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Hard Gelatin. Hidden Stories from the 80S

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Hard Gelatin. Hidden Stories from the 80S Hard Gelatin. Hidden Stories from the 80s Teresa Grandas It was 1976. Franco had died the previous year and a new political panorama was dawning. Three people were meeting around a table to talk about the first democratic elections to be called. Felipe González, of the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (Partido Socialista Obrero Español – PSOE), Ramón Tamames, of the Communist Party of Spain (Partido Comunista de España – PCE) and Raúl Morodo, of the People’s Socialist Party (Partido Socialista Popular – PSP). The discussion centered on the strength and presence of the left in the political panorama, and on the possibility of a single candidacy which could increase its presence. At one point, Tamames mentioned the risk that a party like PSOE might want to demonstrate its political power and run on its own. Indeed, given that it was the first electoral encounter, González said he thought each party should present its own profile to the public. Later, if necessary, there could be alliances, as electoral approach was different from institutional commitment. The scene is from the film Informe general (1976), directed by Pere Portabella. Some months later, the Spanish TV company offered airtime to the parties which were running in the elections which were set to take place on 15 June 1977. For Popular Alliance (Alianza Popular – AP), Manuel Fraga Iribarne, a former minister in Franco’s regime, called for careful consideration of the vote: ‘Do not vote out of nostalgia, out of resentment, do not vote out of feelings of revenge [...]. See who can give the country security, order, and law [...], face up to the great enemies of Spain, which are Marxism and separatism.’ Following this, Carlos Arias 13 Navarro, who was the last prime minister in Franco’s regime, stated: ‘Spain finds itself in one of the most dangerous periods that a nation can go through. The alarming deterioration of our economy, the unsustainable situation of public order, the gloomy social perspective, justify the fear that without a rapid and effective remedy we will soon find ourselves in a pre-revolutionary climate with an unpredictable outcome.’ The left, which finally was able to take part in political decision-making, fought to de- fine itself ideologically and mark out limits within itself. The right, already working feverishly in governance, stood on fear. In the light of the political circumstances we have lived through over recent years in this country, the discourse and electoral proclamations of the 1970s throw up a symbolic background to the current political and strategic framing which possibly tilts our reading; for sure. On 15 December 1976, the Political Reform Act (Ley de Reforma Política) was put to a referendum: the bill established popular sovereignty as a political right and also the two chambers, elected by universal suffrage, of Congress and Senate; lastly, it allowed the government to start con- stitutional reform. Shortly after the opening of the exhibition Hard Gelatin at MACBA in November 2016, the Sexta television station broadcast a previously unseen clip from an interview carried out in 1995 by the jour- nalist Victoria Prego with the man who was the first prime minister of Spanish democracy, Adolfo Suárez, for the Antena 3 station. The clip in question was caught on camera, but was not included in the resulting programme as it had been assumed that the cameras were not recording at that time. Suárez was explaining that, in the face of international pres- sure to put the question of monarchy or republic, and in view of opinion polls showing that the first option was losing, the words ‘monarchy’ and ‘king’ were included in the text of the Political Reform Act. In this way, it was presented as fact that this option had been subjected to popular consultation. This act was voted through by a large majority of the popu- lation. The song which accompanied the campaign to encourage citizens’ participation in the referendum was entitled Habla pueblo, habla (Speak, people, speak) and in one verse it invited people to do so, ‘if you have the desire to erase the marks of rancour...’. 