones colocan a la Revolucióón Mexicana, junto con la Guerra Civil Españñola, como la novena guerra con mayor mortalidad en el contexto internacional, en los úúltimos dos siglos.

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Spanish Civil War Horror and Regional Trauma

English Language Notes ◽

10.1215/00138282-9277238 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 59 (2) ◽

pp. 20-34

Author(s):

Xavier Aldana Reyes

Keyword(s):

Civil War ◽

Spanish Civil War ◽

Historical Trauma ◽

Cultural Work ◽

Nation State ◽

Modern History ◽

Horror Genre ◽

The Past ◽

Military Forces

Abstract This article unpacks the cultural work that Juan Carlos Medina’s Insensibles, released in English as Painless, carries out in relation to Spain’s modern history and argues that the film’s painless children are an allegory of the country’s postdictatorship generations. The rendering of fascism as monstrous is less interesting than the connection of insensitivity to the Pacto del Olvido (Pact of Forgetting) and its suppression of painful memory. The fact that the children speak Catalan is a significant overlooked aspect, because Catalonia was the last region to succumb to Nationalist military forces during the Spanish Civil War (1936–39) and is known for its independentist fervor. A regionalist reading of the film does not simply connect the present and the past; it proposes that the children of the war mediate Spain’s current troubled relationship with historical trauma and act as an artistic response to centralist ideas of a unified and stable nation-state. Such a rethinking demonstrates that the horror genre continues to offer a language of anxiety capable of negotiating and contributing to debates around the importance of national accountability, war reparations, and the condemnation of genocide.

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Trajectories of Transnational Antifascist Volunteers from the Spanish Civil War to the Second World War

War in History ◽

10.1177/0968344519843572 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 27 (3) ◽

pp. 341-345

Author(s):

Nir Arielli ◽

Enrico Acciai

Keyword(s):

Civil War ◽

Spanish Civil War ◽

Second World War ◽

Special Issue ◽

World War ◽

Military Organizations ◽

The Past ◽

Second World

This is an introduction to a special issue on the role played by veterans of the Spanish Civil War’s International Brigades during the Second World War. It argues that the study of these veterans is worthwhile for three reasons: the extraordinary mobility that the antifascist struggle of the years 1936–45 enabled; the microcosm it provides for the assessment of what happens when ideologically fuelled concerns meet pragmatic wartime needs; and the relevance of how governments and military organizations have dealt with suspect returnees in the past for present-day dilemmas that several governments face.

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