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Canterbury Christ Church University’s repository of research outputs http://create.canterbury.ac.uk Please cite this publication as follows: Sanz Sabido, R. (2016) Local memories: conflict and lived experience in the Spanish Civil War. Catalan Journal of Communication and Cultural Studies, 8 (1). pp. 11-30. ISSN 1757-1898. Link to official URL (if available): https://dx.doi.org/10.1386/cjcs.8.1.11_1 This version is made available in accordance with publishers’ policies. All material made available by CReaTE is protected by intellectual property law, including copyright law. Any use made of the contents should comply with the relevant law. Contact: [email protected] CJCS 8 (1) pp. 11–30 Intellect Limited 2016 Catalan Journal of Communication & Cultural Studies Volume 8 Number 1 © 2016 Intellect Ltd Article. English language. doi: 10.1386/cjcs.8.1.11_1 ruth sanz sabido Canterbury Christ Church University Local memories: Conflict 2016 and lived experience in theLtd spanish CivilIntellect war abstraCt Keywords Copyright1. The winners of any conflictdistribution often try to impose their views on the defeated. Through memory 2. official and unofficial mechanisms, most of which operate under the aegis of the Spanish Civil War 3. state and otherfor agents that work on its behalf, the voices of the defeated are silenced. local memories 4. One important counter-mechanism that is available, the one that may serve to resist orality 5. notthe imposition of the victors’ History, is frequently found in the collection, analysis community 6. and publication of oral testimonies, which give expression to, and magnify, silenced ethnography 7. and oppressed memories. Orality therefore provides us with a window into past 8. events or, rather, with multiple windows that allow us to see and take account of 9. the myriad histories of which the past is actually composed, according not to the 10. state-imposed version, but to the ways in which people remember it. Through an 11. ethnographic study of local memories in one southern Spanish village, this article 12. examines some of the ways in which the Spanish Civil War is remembered, focusing 13. particularly on the lived experience of hunger and repression, and the memories of 14. ideological clashes, class struggles and conflicts over land ownership. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 11 CJCS_8.1_Sabido_11-30.indd 11 4/1/16 11:47:26 AM Ruth Sanz Sabido introduCtion 1. 2. It is unbelievable, what a war does in a village. Such a tight-knit commu- 3. nity, and you see […] People in the village that you see every day, you 4. see them in the street and you know they killed your father, and have 5. done other things too. Those things remain inside you. That thorn is 6. still there […] People may not talk about it, but they know it, they still 7. remember. 8. (Carlos 2014, my translation) 9. 10. Memory is, by its very nature, a site of struggle and, in the specific national 11. context of Spain, is clearly one that continues to provoke a great deal of anger 12. and argument. The perpetual erasure of the memory of the defeated did not 13. end with Franco’s death in 1975, but was sustained during the democratic 14. period. Not only have Francoist myths continued to be promoted through 15. sociocultural channels, long after the end of the dictatorship, but oblivion 16. itself became institutionalized, from the early days of the new post-dictatorial 17. system, to the 1977 Amnesty Act (which guaranteed that the agents of repres- 18. sion were protected). The Act was the legal expression of the pact of silence 19. agreed during the Transition: it committed all sides in the conflict to forgive 20. and forget, but served, in effect, to exonerate Franco’s high-ranking officials 21. and civil servants from any crimes they had committed. Consequently,2016 in 22. Spain, the concepts of ‘amnesty’ and ‘amnesia’ have frequently been conflated 23. as synonyms (Escudero et al. 2013: 9). The 1977 LtdAct, which is still in force 24. today, has limited the scope of the 2007 Law of Historical Memory. Passed 25. by PSOE (Partido Socialista Obrero Español, technically a centre-left party), 26. the Law provides guidelines on issues related to memory, from the exhuma- 27. tion of mass gravesIntellect to the elimination of street names that still refer to agents 28. of the dictatorship. However, the fact that there is no obligation to enforce it 29. (it provides, instead, the opportunity for localized debates) has led to further 30. political polarization, particularly since the right-wing government of Partido 31. Popular have stopped applying it. 32. CopyrightAll in all, the exercise of memory has become a contemporary re-enactment 33. distribution 34. of the old divisions that are very much part of the country’s identity, and forwhich still permeate social, political and cultural life in contemporary Spain. 