CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2012
| Author | Mendes, Mariana Semião |
|---|---|
| Title | Exhuming a Traumatic Past in a Post-Transitional Setting: The Social Movement for the Recovery of Historical Memory in Spain |
| Summary | For the past decade, Spain has gone through an incredible resurgence of public interest in less publicized aspects of the Civil War and the Franco Regime. This effort can be traced back to the creation of the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory (ARMH) in 2000, mostly constituted by ‘grandchildren of the victims’. It is my contention that the actions of the ARMH sparked a broader social movement – the Movement for the Recovery of Memory – as (i) hundreds of smaller associations dealing with ‘memory’-related issues were created afterwards; and (ii) thousands of other people have engaged with the activities of these associations. My main goal is to provide an account of the factors that led to the emergence of this movement at this particular moment in time. For that, I go beyond the simplistic explanations based on ‘generational gaps’. With the guidance of the theoretical and analytical tools provided by the social movements’ literature, I apply two of its main theories – the ‘political process’ theory and the ‘cultural approach’ – in order to account for the possible factors that explain both the emergence of the MRM and the fact that it occurred at this particular moment in time. Particularly relevant in my analysis is the transnational diffusion of the ‘transitional justice’ language and how it impacted, on the one hand, on the procedures and discourses of the MRM and, on the other, on the way the past was revisited, to a point that what used to be considered a successful example of a ‘transition to democracy’ is now being questioned in light of these new norms. |
| Supervisor | Pelinka, Anton; Naumescu, Vlad |
| Department | Nationalism Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2012/mendes_mariana.pdf |
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