Remembering Violence by Robin Maria DeLugan

Author:Robin Maria DeLugan [DeLugan, Robin Maria]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Education, Violence & Harassment, Psychology, Ethnopsychology, Social Science, Sociology, General
ISBN: 9781000292008
Google: rhEFEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2020-11-29T01:00:31+00:00

The role of historical memory in Catalonia

As I traveled throughout Catalonia in 2017 and lived for months in Barcelona 2019, I sensed that the ever-present Catalan national flags were more politically charged than ever. While conducting field research about new public sites of historical memory about the twentieth century, people in Catalonia told me that the two most important dates to commemorate are September 11, 1714, associated with the thwarted effort to gain independence and now celebrated as the National Day of Catalonia (the Diada), and October 15, 1940, the date of the execution of President Lluís Companys following the end of the Spanish Civil War. It was widely acknowledged that historical memory about the war is important for Spain and Catalonia as they reckon with the atrocities of war and repression, pursue democracy, and defend human rights. However, there is also the inevitable association of the recuperation of historical memory with Catalan nationalism.

In studying national efforts to recover historical memory wherever they might occur, it is useful to look at policy aims and the specific discourses about the past that policies support. While conducting ethnographic research in Catalonia, I was directed to the government-sponsored organization Memorial Democràtic (Democratic Memorial) which facilitated my initial visits to new public sites of historical memory. In October 2007, before the government in Madrid passed the national Historical Memory Law, the Generalitat de Catalunya issued the decree that created Memorial Democràtic. The mission of Memorial Democràtic is the recovery, commemoration and promotion of democratic memory in Catalonia (1931–1980). This time span includes the era of the Second Republic, the civil war and its victims, the individual and collective repression that occurred during the Franco regime, including the repression of Catalan language and culture, experiences of exile and deportation, and memories connected with anti-Francoist struggles and the transition to democracy. The work of Memorial Democràtic is central to Catalonia’s reflection on historical memory.

Memorial Democràtic currently links over 70 “spaces of memory” (espais de memoria) across the region that represent both tangible and intangible heritage. They include physical sites of battle and bombardment; sites of torture, execution, and imprisonment; and examples of resistance. They also involve museums (including museum-like centers of interpretation), monuments, specialized archives, and entities dedicated to education about and diffusion of historical memory.42 From the staff in Barcelona, I learned about Memorial Democràtic’s initial work, which involved assisting victims of the civil war and Francoism with seeking government indemnification for the economic losses they suffered. Today Memorial Democràtic collaborates with local, national, and international scholars, universities, and governmental and civil society organizations. There is a current effort to revise the organization’s mission by expanding the original historical range of its focus (1931–1980) to 1931 through the present day; it is believed that this extension would better capture advances made with more recent official attention to historical memory, as well as the evolving negotiations of Catalonia with Spain. In other words, Memorial Democràtic aims to capture history in the making.

While the stated goal of

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