On the finish of 2024, the Spanish authorities introduced its intention to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the dying of Francisco Franco. This was to not be a low-key event: Pedro Sánchez, the Socialist prime minister, introduced greater than 100 occasions all through 2025 underneath the slogan ‘Spain in freedom’. For the initiative’s supporters, the dimensions of the anniversary was justified by the need of explaining to youthful generations what Francoism had been, and thus to dissuade them from supporting Spain’s ascendent far proper.
However others criticized the initiative. It was identified that the ‘freedom’ being commemorated had begun not with the dying of Franco in 1975, however with the ratification of the 1978 structure. This had in flip been enabled by the elections to the constituent Cortes in 1977 and the referendum on the Political Reform Regulation in 1976, which had made the transitional course of irreversible. Actually, the one speedy consequence of Franco’s dying had been his alternative as head of state by King Juan Carlos I.
The improvised and top-down nature of the commemoration revealed its political intention: to detract consideration from the weak spot of the federal government – an unstable leftwing coalition supported by sub-state nationalists – and the accusations of corruption by which it was embroiled. For the federal government’s defenders, these criticisms merely proved how far the Spanish Proper remained incapable of distancing itself from the dictatorship.
The fiftieth anniversary of Franco’s dying has thus proven how the previous continues to be a supply of pressure in Spain, greater than twenty years after the eruption of the controversies over ‘historical memory’. To recall: on the finish of 2004, the Socialist authorities of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero created a fee on the victims of the Civil Conflict, initiating a course of that culminated with the approval of the Regulation on Historic Reminiscence in 2007. Since then, debates on the legacy of the Second Republic, the Civil Conflict, the Franco dictatorship and the Transition have come to dominate Spanish public debate.
Picture: David Perez / Supply: Wikimedia Commons
Within the 2000s, it was thought that these controversies would result in a brand new consensus; however the final 20 years have proven how unsuitable that assumption was. This doesn’t imply that the controversy has remained on the identical phrases: the emergence of Podemos after which Vox as main gamers in Spanish politics, for instance, has affected elements of it. However there have been recurring arguments and points – equivalent to the potential of establishing a single official account of the previous, or the reason of the causes of the Civil Conflict – over which critical disagreements persist.
The longevity of the controversy is much more putting given how a lot Spain has modified within the final 20 years. The financial and political disaster that started in 2008 or the Catalan separatist course of that culminated in 2017 have had main impacts on society. The nation is altering, however the disputes over historic reminiscence stay. It appears that evidently there’s something to them that makes them endless.
Maybe this isn’t shocking. In any case, we’re coping with probably the most traumatic episode in Spain’s latest historical past, the Civil Conflict of 1936–1939, and the dictatorship that dominated Spain for the following forty years. These historic episodes are nonetheless vivid within the private and household reminiscences of thousands and thousands of Spaniards.
However this isn’t all. The controversies over ‘historical memory’ additionally have an effect on the founding second of Spanish democracy: the Transition. Within the second half of the Nineteen Seventies, this dismantled the dictatorship and gave beginning to a democratic system. For many years, the method of transition was introduced as exemplary – and with good purpose.
The ‘historical memory’ motion, nevertheless, questions this by arguing that the brand new democracy was constructed on inadequate insurance policies of remembrance. Some go additional, arguing that democracy was primarily based on the impunity of the Francoist elites and a ‘pact of forgetting’ that blocked data concerning the previous. Calls for that sentences handed down by the Francoist authorized order be declared null and void additionally conflict with the truth that the Transition was made ‘from the law to the law’. In beneficial accounts of the Transition, that is seen as constructive; however it takes on totally different connotations if that authentic ‘law’ is said illegitimate.
It’s fascinating to ask whether or not issues may have been in any other case. In different phrases, whether or not reminiscence insurance policies may have been revised with out refuting – or showing to refute – among the fundamental premises of the Transition. In any case, within the Nineteen Eighties, a number of reparation measures had been authorized with out a lot controversy, equivalent to pensions for the disabled and for many who fought on the Republican aspect. One other instance can be the compensation for political prisoners and amnesty for perpetrators on either side following the 1977 Amnesty Regulation.
