Abstract
Espinosa-Romero analyzes the role of the Salamanca Archive as a privileged space of Spain’s historical memory. It was established in 1937 by insurgents and played a crucial role in the repressive structure during the Spanish Civil War and long post-war period. Without forgetting its origins, the Franco regime gave to this archive a new strategic role in the regime’s propaganda machine during the 1960s, providing the material with which to update its foundational values and impose a new narrative of the civil conflict between Spaniards. After Franco’s death, this archive kept this cultural role until 1982 when it was ceased to be a vehicle for the generation of the official and public memory of the war.
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Notes
- 1.
Between March 1976 and October 1984, the Spanish State established different measures to financially compensate the defeated in 1939. These represented a considerable disbursement from the State budget, which in 1980 amounted to 60 billion pesetas; Santos Juliá , Elogio de historia en tiempo de memoria (Madrid : Fundación Alfonso Martín Escudero-Marcial Pons Historia, 2011), 41. The results of this effort are the online databases, “The Military and members of the law-enforcing authorities of the Republic (1936–1939)” and “The dead, maimed and missing from the Army of the Republic ” on the website of the Historical Memory Records Center (CDMH), http://www.mecd.gob.es/cultura-mecd/areas-cultura/archivos/mc/archivos/cdmh/bases-de-datos.html. A critical review of the Historical Memory policies is provided in Bartolomé Clavero, España 1978: La amnesia constituyente (Madrid : Marcial Pons, 2104).
- 2.
From a legal viewpoint, the famous War Proclamation acquired widespread publicity when it was signed on 28 July by the then highest representative of the perpetrators of the coup , General Cabanellas, president of the Spanish National Defence Junta (Junta de Defensa Nacional de España), and when it was published in the Journal of the National Defence Junta two days later, on 30 July, the only and exclusive content of which was the mandate itself. The vicious Decree 108, signed in Burgos on 13 September 1936 by Cabanellas, was published three days later in the same journal.
- 3.
CDMH, DNSD, Secretariat, Recovery, 22, 1. On the OIPA and successive bodies, see Antonio González Quintana, “Fuentes para el estudio de la represión franquista en el Archivo Histórico Nacional, Sección ‘Guerra Civil’,” Espacio, Tiempo y Forma: Serie V, Historia Contemporánea 7 (1994): 479–508; Jesús Espinosa Romero, and Sofía Rodríguez López, “El Archivo de Guerra Civil de Salamanca: De la Campaña a la Transición,” in Paseo documental por el Madrid de antaño, ed. Juan Carlos Galende Díaz, and Susana Cabezas Fontanillas (Madrid : Universidad Complutense de Madrid -Fundación Hospital San José de Getafe, 2015), 131–55; J. Espinosa Romero, “La Delegación del Estado para la Recuperación de Documentos en Madrid ,” in Una ciudad en guerra: Madrid , 1936–1948, ed. Daniel Oviedo Silva and Alejandro Pérez-Olivares (Madrid : Catarata, 2016), 133–58.
- 4.
Franco’s first government dates from 31 January 1938 and Serrano Suñer was appointed the secretary of that Government on 2 February. He thus inherited the competences managed by Nicolás Franco , who became the diplomatic representative of the rebels in Lisbon. The most sensitive affairs were therefore transferred from Franco’s brother to his brother-in-law. On Ulibarri, see Fernando Mikelarena Peña, Sin Piedad: Limpieza Política en Navarra, 1936 (Arre: Pamiela, 2015), 251–62.
- 5.
This civil intelligence network was known as the Information System for the Spanish Northeastern Border (Sistema de Información de la Frontera Nordeste de España, or SIFNE), one of the mainsprings of the SIMP. When it was transferred to San Sebastián and came under the control of the military, its information was called the “Catalan File” after Catalan right-wing refugees, fundamentally traditionalists and members of the Lliga and their families, who constituted a hugely valuable source of information on their fellow countrymen who were loyal to the Republic . One of the most recent studies is Sofía Rodríguez López and Antonio Cazorla-Sánchez, “Blue Angels: Female Fascist Resistants, Spies and Intelligence Officers in the Spanish Civil War , 1936–1939,” Journal of Contemporary History online first (2016), 1–22.
