Inocencia y memoria: reconciliando el trauma de la Guerra Civil Española en “Aquel abril” y “La lengua de las mariposas”

I will analyze the fictional short stories “Aquel abril” by Armando López Salinas (first written and published in 1955) and “La lengua de las mariposas” by Manuel Rivas from his collection ¿Qué me quieres, amor? (1995) in order to understand how individual reflection on the past helps us access a nation’s collective memory in order to process traumatic events and keep them from repeating. I discuss childhood innocence as a form of rebellion and free thought as power to combat violent and oppressive systems that create this trauma. The child protagonists of the two stories represent individual trajectories, but they are also symbols of entire generations within Spain. The two stories “Aquel abril” and “La lengua de las mariposas” through the use of innocent child protagonists’ perspectives uniquely frame the Spanish Civil War and the subsequent dictatorship to remind us of our moral and societal obligation in confronting difficult events of the past to secure a just tomorrow for future generations