Francoist Repression and Incarceration in Contemporary Spanish Culture: Justice through Memory (Palgrave Studies in Cultural Heritage and Conflict)

✍ Scribed by Maureen Tobin Stanley

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2022
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 347
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

This book examines the cultural articulation of Spanish History (and histories (remembered, meaningful experiences). It analyzes how real people and fictional characters experience the rupture of post-war repression, as their vindicating collective memory counters the authoritarian narrative and laws that demonized and criminalized them. The book, that breaks the persistent cycle of denial of Francoist malfeasance, is a resource for scholars and students who research the representation of Spain’s dictatorship, its aftermath and the recovery of postdictatorial memory.

✦ Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Praise for Francoist Repression and Incarceration in Contemporary Spanish Culture
Contents
About the Author
List of Figures
Chapter 1: Introduction: Legislation, the Banality of Evil, and the Moral Imperative of Memory
Laws and Legislation
Laws: Killing and Incarceration
Laws: The Removal of Children
Laws: Legislated Impunity
Laws: Justice for Victims
To Rub History Against the Grain: The Moral Imperative of Memory
Overview of Chapters
A Cartography of Ubiquitous Repression
Works Cited
Chapter 2: The Aestheticized Pilgrimage from Fragmentation to Community: The Journey from the Testimonial Page to the Documentary Screen of Ángel Fernández Vicente (b. 1928), Anti-fascist Resistant, Political Prisoner, and Expatriate
Introduction
Brief Biography of Ángel Fernández Vicente
Description and Overview of the Works
Testimony
Aestheticizing Trauma
Aestheticizing Trauma: Federico García Lorca as a Universal Symbol
Aesthetics: Ángel’s Poetic and Pictorial Language of Incarceration
Aesthetics: Catalyst of Memory
Aesthetics of Remembrance: Remembering the Mother through the Artifice of Guernica
The Omnipresence of the Absent Mother: Solace, Flight, and Fugue
Bird Imagery
Memory Activism
Testimony’s Forward Gaze
Written Testimonies
Films
Works Cited
Chapter 3: The Pórtico de la Gloria in Manuel Rivas’ Postwar Novel O lapis do carpinteiro (The Carpenter’s Pencil): Art and Hagiography as a Metaphor That Subverts the Glory of Franco’s New Spain
Introduction
Manuel Rivas: Renown, Writing, and Resurrection of Galician Memory and Letters
Repression of Galicia
History and Memory
Mythmaking and Counter-memory
The Portico of Glory
Subversion of the Nationalized Consecration of Victory
Haunting, Ethics of Remembrance, and Justice
Works Cited
Chapter 4: The Path to Ambiguous Monstrosity: Illness, Martyrdom, and Castration in Emili Teixidor’s 2003 Novel and Agustí Villaronga’s Eponymous 2010 Film Pa negre (Black Bread)
Introduction
Symbiosis: Arcadian Childhood and Feminine Imagery Before the War
Nationalized Catholicism
Illness and Racial Hygiene: “Vae victis!,” Say the Victors
Communion
Martyrs, Martyrdom, Saints, and Christ Imagery
Castration: In the Novel and Film
The Ambiguation of Monstrosity
Conclusions
Works Cited
Chapter 5: Transgenerational Feminist Memory in Dulce Chacón’s 2002 Novel La voz dormida (The Sleeping Voice)
Introduction
Plot Summary, Narrative, Structure, and Chacón’s Purpose of Femimemory
Early Spanish Feminism as a Context for Chacón’s Novel: Rights Won, Rights Lost, and Reprisals
The Nationalist Construct of Rojas
Repression: Criminalization, Incarceration, Sentencing, and Execution
Torture, Interrogation, and Trauma: The Regime’s Fiction of Power
Torture in Zambrano’s Cinematic Adaptation of Chacón’s La voz dormida: The Male Gaze
Maternal-Sororal Interdependency, Matrilineage, and Matrilineal Legacy
Maternity and Biological Matrilineage
Hortensia’s Notebooks: Transformational Literacy and Transgenerational Legacy
Transgenerational Political Legacy
Conclusions and Hopeful Beginnings
Works Cited
Chapter 6: Miscarriage of Justice: The Perverted Fairy Tale of Maternity and State-Sanctioned Removal of Children from Political Prisoners in Ana Cañil’s 2011 Novel Si a los tres años no he vuelto (If I Have Not Returned in Three Years)
Introduction
“Els nens perduts”: Legislation and the Removal of Children
The Importance of Testimony
The Construct of Gender: Feminism, Fascism, and Anti-feminism
Franco’s Penitentiary Universe
The Penitentiary Galaxy for Women: Ventas, Oropesa, and San Isidro
Repression: Interrogation, Gendered Torture, and Sexual Violence
Incarcerated Children
María Topete Fernández
Propaganda and Redención
A Romance’s Restitution and a Fairy-Tale Ending
Works Cited
Chapter 7: Lessons Learned in Almudena Grandes’ 2012 Bildungsroman El lector de Julio Verne (The Reader of Jules Verne): Gender, Repression, and Resistance
Introduction
Almudena Grandes’ Literary Corpus and Literature’s Memory
Constructing a Shared Past: The Legacy of Galdós in Grandes’ Episodios de una Guerra Interminable
The Reality of Terror in Andalusia and the Nationalist Narrative of Manly Justice
The Repression of Women
Hegemonic Masculinity: Antonino as a Paradoxical Role Model
Repressed and Resistant Alternative Role Models
The Repression of Women and Their Resistance
Filomena
Miraculous Pregnancies
Female Interrogation
Pastora
Doña Elena and the Artifacts of Memory
Conclusions and New Beginnings: Memory and Morality
Works Cited
Chapter 8: Opening Graves and Seeking Closure: Remembering the Dismembered Beloved on the Quest for Justice in Almudena Carracedo and Robert Bahar’s 2018 Documentary El silencio de otros (The Silence of Others)
Introduction
La Querella Argentina (the Argentine Lawsuit)
Distrust Versus Documentaries
Amnesty, Amnesia, and the “Democratic Impunity” of the Transition
Laws: Steps Toward Human Rights
Defining Memory and the Role of El silencio de otros in Both Communicative and Cultural Memory
Exhuming the Dearly Dispatched: María Martín and Ascensión Mendieta’s Quests
María Martín’s Buried—But Not Forgotten—Mother: Faustina López
Ascensión Mendieta’s Fruitful Quest: The Homecoming of Timoteo Mendieta’s Remains
Conclusion: El silencio de otros as an Instrument of Justice
Works Cited
Epilogue
Active Memory Versus Assimilatory Forgetting: Taking a Stance in the Face of Repression
Works Cited
Index