May, for instance, the demand for the opening of the mass graves – an important facet of the debates of the mid-2000s – have been developed throughout the identical framework? Who is aware of? The actual fact is that one thing modified within the method to the politics of reminiscence, and that later debates haven’t managed to separate the analysis of the conflict and the dictatorship from the analysis of the transition course of. And, subsequently, from the legitimacy of the democracy to which it gave method.
Reminiscence of reminiscence disputes
The controversies have provoked huge curiosity within the Spanish twentieth century. The amount of analysis, articles, essays, novels, movies and performs on totally different elements of the Second Republic, the Civil Conflict and the Franco dictatorship produced within the final 20 years is actually overwhelming. This could possibly be seen as constructive, at the least by way of Spanish society’s data of its previous. However the issue – or considered one of them – is that the controversy has all too usually been accompanied by accusations of unhealthy religion. It’s claimed that the arguments made and the analysis performed are usually not the results of a honest try to grasp the previous, however mere subterfuges hiding a political agenda. The amount of phrases produced doesn’t point out a constructive dialogue, however reasonably matches into the sample of polarization so current in in the present day’s societies.
It’s also putting how the disputes over reminiscence have generated a reminiscence of themselves. At this level, debates concerning the latest previous refer not solely to what occurred within the Nineteen Thirties or Nineteen Forties, but in addition to how those self same debates performed out within the Nineties, 2000s and 2010s. These most important of historic reminiscence initiatives consider they had been put ahead by the Left when it was about to lose energy, if not after; all as a method of delegitimizing a Proper that, via the Well-liked Celebration, had come to energy in 1996 and obtained an absolute majority in 2000.
This interpretation is then projected onto the successive episodes of that dispute. It’s all allegedly a part of the identical course of, one which started not within the Nineteen Thirties however within the Nineties: using the previous by the Left in its electoral wrestle in opposition to the Proper. These left events, so the argument goes, have developed a reminiscence of a Proper that refuses to interrupt with Francoism. The polemics of historic reminiscence thus turn into self-referential: the event of the controversy is affected by the reminiscence of earlier levels in it.
Nationwide previous, regional reminiscence?
The progressive regionalization of reminiscence insurance policies also needs to be highlighted, since legislative initiatives haven’t solely corresponded to the Congress of Deputies or to nationwide governments. By 2023, 13 of Spain’s 17 autonomous communities had their very own reminiscence legal guidelines – a shocking proliferation, on condition that the Second Republic, the Civil Conflict and the dictatorship had been nationwide in scale, even when they took particular manifestations in several territories, as is the case with any historic occasion or course of.
The principle drawback with this regionalization of reminiscence legal guidelines is that it has reproduced and multiplied the controversies. Thus, the rightwing regional governments that got here to energy after the 2023 regional elections got down to repeal and change the reminiscence rules handed by their leftwing predecessors. The brand new rules will definitely be repealed as quickly as there’s one other change of presidency in every area, to get replaced by legal guidelines which can be in flip challenged by the brand new opposition – all accompanied by the same old declarations, articles, demonstrations, debates, and so on.
After twenty years, it can’t be mentioned {that a} new consensus is on the horizon. Reasonably, one senses a seemingly inexhaustible spiral of political squabbles by which, as quickly as one entrance appears to relax, one other intensifies. This isn’t a lot as a result of debates on historic reminiscence as to the event – constructive in some instances, dysfunctional in others – of the Spanish state. However whichever method you have a look at it, it’s tough to argue that this can be a mannequin for the event of reminiscence insurance policies. Spanish society has had a very long time to work on its relationship with probably the most traumatic episodes of its previous. However that relationship solely appears to be getting worse.
This text is a part of World Conversations – a venture supported by Open Society Foundations. The unique Spanish model is revealed on-line in Letras Libres.
