LORCA'S GRAVE COMMEMORATION AND THE ETHICS OF RECOVERY IN THE ERA OF MASS DEATH, A CASE STUDY OF THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR

A Thesis submitted to the Committee on Graduate Studies in Partial Fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in the Faculty of Arts and Science

TRENT UNIVERSITY

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© Copyright by Gregory Frankland, 2012

Theory, Culture and Politics M.A. Graduate Program

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1+1 Canada Abstract

Lorca's grave: Commemoration and the Ethics of Recovery in the Era of Mass Death, a

case study of the Spanish Civil War

Gregory Frankland

In August of 1936 the Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca was murdered by a killing squad loyal to Franco, his body deposited into a mass grave near the village of Alfacar in

Spain. The scandal surrounding his murder and the disappearance of his body led to the attempted recovery of his remains in 2009, thirty four years after the death of Franco.

This belated reclamation of the disappeared poet's remains was hastened by the Law of

Historical Memory of 2007, a law enacted by the Spanish Parliament in order to facilitate and fund exhumations of mass graves throughout Spain. These exhumations were of the victims of the Franco regime, a matter of the memory of justice. By addressing the Law of Historical Memory, this thesis takes the resting place of Federico Garcia Lorca to illustrate the moral and ethical consequences of recovering and reforming history.

Lorca's grave is what Pierre Nora would call a "lieu de memoire", a place of memory. As a contribution to the field of memory studies, my thesis studies the politics and ethics of recovery in an era of mass death, often thought to have begun after World War One. By drawing a distinction between exhumation and recovery, I explore the conditions under which commemorative acts, including exhumations on behalf of the vanquished, are founded upon moral and ethical principles. My study is largely inspired by Walter

Benjamin's "On the Concept of History", specifically thesis VII, according to which not historical understanding but history itself belongs to the victor. If historicism is the belief that our understanding of a society or culture is derived from its history, then the victor, who writes history controls historical understanding. The recovery of memory in Spain on behalf of the vanquished allows us to consider the creation of an alternate history that confronts the past rather than forgetting and repeating the past.

Key Words: Federico Garcia Lorca; Walter Benjamin; historical memory; Spanish Civil

War; commemoration; morality; ethics Acknowledgments

I acknowledge my committee: Jonathan Bordo, Andrew Wernick and Antonio Cazorla

Sanchez. As a student of Cultural Studies in my undergraduate years at Trent I was

always pulled toward studying history, but, as it turned out, the history department was not the place for me to be a student. In my Master's degree I wanted to pursue my

inclination to think historically. To Antonio I give gratitude for his guidance and resources, which he provided generously throughout my research on the Spanish Civil

War. To Andrew Wernick for the seminar he instructed on theories of exchange and the

gift. To Jonathan Bordo whose undergraduate honours seminars on critical topography I

attended for the two years of my MA, and for the doctoral writing seminar he established.

To the writing seminar: Grant Timms, D. Laurence Dunne, Jonathan Bordo, Jeremy Bell,

Rachel Cyr, and Jenn Cole. Our weekly meetings, in my second year in TCP saw me trudging home in the snow to write through the evening. To Rachel Cyr who in the final

days of the thesis took great care to edit my writing, and it was through her confidence in my work that I was able to send it off. To Jenn Cole for our lengthy discussions over the many years and the hours we took reading one another our writing either by a fireplace or by the dim lights in the Harvey St. apartment. To Maralynn Cherry for our Tuesday

meetings in her office. To Michael W. Morse for our kitchen discussions, introducing me

to Ludwig Van Beethoven, and for his faith in my abilities as a student. To Norah

Winkelaar, and our bike rides to Bata Library. She, in the last few months of my writing,

always reminded me to think twice about what I was claiming.

iv Contents

Abstract

Acknowledgments

List of Figures

Introduction

Chapter 1. Federico Garcia Lorca's grave

Chapter 2. The Spanish Civil War and the Law of Historical Memory

Chapter 3. Recovery as moral obligation

Bibliography

Appendix

1. The Law of Historical Memory List of Fi2ures

Figure 1: Lorca's grave 18

Figure 2: La Fuente Grande/The Big Fountain 21

Figure 3: The Valley of the Fallen 41

Figure 4: Monument to the Missing 93

VI Introduction

In October of 2009,1 happened across a newspaper article concerning the exhumation of

Federico Garcia Lorca's grave. Lorca, a lecturer, poet and playwright, was murdered by a killing squad loyal to General Franco in August of 1936. The months of August and

September of 1936 were the bloodiest months of the Spanish Civil War in terms of extra­ judicial killings carried out by both forces loyal to the Second Republic and the rebel

Nationalists. Why was Lorca murdered? Lorca's work was highly critical of Catholic society and often times lamented the loss of Arabic and Roma artistic influences in the province of Andalusia. These sentiments were in opposition to a Nationalist Spain under traditional Catholic values. In a lecture that calls for the preservation of a distinctly

Andalusian culture, entitled "Deep Song", Lorca remarks:

Gentlemen, deep song, because of both its melody and its poems, is one of the strongest popular artistic creations in the world. In your hands is the task of preserving it and dignifying it, for the sake of Andalusia and her people.1

Lorca's plea for the active preservation of deep song, "for the sake of Andalusia and her people"2, exemplifies why Lorca would be taken as an enemy of a united Spain under a

Nationalist regime. Lorca's position as an undesirable artist and his potential affiliation with the Communist party in Spain (although he never actually joined the party) made him one victim among thousands whose remains are now sought as part of a larger project for the recuperation of historical memory in Spain.

The team of archaeologists who carried out the exhumation of Lorca's grave did not find any remains. That no remains were found prompted me to think about the

1 Federico Garcia Lorca, "Deep Song", Deep Song and other Prose, ed. and trans. Christopher Maurer. (London: Marion Boyars Publishers Ltd., 1980), 40 2 Ibid., 40

1 obligation the living have towards the remains of the dead. The exhumation of Federico

Garcia Lorca's grave and the more general recovery of historical memory in Spain, demonstrate recovery as commemorative, which is founded on ethical principles.

This study of Lorca's grave and the Spanish Civil War is situated in the era of mass death inaugurated by the First World War. The effort of collective recovery from traumatic experience caused by war on a national level is included in this period of history. The Law of Historical Memory (2007) demonstrates recovery as a common thread between mass death experienced in the First World War and mass death experienced in the Spanish Civil War. This law establishes a dialogue between the First

World War and its aftermath and the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War. In this way, the legacy of the First World War is still demonstrable and very much alive. This thesis is then historically situated from 1914 through to 2007.

The exhumation of Lorca's grave directed me to the Law of Historical Memory, which was passed in Spanish Parliament of December 2007. This law sought to utilize government funds alongside private individual interest in order to exhume mass graves throughout Spain. The law also made documents concerning the Civil War and the

Dictatorship more accessible to the public. With the guidance of Antonio Cazorla

Sanchez, I undertook a study of the Spanish Civil War in order to understand the experience of mass death during and after the Spanish Civil War that the Law of

Historical Memory was in response. We are familiar with the Nuremburg Trials in 1946, in which leading Nazi party members and military leaders were sentenced. Also of note are the Truth and Reconciliation commissions in South Africa. The Law of Historical

Memory is situated in similar ground: a nation that seeks to recover from a traumatic

2 experience caused by war. How these traumatic events are remembered and commemorated is included in any recovery process. The Law of Historical Memory shows how law and historical memory are tied. Lorca's grave effectively introduced to me two areas of focus: first, the Law of Historical Memory, and second, the Spanish Civil

War. With these topics, I was able to move to the theoretic topic of recovery. Recovery, as I understood it, was at the core of the exhumation of Lorca's grave, the Law of

Historical Memory, the recovery from mass death experienced in the First World War, and the Spanish Civil War.

If the Law of Historical Memory implies a particular understanding of recovery, we must consider the legal element involved in such acts of recovery. The relation between recovery and law introduces another sense of the meaning of the term 'recovery'. In law, recovery has also to do with the recovery of a loss, for example in property through a legal process or judgment, that which was rightfully in someone's possession, but taken away, is recovered by them:

The fact or process of gaining or regaining possession of or a right to property, compensation, etc., by a legal process or judgment; spec, (also common recovery) a process by which entailed estate may be transferred from one person to another, based on a legal fiction involving the collusive default of a third party.3

The notion of collecting what was rightfully in one's possession through a formal process is illustrated in the recovery of remains insofar as this process of recovery is a result of judicial processes. A further definition that makes reference to legal processes states,

"The collection of a debt, esp. by means of a formal process." The memory law invites the vanquished to recover the memory of their families. The debt in question in the

3 OED Online, http://www.oed.corne.cat .lib.trentu.ca:8080/view/Entry/l 14474 4 OED Online, http://www.oed.come.cat .lib.trentu.ca:8080/view/Entry/l 14474

3 recovery of memory in Spain is the moral debt incurred by the victors. Paradoxically, the descendents of the vanquished are collecting on the debt incurred by the victors because their victory rendered the vanquished unable to cultivate a memory of their plight. In this case, the victors must submit to the vanquished who are now able to recover a past once denied them.

Why recover someone's remains? Further, as is made clear with Lorca, what are the implications of failing to recover the remains one seeks? The OED defines recovery as

"The regaining or restoration of one's control or possession of a thing lost, stolen, or otherwise taken away, retrieval; the possibility of recovering such a thing."5 Recovery is to be thought of materially and in relation to material objects, the return of the lost object to the rightful holder. The lost object can be as simple as a misplaced sweater, which one recovers after some time. A loss that leads one to the recovery of the thing lost could, according to the definition of recovery so far, involve theft or the denial of access to the material lost or taken away. Such is the case of mass grave exhumations in Spain. The denial of access to the remains of one's family is to deny the human necessity of recovering the remains of their kin or comrade. It may be inaccurate to refer to recovery as a necessity, as it is also possible for someone not to desire to recover the remains of their kin.

Recovery can also be understood in an immaterial sense. By immaterial I refer to the usage of 'recovery' in relation to memory and the recovery of time itself. Recovery is thus a matter of the mind and senses. "To get back or regain (something non-material conceived of as lost or taken away); to win back. Freq. of time." The recovery of that

5 OED (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), 2449 6 OED Online, http://www.oed.come.cat .lib.trentu.ca:8080/view/Entry/l 14474

4 which is immaterial relates also to societal memory. In this sense recovery can also be understood in the context of post-war societies and how such events are remembered and commemorated. In the time after the Spanish Civil War official memory of the war was consolidated, benefiting the victors. In order to clarify, I need only refer to the pro-

Nationalist account of the war entitled, "the General Cause: the red domination in Spain".

Drafted by the Ministry of Justice after the civil war, this document reported on 'Red' violence during the civil war. This Francoist interpretation of the war, which only documented a portion of the events, denies the need for a full account of the war and as such cannot be rightfully called a document of recovery. The Law of Historical Memory on the other hand, is a law that attempts to include what had been previously left out of historical records. Recovery is thus understood in its immaterial sense when memory is the object of recovery.

A brief definition of recovery should be given at this point because recovery will be considered in greater depth in the third chapter. Recovery is to be distinguished from exhumation. Exhumation, ex (out) + humus (ground) can occur without a recovery. The word 'recovery' carries meaning to extend to a loss and as such has an ethical dimension because of the human obligation to tend to the dead, be it through burial, cremation, mummification or embalming. In order to substantiate this claim, we need only return to the attempted recovery of Lorca's remains. In this instance the question arises, is it un­ ethical for Lorca's remains to be unaccounted for and unidentified? This question extends to the other victims of Francoist violence. When exhumation is an act of recovery as I have defined it, exhumation is an ethical act because it is not solely concerned with merely uncovering material but rather, recovering material for the purpose of reversing a

5 wrong, of balancing an injustice with a just act. This begs us to ask the question, what is a society that actively forgets catastrophe in place of cultivating a narrative of victory? For

Walter Benjamin, this is historicism's privilege of the victors' memory over the vanquished.

Benjamin's essay "On the Concept of History" addresses historicism as the property of the victors over the vanquished. I want to introduce at this point thesis VII from "On the Concept of History" to show exactly what is considered in this study in regards to the recovery of memory in Spain, that there is indeed a case of victor and vanquished:

Addressing himself to the historian who wishes to relive an era, Fustel de Coulanges recommends that he blot out everything he knows about the later course of history. There is no better way of characterizing the method which historical materialism has broken with. It is a process of empathy. Its origin is indolence of the heart, that acedia which despairs of appropriating the genuine historical image as it briefly flashes up. Among medieval theologians, acedia was regarded as the root cause of sadness. Flaubert, who was familiar with it, wrote: "Peu de gens devineront combine il a fallu etre triste pour ressuciter Carthage!" The nature of this sadness becomes clearer if we ask: With whom does historicism actually sympathize? The answer is inevitable: with the victor. And all rulers are the heirs of prior conquerors. Hence, empathizing with the victor invariably benefits the current rulers. The historical materialist knows what this means. Whoever has emerged victorious participates to this day in the triumphal procession in which current rulers step over those who are lying prostrate. According to traditional practice, the spoils are carried in the procession. They are called "cultural treasures," and a historical materialist views them with cautious detachment. For in every case these treasures have a lineage which he cannot contemplate without horror. They owe their existence not only to the efforts of the great geniuses who created them, but also to the anonymous toil of others who lived in the same period. There is no document of culture which is not at the same time a document of barbarism. And just as such a document is never free of barbarism, so barbarism taints the manner in which it was transmitted from one hand to another. The historical materialist therefore dissociates himself from this process of transmission as far as possible. He regards it as his task to brush history against the grain.7

7 Walter Benjamin, "On the Concept of History", trans. Harry Zohn. Selected Writings Vol. IV, (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of University Harvard Press, 2006), 391.

6 That which is left behind as a cultural document is a document of barbarism and the victor always ensures that something is left to posterity according to Benjamin. In short, what remains in an obvious manner, as in monuments, or triumphal arches belongs to the victors.

Benjamin gives us the language to understand the current situation in Spain.

When the Fascist, Nationalist and Ultra-Conservative forces, lumped under the general group-name of "Nationalist" defeated the Second Republic in March 1939 decades of

"memory suppression" took place. Coinciding almost perfectly with Benjamin's concept of history as a document of barbarism, under Franco, Spain saw the proliferation of a one-sided narrative; the narrative of the victors was manifested in monuments from the grandiose "Valley of the Fallen" to small monuments devoted to the Nationalist war dead throughout Spanish towns. As Antonio Cazorla Sanchez points out, ".. .the official memory of the executed republicans was either completely erased or, when it was recalled, was defamed."8 The memory of the vanquished was all but denied while mass arrests and executions were being conducted to "cleanse" Spain of Bolshevism and socialism.

Two other writings by Benjamin help to advance our thought on the ethics of recovery. The first essay, "Unpacking my Library", introduces the element of collection inherent in recovery; the second essay is a fragment unpublished in Benjamin's lifetime entitled "Excavation and Language", which focuses upon digging as an act that must account for itself and assume the responsibility of recovering that which is unknown.

Antonio Cazorla Sanchez, Fear and Progress: Ordinary Lives in Franco's Spain 1939-1975. (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 21.

7 In "Unpacking my Library" Benjamin describes the work of the collector encountering his collection which is situated in the act of opening wooden crates. This essay, as Benjamin says, is ".. .concerned with.. .giving you some insight into the relationship between a collector and his possessions, into collecting rather than a collection."9 From this sentence we can take the position that Benjamin's essay, in so far as it is about collecting and the phenomenon of the relationship between the collector and his or her possessions, is also concerned with recovery. The act of digging through disorder and making sense to and giving order to the collected fragments is a common thread in Benjamin's essay, he writes:

I must ask you to join me in the disorder of crates that have been wrenched open, the air saturated with wood dust, the floor covered with torn paper, to join me among the piles of volumes that are seeing daylight again after two years of darkness, so that you may be ready to share with me a bit of the mood—certainly not an elegiac mood, but rather, one of anticipation.10

This is, at its base, an account of what it is to reveal that which is concealed. Benjamin has written this essay with the collector in mind; the collector of books to be exact. And though we could object that this piece of writing has no relation whatsoever to the revelation of human remains in Spain, it remains clear that in Spain a type of collecting is implicit in the act of exhumation. But for what purpose? One does not collect remains for the sake of collecting. One collects for moral and ethical reasons. The collection evidences mass death. The collection in Spain (the unpacking, if I may use such an adjective) is a collection of indications. One collects indicators for the purpose of recovering memory. In this way collecting and the recovery of memory are linked. Is this

9 Walter Benjamin, "Unpacking my Library" Volume IISelected Writings 1927-1934 (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999) 486 10Benjamin, "Unpacking my Library", 486.

8 not Benjamin's main point? The redemption of memory is possible through the revelation and collection of objects lost. The collector aims their efforts towards salvation.

Benjamin writes, "I am not exaggerating when I say that to a true collector the acquisition of an old book is its rebirth."11 Can we take rebirth to mean salvation?12 The redemptive moment is the revelation of the book, as Benjamin writes, into "the light of day". Rebirth is a re-emergence into the world, and in this way, a phenomenal moment. For Benjamin the moment of recovery carries a redemptive possibility.

In Spain the recovery of remains seeks to bring about a rebirth of memory, an attempt to wrest the irretrievable from the abyss of irretrievability, and through this action to redeem the memory of the vanquished into collective memory and individual memory.

At the same time, it allows for a reformation of historical truth

The following fragment, unpublished in Benjamin's lifetime entitled "Excavation and Memory" sums up the work done up to the present:

Language has unmistakably made plain that memory is not an instrument for exploring the past, but rather a medium. It is the medium of that which is experienced, just as the earth is the medium in which ancient cities lie buried. He who seeks to approach his own buried past must conduct himself like a man digging. Above all, he must not be afraid to return again and again to the same matter; to scatter it as one scatters earth, to turn it over as one turns over soil. For the "matter itself is no more than the strata which yield their long-sought secrets only to the most meticulous investigation. That is to say, they yield those images that, severed from all earlier associations, reside as treasures in the sober rooms of our later insights—like torsos in a collector's gallery. It is undoubtedly useful to plan excavations methodically. Yet no less indispensable is the cautious probing of the spade in the dark loam. And the man who merely makes an inventory of his findings, while failing to establish the exact location of where in today's ground the ancient treasures have been stored up, cheats himself of his richest prize. In this sense, genuine memory must therefore yield an image of the person who remembers,

11 Ibid., 487 12 For Arendt, natality carries with it the possibility for salvation. She writes: "The miracle that saves the world, the realm of human affairs, from its normal, 'natural' ruin is ultimately the fact of natality, in which the faculty of action ontologically rooted. It is, in other words, the birth of new men and the new beginning, the action they are capable of by virtue of being born." (Human Condition, 1958, 247)

9 in the same way a good archaeological report not only informs us about the strata from which its findings originate, but also gives an account of the strata which first had to be broken through.13

This essay introduces the recovery of material at a site, and implores the digger to be aware of why they are digging and where they are digging. Benjamin allows us to remark that to recover calls into question the digger and the material that the digger uncovers.

Benjamin suggests ethics with the following sentence,

"And the man who merely makes an inventory of his findings, while failing to establish the exact location of where in today's ground the ancient treasures have been stored up, cheats himself of his richest prize."14

To make an inventory, is to be unaware of the investments that one has brought to the location where one is digging. For Benjamin, to be aware of where one is digging is as important as one's findings because one has included oneself and one's past in the process of digging:

In this sense, genuine memory must therefore yield an image of the person who remembers, in the same way a good archaeological report not only informs us about the strata from which its findings originate, but also gives an account of the strata which first had to be broken through.15

This passage comments on the fact that not only are findings informative but so too is the location of the digger in time and space. The one who favours an awareness of the location of their dig is aware because they are motivated by a loss. Benjamin's thought in this fragment suggests the ethical in exhumation, which is not to simply exhume, but to exhume in the name of something with the ability to critically reflect on the exhumation.

Walter Benjamin, "Excavation and Memory", Selected Writings Vol. II (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of University of Harvard Press, 1999), 576. 14 Ibid., 576 15 Walter Benjamin, "Excavation and Memory", Selected Writings Vol. //(Cambridge: The Belknap Press of University of Harvard Press, 1999), 576.

10 Uncovered material is not treated simply as remains, but as remains that testify to a condition or an event that can radically alter the way we think of the past and recollect the past. Recovery, understood ethically, holds the digger accountable for their findings and what their findings inform. Benjamin's insight here into the act of digging shows us recovery understood ethically on the grounds that to dig is to potentially alter the way the past is understood. What is more, if as in Spain, the digger is actively seeking the remains of murdered people, where the discovery of the remains can alter the way history is understood, the caution with which Benjamin advocates is apparent. This is so because of the fragility of history, which means, historical fact is sometimes rightly, sometimes wrongly altered based on the recovery and interpretation of previously unknown documents or traces.

Memory, for Benjamin, is a medium for exploring the past. As such, memory is also a medium for recovery. In what sense does Benjamin use the word "medium"?

Medium can be taken to mean an intermediary, a communicator between two things. The medium used to make the painting, for example, tempra on wood panel. The material used to communicate the message is the medium. So, memory is to be thought of materially as that which communicates the past. Memory holds the past within it as the earth holds ancient cities as Benjamin rightly argues. More specifically, memory as a medium is a communicator between two times, as it seems Benjamin is aware. Memory, as he says, is not an instrument but rather a medium, a material, and if the wording

"memory is a material" is too vague, we can say that memory is a material practice. The memory and understanding of collective origins are largely, but not completely based on the discovery of deposited material, and on materials that are already in circulation.

11 How does this relate to our example of the recovery of memory in Spain? The exhumation of mass graves in Spain is motivated by an attempt to recover a loss incurred through unjust cause. Recovery is motivated by an ethical and moral problem.

Specifically this problem answers to an obligation and responsibility of a community to the cultivation and preservation of its history. Part of this responsibility and obligation requires the recovery of human remains. In Spain, these remains testify to the fate of the vanquished forces who opposed the rebel armies during the Spanish Civil War and after the war under Francoism. If such historical responsibility is included when exhumations occur, the exhumation becomes a recovery. Benjamin's insight taken alongside the exhumations in Spain, shows us what is at stake when one exhumes, that is, one is not merely a digger cataloguing facts. One is also accountable for what they seek because of the historical implications of what they recover.

This thesis unfolds in three chapters. Chapter one focuses on the grave of

Federico Garcia Lorca and the tomb of Franco at the Valley of the Fallen. Pierre Nora's concept ofLieux de memoires, "places of memory" and Jonathan Bordo's essay "The

Keeping Place" are addressed in order to critically engage sites of burial as places of memory. The second chapter is an account of the Spanish Civil War and introduces the

Law of Historical Memory as a document to inform us on the practice of recovery as an ethical practice and helps to situate recovery as an obligation on the part of the living.

Chapter three takes up recovery as a recurring theme in the aftermath of the First World

War while addressing recovery theoretically by arguing that recovery is a commemorative act founded on a moral obligation the living have to the dead. Through this in-depth engagement with recovery, a general discussion is opened up on

12 commemoration situated in the post-First World War era of which the Spanish Civil War is a part.

13 Chapter 1: The Grave of Federico Garcia Lorca

.. .and if death is death, what will become of poets and sleeping things that no one now remembers?

-Federico Garcia Lorca, from Autumn Song. Nov. 1918

From Gerald Brenan's initial search for Lorca's grave among hundreds of unmarked graves in 1949, to the most recent exhumations in October of 2009, the grave of Federico

Garcia Lorca has been considered as a commemorative site. Lorca's grave will be the main object this of study. Along with the poet's alleged burial site, the Lorca family's summer home is a museum; a statue of Lorca is located in Madrid. All this is to say that in addition to Lorca's burial site, there are many monuments to the memory of the poet.

The monuments to Lorca signify the fact that Lorca left behind what we can call "cultural documents." Surely, everyone leaves behind cultural documents. Cultural documents are pieces of writing, photographs, voice recordings and paintings. We can go so far as to say that a cultural document does not necessarily require a recording in the proper sense.

What I mean is that a cultural document is one's existence in the world among others.

But without any recording of the existence of someone it is conceivable that this existence will be entirely forgotten. Individuals, practice deliberate and accidental depositions. "Deliberate" in this sense, refers to the recording of our actions with the intention to be beheld by someone in the present or the future. Deliberate depositions are a result of the fact that humans can conceive of their own mortality. To leave something behind deliberately is an attempt to combat mortality. "Accidental" refers to objects that are not made to be found as artifacts but rather arise from necessity. When someone

14 discards a broken shovel, they are not committing the shovel to posterity deliberately.

They are discarding the broken shovel for reasons of necessity because they cannot use it anymore. If the shovel is discovered later, then the necessary deposition "for the future" was accidental. If one donates a work of art to a museum however, the action to "leave something behind" is deliberate with the intention of preservation. The memory of the person who made the work is preserved, and if the piece is by an anonymous person, the preservation of the object itself is of primary concern and is thus a testimony to the fact that the piece was crafted. The crafted object is a sign of humanity. Humanity can be thought of as a document itself. Lorca's status before his assassination (as an internationally renowned poet playwright and lecturer) implores us to observe that whether or not Lorca's remains are recovered runs up against the fact that Lorca has left behind a body of work. We are considering a figure that escapes being forgotten because of the fact that he has left behind his craft, and his craft has survived over time.

