Engraved on Spain's Memory

Engraved on Spain’s Memory A case study of political discourses present in the media concerning three cemeteries for victims of the Civil War and the Francoist dictatorship, and their contested contribution to national reconciliation. Francisco Soto Fernández Communication for Development One-year master 15 Credits June 2021 Supervisor: Kersti Wissenbach ABSTRACT This Degree Project deals with the current discourses present on several (web)sites of memory related to three selected cemeteries for victims of the Civil War and the Francoist dictatorship and analyzes their potential contribution to national reconciliation, taking into consideration the presumed social or political interests of the actors behind the (web)sites. Collective memory must be seen as a social construction since memory stems from the shared remembrances of society and relates to key social concepts such as identity. Memory is a changeable device forged through a transformative process in which different actors are involved, from direct witnesses to memory spaces, and recently, the Internet. Memory is also discourse and as discourse is aimed at achieving power by controlling the group. Lately, the Internet has become a battlefield for competing memories, and (web)sites of memory are an opportunity to impose, in the post-truth era, a partial version of historical events. With the purpose of providing answers about whether current discourses present on (web)sites of memory can help achieve national reconciliation, this DP makes use of Discourse Analysis as a primary method, and also in-depth semi-structured interviews - in a limited number - to attain a better understanding through the uniqueness of the knowledge generated by the respondents. The Analysis has proven that, despite the time elapsed, the current discourses present on (web)sites of memory are a continuation of the old Francoist and anti-Francoist rhetoric, their contents are designed for audiences deeply committed to sociopolitical interests and, therefore, their contribution to national reconciliation is poor. The analysis has also discovered interesting initiatives aimed at exploiting sites and (web)sites for educational purposes. Future research may include the repetition of a similar study in the coming years, when the new Law of Democratic Memory has come into force and the political situation in Spain has evolved. It may be also advisable to use contrasting quantitative methods and enlarge the research to other cemeteries, especially, for victims of the Francoist side. Keywords: memory, identity, lieu de memoire, (web)site, Internet, post-truth. I Acknowledgments First of all, I would like to express my deep gratitude to Kersti Wissenbach, my DP supervisor, for her guidance and useful critiques of this research work, and also, to Tobias Denskus and the rest of the professors of the Communication for Development program, for their advice and support. My thanks are also extended to all the participants in the interviews, without whom this DP could not have been completed. I sincerely appreciate their time and interest. Secondly, I would like to thank my family who have encouraged and comforted me over the whole C4D program and this final DP and, especially, Coro who is the light of my life, María, Marta, and Miguel, just for being my kin, and finally, my mother who is now losing her memories and lived through post-war penuries without a father, whose name may be found on a (web)site of memory. Logroño, June 2021 Francisco Soto Fernández. II Table of Contents PREFACE ...............................................................................................................1 1 INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................2 2 HISTORICAL BACKGROUND .........................................................................6 2.1 The 2014 UN Report ............................................................................................ 6 2.2 Realms of Oblivion .............................................................................................. 6 3 THREE CEMETERIES: A CASE STUDY.........................................................9 4 LITERATURE REVIEW ................................................................................. 12 4.1 Three waves of memory studies ......................................................................... 12 4.2 First wave: Memory as a Social Construction .................................................... 12 4.3 Second wave: From ‘Lieux de Mémoire’ to Cultural Memory ........................... 13 4.4 Third wave: Memory as a Media Construction .................................................. 14 4.5 Three stages in Spanish Memory ....................................................................... 16 5 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK ..................................................................... 18 5.1 Memory as a Journey ........................................................................................ 18 5.2 Memory as Discourse ......................................................................................... 19 5.3 The Internet as a Battlefield............................................................................... 20 5.4 Memory-making in the ‘Post-truth’ Era ............................................................ 21 6 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY ...................................................................... 23 7 ANALYSIS ...................................................................................................... 29 7.1 General features (RQ1.2) ................................................................................... 29 7.2 Multimodality (RQ1.1) (RQ1.2) ......................................................................... 30 7.3 Lexis (RQ1.1) ..................................................................................................... 31 7.4 Grammar (RQ1.1) ............................................................................................. 32 7.5 Truth-claims (RQ1.1)......................................................................................... 32 7.6 Rhetoric (RQ1.1) ............................................................................................... 33 7.7 Ideological stances (RQ1.1) ................................................................................ 34 7.8 Social networks and algorithm manipulation (RQ1.2) ....................................... 35 7.9 Overall interpretation of the analysis ................................................................. 36 7.10 A reflection on the analysis ................................................................................ 37 8 CONCLUSION ................................................................................................ 39 APPENDIX 1 Summary of the Analysis .................................................................. 47 APPENDIX 2 Interviews ........................................................................................ 55 APPENDIX 3 Extracts of the Interviews ................................................................. 59 III PREFACE How to stop time? How to reverse the work of forgetting when eighty years from the Spanish Civil War have now elapsed and the last witnesses of the horrors are about to disappear? A site of memory or a ‘lieu de mémoire’, as called by French scholar Pierre Nora, can do the job as the ultimate incarnation of past remembrances. In the digital era, sites and (web)sites of memory are frequent, as binaries of public spaces and virtual devices in which collective memory find their next accommodation. However, not only may these sites and (web)sites preserve memory but also convey a predetermined discourse promoting a partial interpretation of history. With the purpose of normalizing their status, in 2007, the Spanish parliament passed a law in which sites with relevant significance for the memory of those defeated in the Civil War (Cinta, 2011) were regulated with a commemorative and educational function. In addition, a special distinction was conferred on ‘El Valle de los Caídos’ cemetery, a monumental memorial in which around 40,000 victims of the Civil War were buried, from both the Nationalist and the Republican side, and in which, dictator Francisco Franco himself remained interred until 2019. Palpably, the enforcement of these legislative measures has encountered increasing resistance from some sectors within Spanish society. Maybe, they are nostalgic for Franco’s dictatorship, or simply, another manifestation of the ubiquitous political trend across Europe which, as a consequence of economic crises, vindicates the symbols of our darkest past and is threatening the whole European system of values. Hence, collective memory in Spain is doomed to a long period of contestation due to the absence of societal consensus (Encarnación, 2008). In this regard, Pierre Nora himself, in an interview published by the University of Valencia (Martínez Mas & Nora, 2009), openly declared against the latest Spanish laws concerning collective memory due to their unpredictable consequences breaking the appeasement miraculously reached, without bitterness nor violence, during the ‘transition to democracy’ period. But is Nora right when he affirms that Spain is going through a civil war of memories? After the arrival of the Internet, the proliferation of digital artifacts, including the aforementioned (web)sites, has brought about a new ecology of media that somehow replicates

Load more