- 6.
Josep Cruanyes, Els papers de Salamanca: L´espoliació del patrimoni documental de Catalunya (Barcelona: Edicions 62, 2003).
- 7.
This was one of the many transfers of documents from the SIMP to the DGS , General Military Archive in Ávila (Archivo General Militar Avila, or AGMA), C.2962, 14/1.
- 8.
On 9 February 1939 and 1 March 1940 these new special jurisdictions were promulgated against the enemies of the State , following the Nazi and fascist models. In the case of the Special Court for the Repression of Freemasonry and Communism (Tribunal Especial de Represión contra la Masonería y Comunismo), the DERD was both judge and participant because Ulibarri was in charge of drafting the sentences during his first year. See Manuel Álvaro Dueñas, Por ministerio de la ley y voluntad del Caudillo : La jurisdicción especial de responsabilidades políticas (1939–1945) (Madrid : Centro de Estudios Constitucionales, 2009); Guillermo Portillo Contreras, La consagración del derecho penal de autor durante el franquismo: El Tribunal Especial de Represión de la Masonería y el Comunismo (Granada : Comares, 2010).
- 9.
Copy dated 1 January 1945 in CDMH, DNSD, Admin, 5, 74.
- 10.
Decree of 2 March 1944 creating the national identity document; see Martí Marín Corbera, “La gestación del Documento Nacional de Identidad: Un proyecto de control totalitario para la España franquista,” in Novísima: II Congreso Internacional de Historia de Nuestro Tiempo, ed. C. Navajas Zubeldia and D. Iturriaga Barco (Logroño: Universidad de La Rioja, 2010), 323–38.
- 11.
Espinosa Romero and Rodríguez López, “El Archivo de Guerra Civil de Salamanca,” 131–55.
- 12.
The Private Documents Collection holds this type of documentation. While the archive of the geographer Gonzalo de Reparaz was returned in 2016, after having been offered in 1955, the heirs of the great jurist Rafael Altamira also received the documentation that had been taken from his home in El Campello (Alicante ). CDMH, DNSD, Correspondencia, 1954 and 1955.
- 13.
Carlos Robles Piquer , Así nos gobernamos (Madrid : Editora Nacional , 1964).
- 14.
On the changing nature of Spain , see Antonio Cazorla-Sánchez, Fear and Progress: Ordinary Lives in Franco’s Spain , 1939–1975 (Cichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009); Francisco Rojas Claros, Dirigismo cultural y disidencia editorial en España (1962–1973) (Alicante : Universidad de Alicante, 2013), 113; Albert Forment, José Martínez: La epopeya de Ruedo Ibérico (Barcelona: Anagrama, 2001); Beatriz García, “Ruedo Ibérico: Contra la estrategia del olvido, el dedo en el gatillo de la memoria ,” in Nuevas tendencias historiográficas e historia local en España. Actas del II Congreso de Historia Local de Aragón, ed. Miguel Ángel Ruiz Carnicer and Carmen Frías Corredor (Huesca: Instituto de Estudios Altoaragoneses-Universidad de Zaragoza , 2001), 389–400.
- 15.
Javier Muñoz Soro, “Política de información y contrainformación en el Franquismo (1951–1973): El Ministerio de Información es tan importante como el de la Guerra,” Revista de Estudios Políticos 163 (2014): 233–63.
- 16.
On the propaganda use of the Salamanca Archive during the war and as a source for constructing the canonical histories of the Military Historical Service, see Espinosa Romero and Rodríguez López, “El Archivo de Guerra Civil de Salamanca.”
- 17.
Order of 21 May 1965, Boletín Oficial del Estado [BOE], no. 135, 5 June 1965. This new office has been widely studied in academic literature , among others by Alberto Reig Tapia, Ideología e Historia: Sobre la represión franquista (Madrid : Akal, 1986), 74 and ff.; Jesús Izquierdo Martín, and Pablo Sánchez León, La guerra que nos han contado, 1936 y nosotros (Madrid : Alianza, 2006); Paloma Aguilar, Memory and amnesia: The Role of the Spanish Civil War in the Transition to Democracy , trans. Mark Oakley (New York: Berghahn Books, 2002), 67 and ff. In 1964 Fraga succeeded in eliminating the pre-eminence of military censorship for publications on the Civil War , which had been in force since 1941; see Francisco Rojas Claros, Dirigismo cultural, 41–42.