In October of 2009 outside the town of Alfacar in Andalusia Spain, exhumation commenced on the site thought to hold the remains of Federico Garcia Lorca. In 1936 at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War the celebrated poet, playwright and artist, returned to Granada despite warnings that he would not be safe there on account of the

Nationalist uprising. After a short period of being in hiding, given shelter by the Rosales family, who "helped many people, among them a young communist"16, Lorca was arrested, held in the town of Viznar and like other victims of these purges, was driven to

1 7 a remote place, in this case the "olive groves of Viznar, outside the city" shot, and buried in an unmarked grave. In his recently published book entitled Fear and Progress:

16 Ian Gibson, Federico Garcia Lorca: A Life (London: Faber and Faber Limited, 1989), 453. 17 Mary Vincent, "Spain 1833-2002 People and State", (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 153.

15 Ordinary Lives in Franco's Spain, Antonio Cazorla Sanchez writes on the site of Lorca's execution:

That Lorca was buried there made the site quietly famous during the Franco years and legendary today, but also served (and still does) partly to obscure the fact that this is also the grave of thousands of other people who were executed in the area by the Francoist rebels during the Civil War.1

This passage calls into question what Lorca's grave, as a site, is by bringing to our attention the significance of the alleged grave of Lorca. Sanchez reveals the fact that the grave of Lorca is fraught with tension between the anonymous mass, and the individual.

The site thought to contain Lorca's remains is a highly symbolic place, as Sanchez has noted, the site has notoriety not only because there are buried "thousands of other people" but also because Lorca is thought to be buried there. The mnemonic significance of

Lorca's execution and grave site invites reference to Pierre Nora's lieux de memoire,

"places of memory". According to Pierre Nora, editor of "Les Lieux de Memoires" such places of memory, ".. .are complex things. At once natural and artificial, simple and ambiguous, concrete and abstract, they are lieux—places, sites, causes—in three ways: material, symbolic, and functional."19 Not only is Lorca's execution site and grave site a lieu de memoire but so too is his art—that which he has left behind. Each book of Lorca's poetry, plays lectures and sketches are lieux de memoire. The body of Lorca cannot be accounted for, but his body of work is accounted for. Lorca's work is a testimony to his life. One wonders if the body is in fact necessary at all in order to commemorate or honour Lorca's memory. That we are able to ask such a question confirms Lorca's status

18 Antonio Cazorla Sanchez, "Fear and Progress: Ordinary Lives in Franco's Spain 1939-1975" (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), 17. 19 Pierre Nora, Realms of Memory, trans. Arthur Goldhammer, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), 14.

16 as an icon. On the topic of the iconic, Lorca's assassination was, according to Ian Gibson apolitical act. Although there is much debate about Lorca's politics, (he himself said that he was a revolutionary, but never political)20 he was clearly opposed to a fascist Spain, which, at the time was a distinct possibility. It was less so that Lorca was a communist proper and more so socially and culturally deviant from 'traditional' Spanish Catholic culture. What is clear however is that Lorca was deemed a 'Red poet' by the extreme right in Spain. Undesirable if not for his homosexuality, then undesireable for the work he made, (esp. the play Yerma) for its critique of Catholic society in Spain.21 "The

Barraca", the theatre company of which Lorca was Artistic Director, was highly favoured among the lower classes, Gibson writes,

Lorca was satisfied with the outcome of the Barraca's first tour, which he felt proved that he and his friends had been right in believing that the theatre inthe seventeenth century, Spain's 'Golden Age', could get through to ordinary people, even to illiterate peasants.22

Such popularity among the lower classes, especially illiterate peasants, contributed to

Lorca's reputation as both an 'enemy' and a 'revolutionary', a double reputation that would develop into 'martyr status' among Republican supporters.

20 See Ian Gibson's Federico Garcia Lorca (1989), 443 21 See Ian Gibson, "the Barraca, and he as its Artistic Director, were now considered enemies of the 'true Spain', the Spain of sword and mitre, the inquisitorial Spain that was busily plotting the downfall of the fledgling democracy that threatened its privileges." (1989), 333 22 Ian Gibson, Federico Garcia Lorca (1989), 334

17 (Figure 1 Lorca's grave site)

The exhumation that was carried out in October of 2009 discovered that Lorca's grave site was empty. No remains were found. The fact that the site contained no remains does not annul the site as a site. In fact absence only strengthens the site as a site of recovery because we are shown that recovery can take place without evidence and illuminates the multi-faceted essence of memory and commemorative practice. Absence facilitates memory and commemoration as much as presence. It is absence in the first place that drives commemoration and the necessity to remember and to recover what we have lost.

The presence of Lorca's remains as evidence is not necessary for the site to remain significant as a lieu de memoire. What then is the significance of this absence? We can propose that absence itself can be a witness object.23 In the case of Lorca, the absence of his remains only intensifies the testimonial value of the site because commemoration is a reaction to absence.

Witness objects refer to objects that stand in for specular witnesses. The witness objects m this study are human remains that testify to events of mass death Witness objects are defined as such by Jonathan Bordo- "The crossing of the threshold from witnessed to unwitnessed is marked by the erasure of the figural traces of human presence from the contents of the representation and the substitution of that witness figure, for example, by the nonhuman figure of a solitary tree The solitary tree is a stand-in for the specular witness " Bordo, Jonathan. Picture and Witness at the Site of the Wilderness (University of Chicago Press, 2002), 299

18 Sanchez writes that the site "still does" hold greater symbolic value than other mass grave sites to this day. The "greater symbolic value" attached to the grave site is so because the site has the proper name Lorca associated with it. What then does this proper name mean? What does Lorca signify? Ian Gibson informs us:

It was three weeks before the Republican press picked up the rumour that Lorca had been killed by the fascists. Disbelieved at first, the rumour became a certainty soon afterwards when several people escaped from Granada and told the story of what was happening in the city, with convincing information about the poet's arrest and death. There was consternation throughout the Spanish-speaking world, while the European press also reported on the matter. Almost overnight Lorca became a Republican martyr.24

Given the significance of Lorca's death, we are forced to consider the "figure of the martyr" as part of Lorca's legacy because Lorca was first a 'voice' for the lower classes and second because of his fame. Because of Lorca's martyrdom (whether or not it is justified or not, that is, making a martyr of Lorca) we must make room for the exceptional quality of both Lorca's death and burial site. What are we to understand by the use of the word martyr in this context? Etymologically, the Gr. "martyr" literally means witness, "used in N.T. of witnesses for the faith who suffered martyrdom." Aside from the religious connotation of martyr the word extends to a person who has died for a cause, "In extended (esp. non-religious) contexts: a person who undergoes death or great suffering for a faith, belief, or cause, or (usu. With to; also with of, for) through devotion to some object."26 It is at this point that Lorca is a martyr for the Republican cause, which was arguably the fight against fascism because of Lorca's well known anti-fascist stance.

It is worth dwelling on "martyr" as witness. The task is how to keep the meaning of

24 Ian Gibson, Federico Garcia Lorca, 469. 25 OED online resource, http://www.oed.come.cat .lib.trentu.ca:8080/view/Entry/l 14474 26 OED online

19 martyr as witness while using the secularized meaning of martyr. Lorca's death, because of his fame, becomes symbolic and therefore testifies to a whole range of atrocities.

"Lorca" as a proper name becomes a witness object; his work, witness objects; and his remains a witness object. According to the OED martyr has possible roots to Sanskrit, "to bear in mind, remember; but some scholars consider it a word of non-Indo European origin."27 The tie to memory is of interest to us precisely because a martyr is easier to remember or have a memory of and thus commemorate because it is usually the case that a martyr's martyrdom is well known and publicly recognized. Despite the fact that some scholars are not convinced of any Indo-European root of the word martyr, we can still note the mnemonic value of a martyrdom. Martyrs are remembered because of their symbolic death and their accomplishments during their life. Making a martyr of someone is arguably a commemorative act.

Even though Lorca's grave is empty and holds no remnant or trace in the strict sense of material presence, the grave itself still functions as a symbolic site of recovery.28

The grave maintains its symbolic value despite the absence of Lorca's remains as is apparent with the commemorative ceremonies that take place at the site on the anniversary of Lorca's death. It is a site that bears witness to absence and irretrievability which is the condition that instigates recovery. Sites of recovery are therefore monuments to absence, irretrievability and mass loss.

OED online resource, http://www.oed.com.catl.lib.trentu.ca:8080/view/Entry/l 14474 281 must express my gratitude to Rachel Cyr for a paper given in 2010 at Trent University on the empty tomb as part of her research on mass graves in Kosovo.

20 Ian Gibson who has given scholarly attention to Lorca and the recovery of Lorca's remains offers a description of the location of the poet's death in his biography of Lorca, he writes:

In the first days of the war, however, the killings were not carried out here, but in the olive groves that clothe the slopes of this wide valley. Lorca was one of the early victims, and, contrary to what has often been said, is not buried in the barranco at Viznar. He and the three other condemned men were taken, before sunrise, further along the road to Alfacar.. .the lorry stopped not far from the famous spring known as the Fuente Grande.29

Fuente Grande, or 'the Big Fountain' is the place name associated with Lorca's death.

(Figure 2. La Fuente Grande)

Gibson's text offers us only a base from which to engage the question of what exactly constitutes a site of recovery. Gibson has given us the place name. But what about the

Fuente Grande? I would like to offer an additional description of the site of Lorca's death found in Antonio Cazorla Sanchez's text, he writes:

The beautiful Barranco de Viznar is located in an area a few kilometers north of the Andalusian city of Granada. Between Viznar and the neighboring town of Alfacar there is a spring called La Fuente Grande (the Big Fountain) It is a refreshing area, popular for picnicking in the sweltering summer months of southern Spain, and ideal for picking mushrooms in the fall. It is set high in the mountains where pine trees, planted by the government to combat soil erosion in the 1950s and 1960s, provide shade. This bucolic setting was also, from 1936 to the restoration of

29 Ian Gibson, Federico Garcia Lorca, 467.

21 democracy in 1977, a huge, unmarked grave containing the remains of the internationally celebrated poet Federico Garcia Lorca.30

Sanchez's description of the site offers us more material than Ian Gibsons' description because the idea that Sanchez introduces is the commons. La Fuente Grande is a public place. It is a public place that holds greater significance however. It is also a place where hundreds of people are buried in mass graves. It is a site in the manner defined by

Jonathan Bordo, "Site betokens the significances that are brought somewhere in order to make that somewhere a place. A synonym here for site is 'investment.' Site thus betokens the agenda, the virtual, the ideational—in short, the invisibles of a place."31

The final sentence in the passage cited from Sanchez indicates investments. It brings attention to the idea of "the invisibles of a place," This seemingly untouched

"bucolic setting" is in fact a keeping place for memory. Influenced by Nora's lieux de memo ire, a "keeping place" is defined by Bordo as such, "Let me call a site of memory that in principle gives dominance to living witnesses a 'keeping place' and thus distinguish it from all those depositories of memory where preservation takes precedence over recollection—museums, galleries, archives..." A keeping place is therefore a site of and for memory that has as its grounding the experience of memory as opposed to the general, the historical, the knowledge 'storehouses' of preservation. A keeping place as

Jonathan Bordo has defined it, gives dominance to recollection. A keeping place need not preserve an object as does a museum. That is not to say that a keeping place is not able to preserve, but the endurance of that which it seeks to recollect is not concerned primarily

30 Antonio Cazorla-Sanchez, Fear and Progress, 16. 31 Jonathan Bordo, The Homer of Potsdamerplatz, (Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden 2008), 89. 32 Jonathan Bordo, "The Keeping Place." Monuments and Memory: Made and Unmade. Edited by Robert S. Nelson and Margaret Olin. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2003), 174.

22 with material, which is not to say that material is not important but rather, a keeping place recognizes and gives precedence to the ephemeral, the moment and the moment's disappearance. To confirm our understanding of keeping places Bordo writes:

Keeping places are episodic, ephemeral, and unstable; they are subject to relapses and rebirths just as they might not appear to be specially marked or institutionally framed. They may contain nothing 'valuable' at all—valuable in the sense that museums and safety deposit boxes carry valuables. Keeping places can suddenly flare up.33

La Fuente Grande was a site as we have defined it previous to its reputation as a burial ground. Not only is it a public gathering place and now a burial ground but it was also a culturally significant site for the Arabs who lived in what is now known as Andalusia. La

Fuente Grande was an important subject of Arabic poetry. We can return to Gibson here to show this claim, and this fact confirms Lorca's site of death as a place of memory that has undergone changes in symbolic meaning over time:

The Arabs, intrigued by the bubbles that rise continually to the surface of the pool, called it Ainadamar, 'The Fountain of Tears', and the eleventh century began the construction of a canal to carry the water to Granada.. .The Arabs admired the loveliness of the pool's surroundings, and a sizeable colony of summer residences soon appeared in the vicinity. No vestiges of the villas reamin—perhaps as a result of an earthquake—but there survive several compositions by Arab poets in praise of Aidanamar's beauty.. ,34

Given that our study is focused on Lorca's grave site, we must establish how a place becomes a site. How does a word like "city" attached to a proper name like "Dresden" for example, no longer suffice as a description for what that place is? One way to think of this is through pilgrimage. One takes oneself to a site via the pilgrimage. One's journey

33 Bordo, "Keeping Place", 176. 34 Ian Gibson, Federico Garcia Lorca, 467. 35 See Jonathan Bordo's essay The Homer of Potsdamerplatz. "This memory work is what Wenders might mean when he says, "Berlin isn't a city it is a site."

23 to the site is the symbolic investment. Mecca is no longer just a city but becomes a site when one brings oneself and one's religious convictions to Mecca. A place, in this case a city, becomes a site with the introduction of investments by way of bringing objects in material or immaterial form to the site to make it a place. So when we think of Lorca's grave we must keep the pilgrimage as a defining element in mind in what makes a location a place. One can stand at the site and recognize it as the place of Lorca's murder.

Simply through knowing that "this was the place of Lorca's murder," moves mere location into being a place. Through knowledge and signification one establishes an otherwise empty bucolic location as a place. In this moment of recognition a place has, or holds significance and is therefore a site. When something is cited, "here on this day..." the possibility for "site" is realized and completed. The words "here" indicating a location and "on this day", is a reference to a time past because an event of significance happened.

Sigmund Freud's Interpretation of Dreams helps in our investigation of what makes a location a place because he provides us with a methodology for investigating places. In

Freud's Interpretation of Dreams he introduces two concepts that he says are "the foremen in charge of the dream-work." The concepts are condensation and displacement.

At this moment we are specifically concerned with condensation as it relates to the proper name. As Freud comments on condensation in his public lectures on psychoanalysis, "By that we understand the fact that the manifest dream has a smaller content than the latent one, and is thus an abbreviated translation of it."36 Freud uses the name botanical monograph in an interpretation of one of his dreams to demonstrate condensation. It is

36 Sigmund Freud, Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, trans., James Strachey (Pelican Books 1973). 205

24 from this name that he recognizes how condensation works. With our study, the names

Lorca, and La Fuente Grande, function in a similar way as botanical monograph. The names Lorca, and La Fuente Grande, can be de-condensed because they are proper names and therefore sites which contain more in terms of meaning than what is immediately visible to us. It is acceptable then that we use Freud's concept of condensation to think further on the proper name and site. Within the name is contained an entire archive in which the interpreter must excavate, recalling from memory everything that, as Bordo says, "hits" that location; the location being the name itself. Freud writes:

... This first examination suggests that the elements 'botanical' and 'monograph' have been admitted into the dream because they are able to show the widest range of contacts with the most dream-thoughts, that is, they represent points of intersection where a great number of the dream-thoughts converge; and because they have many meetings with respect to the interpretation of the dream.37

Freud then goes on to introduce the concept 'overdetermination' from the passage above.

He defines overdetermination as that "each element of the dream-content turns out to be over-determined, to be represented many times and in many ways in the dream- thoughts" I have turned to Freud precisely because we are attempting a similar method in our approach to the question of what constitutes a site. In our case instead oi botanical and monograph we have Lorca and La Fuente Grande. We take into account all the things that come to converge on these names and sites. Yet we must move both from Lorca and towards Lorca. This double movement is impossible to avoid if we stay true to Bordo's definition of what turns a location into a place by way of investments. The word "grave" when attached to the name "Lorca" comes to signify something other than just a grave. If the word "grave" implies a location, this location comes to mean something more than

37 Freud, Interpretation of Dreams, 216. 38 Ibid., 216

25 just mere location. This is when location becomes a place because of the symbolic investments brought to the location. What then is the reason for the symbolic investment attached to Lorca's grave? Lorca is iconic, a legend; his grave-site has moved into the realm of the mythic. But to speak of "Lorca's grave" in the possessive is an error. Lorca has no grave because he is buried "commonly" and this applies also to the anonymous persons buried at La Fuente Grande. The cultural practice of individual burial and all the dignities that follow this practice is called into question with the recovery of memory in

Spain when one cannot recover the individual sought because one is forced to recognize the loss of the body that a name signifies. This opens the question of maintaining memory without material. What then, does one rely on to uphold memory? Further, the site of common burial is also called into question in that it functions as much as an individuals' burial as a common burial because the commonality of the common grave is made up of individuals.

We should recall that that which is brought to a location as added significance can be material or immaterial. What is brought to La Fuente Grande to make it a site? Lorca's grave, was frequented "quietly" after the Spanish Civil war. Franco's death and the transition to democracy "opened" the site so to speak. Visits to the site, whether done

"quietly" in secret to avoid punishment or not, establish Lorca's grave as a site of recovery. This immaterial investment which is the pilgrimage or travel is the significance brought to a place. How is it immaterial? It is immaterial in that we are speaking of the fact that the visitor believes that the site to which they visit is in fact Lorca's grave. Even if there was some doubt as to whether it was the exact place, somewhere in the vicinity

26 Lorca was murdered. It is comparable with a site of pilgrimage in that when one goes on pilgrimage to a site investments are brought to the site in the visitation itself. The question of "somewhere here" is a general opening instead of a direct pointing. A general opening meaning that one gestures with an open hand around oneself instead of the precision of a point. As we will see, this is exactly the situation of Lorca's grave site post-exhumation in particular because no remains were found.

La Fuente Grande is an historical site and a site of memory. The Arabic example is the first instance of investment at La Fuente Grande named Aidanamar the 'Fountain of

Tears'; the second instance of signification is the site of Lorca's execution, and the third being the recent exhumation. To recall, we must distinguish between three periods in time that Lorca's grave site falls under. The first period of time falls under Franco's rule when the grave was "visited quietly" yet still renowned and iconic as a site; second, post-

Franco when discourse eventually opened up which leads us to a third time of post- exhumation when nothing was recovered. Bordo's definitions of keeping place and site hold true for La Fuente Grande which is bucolic, rustic and rural, but in truth it is completely touched, meaning, it has become a site by the fact that it is a keeping place and thus holds significance because of the concealed human remains there. Yet also at the same time in some cases, for instance in the example of Lorca, the realization that the material fragment sought after may not be recovered. So, it is a site that holds the possibility for recovering remains or not recovering remains. In either case La Fuente

Grande is a lieu de memoire.

27 With such a circumstance we are prompted to point out that Lorca's remains may go unfound and unidentified. We are forced into a mode of remembrance that does not demand the presence of material evidence. Remembrance is based rather on an absence.

In this case, absence challenges the notion of the presence of the object that confirms an event. The absence of the witness object indicates and forces us to behold that which we cannot see. Absence itself becomes a witness object and the fragment exists because the person is absent. We can say that by beholding an absence, we extend our understanding of the fragment to include the fragment in its absence. Absence is not an object of visual obtainment unless the absent object occupied a place beforehand.

The absence of Lorca's remains and the absence of the remains of all the victims are fragments. In this way, the fragment need not be materially present. This statement leads us to consider the question of how remembrance and commemoration are practiced by mnemonically oppressed societies. By mnemonically oppressed I refer to the suppression of commemorative practice devoted to the vanquished in post war Spain. This points us towards Sophocles' Antigone and I will offer a reading of this tragedy in the pages to follow. It should be clear now that the work of retrieval and recovery is necessarily dependent on answering the question of what makes a locale a site of recovery.

Antigone: The case of Polyneices

I will now turn to Sophocles' Antigone because Greek tragedy allows us to explain a place as a site of recovery. One of the main elements that makes a place a site of recovery is the body. In Antigone Polyneices' body is completely exposed instead of being hidden,

28 and Antigone pursues the act of covering Polyneices. This is an inversion of the recovery of memory in Spain, as the objective is to uncover and through this act of uncovering to recover memory of both individuals and historical memory. In the case of Lorca's grave and Polyneices' grave the circumstances hold the following in common. Site, or the location of the deceased is given primary attention. Lorca and Polyneices are in opposite

"states". Lorca is unseen and concealed, whereas Polyneices is fully visible. The context is such that justice is only realized if Polyneices is concealed through burial.

Consider a passage from the first scene of Antigone where Ismene and Antigone meet and discuss their fate:

Yes indeed; for those two brothers of ours in burial/has not Creon honoured the one, dishonoured the other? /Eteocles, they say he has used justly/with lawful rites and -in hid him in the earth/ to have his honour among the dead men there.

Antigone's words set the scene all too perfectly. My concern is focused upon the concealment of the human body as opposed to the exposure of the human body as in

Antigone. That being said, this fact serves to advance my inquiry. In both cases there is an effort to tend to the memory of the dead. For Antigone the body of Polyneices is identified, but such an identification is too visible. Polyneices needs to be buried in order to honour his life. Polyneices is on display and to be on display in this context is to be dishonoured. In Lorca's case the hidden remains are unexposed; clearly not intended to be on display. This is similarly dishonour. Let us return to the first two lines of the passage. This will give us two words to engage. The two lines are: "Yes indeed; for those two brothers of ours, in burial has not Creon honoured the one, dishonoured the other?"

The two words are honour and dishonour. It is obvious to us that we are concerned with

39 Sophocles, Antigone, trans. David Grene (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 162.

29 burial practices in the Western tradition where the covering up of one's dead is the practice. Whether through fire or earth the body is no longer a question for the living.40

We have two brothers: Polyneices and Eteocles who killed one another in battle. They were in a state of civil war. This is the first collision with the Spanish context. Eteocles is the honoured one—the sovereign sanctions it—makes it law. Polyneices is the dishonoured—the sovereign makes it law.

To be exposed in this case means to be dishonoured. With Lorca, why is the lack of a burial marker that points to the place where the body, a dishonour? Because the burial in a mass grave was a deliberate act without an "honouring." For there to be bodies

"lost" which escape being found amounts to dishonour. Polyneices' body is exposed to the point that dishonour has been inflicted upon the body and therefore upon the person who was alive. There is an incomplete story or narrative when the body is left in question.

There is then some middle territory where concealment is accompanied by a sign. This sign can be a funeral (however grandiose or small) or a marker. This is to say for dishonour to be nullified an indication must be made. Now, we can take indication and open up its usage.

Emile Benveniste provides us with the context we require. In Indo-European Language and Society (1969) Benveniste examines two Greek words that will eventually allow him to move towards the Latin dicere. The words are: dike and themis. These two words concern two types of justice: dike having to do with justice between families; themis

40 Is it true however that the body is no longer a question? Does not the covering up through fire or earth allow the body/remains to retain a question? In that, they are now artifacts awaiting revelation from concealment.

30 having to do with justice in a family. Benveniste notes that the root in question is *deik- and that from this root the Greek means 'to show' whereas the Latin (dico) means 'say,' he writes:

The root in question is *deik-, which appears in Sanskrit as dis-, as dis- in Iranian, as die- in Latin and deik (numi) in Greek. But these forms though in perfect formal correspondence do not agree in meaning, for Greek deiknumi means 'show' and Latin dico 'say.'41

Benveniste's task is to discover how 'show' and 'say' come to be related. He challenges our common understanding of indication as pointing:

'To show', in what way? With the finger? This is rarely the case. In general the sense is 'show verbally', by speech. This first determination is confirmed by a number of Indo-Iranian uses in the sense 'teach', which amounts to the same thing as 'show' by words and not by gesture. Besides, there is in Latin a compound to which we shall have to come back, in which *deik- is joined with ius: this is iu-dex, in which *deik- stands for an act of speech.42

Benveniste shows how dicere is tied to justice and the Latin root noun *dix, "Literally as

'the fact of showing verbally and with authority what must be', in other words it is the imperative pronouncement of justice."43 This leads me to say that the English use of indication is not only an act of speech that carries authority but one can also gesture to indicate with authority. How can we apply this meaning of indication to the cases of

Polyneices and the Spanish civil war graves? Indication through the act of revelation allows some type of justice to be passed or realized. These acts are always moving towards reconciliation. What is interesting to note is that within Spain the question of who did what to whom involves inter-family relations. Does this recall the Greek dike'}

Even if the justice sought after is reconciliation there is still a sense of justice being

41 Emile Benveniste, Indo-European Language and Society, (University of Miami Press 1973), 385. 42 Benveniste, Indo-European Language, 386. 43 Ibid., 386

31 fulfilled between families. There is one more substantial passage that we must include from Benveniste's text:

Apoine is the typical instance of a case involving dike, that is inter-familial justice. The terms of the Homeric expression attest one and the same construction both in Greek and in Latin: we have diken eipeia 'say the dike', just like Latin dicere. We now see how this 'showing' became an act of speech: in Greek the substantive dike attracts a verb 'to say' (eipeia); in Latin it is the verb 'to show' (*deik-) which took on the sense 'to say'.

