Reimagining Spain

Reimagining Spain Citation for published version (APA): Hristova-Dijkstra, M. J. (2016). Reimagining Spain: transnational entanglements and remembrance of the Spanish Civil War since 1989. Datawyse / Universitaire Pers Maastricht. https://doi.org/10.26481/dis.20161020mh Document status and date: Published: 01/01/2016 DOI: 10.26481/dis.20161020mh Document Version: Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Please check the document version of this publication: • A submitted manuscript is the version of the article upon submission and before peer-review. There can be important differences between the submitted version and the official published version of record. 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If the publication is distributed under the terms of Article 25fa of the Dutch Copyright Act, indicated by the “Taverne” license above, please follow below link for the End User Agreement: www.umlib.nl/taverne-license Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us at: [email protected] providing details and we will investigate your claim. Download date: 05 Oct. 2021 Since 1989, Spain has gone through a process of re-emergence of the memories of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) and Francoism (1939-1975). These newly produced memories challenge the official reading of the civil war, as established during the transition to democracy, as a “collective insanity.” As part of this process, the last three decades have produced numerous novels, documentaries, and journalistic accounts that have brought to the fore the untold stories of the repression during the civil war and its aftermath. This dissertation offers an analysis of the influence of transnational frameworks on the reconfiguration of the cultural memory narratives of the Spanish Civil War. The selection of post-Cold War Spanish cultural texts – narrative fiction, documentary film, photography and journalism – being analyzed in this dissertation, is framed by three emblematic “spaces of transnational memory.” These are: the wars in former Yugoslavia; Forced Disappearance in the Southern Cone; and the remembrance of the Holocaust. Each of these spaces highlights a different contemporary site of agency in the production of memory, namely contemporary civil war, mass grave exhumations, and testimony. In addition, this dissertation posits affect and emotion as important mechanisms in the production of transnational memories. This research argues that these transnational contexts of remembrance serve to reimagine Spain, proposing alternative and more “inclusive” forms of national memory and identity, often in opposition to the current Spanish “constitutional patriotism.” Transnational memory is located within the margins of the nation-state, a space of entanglement between the national and the transnational, and inhabited by those who were excluded from Spanish national identity through the forging of the Spanish nation-state. Marije Hristova was a Ph.D. candidate at the History Department of the Faculty of Arts and TRANSNATIONAL ENTANGLEMENTS AND REMEMBRANCE Social Sciences, Maastricht University and a Marie Curie predoctoral fellow at the Institute for Language, Literature and Anthropology of the Spanish National Research Council. OF THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR SINCE 1989 Currently, she works as a lecturer of Dutch Studies at the University of Veliko Tarnovo and is a research fellow in the project “Below Ground,” led by Francisco Ferrándiz. MARIJE HRISTOVA Marije Hristova, 2016. CC-BY-NC. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial 4.0 International License. Book cover by Jimena Diaz Ocón, CC-BY-NC. Cover photo: GureGipuzkoa.net | Odonnelleko zuloa Eibarren, 1937 / Calle O´Donnell de Eibar, 1937. © CC- BY-SA: Ojanguren, Indalencio. Gipuzkoako Foru Aldundia. Gipuzkoako Artxibo Orokorra. Diputación Foral de Gipuzkoa. Archivo General de Gipuzkoa. UMP ISBN 978 94 6159 583 6 UNIVERSITAIRE Production – Print Datawyse | Universitaire Pers Maastricht PERS MAASTRICHT Reimagining Spain Transnational Entanglements and Remembrance of the Spanish Civil War since 1989 DISSERTATION to obtain the degree of Doctor at Maastricht University, on the authority of the Rector Magnificus, Prof. dr. Rianne M. Letschert in accordance with the decision of the Board of Deans, to be defended in public on Thursday 20 October 2016, at 14:00 hours by Marije Jusie Hristova - Dijkstra Supervisors Prof. dr. G. Verbeeck Prof. dr. K.K. Patel Assessment Committee Prof. dr. A. Labrie (Chairman) Prof. dr. H.L.M. Hermans (University of Groningen) Dr. P. del Hierro Lecea Prof. dr. M.J.H. Meijer Prof. dr. A. Rigney (Utrecht University) Table of Contents Acknowledgements 7 Introduction 9 1. Transnational Witnessing: Memory, Affect, Imagination 27 2. The Spanish Civil War and the Performance of Identity 55 The Spanish Civil War as foundational myth 59 The Spanish Civil War as taboo 72 Re-emergence of the memory of the Spanish Civil War 79 3. Haunting Analogies: The Wars in Former Yugoslavia as a Space for Transnational Memory 89 Ghosts of civil war 94 Exploring the comparison 110 Transnational genealogies 130 4. The Entangled Kin: Subtierro as a Space for Transnational Memory 137 Ghosts that matter 142 Imag(en)ing subtierro 155 The subterrado and the imagination of alterity 173 5. Borrowed Memory: The Holocaust as a Space of Transnational Memory 185 Holocaust memories in Spain 192 Audiovisual constructions of victimhood 202 Borrowed memory and distanced witnessing 213 Conclusion 233 Works Cited 241 Samenvatting 261 Valorization Addendum 269 Curriculum Vitae 275 Acknowledgements ‘do I change souls when I change the places I inhabit?’ Tzveta Sofronieva (1995) ‘Boundaries don’t hold; times, places, beings bleed through one another.’ Karen Barad (2014, 179) I wish to thank all my readers and audiences of earlier versions of parts of this dissertation for their valuable comments. In Maastricht: my colleagues at the research program Arts, Media and Culture, the FASoS Graduate School and the Department of History. Without the continuous support from Georgi Verbeeck and Kiran Klaus Patel this dissertation would have never been materialized. In Amsterdam: Pablo Valdivia from the Department of Spanish Studies at the University of Amsterdam and my peers at the Huizinga Institute for Cultural History. In Bilbao/Utrecht/Madrid: the coordinators of and participants in the Marie Curie Initial Training Network Sustainable Peace Build- ing. In London: co-organizers, participants and public at the Thinking Memory Through Space conference (July 2013). In Madrid: my colleagues and friends at the CSIC Insti- tute of Language, Literature and Anthropology; the doctoral network (Kon-)Figura- tionen interkulturellen Wissens / (Con)Figuraciones del saber intercultural at the Com- plutense University of Madrid; the members of the I+D+i research project The under- ground past / El pasado bajo tierra and everyone who has participated in the discussions during the monthly lecture series Faces and Traces of Violence. A very special thanks goes to all my friends and colleagues of the association Memorias en Red, whose laugh- ter and critical discussions are ingrained in this text. We would never have met each other without Paco Ferrándiz, his intellectual generosity is without limits. I would like to extend my gratitude to Lorraine Ryan and Janneke Adema who have been of tremendous help with their critical comments on some of the chapters of this dissertation, and to Eliza ten Kate and Dirk Bakker who have assisted me in an indis- pensable way with their incredible copyediting skills. Nynke Borgman has eased the logistics between Bulgaria and The Netherlands. Jimena Diaz Ocón has turned my words into the beautiful and thoughtful cover of this dissertation. 7 Leeuwarden, Altea, Groningen, Sabadell, Laren, Smolyan, Polkovnik Serafimovo, Amsterdam, Santa María d’Oló, Maastricht, Rotterdam, Madrid, Veliko Tarnovo and Sofia are the affective spaces of my “autogeography” because of all the dear friends and “adoptive” families I was so lucky to meet there. They have all added to my transnational gaze that is at the basis of this work. Lekkum and Miedum are the two small villages I just need to return to every now and then to see my supportive and loving family and my favorite five little ladies in the world. You are all so close to my heart. This dissertation is dedicated to Stefan, for teaching me to appreciate the space in- between and kismet ka karvat lena. You mean the world to me. 8 Introduction Fernando Sánchez Castillo’s “Spitting Leaders” at Sonsbeek Park in Arnhem (NL). Photo: Jasper de Boer; September 2008. In 2008 the much-acclaimed Spanish visual artist Fernando Sánchez Castillo exhibited his installation Spitting Leaders in the “Sonsbeek” Park in Arnhem, the Netherlands. The work consists of the busts of four historical figures rising from the park’s pond. The busts of Stalin, Franco, Louis XIV and a fourth ambiguous bust – in different sources identified as Hitler, Pinochet, Philips V and José de Sucre – spit water at each other from their mouths. The work is part of Sánchez Castillo’s continuous inquiry into icons of memory and the vestiges of the Francoist dictatorship (1939-1975) in Spain.

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