14 To celebrate San Sebastián as 2016 European Capital of Culture, the 1516-2016. Tratados de paz (1516–2016. Peace Treaties) exhibition1 wanted to open with a white flag. In popular imagination, the white flag signifies a ceasefire, temporary or permanent, a period when weapons are not used, the end of war, the beginning of peace. This, however, proved extremely problematic for the exhibition, as military museums do not keep or conserve white flags, because in their codes of meaning they symbolise dishonour, surrender, defeat, even disloyalty. From this perspective, which legitimises fighting, hoisting the white flag does not deserve to be remem- bered and far less extolled, not even mentioned. The paradox which this piece of white cloth represents, the various readings it can prompt, has much to do with the task in which we are now involved. Because that is what this project is about, how symbols are read and hoisted, little pieces of history, words and acts. About how the same piece of white cloth has different meanings depending on by whom, when and how it is read. Far from historicist readings or trying to cover historiographical gaps, Hard Gelatin2 addresses what the 1980s were, in Spain, and aims to give visi- bility to some of the symptoms which emerged at that time and confirmed its pathology, but which the hegemonic retelling has obscured. Because Hard Gelatin is about clouded stories, those hidden narratives which seem, rather like a conjurer’s act, to disappear from view but are still there. It is about unheard stories, giving voice to other tales, but above all rais- ing questions, including asking ourselves why these questions still do not have answers; it’s about what lies behind the dominant narratives and how the hegemonic discourses have been articulated, blurring many stories; about how to approach the task of joining up the pieces, complementary and at times counterposed, of a multiple and complex framework; about how we construct memory and how we forget, and what mechanisms produce history. It’s about restoring memories, refuting single narratives, being open to voices that are heterogenic, discordant, diverse. 1. Exhibition curated by Pedro G. Romero, Museo de San Telmo and Koldo Mitxelna Kulturenea, The construction of the story San Sebastián, 18 June – 2 October 2016. of the Spanish Transition, the peri- 2. The title comes from verses in the poem Soles gemelos by Eduardo Haro Ibars: ‘[...] allá tras od in which democracy was estab- las montañas de gelatina dura’ (... there beyond the mountains of hard gelatin), Empalador. lished and consolidated, was based Madrid: La Banda de Moebius, 1980. on a project of reform, defined by 15 the Spanish Royal Academy (RAE) as ‘That which is proposed, projected or executed as an innovation or improvement in something’, policies of con- sensus, exemption from responsibilities, the avoidance of possible dest- abilising factors for the common good, and the maintenance of a balance which would prevent splits. There were great achievements, of course. But the political advances toward democracy, modernity, internationalisation and the euphoria implicit in all this were to be pieces of a gelatinous façade. The framework would be much more complex, and harder. Hard gelatin. The oxymoron lies in something solid, soft, colourless and transparent, odourless and insipid, but notable for its coherence; the hard- ness, meanwhile, is that intrinsic quality of something that is resistant to being worked on, which does not lend itself to taking on a new shape, or makes it much more difficult. The soft, easily digestible but apparently coherent way in which the move from dictatorship to democracy and its consolidation was mapped out and described, excluded anything that grated in order to configure the common imaginary of the eighties as pleasant, easy and very palatable. As Bernat Muniesa points out, Franco died ‘without cancelling the spirit of the Civil War, and a “victorious” Spain and a “vanquished” Spain lived on. [...] And in the middle, a very broad social body, ignorant, uncertain, disconcerted, but sociologically impregnated with the habits of the long Dictatorship.’3 And the political project which was begun lay in the equation ‘Dictatorship + Reform = Democracy’.4 ‘Those who set out our democratic game were frightened of the spontaneous and uncontrol- lable politics that the masses might generate once the Francoist cork had been popped, and above all have tried to channel political action through the most conventional mechanisms. They have engineered a reproduction of a constituent process and formal democratic procedures which divide political attributes into two drastically delimited territories: those who cel- ebrate Mass and those who attend Mass, those who do politics and those who express their assent or dissent 3. Bernat Muniesa, Dictadura y monarquía every four years through their vote. en España. De 1939 hasta la actualidad. Barcelona: Ariel, 1996, p. 153. It is not enough to re-educate de- 4. Ibid, p. 178. politicised masses and too little to 5. Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, ‘Estado de la cuestión, cuestión de Estado’, La Calle, no. 6, compensate the political, economic 2 May 1978, pp. 14–15, in Obra periodística, and social frustrations aggravated 1974–1986, vol. II: Del humor al desencanto. Barcelona: Debate, 2011, p. 191. by a time of crisis.’5 The forgetting, 16 amnesia, poor memory and silence – the Homologated Silence to which the work of Federico Guzmán alludes –, which still endure in our historical present, force us to weave a cartography transcending the simplification that has in many cases marked the story of the Transition. Ortega said that in teaching, one should teach to doubt what is being taught.
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