The very revelation of remains is itself a showing and a declaration of a past event which collides with the present as indication, a pronouncement with authority. "The Latin compound iu-dex implies the notion of showing with authority."45 Is this not what we are forced to realize in the Spanish context? A showing in the sense of the Latin iu-dex, with authority? It is divorced from those revealing it and the remnant reveals itself with the authority it carries by simply being what it is. What it is, is a sought after indication. In this sense the remains are indications.

Polyneices, however, is entirely in a state of 'showing.' Polyneices is a monument of the inverse type. A monument of commemoration as a threat. What is the difference between commemoration and warning? Creon turns Polyneices' remains into a monument-as-threat. Therefore the fact that Polyneices' is showing carries authority.

First the authority of Creon as sovereign and at the same time the fact that Polyneices is visible is itself authoritative. Indication thus occurs without saying (speech) in this case and in the case of the Spanish graves.

As the play progresses Antigone takes up the work of concealment. Her actions are not hidden either, as is shown in the following passage in which a sentry reports to Creon:

44 Benveniste, Indo-European Language, 387. 45 Ibid., 386

32 The doer of the deed had left no trace But when the first sentry of the day pointed it out, There was for all of us a disagreeable wonder. For the body had disappeared; Not in a grave, of course; but there lay upon him a little dust as of a hand avoiding the curse of violating the dead body's sanctity.46

Polyneices' unburied exposed and dishonoured state is different from the mass grave in that those in the mass grave are concealed, unmarked, inaccessible and henceforth dishonoured. Both are dishonoured but for opposing reasons. Now take the line above:

"The doer of the deed had left no trace." The burial of Polyneices and the mass graves in

Spain require a covering to give them their significance. But this "covering up" serves in the former to return honour, whereas in the latter the covering serves to dishonour. There is a question of identity. We know it is Polyneices because one can point to his body and say "there lay Polyneices," whether he is dishonoured or not. Because he is identifiable he can be covered and still retain his honour. He is no longer here, so we should not be able to see him. Antigone's decision to bury Polyneices is based on the question: why is he still visible if he is not here?

The dead, who are unburied and the dead who are buried yet not identified with a marker, are two ways in which the dead can be dishonoured. State funerals for royalty or other heads of state honour who had died through the exhibition of their remains. The symbolic standing of the deceased is the reason for their exhibition in public. The "public tomb" where the dead are on display, for example Lenin's tomb, reaffirm the status of the one who lay in state. Those who became famous in their life are expected to be exhibited in their death. To not do so is seen as an act of dishonour. Any act of preserving the dead is an attempt to immortalize the dead. In a common grave the preservation of the memory

46 Sophocles, Antigone, 171.

33 of the dead is challenged because there is no marker that bears the name of who lay buried there. The exhumation of mass graves in Spain is an attempt to meet the threat of oblivion by way of giving names to the unidentified remains.

At this point we can state with certainty that the case of Polyneices is the antithesis of that of the Spanish civil war graves. As we see in Antigone Polyneices is in a state that I call (following Freudian terminology) "over-determined", in that Polyneices is on display; his presence is easy to behold, one need not search for his body. The other state, as in the case of Lorca, we are faced not with over-determination but rather with a lack of determination. Given this relation between the two situations, dishonour is the condition to be avoided or reconciled. In the case of Lorca and the greater Spanish context, one combats dishonour through revelation and then concealment with a marker.

In Polyneices' case one combats dishonour through concealment. In the Spanish situation one must move through revelation to concealment, whereas Polyneices is already revealed. In both cases however, the movement is towards a reconstitution of what is thought to be right and just namely, the right to memory. What is a right to memory? Is there such a thing? Why is memory a matter of justice? Memory, meaning, shared memory and individual memory. Is it that societies are upheld by the fact that they can remember what came before them? To trace one's "roots", to know what one's grandmother did and where she came from and what happened to her is part of a narrative and a heritage that gives meaning for one's life.

The example of Polyneices and Antigone's urgency to honour her brother allows us to comment upon urgency in relation to memory. Urgency refers first to the urgency on the part of the victors to consolidate what I would call "mnemonic hegemony" through

34 the control of and production of the history of the victory through ritual and ceremony.

We are reminded of the saying "only the victors write history". Urgency in this case is an urgency to discard anything that informs the memory of the vanquished aside from what the victors represent the vanquished as. It is systematic hiding that covers up the other parts of the story that make the victory possible. The urgency of the victor to consolidate social memory and therefore history in accordance with their ideology results in the disappearance of the vanquished. However we must keep in mind that the idea is not to eliminate the memory of the vanquished but rather the vanquished must be remembered in a certain manner according to the victors. Urgency also refers to the recovery of memory on the part of the vanquished and is in response to the possibility of oblivion.

The recovery of memory follows from a known loss. In the case of the exhumation of mass graves in Spain the object recovered is the human skeleton either in fragments or as a whole and any object that testifies to there being an execution. The skeleton becomes a sign of loss in that the name that belonged to the remains no longer applies; the person no longer exists. Recovery is urgent for the vanquished because access to memory through, for example, commemorative practice is suspended during the period of defeat, the period of time in which the vanquished exist after war.47 Only when this period of defeat ends can the work of recovery begin. We must ask: how possible is the task of recovering memory? And to what extent is reforming history (not re-writing as there is a distinct difference) hindered or accelerated? What makes reformation possible? Reformation

47 Ronald Fraser's Blood of Spain contains this striking passage. A priest and a recently released prisoner are having a conversation , "You know that I killed no one, robbed no one, committed no crime. Can you tell me, therefore, why I have spent seven years in gaol?" 'That's very simple, I'm glad you asked me that question,' replied the priest. 'I can answer it. You were on the point of being shot, but you weren't; the same could very well have happened to me had things turned out the other way round. Your side lost, and the rest—whether you robbed or killed—matters not a jot. Many who have committed murders are still alive, and many who didn't have been shot. You've been in prison seven years because you lost the war'..." 510

35 implies a building from a point in time and not a covering up, which is what the common understanding of what "re-writing history" is. Reformation is dialectical in that it does not attempt to forget a part of the past, as re-writing does. Through a dialectical reformation of history, the full range of events is included. This dialectical approach to historiography attempts to encompass the parts of a past that relate to one another.

As we have seen in Spain the transition from an authoritarian regime to a democratic state may compel societies to begin the work of recovering that which was purposefully kept in silence. What is of interest here is something that has been lost that is irretrievable yet at the same time something can be lost and the possibility of retrieval still remains.48 We are concerned with how societies emerge from a repressive state and into a state that allows for the possibility of a reformation of its history. But we must point out the fact, since we have introduced the concept of social memory, that every nation in fact holds true to an agreed upon narrative and history. But this agreement also recognizes that narratives and histories are subject to change. In fact, narratives and histories are collections of fragmented testimonies that are in a process of constant reformation and revision.

Monuments serve as sites that testify to accepted historical narratives. The fact that what monuments communicate can shift given the social climate provides evidence to the reformed or recovered history of a given nation. I will introduce in the section to

48 On this point it is helpful to point to Walter Benjamin's research on the "Haussmannization" of Paris in the Arcades Project. "The radical transformation of Paris was carried out under Napoleon III mainly along the axis running through the Place de la Concorde and the Hotel de Ville. It may be that the Franco- Prussian War of 1870 was a blessing for the architectural image of Paris, seeing that Napoleon III had intended to alter whole districts of the city." Arcades Project [El,6] Pp. 121. To make this example relevant with the idea that one can either retrieve what has been lost or not retrieve what has been lost, the quotation that Benjamin chooses to use after the passage above from Adolf Stahr reads "the new ruler, it seems, has a mind to leave but little of it standing." From this Benjamin has taken the idea that "one had to make haste.. .to see the old Paris," which allows us to say that an attempt was made by people to commit to memory what they were losing.

36 follow the monument dedicated to Franco and the Nationalist war dead called "The

Valley of the Fallen." This monument allows us to consider the mass grave in relation to a declared monument that belongs to the victorious; the remembered in opposition to the forgotten.

The Valley of the Fallen

Under what conditions does a monument become a site of recovery? I want to begin this section by stating that for now we are to understand that monuments are sites of recovery when there is a need for justice to be rendered—or injustice to be recognized. In this section I want to show that the Valley of the Fallen and the common grave, are mnemonic sites (as most monuments are), however there is one element that is present at the common grave that is not present at the Valley of the Fallen and that is the need for recovery.

The Valley of the Fallen is arguably declarative. By declarative I mean, given the monument's size, and given that Franco is buried there, I am justified in stating that there is a signification that extends beyond mere signification. At this point we consider indication. Indication and declaration are treated in this case as related words. In the section on Polyneices, we learned that the Latin word indicare revealed to us the element of saying as an indication. However, we had to take into account that indication extends beyond speech to pointing as one can indicate something by pointing to it. It is fair then to claim, that the monument in question by its very standing announces itself in indication, as a declarative, without speech, but with visible form. As opposed to the common grave, Franco's grave at the Valley of the Fallen is a mausoleum. Before

37 proceeding it would be helpful to describe the Valley of the Fallen, what is contained at that site, how it came to be and what its function is in the present time and further, what is its fate during the period of "recovery" in Spain? Antonio Sanchez gives us an idea of the Valley of the Fallen as a site:

The regime constructed its portrayal of the past (today we would call this a 'historical memory project') not just with words but also with monuments. The most significant monument built by the Francoists to symbolize their view of the war was the 'Valley of the Fallen' (Valle de los Caidos). Located just north of Madrid, this grandiose architectonic complex was built over a 20-year period (1940-59), in part by political prisoners. There, presided over by a cross 150 meters high, a huge basilica was built into a granite mountain and more than 40,000 (perhaps as many as 70,000) fallen soldiers, mostly Francoists, were buried.49

We shall consider this passage by dividing it into two parts, commenting on each part at length. The very first sentence of this passage is striking. "The regime constructed its portrayal of the past (today we would call this a 'historical memory project') not just with words but also with monuments." The fact that both words and monuments are used to initiate these 'memory projects' show us that, although monuments do not speak, they declare and are indicative through being seen and exhibited. Through their apprehension in the world the monument communicates. This takes us back to Antigone's effort to bury Polyneices. That Antigone, and others, could see Polyneices' corpse was itself unjust. Yet, as I have argued, Antigone was attempting to reverse Polyneices' state as monument-as-threat to a simple recognition of his death and nothing more. Her attempt to de-politicize the use of Polyneices' remains made herself a victim of politicization.

It is interesting to note is that in the passage above written by Sanchez, a few hundred republican soldiers are buried at the Valley of the Fallen. The burial of

"enemies" at the site that commemorates the Nationalist dead is akin to Polyneices being

49 Antonio Cazorla Sanchez, Fear and Progress, 21.

38 exhibited as a threat. We are well acquainted with the statement, "In order for there to be a victor there must be a vanquished." Is this true? Not entirely because the vanquished cannot be entirely vanquished and forgotten. Yes, there must be a defeated side but the

"vanquishing" of the defeated is not the idea of completely eliminating the memory of the vanquished. The idea is to be able to state that there was a vanquished. The vanquished must be remembered in a certain manner according to the victors. As is shown in the following passage regarding the Valley of the Fallen:

A few hundred, perhaps even a few thousand, republican soldiers are there too (the process of collecting the bodies was chaotic). The intended meaning of including the burial of some 'enemy' soldiers at the valley was that Franco's Christian Spain had forgiven these people for having been lured into fighting for the republicans by their criminal political leaders.50

The victorious regime under Franco has the power and means to dictate historical memory through acts such as the burial of enemy combatants in such a manner so as to

"forgive" them of their sins. The Valley of the Fallen is a site of memory in that historical memory of the defeated is formed in a certain manner according to victors and it is a site of recovery in that the monument functions as a site for redemption. The redemptive qualities of the site are realized through what we have shown with the burial of

Republican fighters at the site for the purposes of being forgiven and through the fact that the Valley of the Fallen has also a monastery and the site of Franco's burial is a basilica officially recognized by the Vatican. The site operates under the same pretenses as a church. The cultural meaning and signification of the Christian Church are essential to the Valley of the Fallen. Yet it stands that the Valley of the Fallen is also a site of oppression. If so, how could it be a site of recovery? If by recovery we maintain that

50Antonio Cazorla Sanchez, Fear and Progress, 21.

39 there must be a recognition of injustice, the Valley of the Fallen does not make such a recognition. Instead it communicates victory, instead of recovery from defeat as in the exhumation and recognition of common grave sites.

Katherine Hite, in her essay, The Valley of the Fallen: Tales from the Crypt gives us an in-depth history of The Valley of the Fallen. The monument, ordered to be built by

Franco, intended to extend the narratives and myths of Christian triumph over barbarity at the expense of the memory of the vanquished, as the burials that are honoured at the monument are Nationalist fighters. Hite states:

Franco's conception of the monument was not a simple link between church and state. The Valley evokes the memory of the historic Crusades. For Franco, the Crusades refer to the reign of the Spanish Hapsburg empire, to the Catholic Kings' late-fifteenth-century Reconquest of Spain and defeat of an Islamic dynasty, to the expulsions and forced conversions of the Jews, and to the expansion of Spanish imperial control across the seas.51

(Figure 3. The Valley of the Fallen)

51 Katherine Hite, "The Valley of the Fallen: Tales from the Crypt", Forum for Modern Language Studies, vol 44, no 2,110-127. (April, 2008), 114.

40 With references to Spain's past, for example the reconquesta, the monument is adorned with artworks that portray the image of Christianity's triumph. In Hite's work we come across this passage that informs us and backs up the claim that the Valley of the Fallen is a site of oppression, specifically the oppression of common memory:

Mendes, the architect, understood the dictator's intent and sent for Belgian artist Guillermo Pannemaker's famous Apocalypse Tapestries. Commissioned by Spanish monarch Philip II in the mid-sixteenth century, the tapestries were hanging in the nearby La Granja Palace. The eight tapestries illustrate in great detail the Apostle St. John's Book of Revelations, from the story of the Last Judgement, through the seven plagues and the destruction of man, to the armies of Christ, and the triumph of Christ and the church over the devil. Mendes placed the tapestries on the walls and invited Franco and his right-hand man, Minister of Government Luis Carrero Blanco, to view them. Carrero Blanco, a prominent authority on the 1571 Battle of Lepanto and the period of Phillip II, helped to convince Franco that the tapestries better conveyed the dictator's vision of representing those who had died in the new Crusade. While the architect, the sculptor, the government minister and an archbishop apparently talked Franco out of the heroes and martyrs bas reliefs along the nave, there is no escaping the Crusadist imagery from one end of the crypt to the other. Bas reliefs of heroes and martyrs of the Crusades did find a place in the choir, where they are etched above the wooden pews.

The use of the art of Spain's past is our first example to show that the Valley of the

Fallen is undoubtedly a site that signifies oppression with a highly aesthetic relationship to memory, which, we must argue is a very important part of fascist ideology. Earlier, I explained that monuments can be both mnemonic and amnesic. The Valley of the Fallen is one such type of monument. And this brings us to a difficult question that was hinted at earlier but not explicitly stated: are all monuments both mnemonic and amnesic? If so, how is a monument of recovery possible? Monuments are always for one narrative at the expense of another. The issue becomes complicated when the idea of "justice" is brought into the function of the monument.

Katherine Hite, "Tales from the Crypt", 115.

41 Hite includes the Christian pilgrimage as a theme present at the Valley of the Fallen.

At first we must remark that pilgrimage is directly linked with recovering memory through action in that one retraces steps and visits the sites that justify the pilgrimage.

"To walk in the Messiah's footsteps as he was forced through Jerusalem's streets,"

Christians make a pilgrimage in order to do this to Jerusalem where they undertake the act of recovery in order to remember the death of Jesus Christ. Katherine Hite rightly points out the fact that in order to reach Franco's crypt one must encounter along the way towards the site, other important sites associated with Spain's imperial past, she writes:

To reach the crypt is unmistakably like undertaking a pilgrimage along a long, lone, climbing road. Franco deliberately placed the monument in close proximity to other magisterial, imperial monuments of Spain - the Escorial, the Granja, palaces erected by past kings.53

The monument, as we have seen recalls the reconquesta, and Christian glory in Spain; the use of artwork recalls images of this Christian past within the basilica; and the notion of

"pilgrimage" through a space that recalls Spain's imperial past show the memory project of the Valley of the Fallen draws from past events in Spanish history of conquest. The

Nationalist memory project could be argued as a project of recovery given the reliance on recalling the past in order to communicate what the monument stands for in the present but the site that clearly shows us the truth of what the Valley of the Fallen is as a site is the common grave. It is through an engagement with the common grave alongside the grandiose monument of the Valley of the Fallen that we can extend our work on the theme of recovery and monuments and further argue that any element of recovery at the

Valley of the Fallen is precarious and always as a result of conquest. The recovery of

Katherine Hite, "Tales from the Crypt", Forum for Modern Language Studies, vol. 44, no. 2, 110-127, April, 2008.

42 memory, if possible, for the victor is always in remembrance of conquest; the victor then has nothing to recover because nothing has been lost.

The common grave most often signifies indignity, or improper treatment of the dead.

There was however a period in our history when common burial was not seen as undignified. Whether or not one was buried in a common grave was related to one's social class. One of the most notable "figures" of Western culture, Wolfgang Amadeus

Mozart was buried in a common grave in the year 1791 in Vienna. The practice of common burial was normal practice in the middle class at the time. Mozart's burial site holds one thing in common with Lorca's burial site. Mozart's remains are irretrievable yet it is known that he was buried somewhere at that site. The general topographic location can be identified yet the exact location cannot be identified. As I have shown already, the exact location of Lorca's burial is also unknown. The important difference to make mention of is the manner in which Lorca (and many others) at the site were killed and buried. It is not so much the commonness of the grave that is distressing to us but rather the manner and context in which the burial took place. For Mozart's burial there was a recognition, a rite performed. The ceremony of burial was carried out and enacted whereas with Lorca the ceremony of burial was not enacted. The absence of ceremony is rather a source of discomfort than the common grave itself.

The intent is to think of the common grave in such a way that we keep close to addressing monumentality. There is, I argue, a distinction in monumentality (ie. the state of the monument) between La Fuente Grande and the Valley of the Fallen. Does the common

43 grave declare itself based on our understanding of what declarative means? Is the common grave declarative prior to it being known as a place that is then named as a mass grave? What name is best suited to what we are describing? Common grave, or mass grave? If common burial in the 18th century was common practice as much as individual burial is today, then we can make a distinction between the names "mass" and "common" on the basis that there is the presence of a marker in the common grave whereas in the case of the mass grave a marker is absent. A mass grave is undoubtedly a common burial but of a specific nature. In order to avoid an expenditure of energy debating the difference between the words "mass" and "common" I need to state what the word

"mass" signifies in our present time. The word "mass" when used with "grave" has come to signify a crime, or an injustice. The distinguishing element is perhaps the presence of a marker; an indicator. The role of the monument in general is that of a marker. Any definition of a mass grave must take into consideration how that specific grave site became a grave. In other words, was it an execution en masse with the intention of hiding the location of the bodies? The word mass carries with it added significance. But what is it that makes the word mass in relation to the grave carry greater significance? Is it that by the use of the word mass in relation to the word grave we associate it with genocide?

When did the word "mass" become attached to grave to signify a crime against humanity?

It is clear then at this point what I mean when I use the words mass grave beside one another. It is a common grave without a marker and is associated with loss. Why loss?

Because those who were buried were buried so that the recovery of their body was made nearly impossible. To make someone "disappear" is the central idea to this last point on loss. A mass grave can therefore be said to be a site of mass loss and disappearance.

44 In this section we can return to La Fuente Grande as a site of memory and recovery in light of our investigation into the Valley of the Fallen which we have seen functions as a site of memory but not recovery. How are they different? What do they share besides being sites of memory? We can return to Katherine Hite's piece on the Valley of the

Fallen in order to address the first point I wish to illuminate regarding burial. She writes,

"It is a haunting space, full of bellicose sculpture and imagery, built underground, into rock, in order to inter Franco and tens of thousands of war dead, almost half of whom are anonymous"54 I want to focus first on the word anonymous. The situation at hand is that both the Valley of the Fallen, and La Fuente Grande are sites of anonymous burial, aside from one specific distinction. Namely, that Franco is buried at the Valley of the Fallen.

The other distinction is aesthetic. As we have seen the Valley of the Fallen is a monument in every sense of the word. In other words, it satisfies what the word monument means by the presence of the 150-foot tall cross, the basilica. However, a monument need not always be on such grand scale. Simple plaques, a place where objects are brought to.

Bordo's definition of site returns at this point. Everything that is brought to a place to make the place significant and thus a site is associated with the creation of monuments.

Regarding the creation of monuments for the Nationalist war dead, Sanchez also points out:

There were other Francoist monuments in almost every town in Spain, where the officially recognized victims were also remembered with plaques and crosses with the names of those "fallen for God and Spain." At the same time, the official memory of the executed republicans was either completely erased or, when it was recalled, was defamed.55

54 Katherine Hite, "Tales from the Crypt", 111. 55Katherine Hite, "Tales from the Crypt", 21. Hite's commentary directly references the victor, vanquished relation.

45 A monument therefore does not need to match the specifications set out by the Valley of the Fallen. Franco's monument exposes us to an extreme ideology regarding the historical memory of a nation. This exposure is nothing new to us. Seemingly benign monuments now (that are removed enough from their historical context) like "Triumph arcs", are "beautiful" sculptures; yet they are beautiful sculptures that signify (or did signify) military conquests.56 With the above in mind, all the material parts that make up the Valley of the Fallen as a site of significance make it monumental; to be seen and exhibited. This fact cannot be denied and we have covered this point at length above. La

Fuente Grande on the other hand appears as though it does not contain the remains of thousands of anonymous victims. Aside from common knowledge of course La Fuente

Grande, although a site of recovery and memory does not function in the same way as the

Valley of the Fallen. This of course may be subject to change given the enactment of the

LHM.

Regarding the names of persons, we can point out that at both sites, names are associated with the site. At the Valley of the Fallen are the names Franco and Primo de

Rivera; at La Fuente Grande, Lorca. Although names are associated with both these sites which make the sites legendary and mythic, the burial place of Franco and Primo de

en

Rivera are indicated; the whereabouts of their remains are known and made accessible.

Lorca on the other hand is without such precise indication. His remains are rather

56 As Walter Benjamin has written, "There is no document of culture that is not at the same time a document of barbarism." Selected Writings, Vol. 4. 390 571 should mention that Katherine Hite has noted that the Spanish government does not allow gatherings commemorating Franco or Nationalist war dead to take place here; only gatherings for the ritual of Mass are permitted.

46 believed to be in the general area. Nevertheless, both sites communicate loss. But there are two different types of loss involved.

By engaging the question of what constitutes a site of recovery, it can be stated that recovery, in its most general sense, depends upon a loss suffered. The recovery of memory in contemporary Spain relies upon places of significance. I have taken Lorca's grave site at La Fuente Grande and the Valley of the Fallen as examples to engage the question of what constitutes a site of recovery. It should be pointed out however, that many other things can be a site of recovery and memory, for example a library or archives. As we have seen in the Memory Law not only are mass graves sites of recovery but also the General Archive of the Spanish Civil War. Wherever there is a record, an inscription, a trace, an absence or a presence, the possibility of recovery is present.

Recovery should be perceived by us as an action, and it is by deciding to act in a state of recovery, that one takes on the work of memory; a work that moves towards re-tracing.

The act of recovery is clearly also pilgrimage. Benjamin has brought to our attention the redemptive element in history, "The past carries with it a secret index by which it is

CO referred to redemption." Recovery touches upon the redemptive element in history. In other words, recovery, or the act of recovery grasps at redemption. Redemption in this context refers to the making whole of historical memory, in a collective sense, and saving the memory of the vanquished from oblivion. From this point it is necessary to investigate further the victor, vanquished relation via Walter Benjamin's "On the Concept of History." By using Benjamin, we are able to hone in on the political tensions inherent

58 Walter Benjamin, "On the Concept of History", Selected Writings, Vol. 4„ trans. Harry Zohn, (Cambridge Mass.: Belknap Press, 2006), 390.

47 in commemoration as we are forced to consider the memory of the anonymous in opposition to the memory of the individual who has attained public recognition.

Victors and Vanquished

Walter Benjamin's "On the Concept of History" addresses historicism as the property of the victors over the vanquished. I want to recall at this point thesis VII from "On the

Concept of History" to show exactly what is being considered in this study in regards to the recovery of memory in Spain; that there is indeed a case of victor and vanquished.

