Riparare l’irreparabile: la memoria della Guerra civile nella Spagna democratica

Abstract

Riparare l’irreparabile: la memoria della Guerra civile nella Spagna democratica

For many years most of the Spanish public opinion has been calling for a recovery of the memory of the Civil War as if this issue were still covered by silence. But it can be easily seen that the press, literature, cinema and historiography have discussed this issue very often. The basic reason for this apparent paradox is that what is in fact being asked for is not memory but justice. A demand which is bound to be frustrated because the impunity of Franco’s regime is an irreversible fact. The resulting frustration can be only partially relieved by the measures included in the recent Ley de Memoria Histórica. This brings about the perpetuation of a mythic and Manichean image of that past, where there is hardly any space for a critical analysis of the republic and its democratic limits, possibly because this image is still the most effective compensation of injustice.