Breaking the Pact of Forgetting: The Franco Dictatorship and Historical Memory in Spain

Panelists engaged in a conversation on the memory of the Franco Dictatorship in Spain and on the work of the “Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory” (ARMH), taking as a point of departure the documentary Santa Cruz…por ejemplo (2005) . “In 1936, nine residents were murdered by supporters of the band of the dictator Franco. Some of these victims were exhumed, and laid to rest, in 2003 and 2004. The impact of the massacre at that time on the people, and the enormous repression which followed it, leaving its aftermath down to the present time, is portrayed through witnesses and family members, exhumation volunteers and technicians, and the residents themselves of Santa Cruz who, even today, are torn between oblivion, fear and the wish once and for all to heal a wound which has now weighed too long on their memory. This is contrasted with the beauty of the Castilian landscape, in whose soil the pain of many more places with a history similar to that of Santa Cruz lives on.” This event is organized by the Ray Wolpow Institute for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Crimes Against Humanity at Western Washington University in partnership with the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Minnesota