- 18.
Urgent information [from Ricardo de la Cierva ] on the use of the Spanish War theme as a historical base for high-level propaganda against contemporary Spain in 1965, 16 November 1965, AGA, 3, 49, 21, 48803.
- 19.
Thus declared the acknowledgment in the introduction. The quotation is from the opening conference of the course in Universidad de Madrid , delivered by Vicente Palacio Atard, “¿Cómo puede plantearse, a nivel universitario, el studio de nuestra Guerra?,” in Aproximación histórica a la Guerra española (1936–1939), ed. Vicente Palacio Atard, Ricardo de la Cierva , and Ramón Salas Larrazábal, (Madrid : Universidad de Madrid , 1970), 33–55.
- 20.
Fraga reorganized the Directorate-General of Information (Dirección General de Información) in October 1962, putting Franco’s brother-in-law in charge along with the brother of a Spanish exile in Venezuela, Eduardo Robles Piquer; see Francisco Rojas Claros, Dirigismo cultural, 45–65. Draft of the Decree for the creation of a Civil War Studies and Documentation Center, undated, AGA, 3, 49, 21, 48803.
- 21.
Observations on the Decree draft, 1 December 1965, AGA, 3, 49, 21, 48803.
- 22.
For a succinct biography and historiographical study of Ricardo de la Cierva , see Gonzalo Pasamar Alzuria and Ignacio Piero Martín, Diccionario Akal de historiadores españoles contemporaneos (Madrid : Akal, 2002), 189 and 190; Aránzazu Sarría Buil, “El Boletín de Orientación Bibliográfica del Ministerio de Información y Turismo y la editorial Ruedo Ibérico,” in Centros y periferias: prensa, impresos y territorios en el mundo hispánico contemporáneo—Homenaje a Jacqueline Covo-Maurice, ed. Nathalie Ludec and Françoise Dubosquet Lairy (Pessac, Université Michel de Montaigne-Bordeaux 3, PILAR 2004): 233–53.
- 23.
The relations between De la Cierva and Salamanca can be seen in CDMH, DNSD, Correspondence, File 2062. A large part of the National Library’s photographic collection associated with the Republican side came from the Spanish War Studies section, but before being sent to Madrid they were in the Salamanca Archive .
- 24.
Archivo General de la Administración (AGA), 3, 49, 21, 48803.
- 25.
For Robles Piquer, Hugh Thomas’s book was, unfortunately, the best-known international compendium on the Civil War . The interest of Spanish readers and the publishing world was evident in the 870 publications that saw the light in the country in 1965. For more on the view that generations of Spaniards had of the Civil War , see for example, Paloma Aguilar Fernández , Memory and amnesia; François Godicheau and Julio Aróstegui, eds., Guerra civil: Mito y memoria (Madrid , Marcial Pons, Casa de Velázquez, 2006); Michael Richards, “El régimen de Franco y la política de memoria de la guerra civil española,” in Arostegui and Godicheau Guerra civil, 167–200; also Richard’s more recent After the Civil War : Making Memory and Re-making Spain since 1936 (Cambridge: University Press , 2013).
- 26.
Robles Piquer added that the MIT had funded the documentary Franco, ese hombre by José Luis Sáez de Heredia. It was released in 1964.
- 27.
Ricardo de la Cierva ’s previous report had noted that the Codex instalments were being drafted [italics added].
- 28.
On Payne and access to the archive of the Government Records Services , see Francisco J. Rodríguez Jiménez, “Stanley G. Payne: ¿Una trayectoria ejemplar?” Hispania Nova: Revista de historia contemporánea 1 (2015), 24–54.
- 29.
CDMH, Secretariat, Personal file of Pedro Ruiz de Ulibarri.
- 30.
Report of 29 June 1971, “Note for the Honourable Minister (via the Technical Secretary-General) positive (and urgent) suggestions for an editorial attack policy based on a renewed National Publisher,” AGA, 42, 8822, 01.