When Benjamin speaks of barbarism, that which is left behind as a cultural document is a document of barbarism and the victor always ensures that something is left to posterity.

What remains in an obvious manner, as in monuments, or triumphal arches belongs to the victors.

Benjamin gives us the language necessary to talk about the current situation in

Spain. When the Fascist, Nationalist and Ultra-Conservative forces, lumped under the general group-name of "Nationalist" defeated the Second Republic in March 1939 decades of what we could call "memory suppression" took place. Falling almost perfectly with Benjamin's concept of history as a document of barbarism, under Franco, Spain saw the proliferation of a one-sided narrative. The narrative of the victors was manifested in monuments from the grandiose "Valley of the Fallen" to small monuments devoted to the

Nationalist war dead throughout Spanish towns. As Sanchez points out, ".. .the official memory of the executed republicans was either completely erased or, when it was recalled, was defamed."59 The memory of the vanquished was all but denied and at the

Antonio Cazorla Sanchez, Fear and Progress, 21.

48 same time mass arrests and executions were being conducted to "cleanse" Spain of

Bolshevism and socialism.

Arthur Koestler, a Hungarian communist in Spain during the war wrote in the published version of his diary from his experience in a Spanish gaol:

About four o'clock there was a noise in the corridor. An oily voice read out a list of forty to fifty names; doors flew open and were slammed again. A trampling of feet, whispering, mysterious sounds. This time I put my ear instead of my eye to the spy­ hole. All I could discern was that a long file of men was shuffling through a corridor somewhere, slowly and hesitantly, as though walking against their will. The trampling died away. Forty to fifty men were marching to their death.60

Koestler's one hundred and two days in prison are documented in his text. What is striking is the repetition of his counting how many prisoners were "taken out" and in addition to this, his insightful remarks about the name and anonymity, which will reappear throughout his work, "The officer gave orders for the official and me to search the prison for 'Mitchell' From which it became clear to me that they had not even a complete list of the names of their prisoners. To be a 'Red' was quite enough; what did the name matter? Mass graves need no inscriptions."61 Koestler's account that I would like to call his 'prison account' bears witness to the injustice suffered by the individual who is outside the law. It is a testimony to the fragility of law and the fragility of the human in the law and this fragility is further evidenced by Koestler's last phrase, "mass graves need no inscriptions." In other words, being forgotten is one anxiety experienced by those living in the civilized world. To "inscribe oneself aims at combating what

Koestler realized during his period of being a witness, which begs the question, how do we inscribe ourselves in the modern world? What does it mean to inscribe? Walter

60 Arthur Koestler, Dialogue with Death, (Anchor Press Ltd. 1966), 70. 61 Arthur Koestler, Dialogue, 71.

49 Benjamin knew the fragility of the human before the law and before the failure of memory and we can see this by pointing to thesis VI in On the Concept of History,

Benjamin writes, "The only historian capable of fanning the spark of hope in the past is the one who is firmly convinced that even the dead will not be safe from the enemy if he is victorious. And this enemy has never ceased to be victorious."62

Koestler's writing from prison, is a mnemonic document that addresses the exposed individual before the suspension of law and at the same time gives attention to the fact that memory too can survive the suspension of law as evidenced by his writing. The fragile individual before the law relies on memory to preserve their dignity, which is threatened when exposed to the suspension of law. There is then an interesting relation between law and memory. Benjamin's phrasing that "not even the dead" will be safe from the victor speaks to the fragility of memory as well as the fragility of the individual.

In order to do justice to the vanquished, we must make an attempt to inscribe our present efforts as if it were a testimony. Memory is ephemeral; therefore, the creation of a law that acts politically and seeks to establish apolis becomes necessary. The polls according to Arendt:

.. .seemed to assure that the most futile of human activities, action and speech, and the least tangible and most ephemeral of man made 'products', the deeds and stories which are their outcome, would be imperishable. The organization of the polls, physically secured by the wall around the city and physiognomically guaranteed by its laws—lest the succeeding generations change its identity beyond recognition—is a kind of organized remembrance.63

Walter Benjamin, "On the Concept of History", 391. Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952), 198.

50 It would be apt for us to argue that memory is entailed in action and speech. The

"organized remembrance" that Arendt so rightly points out is itself action. The protection of historical memory found in the LHM is exactly the setting up of a polis. Or rather, the current Spanish government allows for the setting up of such a law. The apparatus of democratic government based on the rule of law makes possible a space for the memory law. Arendt writes further on, "The polis, properly speaking, is not the city-state in its physical location; it is the organization of the people as it arises out of acting and speaking together, and its true space lies between people living together for this purpose, no matter where they happen to be."64 If we are at first hesitant to support a "memory law" we can turn to Arendt for re-assurance that the fabrication of a law addressed to preserving memory, facilitating access to archives and subsidizing exhumations to return the vanquished into the world for recognition is not suspect but rather necessary for the survival of what Arendt calls "the realm of human affairs." It is literally salvaging the remains of a world purposefully excluded. It would also be helpful for us to comment on what Arendt called natality. Natality, as opposed to mortality, for Arendt is, "the birth of new men and the new beginning, the action they are capable of by virtue of being born."65 Arendt's conception of natality speaks directly to the memory law in that such an act seeks to re-establish the realm of human affairs that Arendt holds as most important against totalitarian regimes. The reestablishment of the realm of human affairs is possible through a law that facilitates the opening up of information and access to historical

64 Ibid., 198. Arendt offers a second function of the polis, which was, "to offer a remedy for the futility of action and speech; for the chances that a deed deserving fame would not be forgotten, that it actually would become 'immortal,' were not very good. Homer was not only a shining example of the poet's political function, and therefore the 'educator of all Hellas'; the very fact that so great an enterprise as the Trojan War could have been forgotten without a poet to immortalize it several hundred years later offered only too good an example of what could happen to human greatness if it had nothing but poets to rely on for its permanence." 65 Arendt, The Human Condition, 247.

51 memory. Whether or not government needs to do so remains to be seen. We must remember that non-governmental organizations/associations began to exhume mass graves.66 This fact is enough to refute the position that the government should have no role (such as legislating a memory law) given that such organizations, started by ordinary citizens eventually became integrated into law. We can refer back to the polis as we saw it in Arendt's thought.67 Although I recognize that this position is well founded, we need only recall what Franco achieved regarding historical memory in Spain, for example the

Valley of the Fallen monument and the setting up of other monuments at the price of remembrance for the Republican, and the anarchist, communist factions. Given the influence the state can have on how history is represented, perhaps the state cannot be entrusted with the task of preserving and facilitating the institutions needed for keeping the historical memory of a nation. But I must agree with Arendt on the point that what is needed for the preservation of collective memory is a space in which the possibility for remembrance and commemoration is upheld. In Western society, this space in the form of pilgrimage to the monument, are commemorative events at a site designated for commemoration.

How do societies, upon emerging from a previous tyrannical social order, begin to reform the previously accepted history? Are these reformations necessarily a result of reformed social orders? We could get into the details of how each circumstance of oppression results in particular differences of emergence from oppression, but this task is

See above the Asociacion para la Recuperacion de la Memoria Historica (ARMH) was founded by Emilio Silva and Santiago Macias Perez. 67 It would also be helpful to mention Arendt's work on the word archein, to being, to lead and eventually to rule. Arendt's argument for constitutions, which she sees as testaments to the human capability to make things that endure, is apparent in the Historical Memory Law of 2007. That this law was possible only with the action of organized individuals who pursued a question.

52 too large for us to consider here. It is clear that sites, defined as "places of significance" or symbolic space, play a vital role in such reformations. The question must be asked: what makes a monument a site of recovery that serves collective memory?

If we take Benjamin's thesis on "cultural treasures", the material itself that signifies barbarism, that are indeed "documents", for example triumphal arches, certainly serve as mnemonic documents and amnesic documents, yet not documents of recovery.

Arches that signify victory serve as mnemonic documents in that they recognize that an event happened in the past. The repetition of passing under the arc signifies a victory at the expense of a vanquished. Triumphal processions take place at the site of the monument (the arc) and are amnesic documents because with such a procession the memory of the vanquished is unaccounted for. Arguably, the procession itself points to the fact that there was a "losing side" but it is possible, and probable, that even this recognition of the vanquished will eventually fade away and the spectacular procession needs no more justification. For Benjamin, this is the progression and continuum of history itself. In terms of recovery, the triumphal arch and its processions do not serve the purposes of recovery. The reason for this is recovery is work that only the vanquished can take up. Recovery is the work of one who has lost something and has only something to gain back. A site of recovery is, then, a site where the memory of the vanquished can be redeemed. Such sites can be the site of exhumation as in the mass grave, or a monument, a marker. After the grave is exhumed and "proper" burials occur, those gravesites then become monuments and monuments of recovery because they are now recognized as the site in which mass murder took place.

53 Despite the element of recovery in monuments to the vanquished, monuments paradoxically serve amnesic ends. As such, monuments are not necessarily in service of preserving and keeping memory. Each time we frequent a monument, as a participant in that which the monument implores us to remember, or as a passive observer, the monument's amnesic qualities must be kept in mind, even by the commemorator. We should ask ourselves: what does this monument prompt us to remember? what does this monument prompt us to forget? Is this not exactly what the construction and presentation of monuments seek to do, that is, to prompt us? To be prompted means to be incited, "to

CO have something done to aid the memory, a reminder." A teleprompter is used to prompt the speaker to use the words indicated. Following this understanding of being prompted, monuments function in a similar way. They incite us to call something specific to mind at the expense of other particulars. The aesthetic quality of monuments makes this all the more clear to us. The raw presence of a monument (a blank stone for example) but more so the nuances and aesthetics of the monument prompt us to remember in a certain way.

Simply stated, monuments serve rhetorical and communicative purposes. Monuments are among the official cultural "treasures" that Benjamin speaks of. Monuments communicate the urgency of human remembrance and commemoration, and the inevitable slip into forgetfulness and amnesia. By prompting remembrance, one is prompted to forget something in order to remember that which they are prompted to remember. As illustrated above, Lorca's grave, although it is included in a mass collectivity of graves, becomes a site of monumental significance because of his fame as a poet. Walter Benjamin recognized the problematic nature of monumental history,

OED online

54 perhaps taking up Nietzsche's critique of monumental history. Benjamin writes, "In

Marx's theoretical sketch of labor, under the dominion of capital, humanity's interests are better looked after than in the monumental, long-winded, and basically lackadaisical works of historicism. It is more difficult to honor the memory of the anonymous than it is to honor the memory of the famous, the celebrated, not excluding poets and thinkers."70

Memory, commemoration, and monumentalization of Lorca is made with greater ease because of the cultural treasures, the material, the work left behind by Lorca. Given the fact that the memory of the famous is easier to "honor", we are apprehensive to devote our attention to Lorca because the anonymous others are still lost to memory. But this tension between societal Remembrance and individual reminiscence, between the famous and the anonymous, raises the following question: is it important or possible for the memory of the anonymous to be monumentalized in order to reform history? Is not the fact that we cannot possibly remember the anonymous enough to redeem the vanquished in history? History itself is a dialectic of forgetting and remembering. "To grasp the eternity of historical events is really to appreciate the eternity of their transcience."

Benjamin's insight reminds us of the place the anonymous occupy in history—that they escape monumentalization. How is a monument made for the anonymous? This question was first asked in the aftermath of the Great War of 1914-18 and serves to problematize our notion of history as a continuous thread of events. At the same time, and in the wake of the apparent impossibility to monumentalize the anonymous, we are implored to commemorate, to remember them. Tragedy prompts us to remember and obliges us to

69 See Friedrich Nietzsche, The Use and Abuse of History 70 Walter Benjamin, "Paralipomena to On the Concept of History", Selected Writings Vol. IV1938-1940, trans. Edmund Jephcott and Howard Eiland. (Cambridge: The Belknap press of University of Harvard Press, 2003), 406. 71 Walter Benjamin "On the Concept of History", 407.

55 remember. We shudder at the possibility of the impossibility of remembrance because what is at stake is also the future. The transience of historical events that Benjamin speaks of includes the transience of the existence of individual humans because it is the collection of individuals that are a part of history, thus constituting the historical event. I would like to reformulate Benjamin's thesis in the following way: To grasp the eternity of individual existences (as events in history) is to appreciate the eternity of their existence. This is the basis on which one commemorates the anonymous.

56 Chapter 2: The Spanish Civil War and the Law of Historical Memory

In this chapter the historical case of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) will be presented.

The Spanish Civil War is the historical example in which to engage the question of war commemoration because of the recent exhumations of mass graves, taking place over the past decade up to the present, along with the exhumation of the poet Federico Garcia

Lorca's alleged grave site. These events were the driving forces that made me consider recovery and commemoration in a post-war period. My course of historical investigation will move from a general overview of the conflict to the systematic mass murder perpetrated by the various factions within the Nationalist army, the Anarchist militias and the Republican army. I then consider the "Law of Historical Memory" of 2007, which serves to open up a discussion on law, justice and commemoration as obligation.

The Law of Historical Memory under the code of 22296 Law 52/2007 of December 26th was passed in the Spanish Parliament in the year 2007, thirty two years after the death of

Dictator Francisco Franco. The development and implementation of such a law arises from and is a response to mass loss. The LHM is also in response to a very old question that has been given much weight since the aftermath of the First World War: how do we commemorate mass death? But that is not the whole question for this question can be extended to include the dead whose remains are missing. Where there is no trace how do we commemorate the dead? The LHM (as we shall refer to it from now on) is a document that takes recovery as its objective. Alongside recovery (and also as important) is the

57 preservation of documents concerning the civil war in Spain. We shall return to the memory law in the pages to follow.

It is my intention to reflect on the Spanish Civil War in the present by using the memory law rather than relying on a purely past-oriented contextualization of the conflict.

This will be accomplished by giving a brief sketch of the development toward the outbreak of the civil war which will move me to the present-day by bringing to attention the memory law of December 2007. The war will thus be examined from what is happening in Spain presently.

I would like to offer a brief summary of the political climate in pre-civil war

Spain. As in many countries in Europe, the aftermath of the First World War gave way to socialist and communist movements, such as the Bolshevik Communist revolution in

Russia in 1917, and in Germany itself, a short lived revolution. There were movements of the left, and also of the right. Despite its neutrality during the First World War, Spain itself was destabilized by revolutionary activity between 1917 and 1920. Ben-Ami (1986) reminds us that despite the social and political upheaval, "This does not mean, however, that there was a real danger of social revolution on the eve of Primo's take-over." This is not to say however that Spain was by any means stable as Ben-Ami remarks:

The meaning of Primo de Rivera's Dictatorship cannot be separated from the fact that the general did not stage his rebellion in an immobile society. He 'caught' his country in the midst of a process of transition, whereby the old social and political order was being challenged by an emerging bourgeoisie and a radicalizing working class. It was the dangerous questioning of the established order, not just the professional interests of the army that were at stake in September 1923.73

Shlomo Ben-Ami, Fascism from Above: The Dictatorship of Primo de Rivera in Spain 1923-1930, (Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1983), 34. 73 Ben-Ami, Fascism, 1.

58 In 1923 General Miguel Primo de Rivera's nineteenth-century style pronunciamiento was

followed by a military dictatorship along with the cooperation of King Alfonso XIII who

sought to preserve the Spanish monarchy. Contrary to the idea that Spain was heavily

influenced by Bolshevik and Socialist ideology, thus causing Primo's reactionary coup,

Ben-Ami argues that the state of the Spanish parliamentary system which, "was showing

signs of becoming genuine, thus turning parliamentary politics into a real threat to the monarchy's previously undisputed position and to the prerogative status of the military."74 The actual cause for Primo's seizure of power according to Ben-Ami was the threat to the monarchy and the army of a parliamentary democracy. The failure of Primo

de Rivera's dictatorship resulted in the municipal elections of April 1931 that led to the proclamation of Spain's Second Republic, followed by the June 1931 ballots which saw the election of a center-left and socialist coalition government. Yet there is something

else crucial about Primo de Rivera's dictatorship. Rivera's coup was a model of how in

the name of social stability, a coup could be launched and possibly maintained. The task therefore was to maintain the coup; to continue the state of an uprising while maintaining

a facade of civil order, thus making the social fabric appear as though the rule of law was present. Perhaps this task of maintaining a coup d'etat was the lesson learned from

Primo's Dictatorship, later taken on by the generals who organized the uprising in 1936.

Shlomo Ben-Ami, Fascism, 19. See also Preston The Spanish Civil War (1986): "Ostensibly Primo came to power to put an end to disorder and to prevent an embarrassing report by a parliamentary commission from causing discomfort to the King."

59 The Second Republic was a short-lived period of democracy in Spain that gave way to the Civil War. As Salvado notes it was ".. .an exception in Europe."75 Whereas the

Republic represented the first genuine Spanish exercise in democracy, elsewhere on the continent the political trend was taking an opposite direction as constitutional regimes were succumbing to dictatorships and Fascism. The Second Republic was an exception to the political situation in the rest of Europe. Stanley Payne (2006) recalls an earlier period of Spanish republicanism and reminds us that the First Republic of 1873-74, born from the republican movement of the 1860s, was a "disastrous experience.. .when the country nearly fell apart."76 Payne recalls the earlier experience of republicanism in Spain to show that republicanism was largely mistrusted by 1931. Payne also notes that the

Republic was given "a new lease on life" because of "accelerated modernization" and the failure of Primo de Rivera's dictatorship, which helped to tarnish the legitimacy of the monarchy.77 In general, the advent of the Second Republic, because of its "bloodless introduction" gave hope to the possibility of "a new civic maturity", which after the First

World War was seen as a Spanish attempt at a "new human order." To be sure, the

Second Republic did not inspire hope and optimism in Spain's political right or the

Catholic Church.

The Constitution of the Second Republic was drafted in 1931. Payne writes, "In most respects, this was a standard liberal democratic constitution of the early twentieth

7Q century, influenced possibly more by Weimar than by any other extant document." If

75 Francisco J.Romero Salvado, "Twentieth-Century Spain: Politics and Society in Spain, 1898-1998" (New York: St.Martins Press, 1999) 76 Payne, Stanley, The Collapse of the Spanish Republic 1933-36. (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2006), 9. 77Stanley Payne, The Collapse of the Spanish Republic, 9. 78 Ibid., 9. It should be noted that Spain was neutral during the Great War of 1914-1918. 79 Stanley Payne, Spain's First Democracy. (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1993), 63. we agree with Payne, that the Republican constitution of 1931 was influenced primarily by the Weimar Constitution, we can begin to ask the questions of the viability of a liberal constitution in a traditionalist society such as Spain. By traditionalist I mean that the

Catholic Church was still very influential in the political and social spheres despite the demand for liberalism and socialist policy. The Constitution of the Second Republic was drafted amidst political and social instability, similar to the Weimar Constitution drafted in 1919.80 It comes as no surprise to us then, if we remember the Weimar Republic and its eventual fate that the drafting of a liberal constitution in a volatile climate would result in social and political instability leading to violent conflict, total civil war and even world war.

One significant article in the Republican constitution in particular supports the claim about Spain as traditionalist under the influence of a powerful Catholic Church is

Article 26. Payne writes:

Article 26 established only general guidelines for anticlerical policy, specific aspects of which had to be codified in subsequent legislation. Thus a decree of 24 January 1932 dissolved the Society of Jesus and seized its official property. This ended all formal activity of the Jesuits, though individual members were not R1 expelled from the country and might continue to serve in other religious functions.

Payne goes into some depth in this article, pointing out the various limitations of the

Republican regime on the Church, and many of the statements hint at, if not clearly declare the hostility toward the Church. For example, "The state, the regions, provinces and municipalities will not maintain, favor or support economically any church, religious association or institution.. .A special law will regulate the total elimination of the clerical budget within a maximum of two years.. .The property of religious orders is legally

80 For example the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic which was dismantled on the 3 May 1919. 81 Stanley Payne, The Collapse of the Spanish Republic, 51.

61 subject to nationalization." To further contextualize the constitution of the Second

Republic, Payne notes that the "Republic inaugurated the most intensive era of reform in

Spain since the institutions of liberalism had first been stabilized in the 1840s.. .This involved the separation of church and state."83 Based on the Republican constitution and

its aims, we can begin to understand some of the reasons why the uprising in 1936 was necessary for the traditionalist forces in Spain, Franco among them. But we must be careful not to paint the Second Republic as a radical regime because as Preston (1986) writes:

Ultimately, the new regime was to fail because it neither carried through its threatened reforms nor fulfilled the Utopian expectations of its most fervent supporters.. .the seeds of war were buried near the surface of a Republic which was the source of hope to the left and of fear to the right.84

The Second Republic, answering neither to the radical left nor to the radical right, fell

into paralysis. The paralysis appeared as a threat to both right and left and hence was a

summons to action.

The Rising

A pronunciamiento is a declaration or announcement of opposition made by military leaders to the ruling government, and is specific to Spain. According to Hugh Thomas:

The pronunciamiento, usually causing a few deaths at least, became the customary way of changing governments in the mid nineteenth century. The remainder of the reign of Isabella II was passed under a frankly conservative rule except for a short space between 1854 and 1856 after a pronunciamiento turned into a revolution by the people of Madrid.85

Quoted in Payne Spain's First Democracy: The Second Republic 1931-1936(1993), 81-82 Stanley Payne, Spain's First Democracy, 81. Paul Preston, The Spanish Civil War: 1936-39, (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson Ltd. 1986), 19. Hugh Thomas, The Spanish Civil War, (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books Ltd., 1968), 33. In turn, the ones who make the declaration await the support or resistance of the other branches of the military.86 A pronunciamiento may or may not lead to war, and its success depends upon whether there is enough support among other military officials to overthrow of the government. The declaration is public, which is different from a coup

'd'etat', which tends to happen without any form of public declaration. Declaring a pronunciamiento threatens the stability of law; war becomes a possibility if the pronunciamiento is met with resistance by the government. General Mola, the mastermind of the plot, made it clear that the rising would not be in a. pronunciamiento of the 'old style'. We should hasten to draw attention to the phrasing that there was to be no pronunciamiento in the 'old style'; if not in the old style, then in what style was the pronunciamiento of 1936? First however, what is the 'old style' pronunciamiento? With reference to General Primo de Rivera's pronunciamiento that led to his dictatorship in

1923, Thomas remarks:

It was hardly to be expected that Alfonso should refuse what was in effect an ultimatum, presented in the nineteenth-century style of pronunciamiento, by General Miguel Primo de Rivera, Captain-General of Catalonia.

What follows is Primo de Rivera's declaration in the form of an appeal and an underlying threat. In a pronunciamiento intentions are made clear and the element of a 'surprise' uprising is excluded. An excerpt from the declaration reads as follows:

We have reason on our side and therefore force, though so far we have used force with moderation.. .Neither I, nor the garrisons of Aragon from whom I have just

86Hugh Thomas, 33 87 To illustrate this point I quote Thomas, "Apart from from the Carlist Wars, there had been no fewer than forty-threepronunciamientos, successful or unsuccessful, between 1814 and 1923. (Thirty-two failed, eleven succeeded)", 85. 88 Ibid., 36

63 received a telegram in support, will agree to anything but a military dictatorship. If the politicians make an attempt to defend themselves, we shall do the same.. .Today we are resolved on moderation, but on the other hand we shall not shrink from bloodshed.89

The pronunciamiento of 1936 anticipated the war to come. In fact it was more of a declaration of war than a. pronunciamiento. The rebels expected the government to resist and they had prepared risings to take place throughout the country. The pronunciamiento of 1936 did not follow the traditional procedure of an old-style pronunciamiento because of the already apparent build up towards war. The 1936 pronunciamiento was therefore more symbolic than functional. The possibility of a rising was already well known and therefore the possibility of and conditions for a rising were already public. Thus there was no need for an official proclamation in the form of an 'old style' nineteenth-century pronunciamiento. "In Barcelona.. .rumours were incessant that the Army was about to rise. Armed members of the various organizations stood on guard at all Republican of left-wing headquarters. Many Falangists were arrested, some admitting that they were on their way to loot a Republican newspaper office."90 The lack of a.pronunciamiento in the

'old style' indicates that the pronunciamiento of 1936 serves as an historical marker; the rebels who started the Spanish Civil War broke from the traditional practice of rebellion in Spain.

On the 17th of July 1936 the uprising against the Second Republic commenced under the direction of General Emilio Mola. What is called the Spanish Civil War ensued from July

1936 until March 1939. In later years it would be described as a precursor to the Second

89 Hugh Thomas, Spanish Civil War, 36. Thomas notes that this document "was made public by Count Romanones in the Cortes during King Alfonso's 'trial' in December 1931." 90 Ibid., 178 World War, as all of the nations in the later European theatre of war were present fighting for the Ultra-conservative Catholics, the Fascists (which includes largely the Falange), and Monarchist factions (all placed under the title of the Nationalists) or the Republic of

Spain, the elected center-left government since the elections in February of 1936. Yet, the

Republican forces were not unified. Numerous Anarchist militias, Unions, Communist and Socialist parties, and more liberal left-wing groups comprised the forces fighting for the Second Republic, as they saw it, "against Fascism". That is to say, as much as the left was fighting for the Second Republic, they were also fighting in large part against the threat of Fascism and for their respective political positions.

