Abstract
Messenger investigates the prominent and complex role that the memories of Catalonia’s experience in the Spanish Civil War play in ideas about Catalan identity. Focusing on how contemporary Catalan memory sites construct narratives that link experiences of the Spanish Civil War and the fight for democracy with the broader European struggle against Nazism in World War II, the chapter shows how these narratives not only connect Catalonia’s past to Europe’s, but also posit Catalonia as an essential part of contemporary efforts to further democracy in Europe. While these narratives Europeanize and transnationalize memories of the Spanish Civil War, making the memory of Franco’s victims more cosmopolitan, Messenger shows how memories of historical injustices and democratic activism can also be mobilized to create a new sense of civic nationalism in Catalonia.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsNotes
- 1.
Paul Preston, The Spanish Holocaust: Inquisition and Extermination in Twentieth Century Spain (New York, NY: W. W. Norton, 2012).
- 2.
Nancy Fraser, “Reframing Justice in a Globalizing World,” New Left Review 36 (2005): 69–88.
- 3.
Conxita Mir, “The Francoist Repression in the Catalan Countries,” Catalan Historical Review 1 (2008): 133–47. 138.
- 4.
Preston, The Spanish Holocaust, xviii–xix.
- 5.
Preston, The Spanish Holocaust, 507–9.
- 6.
Mir, “The Francoist Repression,” 138.
- 7.
Mir, “The Francoist Repression,” 138.
- 8.
Mir, “The Francoist Repression,” 138.
- 9.
Mir, “The Francoist Repression,” 138.
- 10.
W. L. Bernecker and S. Brinkmann, Memorias divididas: Guerra Civil y franquismo en la sociedad y la política españolas, 1936–2008, trans. M. Muñoz-Aunión (Madrid: Abada Editores, 2009), 220.
- 11.
E. Roller, “When Does Language Become Exclusivist? Linguistic Policies in Catalonia,” National Identities 4, no. 3 (2002): 273–89.
- 12.
R. D. Martín, “Legal Framework for Democratic Memory Policies and Mass Graves in Catalonia and Spain and Services for People Who Suffered Retaliation,” in Historical Memory: Policy and Practice (London School of Economics and Political Science, Catalan Observatory, 2010), 5, http://www.lse.ac.uk/europeanInstitute/research/catalanObservatory/PDF/HistMem1/Raul%20Rigon%20.pdf.
- 13.
Martín, “Legal Framework for Democratic Memory,” 6.
- 14.
Memorial Democràtic, “Article 54 and Llei Del Memorial Democràtic,” accessed October 18, 2014, http://memorialdemocratic.gencat.cat/ca/memorial_democratic/qui_som/.
- 15.
Some examples of these public events include an academic conference on the centenary of the birth of Joaquim Amat-Piniella, a writer who died at Mauthausen under the Nazis, a local commemoration of the Civil War bombing of cities and towns in Tarragona, La Garriga, Figueres and Flix, amongst others, a memorial service for the anniversary of the execution by Francoist courts of Manuel Carrasco I Formiguera, a Catalan political leader, and the launch, with an academic conference, of the travelling exhibition “Catalonia in Transition 1971–1980.” Memorial Democràtic, “Memòria d’actuaciones del Memorial Democràtic” (Generalitat de Catalunya, 2013).
- 16.
David Wingeate Pike, Spaniards in the Holocaust: Mauthausen, Horror on the Danube (London: Routledge, 2000).
- 17.
Pike, Spaniards in the Holocaust.
- 18.
Preston, The Spanish Holocaust, 516.
- 19.
Jie-Hyun Lim and Peter Lambert, “Introduction: Coming to Terms with the Past of Mass Dictatorship,” in Mass Dictatorship and Memory as Ever Present Past, ed. Jie-Hyun Lim, Walker, and Lambert (London; New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 1–13.
- 20.
Miquel Serrano, Personal Interview, November 13, 2012.
- 21.
Serrano, Personal Interview.
- 22.
Margaret Townsend, Personal Interview, November 13, 2012.
- 23.
Daniel Levy and Natan Sznaider, “Memory Unbound: The Holocaust and the Formation of Cosmopolitan Memory,” European Journal of Social Theory 5, no. 1 (2002): 87–106. 89.
- 24.
Sharon Macdonald, Memorylands: Heritage and Identity in Europe Today (London; New York, NY: Routledge, 2013).
- 25.
Jordi Font, Personal Interview, November 13, 2012.
- 26.
Memorial Democràtic, “Memòria d’actuaciones.”
- 27.
Conseil General des Pyrenées Orientales, “Le Mémorial de Rivesaltes,” accessed October 18, 2014, http://www.ledepartement66.fr/52-le-memorial-de-rivesaltes.htm.
- 28.
Scott Soo, The Routes of Exile: France and the Spanish Civil War Refugees, 1939–2009 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013).
- 29.
Soo, The Routes of Exile, 237.
- 30.
Memorial Democràtic, “El Memorial del Camp Rivesaltes,” accessed October 18, 2014, http://memorialdemocratic.gencat.cat/ca/publicacions/Rivesaltes.
- 31.
Alejandro Baer and Natan Sznaider, “Ghosts of the Holocaust in Franco’s Mass Graves: Cosmopolitan Memories and the Politics of ‘Never Again,’” Memory Studies 8, no. 3 (February 5, 2015): 328–44. 333.
- 32.
Baer and Sznaider, “Ghosts of the Holocaust,” 336.
- 33.
Jie-Hyun Lim, “Victimhood Nationalism in the Memory of Mass Dictatorship,” in Mass Dictatorship and Memory as Ever Present Past, ed. Jie-Hyun Lim, Walker, and Lambert (London; New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 36–61.
- 34.
Anthony Smith, “Tres conceptos de nación,” Revista de Occidente 161 (1994): 7–22.
- 35.
A. Villarroya, “Cultural Policies and National Identity in Catalonia,” International Journal of Cultural Policy 18, no. 1 (2012): 31–45.
- 36.
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London; New York, NY: Verso, 2006).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Messenger, D.A. (2017). Contemporary Memory Politics in Catalonia: Europeanizing and Mobilizing the History of the Spanish Civil War. In: Kraenzle, C., Mayr, M. (eds) The Changing Place of Europe in Global Memory Cultures. Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-39152-6_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-39152-6_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-39151-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-39152-6
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)