35. It was only approximately 30 years after Franco’s death that the recovery of 36. not memory began to be promoted, through social, political and cultural means, 37. by Memory Associations, composed of victims and relatives, together with 38. scholars and public figures who champion the victims’ universal human right 39. to obtain truth, justice and reparation. Only then did some of the unheard 40. voices of the past begin to gain attention, although their stories continue 41. to remain, on the whole, obscured by (still predominant) state-sponsored 42. versions of history. 43. Against this backdrop, I examine some of the narratives that these poli- 44. tics of memory and oblivion have disregarded. The interdisciplinary framework 45. of Critical Ethnography of Memory (Sanz Sabido forthcoming) aims to gain 46. access to ‘local’ memories – that is, individual memories of local events that 47. happened in small communities – through a process of immersion in those 48. localities where specific incidents occurred. Although there is no space in this 49. article to discuss the methodological underpinning of the approach in all its 50. depth, it is worth pointing out that Critical Ethnography of Memory depends 51. on a critical analysis of the narration and performance of oral testimonies about 52. 12 CJCS_8.1_Sabido_11-30.indd 12 4/1/16 11:47:26 AM Local memories 1. 1. past events (Sanz Sabido forthcoming). The purpose is to create a counter- 1. Just like other mountainous, 2. 2. mechanism that gives voice to those who have been silenced (Portelli 2006), agricultural villages, 3. 3. in the first instance by the imposition of repressive political, legal, economic Arroyomolinos has 4. 4. and cultural mechanisms during the war and the dictatorship and later, after always had a relatively small number of 5. 5. Franco’s death, through ostensibly democratized channels of control. The inhabitants. The first 6. 6. Critical Ethnography of Memory can therefore be understood as a tool that can modern census, in 7. 7. be used to uncover what Foucault (2004) described as ‘subjugated knowledges’, 1857, included 852 inhabitants, but the 8. 8. which he defined in two different ways: as ‘historical contents that have been locality increased its 9. 9. buried or masked in functional coherences or formal systematizations’, or as population thanks to a larger number of 10. 10. births and the arrival of 11. 11. whole series of knowledges that have been disqualified as nonconcep- immigrants seeking the 12. 12. tual knowledges, as insufficiently elaborated knowledges: naïve knowl- opportunities offered by the exploitation 13. 13. edges, hierarchically inferior knowledges, knowledges that are below of wood and coal. 14. 14. the required level of erudition or scientificity. And it is thanks to the Arroyomolinos began 15. 15. reappearance of these knowledges from below, of these unqualified or the twentieth century with 2366 inhabitants, 16. 16. even disqualified knowledges […] that made the critique possible. increasing to 2666 in 17. 17. (Foucault 2004: 7–8) 1920 (Jurado Almonte 1995: 168). The 18. 18. municipal register of 19. 19. Certain types of knowledge are therefore hidden, while others are declared 1940 included 2357 20. 20. ineligible before they have even acquired the status of knowledge. For people who were present in the village, 21. 21. Foucault, these knowledges consist of what people know at a local level: 97 absent inhabitants, 22. 22. 2016and one non-resident 23. 23. this is by no means the same thing as common knowledge or common or passer-by (Padrón Municipal 1940). 24. 24. sense but, on the contrary, a particular knowledge, a knowledgeLtd that is The village began 25. 25. local, regional, or differential, incapable of unanimity and which derives to lose inhabitants, particularly in the 26. 26. its power solely from the fact that it is different from all the knowledges 1960s and 1970s, 27. 27. that surround it. when a significant 28. 28. (Foucault 2004: 7) number of families Intellect left the village to look 29. 29. for better prospects 30. 30. Following a similar principle, the primary concern of a Critical Ethnography in more prosperous 31. 31. of Memory involves immersion in local milieus and the critical analysis of oral parts of the country. Between 1960 and 32. 32. testimonies (an approach that is closer to the second definition given above), 1975, the population 33. 33. although it also takes into account the first perspective, since they are both was reduced to nearly Copyright half the size recorded 34. 34. useful in facilitating critique:distribution they are both oriented, in other words, towards in 1920. After 54 years, 35. 35. unearthingfor hidden stories, on behalf of the people who experienced them, the 1994 census 36. 36. and validating them against the systemic, long-standing marginalization of counted only 1240 inhabitants.