Perhaps the most striking thing about the Civil War was the manner in which the neighbouring European nations reacted. It is necessary to interrogate European involvement because it is largely the support of nations exterior to Spain that determined the course of the war.91 Such support would be on the grounds of geo-political interests, economic interests and ideological interests. These preliminary decisions helped to cultivate the grounds for the Second World War.

The Nationalists received full support on the part of Fascist Italy under Mussolini and National Socialst Germany under Hitler, while the Republic had to face the reality of opposition on the part of Britain and France with some support from the Soviet Union and the renowned International Brigades. Britain's opposition to the Second Republic

91 Casanova notes that "Although the Spanish Civil War was clearly internal in its origin, the international situation played a decisive role in the duration, progress and final result of the conflict. The rearmament policies followed by the principal countries of Europe since the beginning of that decade created a climate of uncertainty and crisis that undermined international security." (212) This argument is contrary to Hugh Thomas (1968), "In a broad sense the Spanish Civil War was primarily the result of general European ideas and movements upon Spain. After all, from the sixteenth century onwards, each of the leading political ideas of Europe has been received with enthusiasm by one group of Spaniards and opposed ferociously by another..." The Spanish Civil War, 279.

65 came from a growing school of thought that Leftist economics and Communism were greater threats to Western democracies than Fascism and, in the case of Franco's Spain, an authoritarian, Catholic and traditionalist regime that openly supported Fascism. There is then a question of Western intentions regarding the civil war in Spain, Preston (1986) writes:

Besides their concern about the overall left-right balance in Europe, the British were inclined by their considerable commercial interests in Spain, with substantial investments in mines, sherry, textiles, olive oil and cork, to be anything but sympathetic to the Republic. The business community inevitably tended towards the Nationalist side since it was believed that the anarchists and other Spanish revolutionaries were liable to seize and collectivize British holdings. Equally, members of the British government, for reasons of class and education, sympathized with the anti-revolutionary aims of the Nationalists as they did with those of Hitler and Mussolini.92

Anglo interests and German interests were strangely similar regarding Spain. Both countries had economic interests in Spain, and both countries did not wish to see the spread of Bolshevism and Communism. A statement made by Hermann Goring, at the

Nuremburg trials in 1946 supports the argument that Britain and Germany held strikingly similar interests, "the Fuhrer thought the matter over. I urged him to give support under all circumstances: firstly, to prevent the further spread of Communism; secondly, to test my young Luftwaffe in this or that technical aspect."93 The only point of similar interest here is the prevention of the spread of Communism. The German government saw its part in the Spanish Civil War opportunistically in terms of testing its newly established

Luftwaffe, whereas Britain, by leaving the Republic on its own opted to test its diplomatic standing with the young National Socialist regime in Germany given that both nations had a similar interest in halting the spread of Communism. I introduce this point

92 Paul Preston, The Spanish Civil War: 1936-39, (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson Ltd. 1986) 74 93 Hugh Thomas, The Spanish Civil War, 299.

66 to comment upon one way in which the war came to be decided. Salvado rightly points to the fact that the insurgency was largely, in the beginning a failure, but that it was the international response that helped determine the course of the war. The victory for

Franco and the Nationalists, could be in large part blamed on the Western democracies for not only being aware of the support coming from Italy and Germany,94 but also not supporting the Republic with arms and material. It makes one also question Allied intentions in the Second World War. Although it became obvious that continental Europe needed to be liberated from Nazism, the subsequent stand-off leading to the Cold War with the Soviet Union is highly suspect if we take seriously the argument that

Communism was the "real enemy" of Western democracies, but this claim is not relevant in this current work. We can state quite clearly however that Britain's neutrality was in support of anti-left policies.

Systematic violence

Julian Casanova's "dialectic of arms" thesis in his recently published book The Spanish

Republic and Civil War (2010) gives us a reliable and stable ground upon which to offer an account of the systematic violence and mass murder perpetrated in the early days of the Civil War, specifically in July and August of 1936, which many authors have noted as the bloodiest in terms of reprisals, mass killings and political executions. Casanova

94 Salvado notes that Franco "established contacts on the 22 July with two National-Socialist Party members in Morocco, Johannes Bernhardt and Adolf Lagenheim, who agreed to travel to Germany to deliver a plea for military assistance. By using party channels, Franco.. .appealed directly to Hitler." On the 25 July "Franco's messengers met with Rudolf Hess.. .In a few days, a German vessel, the Usaramo, left Germany loaded with materiel destined for Franco.. .ten Junkers 52, six Heinkel 51s, anti-aircraft guns, bombs, ammunition and various other items." (Salvado, 98) As for Italy, "Mussolini moved from his initial caution of limited aid towards massive participation. By March 1937 about 50 000 Italian troops organized in mechanized divisions were fighting in Spain, the final total number of Italian troops involved would be 80 000." (Salvado, 104)

67 makes an important distinction to help us understand the nature of the mass killings. He writes:

Contrary to appearances, this violence was not so much a consequence of the war as the direct result of a military uprising which from the outset, went hand in hand with unpunished murder and the coup de grace. It was a strategically designed plan, which, in the places where it failed, was met by a sudden armed response against the main players in the uprising and those considered to be their material and spiritual brothers-in-arms."95

For Casanova, the killings were made possible not by the war itself but by the uprising.

That there was a destabilization caused by an uprising made room for radical action. The task is therefore to introduce the "dialectic of arms" thesis and show that systematic violence was committed by both sides when the law was all but suspended when the uprising began in July of 1936. Casanova writes, "Compliance with the law was replaced by the language and dialectic of arms, by the rejection of human rights and the veneration of violence."96 What Casanova gives us, is the phrasing "dialectic of arms", meaning, the taking up of arms for the purpose of executions, cleansing and extreme violence happened on the part of both the Nationalist and Republic forces, although we should hasten to point out that the executions carried out in republican held territory were largely committed by militias in the summer of 1936 at the onset of the rising.97 According to

Casanova:

The republican State.. .by surrendering its monopoly on arms, was not capable of preventing the beginning of a sudden and violent revolutionary activity aimed at destroying the positions of the privileged classes, wherever the insurgents were defeated. Political measures gave way to armed action.98

95 Julian Casanova, The Spanish Republic and Civil War, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 201. 96 Casanova, 163. 97 Casanova (2010) writes: "The coup did not overthrow the Republic, but by opening a wide breach in the army and security forces, it did destroy its cohesion and caused unrest." (Ibid., 166) 98 Ibid., 166-167.

68 The situation was therefore one where revolutionary groups were armed by the State in an attempt to thwart the uprising, "A counter-revolutionary coup d'etat, whose intention was to halt a revolution, ended up by unleashing one."99 On the one hand was the cleansing of the bourgeoisie, landowners, shopkeepers, Catholics, the middle classes on the part of armed militias100; while the Nationalist rebels cleansed their territory of 'Reds' and sympathizers of the Republic. Casanova's insight into the chaotic nature of the mass killings extends to both sides of the conflict at the onset of the uprising.

In Nationalist held territory the purges were carried out in a similar ideological fashion:

The killings were rife wherever there was the most resistance, wherever old conflicts and influential leftist organizations triggered the settling of scores.. .a commemoration, was all it took for the death toll to soar. The night of 10 to 11 August 1936 in Seville was such a case: to celebrate Sanjurjo's anti-republican coup in 1932, various left-wing figures were murdered... x

In a similar fashion to the killings in republican held territory, the killings in Nationalist held territory and Republican territory were sporadic and highly concentrated in the early months of the war, ".. .the final days of July and the months of August and September

1936 saw the highest number of killings in almost every region that had been under control of the rebels from the start: between 50 and 70 per cent of the total number of victims of this repression during the civil war and afterwards were concentrated in this

yy Ibid., 167. 100 To be more specific Casanova writes: "It is fair to say that in Madrid, the fury was directed primarily against military personnel and leading politicians, while in Barcelona it was the clergy and business owners who bore the brunt. It is clearly significant that is was the socialists and Communists who took the leading role in this mass lynching of the enemy in Madrid, and that it was the anarchists who were behind the chaos that was responsible for the thousands of killings in Catalonia by so many different factions." (2010) 199. 101 Julian Casanova, The Spanish Republic and Civil War, 164. 1 09 short period." If we recognize that the mass killings were exceptional in the early days of the war, and committed by both Republican supporters and Nationalist supporters, we can begin to ask the question, what happened after the civil war? In Casanova's text, we come across a rather telling passage: Under these circumstances, with no law to be obeyed, and with no fear of punishment, gangs of killers appeared everywhere, protected by the army, by landowners and the middle class fearful of revolution; they organized shooting parties to settle old scores, dominated by young Falangists, students and respectable citizens, but also by predatory and spiteful people who, unfettered by the inhibitions that had previously restrained their violent instincts, now have free rein to their aggression and cruelty. Thus it is hardly surprising that the greatest bloodshed took place in the two months that followed the rising, before this violence was legalized.103

From this passage I would like to focus on the last few words of the last sentence: before this violence was legalized. This is the distinction to be made—legalization of killing was indeed consolidated in Nationalist territory. What is the difference between killings made legal, or under legalization, and killings committed under a state of exception to the law? Instead of an unleashing of tensions, the legal procedure is perhaps bureaucratized deliberation and judicial 'proceedings', the procedure—a performance, an enactment and passing of the law. To explain the difference between legal killings and extra-judicial killings moves us to consider post-war "justice" under the Franco regime, which directs us towards the present question of the recovery of memory in Spain. The difference between legalized killings and extra-judicial killings is that legalized killings are a result of a victory. The "recovery of memory", the gathering of what has been forgotten is the task of those who still recognize a vanquished faction. Recovering the memory of the vanquished is the ultimate affirmation of a defeat. Yet the fact that such a recovery is

102 Casanova, Julian. The Spanish Republic and Civil War, 164. 103 Ibid., 163-164. possible signifies a progression away from the prohibition of commemorating the vanquished.

What was the cause of extremist violence perpetrated against Franco's enemies, and where did the ideology that supported violence come from? In an essay entitled "The

Theorists of Extermination" (2010), Paul Preston seeks to answer this question of the origin of the systematic violence in Spain. He argues that Franco, among many other high ranking officials on the far-right in Spain were anti-Semites and firm believers of the

Jewish world conspiracy, "In Spain as in other European countries, anti-Semitism reached a new intensity after 1917. It was taken as axiomatic that Socialism was a Jewish creation and that the Russian revolution had been financed by Jewish capital.. ."104 Thus, the far-right saw Spain as the protector of Western Christian civilization against not only a Jewish conspiracy, but a Muslim, Liberal, Communist, Socialist, Anarchist and

Bolshevik takeover. At least this was the narrative propagated in many journals and newspapers published by right-wing writers and in some cases priests. For example, the

Catholic intellectual Angel Herrera Oria edited the newspaper El Debate and founded the political party Accion Popular. Later developing into the Confederation Epanola de

Derechas Autonomas. A Catalan priest by the name of Juan Tusquets Terrats was the author of Origenes de la revolucion Espanola and was a great influence on Franco.

"Tusquets would come to have enormous influence within the Spanish Right in general and specifically over General Franco, who devoured his anti-Masonic and anti-Semitic diatribes."105 Of great importance is a further insight by Preston concerning the scope of

104 Paul Preston, "Theorists of Extermination", 43. 105 Paul Preston, "Theorists of Extermination", 51.

71 Tusquet's influence on the Francoist rebels, especially those holding high-ranking positions, including Franco himself, "When Tusquets finally became a collaborator of

Franco in Burgos during the Civil War, his files on alleged Freemasons would provide an important part of the organizational infrastructure of the repression."106 Also of note was the fact that Tusquets' work was widely read by the Nazis to the point he was invited to the concentration camp at Dachau by the Anti-Masonic Association in 1933.107

Preston's essay seeks to remind us that the violence committed by Francoists during and after the Civil War had an ideological basis, an agenda, and was quite deliberate with the objective of exterminating political and cultural opponents under the banner of preserving

Western Christian civilization. Preston also reminds us quite importantly of Spain's anti-

Semitic history:

The idea that there was an evil Jewish conspiracy to destroy Christianity went back to the early Middle Ages in Catholic Spain. In the early nineteenth century, the Spanish extreme Right had come to believe that the Freemasons were the tool of the Jews and that their objective was to establish Jewish tyranny over the Christian world.108

The point here is to show the ties Spain had with other fascist nations, not only in terms of support in arms as we have seen, but also the relation of ideologies, especially between

Nazi Germany and Spain. Although for obvious reasons what was happening in Nazi

Germany and Stalin's Soviet Union in the decade of the 1930's was not the same as in

Franco's Spain, the common thread linking the purges seen in all of these nations was largely based on the propagation of the invasion of the foreign enemy, and this enemy is

Ibid.| 50. Ibid., 42.

72 seen to be a threat to Western Civilization. Preston, in my opinion sets up an argument that seeks to posit Franco's Spain as influenced by fascist ideology more than any other ideology (except the influence of the Catholic Church, which opens up the connections between the Catholic Church and fascist movements). At the same time Preston reveals the simplicity of saying that Franco's Spain was outright and thoroughly 'fascist.'

However, it is clear that Franco's Spain supported and endorsed fascist movements thus making Franco's regime a collaborator with fascism but only insofar as it benefited

Franco's vision for Spain.

Post-war 'justice'

Julius Ruiz's Franco's Justice focuses specifically on the Nationalist occupation of

Madrid and the subsequent passing of repressive laws aimed at 'cleansing' newly occupied territory, yet he poses a question concerning post-war executions as a way to understand the nature of Francoist repression and how it functioned as post-war repression:

Underlying this methodology is the assumption that the post-war repression was based on a bureaucratic pseudo-legalistic apparatus. But was this really the case? In Nazi Germany, the extra-judicial activities of the Gestapo-SS ran parallel, and increasingly supplanted, the actions of regular and special courts. Did a similar parallel system of extra-judicial punishment exist in post-war Spain? One way of answering this question is through discussion of the vexed issue of post-war executions in Madrid.110

Ruiz therefore wants to take up the work of examining how law functioned in its exercise of sentencing, he writes, "[T]his study is more concerned with the criteria employed by

In particular, Nazi ideologues as we know, took literally the idea that the nation is a body. The doctrine of "blood and soil" is what I am referring to. 110 Julius Ruiz, Franco's Justice, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 15.

73 military tribunals when sentencing people to death."111 Ruiz's text gives us two laws. The

LPR (Law of Political Responsibilities) and the LRFC (Law for the Repression of

Freemasonry and Communism). We will examine these laws in relation to the LHM of

2007. The LPR, according to Ruiz was:

A retrospective piece of legislation, it declared that anyone incurring political responsibilities was liable to face punishment for the 'damage' they had caused Spain from special tribunals directly appointed by the government and containing a member of the single party, the Falange. Who held political responsibilities was singularly wide and ill-defined.

The LPR was a law that targeted civic life. It held true the notion that citizens had a duty to uphold the values of 'Spain' as envisioned by the Nationalists. Ruiz makes clearer what the LPR focused on:

The LPR replaced a piecemeal wartime institutional system in a crucial area of justice: civil responsibilities. The Nationalists did not only put in place a criminal military framework to punish 'military rebellion' but also a parallel civil responsibilities system to obtain reparation from those it held as generally responsible for producing the "Marxist rebellion".113

The LPR was a law that forced the reparation for damages caused, a similar model to the

Treaty of Versailles in 1919; that is, a law that demands reparation for what was lost during the conflict, drafted by the victors.

Ruiz remarks that, "While post-war military justice was harsh it was not exterminatory."114 Further, Ruiz points out that, "The Franco regime employed Catholic themes of redemption and charity to justify publicly this massive process of liquidating

111 Julius Ruiz, Franco's Justice, 15. 112 Ibid., 132. 113 Ibid., 132. 114 Julius Ruiz, Franco's Justice, 18.

74 the penal legacy of the civil war."115 Post-war justice was then a justice that sought to secure Franco's regime and to remove 'Red' elements from Spanish society under the aegis of 'correcting' and 'reconciling' those who were imprisoned by the regime. "The self-imposed task of punishing and purging Republicans from Spanish society was immense. There were around 50 000 post-war executions, over 280 000 prisoners by

November 1940, and 226 726 LPR cases by October 1941."116 The Valley of the Fallen, the monument that would later hold the remains of Franco, was constructed by prisoners who were set to work as part of the "Redemption of Sentences through Work scheme"117

The site also served as a site of commemoration for Nationalist dead. The construction of such a monument for the victors was part of Franco's post-war "justice". Ruiz writes,

"The most significant private project in the province, although under overall state control, was the construction of the 'Valley of the Fallen' at Cuelgamuros near El Escorial. Three private companies, San Roman, Molan, and Baniis, carried the construction of Franco's memorial to the Nationalist dead; in 1943 they employed 250 prisoners."118 The Valley of the Fallen is one example among many of this work scheme in action. Other examples include the construction of prisons. The example of the redemption through work scheme as a way to cleanse Spanish society of its enemies, shows, as Ruiz has pointed out, that extermination was not the policy of Franco's regime. But, this should not distract us from the fact that such a work scheme was slave labour.

1,5 Ibid., 117 116 Ibid, 7 117 Ibid., 120. "The Redemption of Sentences through Work scheme was created by decree in May 1937.. .Through their labour, prisoners with sentences in excess of two years would not only repay the 'damage' they had done to Spain but would be able to work off their sentences." (119) 118 Ibid., 120

75 Ruiz also presents us with a commentary on an inversion of historical truth under

Franco. Consider for example the fact that the word 'rebel' was used as a signifier for the

Republic where in actual truth, the rebels were the Nationalist armies, "The fact that

Madrid was only fully occupied by the Nationalist army days before the end of the civil war on 28th March 1939 allows us to analyze how Francoist inverted logic was put into practice in a province that had been under Republican or 'rebel' rule."119 He further remarks that, "What makes post-war military justice such a singular phenomenon is the attempted enforcement of the claim that the rebels represented the legitimate government of Spain from July 1936."120 With such a reversal of fact, the Republic is then posited as the illegitimate government, and as such, 'the rebels'. This inversion of fact was only possible because of the Nationalist victory. Ruiz's study makes it apparent that the majority of extra-judicial killings happened as Casanova has also argued, in the first two months of the civil war in 1936.121 This being the case, the question of oppression during

Franco's regime moves from the ridiculous idea of reform through "religious redemption" to the engineering of how the war and its vanquished were remembered.

Ruiz argues that post-war 'justice' under the Franco regime did not measure up to the ideological drive as seen in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Ruiz's study provides us with a point in time in which to focus. That is, there is a distinction to be made between 'in war' killings and post-war executions, or death sentences, "While these statistics are an appalling indication of the nature of Franco's 'peace' after the civil war,

U9Julius Ruiz, Franco's Justice, 9. 120 Ibid., 19 121 "Indeed, the final days of July and the months of August and September 1936 saw the highest number of killings in almost every region that had been under the control of the rebels from the start: between 50 and 70 per cent of the total number of victims of this repression during the civil war and afterwards were concentrated in this short period." Casanova (2010), 164 122 Julius Ruiz, Franco's Justice, 118.

76 they do not suggest, in the context of the mass implementation of military justice, a death-sentencing rate indicative of a policy of extermination."123 Ruiz offers us an in- depth analysis of executions carried out in Madrid province in the period of 1939-1944.

1939 saw the highest number at 1,214 confirmed executions with 24 unknowns; 1944 with 2 confirmed and 0 unknown.124 As Ruiz says, numbers do not reflect human suffering but his analysis forces us to consider the difference between in war killings and post-war executions in the Spanish context. That being established, the majority of the graves under exhumation are then from the first two months of the civil war July-

September of 1936.

My engagement with Preston and Ruiz on the origins of extreme violence in

Spain and post-war 'justice' under Franco provides historical information for how the mass graves came to be. We will now proceed to an analysis of the LHM in order to elaborate the significance of recovery.

The Law of Historical Memory

Our account so far has required us to return to the LHM. The text begins with this general statement, "22296 LAW 52/2007, of December 26th, to recognize and broaden rights and to establish measures in favour of those who suffered persecution or violence during the

Civil War and the Dictatorship."125 According to this primary statement, the law seeks to recognize suffering, persecution and violence. Recognition is in this case an indication,

123 Julius Ruiz, Franco's Justice, 100. 124 Ibid., 104

125 Historical Memory Law [Source: BOENo. 310, pp 53410 - 53416, 27Dec07. Translation into English from the original Spanish version carried out by Equipo Nizkor on 31st January, 2008]

77 and an announcement of an injustice committed in the past. To recognize is also to remember. When we say "I recognize you," we are remembering. Etymologically, recognize is broken down as such; re- "again" + cognoscere "know." To know again thus becomes an objective of the memory law; specifically to know again and remember anew the Spanish Civil War. Such a new perspective seeks to redeem the memory of the vanquished. With the recognition of the vanquished, the drafting of constitutions and subsequent laws that address an emergence from a state of oppression such documents can be granted the title of mnemonic documents, documents that primarily work towards addressing collective memory as its primary concern. The following passage under the heading "explanation of reasons" in the memory law reads:

The spirit of reconciliation and harmony and of respect for pluralism and peaceful defence of all ideas which guided the Transition, enabled the establishment of a Constitution for us, that of 1978, which legally expressed the desire of Spaniards for reunification, forming a social and democratic state of law with the clear wish for i o/-

integration.

According to this passage, reconciliation, harmony, pluralism and the "peaceful defence of all ideas which guided the Transition", "enabled" the drafting of a constitution. The

"Transition" is the period of time from Franco's death to the establishment of democracy in Spain, a three year period from 1975-78. It would not be inaccurate to say that Spain is still in transition evidenced by the memory law of 2007. The implication is that the desire to reform what is remembered is foundational to the drafting of and preservation of constitutions after a period of tyrannical rule. However, what is unique about Spain is that the drafting of the constitution of 1978 as has been noted by Joan Ramon Resina is "a screen memory, a displaced metaphor for knowledge that is censored and must be 126 Historical Memory Law [Source: BOE No. 310, pp 53410 - 53416, 27Dec07. Translation into English from the original Spanish version carried out by Equipo Nizkor on 31st January, 2008] 1.

78 constantly repressed lest it gain admittance into public consciousness." This statement complicates the passage in the memory law above that states that the Transition was

"guided" by virtuous acts. The counter-argument to this is that the Transition was guided by amnesia rather than such things as "the spirit of reconciliation and harmony." Resina goes on to note that the repression of the Transition shows itself in the exhumation of mass graves.128 Paloma Aguilar's position on the Transition is less focused on amnesia, repression and silence than that of Resina. For Paloma Aguilar, the Transition was a period of "improvisation." He writes, "Only two days after Franco's death Juan Carlos was crowned king. The new monarch gave a speech whose ambiguity bothered many: stating his loyalty to the Ancien Regime while seeming to leave open the possibility of bringing into political life groups which had been excluded from it since 1939."129 What we have then is not & forced forgetting but rather a period where that which had been before Franco's regime was able to be recalled and recovered. If there happened to be feelings of unease in this period, the reasons for such unease are quite obvious, and far from being a period of strict repression, it was actually a period of recovery. What must be kept in mind is that such periods of recovery are navigated slowly, as Aguilar rightly notes, "In spite of how it may look from our perspective, and in spite of how some political personalities self-interestedly want it to appear, the transition was strewn with difficulties and uncertainties. Far from there being a preconceived plan, the path was full of improvisation."130 The argument that the "path" to reconciliation and reconstruction

127 Ramon Joan Resina, The Weight of Memory and the Lightness of Oblivion, 235. 128 Ramon Joan Resina, The Weight of Memory and the Lightness of Oblivion, 235. 129 Aguilar, Paloma "The opposition to Franco, the transition to democracy and the new political system", Spanish History Since 1808 edited by Jose Alvarez Junco and Adrian Shubert (New York: Arnold, 2000) 306 130 Paloma Aguilar, "The opposition to Franco, the transition to democracy and the new political system", 306-307.

79 was shrouded in what Resina called "a screen memory", is complicated and problemitized here by Aguilar. He notes further that:

"Rebuilding a civil society dismembered by a devastating war and a brutal dictatorship was a slow and difficult process which began with the emergence of small bubbles of liberty that began to develop on the margins of the regime. Workers and students made themselves heard in 1962, and from then until repression was stepped up in 1969 they staged intermittent acts of public protest."131

Far from denying action in order to rebuild civic society, Aguilar affirms the actions of

small groups, and the decisions of the political elite, "who, in spite of having held high office, saw the need of reaching an agreement with the democratic opposition and containing the displeasure that such negotiations would inevitably produce in the most conservative sectors of the regime." Such a period of regime change requires a

dialectic of recovery (remembering and commemorating) and silences.

In order to know again or reform common knowledge and memory of the Civil War, the

memory law includes the establishment of various governmental initiatives. As we will

see, some provisions outline subsidies for the exhumation of mass graves. Other provisions address the maintenance and preservation of a "General Archive of the

Spanish Civil War"; the compensation in monetary amounts to victims or the relatives of

victims; and the granting of citizenship to members of the International Brigade. What is

interesting to note first is the relation between law and memory. How else is such a

1 Ibid., 307 2 Ibid., 307 "memory project" possible? Is it inevitable and necessary that a law be drafted that takes

• 1 ^^ memory as its primary focus?

