Historia e historias en la novela Inés y la alegría. Episodios de una guerra interminable, por Almudena Grandes

History and Stories in the Novel Inés y la alegría. Episodios de una guerra interminable by Almudena Grande. In the past decades, a certain careless neglect seems to have gradually blurred twentieth-century historical events that are still relevant because they have not been completely clarified; they particularly concern dramatic nation-wide events which some of the long-lived Spaniards witnessed. The phenomenon is natural in a society that is advancing by huge strides towards the future, just as it is natural to have people who want to keep alive the memory of those men and women who, during the Civil War and then during the Franco dictatorship, endured the impact of such terrible convulsions. Literature, despite its availability for invention and its inherent subjectivity, is a wonderful way to save this fading image of the past. My paper aims to study the recovery work done by Almudena Grandes, who in her novel Inés or the Joy. Episodes of an Interminable War, presents an episode known as the invasion of the Aran Valley, when 4,000 guerrillas organized by the Spanish Communist Party (P.C.E.) and the Spanish National Union (U.N.E.), crossed the Pyrenees Mountains from France in October 1944. Here, the writer brings to life an abundant documentary material drawn out from archives, libraries and oral testimonies, and manages to enrich History - with capital 'H' - with small personal histories, some invented, others true; historic reality intertwines with the sinuous threads created by her fantasy in order to weave a very agitated and vivid canvas in vibrant colors. Keywords: Spanish novel, Almudena Grandes, the invasion of the Aran Valley, twentieth-century history

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

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).

From National Catholicism to Romantic Love: The Politics of Love and Divorce in Franco's Spain

In the early 1970s, when the Franco dictatorship (1939–75) was coming to an end, some Catholic intellectuals began to defend people's right to end their failed marriages and seek happiness with a new partner. In so doing, they recognised that love was the primary purpose of marriage; if it was absent the union ceased to be valid. These intellectuals thus broke with a discourse that had until then been deep-seated in both Catholic theology and Francoist morals and laws. According to these, love was only a secondary end of marriage and the conjugal union was indissoluble, leaving people no choice but to tolerate it if it was an unhappy one.

Spanish Carnival, Dictatorship, and Political Correctness

В статье в контексте истории Испании XIX-XXI вв. рассматривается эволюция народного карнавала как воплощения «протестного начала», «праздника непослушания», в ходе которого привычный социальный порядок «переворачивается вверх дном», происходит отказ от повседневных правил поведения, отменяются устоявшиеся этические и идеологические нормы. Давление властных структур на карнавальную традицию, порой весьма жесткое, вынуждало вести почти непрерывную борьбу за ее поддержание. Особое место в этом процессе занимает период диктатуры Франко, когда карнавал был запрещен и предпринимались попытки сконструировать ему замену, полностью лишенную исконной протестной и «ниспровергательской» сути. Автор описывает восстановление карнавальной традиции после падения диктатуры, а также реакцию общества и администрации на возобновившиеся «нарушения табу» в условиях либеральных свобод. Автор обращает внимание на принципиально новую тенденцию в культурно-идеологической атмосфере Испании последних лет, связанную с резким усилением влияния постулатов так называемой политкорректности и попытками влиятельной части общества перестроить в соответствии с ними действующую систему ценностей и отношений. В этой ситуации карнавал, веками игравший роль возмутителя общественного спокойствия, впервые в истории подвергается все более резкой критике как бастион консерватизма, сексизма, мачизма и т. д., требующий радикальной перестройки. Между тем ее реализация неминуемо уничтожит неповторимую специфику карнавала, буквально чудом сохранившуюся после столетий ограничений, запретов, «коммерческой коррозии» и других губительных для поддержания традиции факторов. This article examines the evolution of Spanish national carnival in the context of Spanish history of the past two centuries as the embodiment of the “protest principle,” as a “holiday of disobedience,” when the usual social order is turned upside down, everyday rules of behavior are rejected, and established moral and ideological norms are abolished. Pressure on the carnival tradition on the part of the authorities, sometimes very severe, generated an almost continuous struggle to maintain it. During the Franco dictatorship, carnival was banned and attempts were made to construct a replacement, devoid of the original critical and “subversive” spirit. This article describes the restoration of the carnival tradition after the dictatorship fell. It analyzes the reaction of Spanish society and administration to the renewed “taboo violations” in the context of liberal freedoms. The author draws attention to a fundamentally new trend in the Spanish cultural and ideological atmosphere of recent years associated with a sharp increase in so-called political correctness and with attempts by an influential part of society to rebuild a new system of values. In this situation, the carnival, which for centuries played the role of disturber of public peace, for the first time in history is being criticized as a bastion of conservatism, sexism, machismo, etc., that requires radical restructuring. However, the implementation of such change will inevitably destroy the unique nature of the carnival which miraculously survived centuries of restrictions, prohibitions, “commercial corrosion” and other factors detrimental to the maintenance of the tradition.

Between modernity and tradition: the formation of a psychoanalytical culture during the Franco dictatorship

The aim of this work is to analyze the process by which psychoanalysis categories joined scientific and popular culture in Francoism. To do so, we will start with the criticism and reinterpretations that different experts did on Freud’s theory to adapt it to the new political-social context. This analysis will allow us to show how reappropriation and signification of a progressive and modern theory was achieved based on the doctrinal principles of national-Catholicism. From here on, we will analyze the incorporation of psychoanalytic language and ideas into several mass media, confirming the consolidation of psychoanalysis as a cultural framework in Spain.

SECOND SPANISH REPUBLIC OF THE PRE-WAR PERIOD (1931-1936) AND HER MEMORY IN CINEMA IN SPAIN

This article analyzes the memory and representation of the Second Spanish Republic, particularly its years in peace (1931-1936), in Span-ish fiction cinema and made in this country, from 1939 to the present day. The most common ideas and images in this vision of the Second Republic present in cinematography are studied, and the continuity / evolution or change in them throughout the Franco dictatorship, the Democratic Transition and to this day, taking as an example some films. Finally, some general conclusions are addressed that highlight a lower visibility of this period in Spanish cinematography in general compared to the period of the Civil War (1936-1939), as well as the persistence of certain stereotypes around the Second Republic.

Employers’ Mutuals and Accident Insurance Scheme in Spain: From Rejection to Control and Collaboration (1966–1990)

This article discusses the role of employers and their organizations in promoting or hindering social insurance schemes and, ultimately, the welfare state. Unlike most studies that center on countries in periods of democracy, this research focuses on the role of employers, and specifically employers’ mutuals, in the development of the industrial accident scheme during the Franco dictatorship in Spain. The institutional elimination of the class struggle, by repressing the working class and prohibiting class-based unions, led to an evolution of the industrial accident scheme and employers’ liabilities that revolved around the interrelationship between employers and the state. While employers tried to keep control of the management and low cost of the insurance, the state maintained significant bureaucratic intervention and increased auditing and control. The democratic period that began in 1977 prolonged the structure fostered during the Franco regime and enhanced the power of the mutuals in managing this insurance.