The Politics of History and Memory in Democratic Spain

Abstract

This article examines the political uses of history and memory in Spain since the death of General Francisco Franco in 1975. The myth of the war as a collective tragedy facilitated the democratic transition, as did the Amnesty Law of 1977, which applied to the agents of Franquist repression as well as its victims. Once democracy was consolidated, professional historians clarified military responsibility for the civil war and documented the extent of the repression; the right responded by reviving the Franquist myth of the civil war as a crusade against communism. “Memory” replaced history in public discourse with the breakdown of the transition consensus and the maturation of a generation with no recall of the war or the dictatorship. Demands for official condemnation of the dictatorship and public recognition of its victims culminated in the passage of the so-called Law of Historical Memory in October 2007.