I would like to start with the section of the law that addresses the whereabouts of those who were killed or executed by Francoists during and after the Civil War. Article 11.1, reads as follows:

Public administration offices, subject to their authority, will assist direct descendants of victims who request an inquiry in respect of, and the location and identification of, persons who disappeared violently during the civil war or the subsequent political repression and whose whereabouts are unknown. The provision of the preceding paragraph is applicable to those entities which were formed prior to June 1 2004 and the functions of which include such activities.134

This passage establishes the fact that the law is carried out by "public administration offices". It is important to point out that persons who request to know of the whereabouts of a missing relative are not required to do the work by their own means. Government assistance by way of administration is involved in the process of recovery. An interesting change in position given what the Spanish government decided to do during the

Transition period after Franco's death. This begs the question, is the government obligated to provide such a service to its citizenry? We should follow this passage with

Article 13.2:

The public administrations, in the exercise of their powers will establish the procedure and the conditions by which the direct descendants of the victims referred to in article 11 para 1, or the entities that act in their name may recover the

This question opens a way to inquire into the history of memory in law. What laws have been drafted since, for example the French Revolution, that take memory as the sole motivation for the law's drafting? By approaching this question, we can begin to critique the role of mnemonics in legal matters and documents. 134 "The Law of Historical Memory" [Source: BOE No. 310, pp 53410 - 53416, 27Dec07. Translation into English from the original Spanish version carried out by Equipo Nizkor on 31st January, 2008]

81 remains buried in the corresponding graves in order to identify them and move them to another location.135

The recovery of bodies and the movement of bodies to other locations is overseen by public administration. This means that although individuals can request to recover the remains of their relative, they cannot do so without the involvement of government funded administrations. This is to point to the government's participation in a recovery of memory.

Since the early part of the 21st century support for the exhumation of mass graves became part of the LHM in Spain. Exhumations were first undertaken by grassroots organizations. For example in the year 2000 the Asociacion para la Recuperacion de la

Memoria Historica (ARMH) was founded by Emilio Silva and Santiago Macias Perez.

The act of beginning such an association was a mnemonic political act. By mnemonic political act I mean the fact that such an association is concerned with addressing victims of the war and the dictatorship through remembrance with the objective of reforming historical memory. Since 2007 such efforts became part of a legally recognized effort to recover the remains of those killed and buried in mass graves by Francoist forces during and after the Spanish Civil war.136 Article 12.1 reads as such:

The Government, in collaboration with all the offices of Public Administration, shall draw up a protocol of scientific and multi-disciplinary process to ensure institutional collaboration and proper intervention in exhumations. It will also enter into collaborative agreements as appropriate to subsidize the social entities 1 ^7 participating in these works.

135 "The Law of Historical Memory" [Source: BOE No. 310, pp 53410 - 53416, 27Dec07. Translation into English from the original Spanish version carried out by Equipo Nizkor on 31st January, 2008] 136 We are reminded of the name "the disappeared" in many other countries, including among them Argentina and Chile. In a sense, one could extend this work to include these countries as they are similar to Spain given the move away from totalitarian rule. Historical memory as a national and cultural issue becomes very important to any "transition" period. 137 "The Law of Historical Memory" [Source: BOE No. 310, pp 53410 - 53416, 27Dec07. Translation into English from the original Spanish version carried out by Equipo Nizkor on 31st January, 2008]Article 12.1

82 As we see here, the legal instrument of the memory law is fashioned with the objective of recovery. In this way the "recovery law" recognizes injustices that were committed and the law's intention is to recognize these injustices and begin to approach recollection through recovery. In other words the law attempts to ensure that everything that can be accounted for be accounted for through the act of recovery and identification. But what is recollection in this context? It is not simply to remember individually, rather recollection becomes a larger societal question. The law says as much in the following passage:

.. .the current Law wishes to contribute to the healing of wounds still open amongst Spaniards and to give satisfaction to those citizens who suffered, directly or through their relatives, to consequences of the tragedy of the Civil War or the Dictatorship repression. It wishes to do so in the complete certainty that, by entering more deeply into the spirit of reunification and harmony of the Transition, not only will those citizens be recognized and honoured but also the democracy of Spain as a whole. It is not the task of the legislature to implant a particular collective 138 memory.

What are the consequences of the government taking on such a strong role in the formation and recuperation of the collective memory of a nation? And is "collective memory" desirable? Is it unavoidable? Ought government to have a part in the formation of collective memory? It is obvious that each and every part of a society contributes to the collective memory of that specific nation, so yes, government does have a part. In addition to this, government ensures the right to memory and recollection, through a constitution. One aspect of the law that comes as no surprise is that under the law, access to archives and documents are guaranteed:

138 "The Law of Historical Memory" [Source: BOE No. 310, pp 53410 - 53416, 27Dec07. Translation into English from the original Spanish version carried out by Equipo Nizkor on 31st January, 2008]

83 The functions of the Documentary Centre of Historical Memory shall be: To maintain and develop the General Archive of the Spanish Civil War created by Royal Decree 426/1999, of 12th March. To this end, and by way of proceedings to be determined by regulation, into this Archive shall be integrated all original documents or reliable copies of the same, referring to the Civil War of 1936-1939 and the subsequent political repression situated in State-owned museums, libraries or archives, and these shall keep a digitalized copy of said documents. In addition, the General State Administration shall proceed to compile the relevant oral testimonies relating to the said period of history which will also be send to and integrated into the General Archive.139

Not only is the recovery of bodies the object of the memory law, so too are written and oral testimonies. Anything that contributes to the General Archive of the Spanish Civil

War and the dictatorship aims to correct past injustices through preservation.

What, however, does the rule of law guarantee? It is important to note that the memory law specifically addresses memory as a national and cultural issue. What is the genesis of memory as a legal question for a nation? By legal question for a nation, I mean i that a society's members ask themselves and one another, "how will we remember what happened?" At this point we can return to the question of memory and constitutions.

Perhaps it is apt for us to introduce another example to speak of constitutions and the general objectives of such documents.

The German Constitution (the Basic Law) was drafted in the city of Bonn in May of

1949. The preamble situates us in the task of such a constitution, "Conscious of their responsibility before God and man, Inspired by the determination to promote world peace as an equal partner in a united Europe, the German people, in the exercise of their constituent power, have adopted this Basic Law. 14° Such a "consciousness" of responsibility, is contingent upon a historical memory that recognizes the plight of the

139 "The Law of Historical Memory" [Source: BOE No. 310, pp 53410 - 53416, 27Dec07. Translation into English from the original Spanish version carried out by Equipo Nizkor on 31st January, 2008]Article, 20.2 140 Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany. Published by: German Bundestag Public Relations Division. Berlin 2010. 13

84 German people and of Europe under Nazi rule. Therefore, historical memory is directly implicated in the law. Concerning expellees and citizenship, the constitution seeks to reestablish a previous state:

Former German citizens who between 30 January 1933 and 8 May 1945 were deprived of their citizenship on political, racial or religious grounds, and their descendants, shall on application have their citizenship restored. They shall be deemed never to have been deprived of their citizenship if they have established their domicile in Germany after 8 May 1945 and have not expressed a contrary 141 intention. t

This is one example of such "reversals" that contribute to how the period of Nazi rule, and the war are remembered. Further, the "denazification" of post-war Germany also finds itself motivated by the question, how will we remember. It is obvious to us, given what we know about Nazi Germany, that any constitution drafted after the regime's collapse will seek to restore what was lost; therefore we can, as I mentioned earlier, refer to constitutions as mnemonic documents if these constitutions follow a period of oppression.142 Also of importance is that the German constitution drafted in 1949, recovers the year 1919 in that Articles 136-141 in the Weimar Constitution concerning religious rights are included, "The provisions of Articles 136, 137, 138, 139 and 141 of the German Constitution of 11 August 1919 shall be an integral part of this Basic

Law."143 The reinstatement of these articles is a turn towards a previous document that was discarded by the Nazis. Given this fact, we can see the reinstatement of a previous law and this in turn is possible because the Weimar Constitution is remembered and hence able to be accessed and admitted back into the current constitution.

Published by: German Bundestag Public Relations Division. Berlin 2010. Article 116, 114. 142 Yet, isn't it also true that constitutions are mnemonic documents in their very fabrication? That constitutions are made, documented, made public and kept in mind of those who the constitution applies to, suggests that constitutions are mnemonic documents in their very formation. The question is whether they serve the purposes of reforming historical memory. The mnemonic potential of constitutions is only confirmed through the observation that they can serve to reform historical memory. mBasic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany. 126.

85 How does the Spanish example differ from the German example? The most important difference of course is the fact that Franco ruled for a period of thirty-eight years whereas, the Third Reich lasted a period of twelve years. With Spanish neutrality during the

Second World War and with the support of Western democracies, Franco was able to hold power until his death in 1975. This fact is why the "Transition" period as noted in the memory law is an important difference that must be taken into account. In both the

German and the Spanish examples, we have societies that are emerging from periods of oppression. But with Franco's Spain, almost forty years of rule entrenched Francoist ideology in the memory of the nation, which presents historians, archivists and ordinary

Spaniards with a difficult task.

86 Chapter 3: Recovery as Moral Obligation

"To the process of rescue belongs the firm, seemingly brutal grasp. " -Walter Benjamin, Arcades Project

The theme of recovery has come up frequently in the previous two chapters with Lorca's grave, the Spanish Civil War, and the LHM. Recovery has yet to be studied on its own.

This chapter will pose the question, what is the act of recovery at the site of Lorca's grave, and more generally the recovery of historical memory in Spain? I focus in particular on the moral and ethical implications of recovering human remains for the purpose of restoring historical memory of the vanquished. The recovery of human remains fulfills both a societal and an individual obligation to recover the dead. Such recoveries, I argue, allow for the commemoration of the dead. I turn to the First World War and focus upon commemorative practice in the war's aftermath, specifically the recovery of soldiers' remains. Commemorative practice after World War One relied in part on the recovery and identification of individuals' bodies. If the recovery and identification of the body was not possible, the recording of the name and the construction of monuments devoted to the missing stood in for the absence of the body.144 The struggle to remember individuals in spite of the mass in which the individual has been absorbed, is at the core of war commemoration after the First World War. It is not inaccurate to suggest then that the First World War inaugurated a different type of commemorative practice from previous wars, as Jay Winter (2005) notes, "In the years following the war, in the face of

144 See Stephan Goebels The Great War and Medieval Memory, (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 2007), 3. "War memorials providing symbolic foci of bereavement functioned as substitutes for the graves of the missing and absent dead (soldiers and sailors. Notably, in Britain and Germany, the two major belligerents which, generally speaking, did not repatriate their fallen soldiers, monuments helped to trigger memory in the absence of bodies."

87 the army of the dead, the effort to commemorate went beyond the conventional shibboleths of patriotism."145 The recovery of human remains was of greater importance than the patriotic celebrations of the war's conclusion. Despite the struggle against oblivion, the recovery of soldiers' bodies still served a commemorative end, which is variegated and can serve individual memory and collective memory, political and religious agendas. It would be inaccurate to suggest that the aftermath of World War One did not inspire patriotic zeal, if anything patriotism was increased among the participant nations. What Jay Winter argues is that the effort to commemorate was not solely founded upon patriotic principles but rather, included first and foremost the recognition of mass loss by the recovery of the dead and missing. It is my contention that the recovery of memory in Spain shares a lineage of commemorative practice with the First

World War. The conflicts are two completely different conflicts, and at first glance it seems inappropriate to compare them, however, the commemorative practices in each war are founded upon the recovery of human remains. In the effort to commemorate the dead, recovery is based upon a moral obligation the living have to the dead.

I return to the LHM after the First World War to investigate the ethical and obligatory side of recovery and commemoration. Friedrich Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morals, specifically the second essay entitled "Guilt, Bad Conscience and the Like", is employed to advance the discussion of the LHM and commemorative practice along moral and ethical lines of thought. This is accomplished by focusing on Nietzsche's argument that pain is the most powerful aid to memory. Nietzsche's assertion that, "the past, the longest, deepest and sternest past, breathes upon us and rises up in us whenever

Jay Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 2

88 we become serious", relates to commemorative practice in that to commemorate, the living who were not present at the catastrophic event they commemorate must, in their solemn recognition of the catastrophe, be it a battle, or a murder, attempt to recollect the event they were not present at. Commemoration is made possible by a solemn invocation of the past by way of a narrative. The most important element to focus upon here is sacrifice. The notion that a sacrifice was made relates to Nietzsche's insight that pain is the most powerful aid to memory, "Man could never do without blood, torture and sacrifices when he felt the need to create a memory for himself.. ."147 The recognition of a sacrifice through commemorative practice is to be taken as our basis for addressing commemoration and recovery as morally and ethically motivated practices, which allows us to pose the question, is there an obligation for the living to commemorate those who died in war? Before we approach this question, I want to define recovery.

What is Recovery?

Exhumation has been shown as possible without recovery, for example, in the exhumation of a grave for the purpose of collecting data. This type of exhumation is strictly archaeological because the motivation for exhumation does not concern recovering one's dead for the purposes of memory and remembrance, but rather, archaeological exhumation serves the purpose of scientific and historical inquiry. The recovery of the dead in the example of Spain means to exhume in order to restore and determine a loss. Loss refers to the inability of someone to account for the remains of a relative and the uncertainty of what happened to them. The victim, having been murdered

146 Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Geneaology of Morals, trans. Walter Kaufmann and RJ Hollingdale. (New York: Vintage Books. 1969), 61 147 Nietzsche Genealogy of Morals, 61.

89 and thrown into a mass grave received the treatment of a sub-human; someone who, in

the eyes of the killers, did not deserve the treatment humans give to the dead in the form

of funerary rites. Those who initiate exhumations are the offspring (in some cases) of

those who are being recovered. As such, pathos is a fundamental component of recovery

that is not present in archaeological exhumation.

The recovery of human remains and human-made artifacts can both be recovered.

The material which humans have crafted with their hands, and the remains of an

individual can be recovered, which reveals a distinction between two types of recovery.

To explain what the recovery of human-made material is I take as my example the

Triimmerfrauen. A lesser known figure of the ruined cities of Germany post World War,

the Triimmerfrauen were the women who "cleared the worst of the bombed out shells,

14R

dug out rubble, separated it, and dressed the stones if possible for reuse." The work of

the Triimmerfrau is an act of recovering memory that is reliant on the recovery of

material. The ruined material, wrested from its state as debris and ruin, was used to

rebuild bombed out cities. The fragments of bricks they held in their hands as recovered

material, were the very bricks that one would have leaned up against or passed by as a

pedestrian at a previous time. In Dresden, a monument to commemorate the efforts of

these women by Walter Reinhold stands outside the Rathaus (City Hall). The iron statue

represents the Triimmerfrau as a woman who carries in her right hand a hammer, her left

hand clenched tightly; a kerchief is worn on her head. As the plaque says below, "by the

work of their hands" the city was restored. By recovering and wresting fragments from

" their state of ruin, these women took up a work of memory that was directly tied to

material remains. In this instance, the cultivation of collective memory is taken up by

148 Fredrick Taylor, Dresden February 13 1945 (New York: Harper Collins), 396. recovering material for the reconstruction of buildings, to 'resurrect' the city that lay in ruins.149 In Spain, the work of recovery is the recovery of human remains. Unlike the resurrection of a city through the recovery of ruined buildings, the recovery of human remains serves to give 'proper' funerary rites to the deceased, and to create anew historical memory of the war and the dictatorship of Franco. The objective of recovery in this case is to make possible the human need to tend to the dead for the purposes of commemoration and personal remembrance.

The recovery of human remains, and the recovery of human artifacts by the

Triimmerfrauen are quite distinct from one another. In both cases however, recovery is an ethical act in that recovery aims to cultivate and preserve the memory of the vanquished in an effort to prevent oblivion. However as W.G. Sebald notes, the reconstruction of

German cities after the Second World War came from an effort to forget because what was experienced was never "capable of public decipherment."150 To speak of ethics in this context as opposed to the recovery of human remains in Spain seems impossible.

What Sebald is suggesting is that there was a necessity to forget as opposed to a moral obligation to recollect. We can suggest then that recovery can involve both remembrance and forgetting. Sebald notes further:

From the outset, the now legendary and in some respects genuinely admirable reconstruction of the country after the devastation wrought by Germany's wartime enemies, a reconstruction tantamount to a second liquidation in successive phases of the nation's own past history, prohibited any look backward.151

149 The reconstruction of the city can be thought of as a commemorative act. Yet so too would leaving the ruins, as was the case until recently with the Frauenkirche in Dresden. Under the DDR the Frauenkirche was in its ruined state until 2005. The ruin itself can function as a commemorative object because it testifies to an event; the object bears the marks of catastrophe. 150 W.G. Sebald, On The Natural History of Destruction (Toronto: Vintage Canada, 1999), 4. 151 Sebald, Natural History of Destruction, 7.

91 For the citizens of post-war Germany, forgetting was essential to its recovery. However, if we look at the example of the Triimmerfrauen's recovery of human artifacts, it is at the same time a look backward with the collection of fragments and a forgetting when the recovered material is re-used.

Recovering the remains of individuals demonstrates the condition of mass loss and leads us to think collectively. To recover an individual from a mass collectivity is an attempt to redeem the memory of that individual. Stefan Goebel (2007) helps to clarify this in his book, The Great War and Medieval Memory:

The 1914-18 war triggered off an explosion of naming in memorialisation. The practice of naming recalled each individual victim and returned him an individuated existence against the oblivion to which he had been consigned on the battlefield. Even if the soldiers did not return physically, commemorations gave the pledge that 'Their Name Liveth for Evermore."152

Goebel's work on the First World War demonstrates with great clarity the mass into which the individual was absorbed. The effort to redeem the individual, to extract them

from the general does not negate the general, but rather signifies and confirms the general

as a condition in which mnemonic techniques focused upon commemoration emerge. To redeem the name by way of, for example, the etching of names in stone, demonstrates a practice of recovery that recognizes the mass in which individuals are lost. Such a

'naming' is demonstrated quite clearly with the Monument to the Missing at Thiepval,

one monument among many located at the site of one of the battles of the Sorame.

152 Goebel, Stefan. The Great War and Medieval Memory, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 29

92 (Figure 4. Monument to the Missing, Thiepval, France)

Designed by Sir Edward Lutyens after his trips to the battlefields in France in 1917, the monument bears the names of approximately 73 000 missing soldiers.153 In large white stone tablets are etched the names of those killed in action whose remains have not yet been recovered. Inscribed in what is called 'the remembrance stone' are the words, 'their name liveth for evermore.' The battlefields of the Somme are dotted with roughly forty- four monuments dedicated to the recovered dead and the dead whose remains are missing.

With the absence of the body, the name, etched in stone suffices as an act of recovery.154

It is estimated that 146,431 Allied soldiers and 164,055 German soldiers were killed and or missing.

The recovery of historical memory in Spain is part of a condition of recovery and war commemoration in Western European society, which finds its origins in the post-

First World War era. Once it is understood that the particularity of the Spanish recovery

Jay Winter, Site of Memory, Sites of Mourning, 105. 4 We must admit however, that there is still an absence. Recovery then is not complete. What is a complete recovery? Is it when the name and the body are accounted for and announced? An announcement in this case is the verbal utterance of the name in a ceremony, or the name etched in stone made visible for others. A complete recovery requires a memory of the individual, a name and a body; all of which attest to the existence of that person.

93 of memory shares a lineage with commemorative practice inaugurated by the First World

War, it is possible to consider recovery as a topic in a general sense with a history. What is more, we can begin to think of commemorative practice post-First World War as an act

of recovery, and as such, distinct from the celebration and glorification of victory.

Victory, or to be victorious, means to move past the vanquished without reflection. As

Walter Benjamin has noted, "Whoever has emerged victorious participates to this day in the triumphal procession in which current rulers step over those who are lying prostrate."155 In order for the vanquished to commemorate, recovery is necessary whether

through the recovery of material as shown with the Triimmerfrau of the destroyed

German cities of World War II, or the recovery of human remains in the case of Federico

Garcia Lorca and the recovery of historical memory in Spain.

The First World War made commemoration and recovery parallel mnemonic practices.

The current recovery of memory in Spain is part of a post-war condition of

commemoration as recovery. The search for remains, and the inscription of the name in

stone at the site of battle or catastrophe, is included in the commemorative process. The

reason for choosing the First World War is because the First World War, in all of its

complexity, radically shook the foundations of Western culture. As such it is to be

considered a marker in Western history for commemorative practice. Modris Eksteins has

given us useful insight into the First World War and its effect upon memory and

commemorative practice. He remarks in the preface to Rites of Spring, "Our title, adapted

from a ballet that is a landmark of modernism, is suggestive of our main motif:

155 Walter Benjamin, "On the Concept of History", trans. Harry Zohn. Selected Writings Vol. IV, (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of University Harvard Press, 2006), 391.

94 movement. One of the supreme symbols of our centrifugal and paradoxical century, when striving for freedom we have acquired the power of ultimate destruction, is the dance of death, with its orgiastic-nihilistic irony."156 The title of Eksteins' book is taken from

Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring which was first performed on the 29th of May 1913 and is seen by Eksteins as "emblematic", he writes, "with its rebellious energy and its celebration of life through sacrificial death, perhaps the emblematic oeuvre of a twentieth-century world that, in its pursuit of life, has killed off millions of its best human beings. Stravinsky intended initially to entitle his score The Victim."157 The main theme of Eksteins' book, movement as destruction, relates to our concern for the fate of memory in the wake of mass loss. If movement as mass loss is indeed the great destroyer of memory, the First World War should be remembered as the point in Western history when movement, mass loss and the threat to memory were fully realized.

Remembrance Day commemorations signify the continued recovery from the First World

War. We recall Walter Benjamin's remarks on the First World War regarding experience,

"A generation that had gone to school in horse-drawn streetcars now stood in the open air,

amid a landscape in which nothing was the same except the clouds and, at its center, in a

force field of destructive torrents and explosions, the tiny, fragile human body."158

Industrialized mass warfare and its aftermath reformulated the question of how to commemorate.159 In the aftermath of World War One the anxiety of forgetting what had

Modris Eksteins, Rites of Spring (Toronto: Key Porter Press Limited, 1989) xiv. 157 Modris Eksteins, Rites of Spring ,xiv. 158 Walter Benjamin, Poverty and Experience Selected Writings Vol. II, (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999), 732. 159 Stephan Goebels (2007) offers a rich empirical comparative history on the topic of medievalism as a phenomenon in commemorative practice on the part of Britain and Germany.

95 transpired over four years of mass slaughter was understandably part of society.160

Eksteins reminds us that, ".. .the devastation was so wide and the task of reconstruction so staggering that notions of how this was to be accomplished dissolved often into daydream and wishful thinking."161 As is shown with the recovery of historical memory in Spain, one reaction is to "bury the past" Eksteins notes:

Faced with the horrendous idea that the war might not have been worth the effort, people simply buried the thought for a time. And if one was to bury that thought, one also had to bury the war.. .The war was buried. Robert Graves and T.E. Lawrence had an agreement at Oxford that they would not discuss the war. Edmund Blunden tried to write his memoirs in the immediate aftermath and found that he simply could not. And so after composing a fragment, he stopped.162

The seemingly impossible task to remember, gave way to collective commemoration focused upon recovery. As if the experience of the Great War could not be remembered solely on an individual basis, it took the form of mass commemoration, "Cenotaphs were erected, cemeteries prepared, headstones manufactured. Between 1920 and 1923 British shipments of headstones to France reached four thousand a week. On November 11, 1920, the unknown soldier was borne from France and buried at Westminster.. ."163 It should come as no surprise to us that the heightened practice of mass commemoration was unavoidable.

It is as though the loss experienced in the First World War made it easier for remembrance. The First World War inaugurated a highly organized and solemn institution of commemoration, made possible by way of both recovering the remains of

See Stephan Goebels book entitled "Medieval Memory and the Great War" for the differences of commemoration between Britain and Germany. In any case, despite the differences in commemorative practice, commemoration became a primary concern for all those involved in the Great War. 161 Modris Eksteins, Rites of Spring, (Toronto: Lester and Orpen Dennys Ltd., 1989), 258. 162 Modris Eksteins, Rites of Spring, ISA. 163 Ibid., 255.

96 those who perished and also not recovering the remains of those who perished. The anxiety of forgetting caused by the First World War resulted in a "technique of mnemonics" distinct from previous commemorative practice post-war in that recovery was the main focus of commemoration. The survivors and the civilians who were affected by the war had to come up with a way to account for the dead and disappeared, while at the same time to keep in mind the scale of destruction. In the case of war commemoration, the name, if the body is absent, becomes the only means to access the knowledge that someone did indeed exist and that they did indeed perish. It is when we cannot retrieve the name or the body that the practice of commemoration becomes complicated. As demonstrated by the annual commemoration ceremonies on November

11, doubt as to whether commemorations are enough, and how they could ever be enough, can still be posed today, despite the proliferation of commemorative practice. Close to one hundred years since the start of the Great War the inheritors of the sacrifice made by those who fought, are still perplexed as to how commemoration is enough.

