Franco's Crypt
Spanish Culture And Memory Since 1936
Jeremy Treglown
Many believe that under Franco's facist dictatorship, nothing truthful or imaginatively worthwhile could be said or written or created. Four decades after Franco's death, foreign narratives -- For Whom the Bell Tolls, Casablanca, Homage to Catalonia -- still have greater credibility than Spanish ones. Yet La Guerra de Espana was, as its name asserts, Spain's own war, and in rec...
Synopsis
Many believe that under Franco's facist dictatorship, nothing truthful or imaginatively worthwhile could be said or written or created. Four decades after Franco's death, foreign narratives -- For Whom the Bell Tolls, Casablanca, Homage to Catalonia -- still have greater credibility than Spanish ones. Yet La Guerra de Espana was, as its name asserts, Spain's own war, and in recent years the country has begun to reclaim this crucial aspect of its history. In a compelling investigation of collective memory, Jeremy Treglown talks to the descendents of men and women killed during the civil war and ensuing dictatorship, examining how a culture remembers. Through monuments, paintings, novels and films he finds that despite state censorship, creativity under Franco was burgeoning and events of the time were in fact vividly recorded.
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