- 31.
Censorship file on the Historia Ilustrada de la Guerra española, by Ricardo de la Cierva y de Hoces, AGA, 66,06302, File 11933,70. The work was published with an initial print run of 5,000. Danae publishing house produced at least nine editions up to 1979.
- 32.
Report by José Manuel Mata Castillón , Archives of the National Movement , 5 April 1982, AGA, 66, 21604, 1964, Folder 107.
- 33.
Royal Decree 2761/1977 of 28 October which reorganized the Presidency of the Government.
- 34.
The Minister of Culture was Pío Cabanillas, former undersecretary of the MIT.
- 35.
Order on the administrative disablement, reserved archiving and expurgation of the archives of the Directorates-General of Security and the Civil Guard of the records on legally recognized political and union activities, BOE , no. 11, 13 January 1978. The Archive of the General Cause was incorporated into the National Historical Archive in 1980. See José Ramón Urquijo Goitia, “Archivos e historia contemporánea,” Ayer 61 (2006), 311–25; of particular relevance are Antonio González Quintana, “La política archivística del gobierno español y la ausencia de gestión del pasado desde el comienzo de la transición,” Hispania Nova 7 (2007), 24–54, and his “Los archivos de los ‘servicios de seguridad de los Estados’ en los procesos de transición política de la represión a la reparación,” in Guerra civil: documentos y memoria, ed. María Dolores de la Calle Velasco and Manuel Redero San Román (Salamanca: Universidad de Salamanca, 2006), 111–30.
- 36.
Francisco Umbral, in his column “Diario de un snob” in El País, described the appointment of De la Cierva as adviser as a huge error and was horrified at what “this alcohol-free Fraga at the head of intelligence and even of intelligentsia could be,” El País 22 February 1978.
- 37.
Order of 7 May 1979 which provides for the documentary collection of the abolished Documentary Services Section to be assigned to the National Historical Archive to form an independent division within it, BOE , 148, 21 June 1979.
- 38.
ABC, 14 November 1979, 23.
- 39.
La Vanguardia, 15 July 1981, 28.
- 40.
El País, 26 October 1980. This paper dedicated a leading article to the exhibition, congratulating the Ministry’s Directorate-General, professor Javier Tusell since April 1979, for the spirit of the exhibition on a period that should act as a lesson and chastisement.
- 41.
María Antonia Paz Rebollo, and Julio Montero Díaz, “Usos públicos de la historia en la transición española: Divulgación histórica y debate en televisión española (1978 a 1985)”. Historia y Política 33 (January–June 2015), 275–302.
- 42.
In 1987, three years after the adoption of Law 37/84 that recognized the rights and services for people who fought for the Republic , the archive had received 13,900 requests to document claims. That year 1029 researchers visited the archive; see Memoria actividades del Archivo de 1988.
- 43.
Data extracted from the anual report of the Archive conserved at the CDMH.
- 44.
Real Decreto 426/1999, de 12 de marzo, de creación del Archivo General de la Guerra Civil Española. BOE , 13-03-1999; Orden ECD/1555/2002, de 17 de junio, por la que se establece el funcionamiento y las competencias del Centro de Estudios y Documentación sobre la Guerra Civil Española. BOE , 25-06-2002.
- 45.
See Javier Tusell, “Bochornosa TVE,” El País, 22 February 2003, and his “El revisionismo histórico español,” El País, 8 July 2004; Alberto Reig Tapia, Anti Moa (Barcelona: Ediciones B, 2006) and Revisionismo y política: Pío Moa revisado (Madrid : Akal, 2008); Por Carlos Rilova Jericó, “‘¿Qué te parece Pío Moa ?’ Dos notas sobre el revisionismo y la guerra civil española,” Hispania Nova 7 (2007) 24–54.
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Romero, J.E. (2018). The Spanish Civil War Archive and the Construction of Memory. In: Ribeiro de Menezes, A., Cazorla-Sánchez, A., Shubert, A. (eds) Public Humanities and the Spanish Civil War. Palgrave Studies in Cultural Heritage and Conflict. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97274-9_3
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