In the Commonwealth nations, Remembrance Day is perhaps the best example to use to address the questions posed here. Remembrance Day however, is no longer about commemoration for recovery but rather commemoration for the celebration of war which still maintains the obligation to commemorate for those left alive. Consider the following statement made by Prime Minister Stephen Harper in 2006 on November 11:

On this solemn day, Canadians gather together to honour the soldiers, sailors and airmen and women, who served and continue to serve our country, and we pause to remember the more than 116,000 men and women who have laid down their lives in defence of Canada. Today, as Canadians have done for the past 88 years, we pay tribute to the sacrifice made by generations of Canadian military personnel for the protection of our fundamental values and thank them for our freedom. November 11

97 is a time to mourn. It is also a time to celebrate the proud military traditions of our great country. Canada has always answered the call to stand up for freedom, democracy, human rights and rule of law. Our commitment to these values is being tested yet again in Afghanistan, and Canadians are rightly proud of the work our brave soldiers are doing to help those less fortunate than us. Their courage and devotion to duty inspires us all. I know I speak for all Canadians in expressing unequivocal support and heartfelt gratitude to all our troops and their families. We are holding the torch high. The Canadian heroes who lie beneath the poppies in Flanders fields can rest in peace.164

This speech shows that commemorative practice in Canada is moving away from recovering from unimaginable loss and towards a mnemonic practice that makes explicit reference to the present and traces a lineage of "Canadian" combat back to the First

World War using past conflicts in order to justify and celebrate the present-day deployment of the Canadian military in Afghanistan. Arguably, commemorative practice in Canada has been stepped up since the First World War as the "Highway of Heroes" demonstrates. The procession of soldiers bodies down the stretch of roadway on the way to the soldiers' final resting place, initiate one-day commemorative acts. Those who participate in the ceremony, honour the dead soldier by standing atop the overpasses that line the highway. What could be the reason for a possible return of celebration of war as commemoration? Perhaps it is a symptom of forgetting the horrors of the First World

War. Or, more simply, the war that the soldiers fight presently is not the First World War, so, mnemonic techniques are subject to change based upon the war being waged.

Recovery is to be understood by us as a practice that moves toward commemoration. In order to commemorate, one must recover. The First World War demonstrated for us that recovery was initiated as a mnemonic technique to deal with the aftermath of the war, which, in turn transformed commemoration itself into an act of recovery: to

164 http://pm,gc.ca/eng/media.asp?id=1401. Speech given on Remembrance Day in 2006.

98 commemorate is to recover, to recover is to commemorate. But this is not a mnemonic technique universally for all parties involved. We must take note, that recovery is a mnemonic technique of the vanquished. Although there was arguably a victorious side in the First World War, the losses suffered blurred the distinction between victor and vanquished. Even the victorious armies in the First World War, because of the losses suffered took up recovery as a mnemonic technique.

Obligation and Commemoration

Every war must reckon with the dead. The First World War inaugurated mnemonic devices founded upon recovery. In the Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche was insightful to propose that great pain inspires mnemonic techniques:

.. .perhaps indeed there was nothing more fearful and uncanny in the whole prehistory of man than his mnemotechnics. 'If something is to stay in the memory it must be burned in: only that which never ceases to hurt stays in the memory'—this is a main clause of the oldest (unhappily also the most enduring) psychology on earth. One might even say that wherever on earth solemnity, seriousness, mystery, and gloomy coloring still distinguish the life of man and a people, something of the terror that formerly attended all promises, pledges, and vows on earth is till effective: the past, the longest, deepest and sternest past, breathes upon us and rises up in us whenever we become 'serious.'165

The proclamation that the Great War was the "war to end all wars", was perhaps one of the most important mnemonic proclamations that emerged from the First World War. The phrasing, "war to end all wars" signifies the war's impact upon memory by declaring an end. To be able to declare an end, one must be unable to forget that which inspired the declaration of an ending. Quite far from a Nietzschean art of forgetting, remembrance was taken up as the way to fulfill the proclamation of a war to end all wars. "Active forgetfulness" for Nietzsche is, "like a doorkeeper, a preserver of psychic order, repose,

165 Friedrich Nietzsche, Geneaology of Morals, 61.

99 and etiquette.. ,"166 But Nietzsche qualifies this definition with the assertion that.. ."there could be no happiness, no cheerfulness, no hope, no pride, no present, without forgetfulness."167 Active forgetfulness could paradoxically function as a mnemonic technique that allows one to actually move past what has been, without having to recall what one is trying to move past. What then is memory for Nietzsche? He writes:

Man could never do without blood, torture and sacrifices when he felt the need to create a memory for himself; the most dreadful sacrifices and pledges (sacrifices of the first-born among them), the cruelest rites of all the religious cults (and all religions are at the deepest level systems of cruelties)—all this has its origin in the instinct that realized that pain is the most powerful aid to mnemonics.168

For Nietzsche, memory is related to his definition of monumental history, ".. .the fiercest battle is fought round the demand for greatness to be eternal. Every other living thing cries no. "Away with the monuments," is the watchword."169 Monumental history is a recognition of the past that upholds a certain image of what was, "What is the use of this

'monumental' contemplation of the past to the modern man, this preoccupation with the rare and classic? It is the knowledge that the great thing existed and was therefore possible, and so may be possible again."170 Forgetfulness would work in contradiction to

Nietzsche's concept of monumental history. The line of reasoning that modern remembrance follows is the following: if World War One is remembered and commemorated we can prevent war from ever happening again. This is the inverse of

Nietzsche's argument. A monumental history shows us the possibility of an event or a great person, and hence shows us that such things are possible again. As we know, the

166 Friedrich Nietzsche, Geneaology of Morals, trans. Walter Kaufmann and RJ Hollingdale. (New York: Vintage Books. 1969)58 167 Nietzsche, 58. 168 Ibid., 61 169 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Use and Abuse of History, trans. Adrian Collins (New York: Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1957), 15. 170 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Use and Abuse of History, 14. cultivation of memory through commemorative practice has no power in the prevention of war, nor does it allow for the continuation of war. Perhaps the proclamation "the war to end all wars" is a neutral rhetorical device used to express the destructiveness of the war. Even so, its mnemonic content is still apparent by the fact that it declares an end to war. The threat to memory itself, caused by the experience of the war, initiated the reaction of commemoration as prevention. Prevention is what is ethical in commemorative practice. The proclamation we have taken as an example, "the war to end all wars" is a statement founded upon ethical reasoning. This declaration was in response to the destructiveness of the First World War. Mass loss was something never again to be repeated. It is at the same time a mnemonic declaration because it implores us to remember the First World War in order to end war.

Is commemoration obligatory? If there is an obligation to commemorate, such an obligation would align with Nietzsche's concept of monumental history as commemorative practice is included in monumental history. Monumental history, as we have seen, aims at the constant remembrance of the past. There is a distinction to be made between monumentality, and the unregulated faculty of memory that humans are naturally capable of. Monumentality, of which commemoration is apart, and, actually thrives in a practiced monumental history, refers to the erection of monuments, processions at sites of symbolic value, e.g. battlegrounds, burial grounds and ceremonies.

The site of Lorca's grave sees an annual ceremony marking the day of his killing. As was specified in chapter one, Lorca's grave is a site of pilgrimage and as such, also a site for commemorating the life of the poet. Obligation, in commemorative practice, is present when remembrance references a higher purpose as an object for commemoration such as

101 sacrifice. The recognition of a higher purpose is possible when a monumental history is practiced. This is demonstrated in two ways. The first way is the elevation of an otherwise ordinary human being to the status of hero. The figure of the hero can be, for example, the veteran, the witness, the defender of the nation and the principles upheld by that nation. The second is the higher purpose of the nation. Commonwealth nations that observe Remembrance Day commemorate not only the veteran-heroes who died and survived, but also the principles of the nation that commemorates, (e.g. freedom). The obligation is founded upon a debtor creditor relation. Those who have died for the nation are repaid by our commemoration. The case of Spain however, introduces a recovery that is situated in the victor, vanquished relation. This relation complicates commemorative acts because the memory of the vanquished is the object of recovery and commemoration.

This recovery is not attached to victory, but rather to defeat. What then happens to the obligation to commemorate in this instance? The recovery of remains in order to commemorate is the obligation. This is how recovery can be thought of as commemorative. In the act of recovery is the act of commemoration, and the guiding principle of these two acts is the decision based upon moral and ethical grounds to not allow the dead to be forgotten and unburied.

I would like to return to Eksteins for the moment to reflect on the commemorative act as obligatory, and as such, critical thought is not needed on the part of the commemorator:

Year after year, on every possible occasion, not just on Armistice Day, the rituals and solemn phrases were repeated. To some they may have brought a measure of solace, but what did the ritual and rhetoric really mean, especially in relation to the postwar world? The old catchwords—freedom, dignity, justice—simply rang hollow. Even arguments relating to what had been averted by the war, as opposed to

102 what had been achieved, offered little sustenance in relation to the sacrifice. Best not to ask such questions. Commemorate, yes; think, no.171

I want to focus specifically on the last sentence of this passage, "best not to ask such questions. Commemorate, yes; think, no." To commemorate without asking why one is commemorating, is an indication that commemoration is obligatory. When a repayment is required, one has promised beforehand that they would repay, thought is then not necessary to fulfill the obligation. For example, when one is loaned money, one enters a contract of repayment. The debtor and the creditor both know that a repayment is required, so, when the time to repay arrives, the thinking was done in the signing of the contract. Thought is not necessary when an obligation is to be fulfilled. In the case of war commemoration however, one has not yet placed oneself in the position of debtor at the start of war. It is only through the war's progression, or when the war comes to an end, that commemorative practice in the postwar period takes on whatever form it does. In other words, not all wars require a repayment in the form of commemoration; not all wars establish a creditor, debtor relation. The First World War however established a creditor debtor relation based on the brutal reality of mass loss, senseless death and sacrifice. Is it true, as Eksteins would have us believe, that thought is not required in order to commemorate? On the contrary, a reasoned decision must have taken place to help develop the idea that a repayment was indeed required.

The repayment, in the form of commemoration is obligatory if one belongs to a community. A promise was made by those who remained after the First World War to never forget, "Lest we Forget", rings as a warning. What if we forget? If we forget, then

1 Modris Eksteins, Rites of Spring, 255-256.

103 our pledge has been broken. By belonging to a community, one has an obligation to the community by being a part of it, as argued in Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals:

What will happen if this pledge is broken? The community, the disappointed creditor, will get what repayment it can, one may depend on that. The direct harm caused by the culprit is here a minor matter; quite apart from this , the lawbreaker is above all a 'breaker,' a breaker of his contract and his word with the whole in respect to all the benefits and comforts of communal life of which he has hitherto had a share.172

If memory is one of the faculties that bind societies, then it follows that to "enjoy the advantages of a communality" includes the practice of commemoration. To not partake in the commemorative practice of a community is to place oneself (even if only temporarily) outside the community. To commemorate affirms a member's place in the community because through the faculty of memory they are actively upholding a principle of the society in which they belong. Nietzsche writes further:

.. .the community, too, stands to its members in that same vital basic relation, that of the creditor to his debtors. One lives in a community, one enjoys the advantages of a communality (oh what advantages! We sometimes underrate them today), one dwells protected, cared for, in peace and trustfulness.173

Commemoration is necessary insofar as one belongs to a community which has suffered a loss and has retroactively found a reason to demand repayment in the form of commemoration. In the case of war commemoration, as we have seen, a sacrifice had presumably been made by those that participated in war. We, the inheritors of their sacrifice are obligated to pay them homage. Inheritance is of utmost importance here.

Because we live in the time following a supposed sacrifice, we are obligated to

Friedrich Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals, 71. Friedrich Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals, 71.

104 commemorate those that took part in the sacrifice. The reason for commemoration is both obligation based on a moral code, and necessity based on the assumption that memory is a part of what holds a group together, where identity is maintained, and where history is maintained.

I want to return to the question posed above, is there an obligation to commemorate? After all, we did not bear witness to the events that we commemorate.

Perhaps commemoration brings us as close to witnessing as possible, and it is the desire to bear witness that drives us to commemorate. Yet such an effort points to the irretrievability of that which we commemorate; we, the commemorators who were not present at the event cannot possibly bear witness to what we commemorate.

The LHM of 2007 is one of the many 'mnemonic techniques' initiated by mass loss in

Spain. Law is the primary tool in which to recover from mass loss. Examining the legal side of recovery allows us to comment upon justice and exchange while maintaining our previous discussion on obligation. The element of obligation is implied in the law itself because the law is binding as the signature at the end of the law indicates, "Accordingly, I command all Spanish individuals and Spanish authorities to comply with and ensure compliance with this Law. JUAN CARLOS R. President of the Government, JOSE

LUIS RODRIGUEZ ZAPATERO."174 The LHM relies on the argument that those who are living in the post civil war period in Spain are obligated to commemorate the vanquished:

It is now time, therefore, that Spanish democracy and the generations which today enjoy that democracy, honour and compensate for all time those who endured

174 "The Law of Historical Memory" [Source: BOE No. 310, pp 53410 - 53416, 27Dec07. Translation into English from the original Spanish version carried out by Equipo Nizkor on 31st January, 2008]

105 directly the injustices and offences which took place, for contrasting political or ideological reasons, or for their religious beliefs, in that painful period of our history.175

This passage confirms the obligation members of a community have to honour losses suffered by those who came before them and that the obligation to do so is encouraged by law. We can now move on to consider how exchange is implicated in commemorative practice.

Recovery, Justice and Exchange

The LHM of 2007 will serve as our example to illustrate justice and exchange in the commemorative act of recovery; article 1 reads:

Objective of the Law

1. This Law has as its objective the recognition and extension of rights in favour of those who suffered persecution or violence, for reasons of politics, ideology or for religious beliefs, during the Civil War or the Dictatorship, to promote their moral redress and the recovery of their personal and family memory, and to adopt complementary measures designed to suppress elements of division between citizens, all this with the object of fostering cohesion and solidarity between the various generations of Spaniards with respect to principles, values and constitutional liberties.

This passage introduces recovery as a central motivation for the law as the following sentence indicates, ".. .to promote their moral redress and the recovery of their personal and family memory..." The phrasing .. ."to promote their moral redress..." demonstrates morality as an element in the tending to of the dead. Although the human need to tend to the dead has immediate practical reasons outside of spiritual reasons, it is considered un-

175 "The Law of Historical Memory" [Source: BOE No. 310, pp 53410 - 53416, 27Dec07. Translation into English from the original Spanish version carried out by Equipo Nizkor on 31st January, 2008] 176 "The Law of Historical Memory" [Source: BOE No. 310, pp 53410 - 53416, 27Dec07. Translation into English from the original Spanish version carried out by Equipo Nizkor on 31st January, 2008]

106 ethical if one is denied the practice of burial, embalming or cremation. Recovery is a moral act on the premise that to recover remains is the best possible action when a denial of access has been enforced. Involved here are personal memories and familial memory.

The former relating to the particular, the latter to the general. The memory law seeks to allow for the recuperation of personally held memories of the war and the dictatorship, and the recovery of memory in a societal context. This is demonstrated in the sentence,

".. .to adopt complementary measures designed to suppress elements of division between citizens..." Thus, the memory law recognizes a fracture in Spanish society, and by making accessible through recovery what all citizens ought to know about what happened during the war, the law attempts to address mnemonics generally at a societal level. But this of course runs up against personal memories and the problem of interpretation and historical truth is raised, though, I will not address this problem in this thesis.

In On the Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche observes that the relationship between creditor and debtor is rooted in the idea "that every injury has its equivalent,"177 and

"Justice, on this elementary level is the good will among parties of approximately equal power to come to terms with one another, to reach an 'understanding' by means of a settlement—and to compel parties of lesser power to reach a settlement among themselves."178 Nietzsche's insight is helpful when examining the recognition of an injustice and how individuals and society come to terms with, and recover from injustices.

In the LHM punishment is not sought after. To my knowledge, the LHM does not seek to bring individuals to trial and punish the perpetrators in the manner of the Nuremburg

Trials. This is so because of the amount of time that has passed since the atrocities were

177 Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Geneaology of Morals, trans. Walter Kaufmann and RJ Hollingdale. (New York: Vintage Books. 1989) 62. 178 Friedrich Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morals, 70-71.

107 carried out. The more time passes the harder it is to gather evidence to incriminate the perpetrators. Rather, upheld historical knowledge is questioned under the memory law.

What is more, Francoist histories of the civil war which does not give recognition to victims of Francoist violence are declared illegitimate. Article 15.1 reads:

1. The offices of Public Administration, in the exercise of their authority, shall take appropriate measures to withdraw all shields, insignia, plaques and other commemorative objects or references which extol, individually or collectively, the military uprising, the Civil War and the repression of the Dictatorship. These measures may include the withdrawal of public subsidies and support.179

The removal of symbols that celebrate the military rising or promote the Dictatorship is part of reforming the previously upheld Francoist history in favour of the vanquished. It is more wise (yet no less complicated) to forego the idea of punishment and pursue instead reconciliation by way of what can be known about the war through historical truth.

The memory law facilitates the recovery of historical truth and is an effort to recognize victims that have otherwise been left to the threat of oblivion. The law upholds the idea that death is not meaningless and that the recognition of a death through funerary rites is necessary for those who desire it.

Despite the absence of punishment, the LHM recognizes the creditor, debtor relationship. The situation of exchange and the placement of guilt should come as no surprise to us when justice is being sought. If we take it as true that recovery involves exchange and a pronouncement of guilt, the LHM helps to prove Nietzsche's argument that:

it was rather out of the most rudimentary form of personal legal rights that the budding sense of exchange, contract, guilt, right, obligation, settlement, first transferred itself to the coarsest and most elementary social complexes (in their

179 "The Law of Historical Memory" [Source: BOE No. 310, pp 53410 - 53416, 27Dec07. Translation into English from the original Spanish version carried out by Equipo Nizkor on 31st January, 2008]

108 relations with other similar complexes), together with the custom of comparing, measuring and calculating power against power.180

The memory law cannot escape obligation as it is founded upon a community's obligation to tend to the memory of their dead. The vanquished of the Civil War are now in the position of creditor, and the law signifies the collection of a debt. That which is exchanged is historical memory. The "punishment" related to the broken pledge that

Nietzsche discusses in the second essay in the Genealogy does not wholly relate to the

LHM in Spain. Punishment, as we understand it is not the motivating factor of the movement to recover memory. But the fact that recovery is tied with the law makes recovery a question for the community at large. Nietzsche points to ostracism with the

German word Elend, as Kaufmann reminds us, means misery, and originally exile, but it is clear that the memory law in Spain does not seek to ostracize nor does it seek to punish individuals. This is so because of the widespread involvement in extra-judicial executions.

The familiar phrase applies here, "if we punish one we must punish all", and the impossibility of such a task is already realized in its utterance. However, matters become complicated with the use of the word justice, as Nietzsche argues, "Justice is thus requital and exchange under the presupposition of an approximately equal power position:

1 Rl revenge therefore belongs originally within the domain of justice, it is an exchange."

Justice understood as exchange is a fundamental component of the memory law. Indeed the LHM seeks justice on the grounds of an exchange. What is the exchange? The exchange, through the moral act of recovery, is the cultivation of historical memory in favour of the vanquished. The moral act of recovery seeks to invert the victor/vanquished

180 Friedrich Nietzsche, Geneaology of Morals, 70. 181 Friedrich Nietzsche, Human all too Human, A Book for Free Spirits, trans. Marion Faber with Stephen Lehmann. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984), 1, 92.

109 relation. In this inversion, the victor/vanquished relation is rendered void while at the same time the memory that there was once a victor and a vanquished is maintained. As I have attempted to demonstrate, there is a moral obligation on the part of the living descendants to recover and tend to both the memory of the dead and the dead.

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114 APPENDIX 1

The Law of Historical Memory [document] 26 December 2007

Full text of the aberrant impunity law known as the "Memory Law"

22296 LAW 52/2007, of December 26th, to recognise and broaden rights and to establish measures in favour of those who suffered persecution or violence during the Civil War and the Dictatorship.

JUAN CARLOS I REY DE ESP ANA

To all those here present, be advised that Parliament has passed and I hereby give my approval to the following law:

EXPLANATION OF REASONS

The spirit of reconciliation and harmony and of respect for pluralism and peaceful defence of all ideas which guided the Transition, enabled the establishment of a Constitution for us, that of 1978, which legally expressed the desire of Spaniards for reunification, forming a social and democratic state of law with the clear wish for integration.

Thus the spirit of the Transition gives meaning to this constitutional model offering the most fruitful co-existence that we Spaniards have ever enjoyed and it also explains the various measures and rights which have been recognised over time from the very beginning of the entire democratic era, for the benefit of those persons who, for the decades prior to the Constitution, suffered the consequences of our devastating civil war and the dictatorship that succeeded it.

Notwithstanding that legislative effort, there still remain initiatives which should be adopted to give effect and a definitive response to the demands of those citizens, presented both through parliament and through various civic associations. These constitute legitimate and just demands to which our democracy, calling again upon that founding spirit of harmony and in the context of the Constitution, cannot fail to respond.

Therefore, this Law addresses the matters stated by the Constitutional Commission of Congress of Deputies which unanimously approved a motion [Proposicion no de Ley] on 20th November 2002 in which the representative organ of the people affirmed that "no- one should be able to feel that it is legitimate, as it has been in the past, to use violence as a means to impose political beliefs and to establish totalitarian regimes contrary to the

115 liberty and dignity of all citizens, and to do so merits condemnation and repudiation by our democratic society". This Law adopts that statement and the condemnation of Francoism contained in the Report of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe signed in Paris on 17th March 2006 which denounced the serious human rights violations which were committed in Spain between 1939 and 1975.

It is now time, therefore, that Spanish democracy and the generations which today enjoy that democracy, honour and compensate for all time those who endured directly the injustices and offences which took place, for contrasting political or ideological reasons, or for their religious beliefs, in that painful period of our history. Certainly, those who lost their lives, and, in addition, their families. And those who lost their freedom, who endured imprisonment, deportation, confiscation of their possessions, forced labour or internment in concentration camps within or outside of our borders. And those who lost their homeland by being forced into a long, heartbreaking and in many cases, irreversible, exile. And finally, those who at various times fought in the defence of democratic values, such as the members of the Carabinero Corps, the International Brigades, the guerrilla fighters, whose rehabilitation was unanimously demanded by Parliament on 16th May 2001, or the members of the Democratic Military Union which was dissolved when the first democratic elections were held.

Thus the Law sets out the bases whereby public powers can implement public policies addressing the knowledge of our history and the nurture of democratic memory.

The present Law begins with the consideration that various aspects relating to personal and family memory, particularly when they have been affected by conflicts of a public nature, form part of the legal status of democratic citizenship, and as such, are dealt with in the text. Thus, an individual right of each citizen to personal and family memory is recognised and its expression is found for the first time in the Law in the general recognition set out in article 2 hereof.

In fact, there is in the said provision a general declaration of the unjust nature of all the convictions, punishments and expressions of personal violence which took place during the Civil War, for reasons which were unequivocally political or ideological, as well as those which, for the same reasons, occurred in the subsequent Dictatorship.

This general declaration in article 2 is complemented by provision for a specific procedure to obtain an individual Declaration, rehabilitating and reparative in content, which will be available as a right to all those affected and which can be exercised by them or by their relatives.

In article 3 of the Law the courts, tribunals and administrative organs of whatever nature which were set up in breach of the most fundamental guarantees of the right to due process are declared illegitimate, and those penalties and punishments of a personal nature imposed for political or ideological reasons or for religious beliefs are similarly declared illegitimate. This underlines, unequivocally, the current lack of judicial effect of

116 those decisions and judgements which contravened human rights and it will contribute to the moral rehabilitation of those who suffered unjust penalties and punishments.

Similarly the Law includes a repealing provision which expressly deprives of legal effect those laws passed under the Dictatorship which were manifestly repressive and contrary to fundamental rights with the dual objective of removing them formally from the legal system and preventing their application by any administrative or judicial authority.

In articles 5 to 9 there is a recognition of various improvements in economic rights which already exist in our legal system. Similarly, the right to indemnification for all those who lost their lives in defence of democracy, that democracy which we enjoy today, and who had not hitherto received due compensation (art. 10) is envisaged.

Various principles (arts. 11 to 14), in response also to a very legitimate demand by many citizens who do not know the whereabouts of their family members, some of whom are still in common graves, envisage measures and instruments so that the public authorities will facilitate to all interested parties who so request the tasks of locating and where relevant identifying the disappeared, in one final mark of respect for them.

Similarly, there are a series of measures (arts. 15 and 16) concerning the symbols and commemorative monuments of the Civil War or the Dictatorship, introduced with the principle of avoiding the extolling of the military uprising, the Civil War and of the repression of the Dictatorship, in the conviction that citizens have a right to this - that public symbols be considered an opportunity for meeting and not for confrontation, offence or injury.

