Date of Award:

8-2021

Document Type:

Thesis

Degree Name:

Master of Arts (MA)

Department:

History

Committee Chair(s)

Tammy Proctor

Committee

Tammy Proctor

Committee

James Sanders

Committee

Susan Grayzel

Committee

David Richter

Abstract

This project examines the interplay between memory, history, and politics relating to Spanish Republican memories of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) and the following authoritarian dictatorship of Francisco Franco (1939-1975). In my analysis of this relationship, I focus on the years around the passage of the Law of Historical Memory in 2007; I explore how Spaniards used several forms of media, namely books, graphic narratives, and interviews, to relay their messages regarding the recovery, preservation, and passage of the memories of the defeated Republicans. The authors in each medium, despite telling different stories, both real and fictional, portrayed the act of recovering memory with a sense of closure and healing for those telling the stories. Similarly, they all emphasize the importance of creating an intergenerational memory, with older Spaniards, namely the former Spanish Republicans and those that lived during the war and dictatorship, passing their memories along to younger generations for posterity’s sake.

Before this, however, this project also introduces the reader to the Spanish Civil War as an event, as well as giving an overview of memory studies, showing how both are complex subjects and how their scholars discuss them.

Similarly, I also discuss the forces that worked against the Republican memory, namely the harsh repression of this group enacted during Franco’s dictatorship and the silencing tactics and agreements of the post-Franco democracy.

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