The legislators consider that is just to recognise two groups in particular. In the first instance, the volunteer members of the International Brigades, who will be granted the right to take Spanish nationality without the need for them to renounce whatever nationality they currently have (art. 18); and also, to the civilian Associations who have done significant work to defend the dignity of the victims of political violence addressed in this Law (art. 19).

In order to facilitate compilation of and the right to access to the historical information concerning the Civil War, the Law reinforces the role of the current General Archive of the Spanish Civil War, headquartered in Salamanca, and integrates it into the Document Centre of Historical Memory, also headquartered in the city of Salamanca, and provides that all documentation existing in other State centres, be transferred to it (arts. 20 to 22).

This Law extends the possibility of acquiring Spanish nationality to descendants up to the first degree of those who were originally Spanish. With this provision, we address a legitimate demand of the Spanish emigrants which includes, particularly, the descendants of those who lost their Spanish nationality due to exile as a result of the Civil War or the Dictatorship.

117 Once and for all, the current Law wishes to contribute to the healing of wounds still open amongst Spaniards and to give satisfaction to those citizens who suffered, directly or through their relatives, the consequences of the tragedy of the Civil War or the Dictatorship repression. It wishes to do so in the complete certainty that, by entering more deeply into the spirit of reunification and harmony of the Transition, not only will those citizens be recognised and honoured but also the democracy of Spain as a whole. It is not the task of the legislature to implant a particular collective memory. But it is the duty of the legislature and of the Law to compensate the victims, to enshrine and protect with maximum legal vigour the right to personal and family memory as an expression of complete democratic citizenship, to nurture constitutional values and to promote the understanding and reflection of our past in order to avoid the repetition of a state of intolerance and human rights violations as lived through then.

That is the undertaking which these provisions and their legal consequences address.

Article 1. Objective of the Law.

1. This Law has as its objective the recognition and extension of rights in favour of those who suffered persecution or violence, for reasons of politics, ideology or for religious beliefs, during the Civil War or the Dictatorship, to promote their moral redress and the recovery of their personal and family memory, and to adopt complementary measures designed to suppress elements of division between citizens, all this with the object of fostering cohesion and solidarity between the various generations of Spaniards with respect to principles, values and constitutional liberties.

2. As a matter of public policy, this Law attempts to promote democratic values and principles, facilitating the understanding of the facts and circumstances which took place during the Civil War and the Dictatorship and ensuring the preservation of the documents relating to that historical period and their deposit in public archives.

Article 2. General recognition.

1. As an expression of the right of all citizens to the moral redress and the restoration of their personal and family memory, all convictions, punishments or other forms of personal violence which took place for reasons of politics, ideology or religious belief, whether during the Civil War or during the Dictatorship, are recognised and declared to be completely unjust in nature.

2. The reasons referred to above include the membership of or collaboration with political parties, unions, religious or military organizations, ethnic minorities, secret societies, masonic lodges and resistance groups, as well as conduct connected with cultural or linguistic choices or those of sexual orientation.

3. Similarly, the injustice caused by the exile of many Spaniards during the Civil War and the Dictatorship is hereby recognised.

118 Article 3. Declaration of illegitimacy.

1. The courts, tribunals and other criminal or administrative organs of whatever nature which were constituted during the Civil War to impose penalties or punishments of a personal nature for reasons of politics, ideology or religious beliefs, are hereby declared illegitimate together with all their decisions.

2. As they were contrary to Law and violated the most fundamental requirements of the right to a fair trial, the Court of Repression of Masonry and Communism, the Court of Public Order, the Courts of Political Responsibilities and the Courts-Martial, all of which were constituted for reasons of politics, ideology or religious belief are declared illegitimate pursuant to article 2 of this Law,

3. Also declared illegitimate herewith, given that they were defective in form and substance, are the penalties and punishments ordered for reasons of politics, ideology or religious belief by any court or administrative organ of whatever type during the Dictatorship against those who defended the previous institutional legality, attempted to re-establish a democratic regime in Spain, or tried to live pursuant to those choices afforded by the rights and freedoms recognised today by the Constitution.

Article 4. Declaration of redress and individual recognition.

1. The right to obtain a declaration of reparation and individual recognition is hereby acknowledged for those who during the Civil War and the Dictatorship suffered the effects of those decisions referred to in the preceding article.

This right is fully compatible with the other rights and compensating measures recognised in preceding laws as well as the institution of any legal proceedings that may occur before the courts of justice.

2. Those persons affected, and, in the event that they have already died, spouses or persons with similar emotional nexus, their ascendants, descendants and collateral relatives to the second degree shall have the right to request the said Declaration.

3. Similarly the said Declaration may be requested by public institutions, subject to the prior consent of their appropriate government body, in respect of those who carried out a relevant office or activity within such institution but who did not have a spouse or a relative of the type referred to in the above paragraph.

4. The persons or institutions referred to above can require the issue of the said Declaration of the Ministry of Justice. To that end, they can bring all documentation relating to the facts or proceeding as is in the possession of the petitioners as well any relevant background information.

5. The Declaration referred to in this Law shall be compatible with any other indemnifying or compensating measure provided for in the legal system and shall not

119 constitute an entitlement to recognition of patrimonial responsibility of the State or of any office of the Public Administration, nor will it give rise to any consequence, damages or reparation, whether economic or professional in type. The Ministry of Justice shall deny the issuance of a Declaration where the provisions of this Law are not complied with.

Article 5. Improvement of the loans provided by Law 5/1979, of 18 September, on pensions, medical, pharmaceutical and social assistance in favour of widows, children and relatives of the Spaniards who died during or after the Civil War.

1. In order to complete the protective measures established pursuant to Law 5/1979, of 18 September, on pensions, medical, pharmaceutical and social assistance in favour of the widows, children and other relatives of Spaniards who died during or after the Civil War, article 1, number 2 a) and c) are hereby amended to provide as follows:

• a) For wounds, illness or accidental injury caused as a consequence of the war. • c) As a consequence of political or union actions or opinions when a personal and direct relationship of causality can thus be established between the civil war and the death.»

2. The pensions recognised pursuant to the provision in the preceding paragraph shall take effect economically from the first day of the month following the entry into force of the present Law, and the laws concerning expiry of the same set out in the Regime for State Passive Classes (Regimen de Clases Pasivas del Estado) will also apply where relevant.

Article 6.Amount of certain pensions for orphans..

1. The amount of pensions in favour of orphans who are non-disabled adults (older than 21 years of age) where the original beneficiary was not a public servant pursuant to Laws 5/1979, of 18 September and 35/1980, of 26 June, shall be set at 132.86 euros monthly.

2. With respect to the pensions for orphans referred to in this article, the system of supplementary payments (complementos economicos) currently in force shall apply and they will therefore be subject to annual revaluations as established by the General State Budget Laws (Leyes de Presupuestos Generales del Estado).

3. The provisions in the preceding two paragraphs shall take economic effect from the first day of the month following the entry into force of the present Law, without prejudice to the norms concerning expiry of the same set out in the regulations governing Passive Class Pensions.

Article 7. Amendment in favour of those who suffered imprisonment of the scope of application of compensation as a consequence of the events contemplated in Law of amnesty 46/1977 of 15 October.

120 1. In order to incorporate matters excluded from the compensation granted in respect of periods of imprisonment during the Dictatorship, paragraphs 1 and 2 of the Eighteenth Additional Provision of Law 4/1990 of 29 June on the General State Budgets for the year 1990, are hereby amended to provide as follows:

«One. Whoever can show that they were deprived of their liberty in a penal institution or in a Disciplinary Battalion, in whatever way, during three or more years, as a consequence of the events contemplated in Law 46/1977 of 15 October and who were 60 years of age as of 31 December 1990, will be entitled to receive one time only a payment by way of compensation according to the following scale:

Three or more years imprisonment: 6,010.12 €.

For every three complete additional years: 1,202.02 €.

Two. If the beneficiary of this compensation is deceased, and if as of 31December 1990 he or she would have reached 60 years of age, the surviving spouse will be entitled to this compensation if he or she is receiving a widower/widow's pension for the same reason; if the surviving spouse is not receiving it, he or she will be entitled to the same if he or she establishes that he or she is the widowed spouse of the beneficiary.»

2. A paragraph 2 bis and 7 are hereby added to the Eighteenth Additional Provision of Law 4/1990 of 29 June on the General State Budgets which provides as follows:

«2 bis. Compensation in the amount of €9,616,18 will be made to the surviving spouse of any person who, having been deprived of their liberty for under three years as a consequence of the events provided in Law 46/1977 of 15th October, was condemned to death as a result of such events and was executed, and due to the said circumstances had not been recognised nor granted a pension or compensation through one of the public systems of social welfare."

«Seven. Whoever considers that they are entitled to the benefits established in paragraphs one and two above, whether because they are the original beneficiaries or surviving spouses or widowed pensioners for such reason, should submit an express application for the same to the General Directorate of Personnel Costs and Public Pensions (Direccion General de Costes de Personal y Pensiones Publicas).»

121 Article 8. Taxation of Personal Income in respect of compensation for those who suffered deprivation of liberty as a consequence of the events contemplated in Law of Amnesty 46/1977, of 15 October.

With effect from 1 January 2005, a new letter u) is added to article 7 of the consolidated text of the Law of Personal Income Tax, passed by Royal Legislative Decree 3/2004 of 5 March, which will provide as follows:

«u) Compensation provided in the legislation of the State and the Autonomous Communities to compensate for the deprivation of liberty in penal institutions as a consequence of the events contemplated in Law of Amnesty 46/1977 of 15 October.»

Article 9Assistance to compensate for the tax charge in respect of compensations received since 1 January 1999 for deprivation of liberty as a consequence of the events contemplated in Law of Amnesty 46/1977 of 15 October.

1. Persons who between 1 January 1999 and 31 December 2004 received compensation provided in the Law of the State and the Autonomous Communities to compensate for deprivation of liberty in penal institutions as a consequence of the events contemplated in Law of Amnesty 46/1977 of 15 October, may petition, in the form and for the periods to be determined, the benefit of assistance set at 15% of the amounts they have declared as such compensation in their Personal Income Tax Declaration for each of the tax periods.

2. If the persons referred to in para. 1 above have died the right to assistance will pass to their heirs who may make a request therefor.

3. The assistance received by virtue of the provisions of this article shall be exempt from Personal Income Tax.

4. The procedure, conditions for obtaining this assistance and the competent authority for recognition and payment thereof will be determined by Order of the Ministry of Economy and Treasury.

Article 10. Recognition of those persons who died in the defence of democracy during the period between 1 January 1968 and October 1977.

1. Bearing in mind the exceptional circumstances which resulted in their deaths, the right to indemnification in the amount of 135,000 € is hereby granted to the beneficiaries of those who died during the period between January 1 1968 and October 6 1977, in the defence of and demand for restoration of democratic liberties and rights.

2. The beneficiaries of the indemnification referred to in the first paragraph of this provision shall be the children and spouse of the person who died, provided the latter was not legally separated nor in the process of separation or matrimonial annulment, or the person who had been co-habiting with such person in a permanent way with a similar

122 emotional relationship as that of a spouse during a period of at least two years immediately prior to the date of death, unless the two had common descendants in which case, mere co-habitation will be sufficient.

If none of the above are alive, in successive and exclusive order the parents, grandchildren, siblings of the deceased and the children of the person who co-habited with the deceased shall be the beneficiaries, where they were economically dependent upon the deceased.

Where there are a number of persons who belong to one of the groups who have a right to indemnification, the maximum amount will be divided in equal parts among those who have such rights on an equal basis except where those persons comprise the spouse or person with similar affective relationship and the children of the deceased, in which case the assistance will be apportioned as to 50% between the spouse or person with similar relationship and 50% to all the children.

3. The payment of the indemnification will be made provided always that no indemnification or other economic compensation has been received due to the same events or where it has been received if it was of a lesser amount than that established in this article.

4. The Government, by Royal Decree, shall determine the conditions for the procedure by which to grant the indemnification established in this article.

5. The beneficiaries of the indemnification established by this article will have a period of one year, commencing from the entry into effect of the Royal Decree referred to in the preceding paragraph, to submit their demand to the said Commission.

Article 11. Co-operation between Public Administration offices and individuals to locate and identify victims.

1. Public administration offices, subject to their authority, will assist direct descendants of victims who request an inquiry in respect of, and the location and identification of, persons who disappeared violently during the civil war or the subsequent political repression and whose whereabouts are unknown. The provision of the preceding paragraph is applicable to those entities which were formed prior to June 1 2004 and the functions of which include such activities.

2. The General State Administration will draw up working plans and will establish subsidies to defray the costs arising from the activities contemplated in this article.

Article 12. Measures for the identification and location of victims.

1. The Government, in collaboration with all the offices of Public Administration, shall draw up a protocol of scientific and multi-disciplinary process to ensure institutional

123 collaboration and proper intervention in exhumations. It will also enter into collaborative agreements as appropriate to subsidise the social entities participating in these works.

2. The offices of Public Administration will prepare and make available to all interested parties, within their respective territorial areas, plans which identify those areas where the remains of persons referred in the preceding article are located, together with complementary information on the same.

The Government will determine the process and will design an integrated map covering the entire Spanish territory which will be also available for all interested citizens and will incorporate the information which should be submitted by the various competent public administrations.

The areas included in the maps will be subject to special preservation by their landowners on terms to be established by regulation. Similarly, the competent public authorities will adopt measures to ensure their appropriate preservation.

Article 13. Administrative authorizations for activities of location and identification.

1. The competent public administrations will authorize the tasks of prospecting with a view to locating the remains of the victims referred to in article 11 para 1, in accordance with the legislation governing historic patrimony and the protocol addressing the process approved by the Government. The findings will be immediately advised to the competent administrative and judicial authorities.

2. The public administrations, in the exercise of their powers will establish the procedure and the conditions by which the direct descendants of the victims referred to in article 11 para 1, or the entities that act in their name may recover the remains buried in the corresponding graves in order to identify them and move them to another location.

3. In all circumstances, the exhumation will be subject to the administrative authorization on the part of the competent authority which must take into consideration the existence of any opposition on the part of any of the direct descendants of the persons whose remains are to be moved. To this end, and prior to the corresponding decision, the competent authority must give adequate publicity to the petitions submitted, communicating the same in all cases to the General State Administration for its inclusion in the map referred to in paragraph 1 of the preceding article.

4. The remains of victims which have been moved and have not been claimed will be interred in the cemetery within the municipality where they were located.

Article 14. Access to the lands affected by the work of location and identification.

1. The carrying out of activities of location and eventual identification or transfer of the remains of those persons referred to in paragraph 1 of article 13 constitute activities of public utility and social interest for the purposes of allowing, where appropriate and

124 pursuant to articles 108 to 119 of the Law of Compulsory Expropriation, the temporary occupation of those lands where they must be carried out.

2. For the purposes of the activities set out in the preceding paragraph, the competent administrations will authorize, save for reasons of the public interest, the temporary occupation of public property.

3. With respect to lands in private ownership, the descendants or the appropriate organizations pursuant to the preceding paragraph may request the consent of those entitled to the lands where the remains are located. If no consent is given, the public administrations may authorize temporary occupation, provided always they have heard the arguments of the affected owners of the land and have given due consideration to their arguments and have set appropriate compensation for them at the cost of the temporary occupiers.

Article 15. Symbols and public monuments.

1. The offices of Public Administration, in the exercise of their authority, shall take appropriate measures to withdraw all shields, insignia, plaques and other commemorative objects or references which extol, individually or collectively, the military uprising, the Civil War and the repression of the Dictatorship. These measures may include the withdrawal of public subsidies and support.

2. The provisions of the preceding paragraph shall not be applicable where such references are strictly private acts of remembering which do not extol either party in the hostilities or where there exist artistic, architectural or artistic-religious reasons which are protected by law.

3. The Government will co-operate with the Autonomous Communities and local entities to prepare a catalogue of vestiges pertaining the Civil War and the Dictatorship for the purposes of the preceding paragraph.

4. The offices of Public Administration shall be able to withdraw subsidies or support from private owners who do not comply in accordance with the provisions of para. 1 of this article.

Article 16. Valley of the Fallen (Valle de los Caidos).

1. The Valley of the Fallen shall be governed strictly by laws of general application governing places of worship and public cemeteries.

2. In no part of the grounds can any acts be carried out which are political in nature or which tend to extol the Civil War, its protagonists or Francoism.

Article 17. Buildings and works carried out by forced labour. The Government in co-operation with the other offices of Public Administration shall compile a census of buildings and works which were carried out by members of Disciplinary Battalions of Worker Soldiers as well as by prisoners of concentration camps, Worker Battalions and prisoners of the Militarized Penal Colonies.

Article 18. Granting Spanish nationality to the voluntary members of the International Brigades.

1. To implement the right recognised by Royal Decree 39/1996, of January 19, of the voluntary members of the International Brigades who took part in the Civil War of 1936 to 1939, the requirement that they renounce their prior nationality contained in article 23, letter b of the Civil Code will not be applicable as regards the acquisition of Spanish nationality by naturalization papers.

2. The requirements and procedure to be followed in order to acquire Spanish nationality by the persons referred to in the preceding paragraph will be determined by way of Royal Decree passed by the Council of Ministers.

Article 19. Recognition of Victims Associations.

The work of the associations, foundations and organisations who have stood out in the defence of the dignity of all the victims of political violence referred to in this Law is hereby acknowledged. The Government, by Royal Decree, shall be entitled to grant such distinctions as it considers appropriate to such entities.

Article 20. Creation of a Documentary Centre of Historical Memory and General Archive of the Civil War.

1. In accordance with the provisions of Law 21/2005, of 17 November, a Documentary Centre of Historical Memory is established with headquarters in the city of Salamanca.

2. The functions of the Documentary Centre of Historical Memory shall be:

• a) To maintain and develop the General Archive of the Spanish Civil War created by Royal Decree 426/1999, of 12th March. To this end, and by way of proceedings to be determined by regulation, into this Archive shall be integrated all original documents or reliable copies of the same, referring to the Civil War of 1936-1939 and the subsequent political repression situated in State-owned museums, libraries or archives, and these shall keep a digitalised copy of the said documents. In addition, the General State Administration shall proceed to compile the relevant oral testimonies relating to the

126 said period of history which will also be sent to and integrated into the General Archive. • b) To recover, collect, organize and put at the disposition of interested parties, documentary resources and secondary sources which may be of interest for the study of the Civil War, the Franco dictatorship, the guerrilla resistance against it, the exile, the internment of Spaniards in concentration camps during the Second World War and the transition. • c) To promote historical investigation of the Civil War, Francoism, the exile and the Transition and to contribute to the dissemination of such findings. • d) To encourage the diffusion of the resources of the Centre and to facilitate the active participation of its users and their representative organizations. • e) To grant assistance to investigators, by means of awards and grants, to enable them to continue carrying out their academic work and investigation of the Civil War and the Dictatorship. • f) To collect and make accessible to interested parties information and documentation concerning similar events which have taken place in other countries.

3. The structure and operation of the Documentary Centre of Historical Memory will be established by means of Royal Decree agreed in the Council of Ministers.

Article 21. Acquisition and protection of documents on the Civil War and the Dictatorship.

1. The General State Administration shall approve, on an annual basis and with funding established in each case in the General State Budgets, a programme of agreements for the acquisition of documents referring to the Civil War or the subsequent political repression which are in the possession of public or private, national or foreign archives, whether in original version or in some format faithful to the original which permits archiving, understanding or reproducing words, data or numbers. The said documentary resources will be incorporated into the General Archive of the Spanish Civil War.

2. Without prejudice to the provisions of article 22, pursuant to the provisions of Law 16/1985, of 25 June, on Spanish Historical Patrimony, the documents in the possession of public and private archives concerning the Civil War and the Dictatorship are declared to be part of the Documentary and Bibliographic Patrimony.

Article 22. Right of access to the resources of public and private archives.

127 1. For the purposes of the provisions of this Law, the right of access to documentary resources held in public archives and the right to obtain any copies requested is hereby guaranteed.

2. The provision of the preceding paragraph shall be applicable in full to those private archives which are maintained in whole or in part by public funds.

3. The public authorities will adopt necessary measures for the protection, integrity and cataloguing of such documents, in particular in those cases where there is serious deterioration or a risk of degradation.

First additional provision. Creation \1\ of the General Archive of the Spanish Civil War.

The Government is authorized to carry out the actions necessary in order to organize and restructure the General Archive of the Spanish Civil War.

Second Additional Provision.

The provisions contained in this Law are compatible with the exercise of rights and access to ordinary and extraordinary judicial proceedings established pursuant to laws or international treaties or agreements entered into by Spain.

Third Additional Provision. Institutional Framework.

Within a period of one year from the date of entry into force of this Law, the Government shall establish the institutional framework to instigate public policies relating to the conservation and promotion of democratic memory.

Fourth Additional Provision. Authorisation of the Government to grant extraordinary indemnification.

1. The Government is hereby authorised to determine, within a period of 6 months and by Royal Decree, the ambit, conditions and process by which extraordinary indemnification shall be granted in favour of those who suffered incapacitating injuries by reason of events and in circumstances and conditions referred to in article 10 para. 1 of this Law.

2. The indemnification referred to in this provision shall be granted provided always that no other economic indemnification or compensation has been made on the basis of the same events at the cost of one of the public systems of social welfare.

3. The indemnification established pursuant hereto will be paid directly to those persons who are incapacitated and shall not be transferable.

Fifth Additional Provision.

128 For the purposes of the application of Law 37/1984, of 22" October, personnel of the Merchant Navy who were incorporated into the Republican Army from 18th July 1936 shall be deemed to be included in Decree of 13th March 1937 which established the incorporation into the Navy Reserve, Decree of 12th June 1937 which implemented the foregoing by establishing admission and ranking in the said Reserve and the Circular Order of 10th October 1937 which, in furtherance of the above, approved the regulation of the said ranking. Payment of the corresponding pension will be made provided always that no economic compensation of any kind has been received for the same reasons or, where it has been received, it is in an inferior amount to that determined pursuant to the above-mentioned provisions.

Sixth Additional Provision

The Foundation which is responsible for the management of the Valley of the Fallen shall include amongst its objectives the honouring and rehabilitating of the memory of all those persons who died as a consequence of the Civil War of 1936-1939 and the political repression which followed it, with a view to deepening the knowledge of this historical period and its constitutional values. In addition, it will promote the aspirations of reconciliation and coexistence which exist in our society. The foregoing shall be subject to the provisions of article 16.

Seventh Additional Provision. Acquisition of Spanish nationality

1. Those persons whose father or mother were Spanish in origin can adopt Spanish nationality by submission of a Declaration within two years from the date of entry into force of this Additional Provision. The said period can be extended by agreement of the Council of Ministers up to a maximum period of one year.

2. This right shall also be granted to the grandchildren of those who lost or who had to renounce their Spanish nationality as a result of exile.

Eighth Additional Provision. Access to the death records at Civil Registers.

The Government, through the Ministry of Justice to the extent necessary to give full effect to the provisions of this Law, shall issue the necessary provisions to enable access to the records of deaths at Civil Registers which are part of the General Administration of Registers and Notaries.

Repealing Provision.

To conform with the provisions of point 3 of the Repealing Provision of the Constitution, War Edict of 28th July 1936, of the National Defence Junta approved by Decree No. 79, Edict of 31st August 1936 and in particular the Decree of General Franco no. 55 of 1st November 1936; the State Security Laws of 12th July 1940 and 29th March 1941 amending the Criminal Code with respect to crimes against State security; the Law of 2nd March 1943, modifying the crime of Military Rebellion; the Decree-Law of 18th April

129 1947 concerning military rebellion, banditry and terrorism and the Laws 42/1971 and 44/1971 reforming the Military Justice Code, the Laws of 9th February 1939 and of 19th February 1942 concerning political responsibilities and the Law of 1st March 1940 concerning repression of masonry and communism, the Law of 30* July 1959 on Public Order and Law 15/1963 creating the Court of Public Order, are all herewith expressly repealed.

First final provision. Authorization for implementation.

The Government and members thereof, are authorized within their respective powers, to issue those measures necessary for the implementation and application of the provisions of this Law.

Second final provision. Entry into effect.

The current Law will enter into effect the day after its publication in the Official Gazette (Boletin Oficial del Estado), with the exception of the Seventh Additional Provision which will enter into effect one year after its publication.

Accordingly,

I command all Spanish individuals and Spanish authorities to comply with and ensure compliance with this Law.

Madrid, 26 December 2007.

JUAN CARLOS R.

President of the Government, JOSE LUIS RODRIGUEZ ZAPATERO

[Source: BOE No. 310, pp 53410 - 53416, 27Dec07. Translation into English from the original Spanish version carried out by Equipo Nizkor on 31st January, 2008]

Notes: 1. Translation note: "Adecuacion" in the original Spanish text. In fact the "General Archive of the Civil War" does not exist. What does exist is the original archive created under the Francoist regime under the name of "Causa General", criminal proceedings which were Spanish inquisitorial in type. These proceedings classed together all the crimes of which the Spanish republicans were accused by the Franco regime. [Back] 131