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Public Humanities and the Spanish Civil War pp 139–162Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Thinking Outside the Grave: The Material Traces of Republican Lives Before the Spanish Civil War

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Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Cultural Heritage and Conflict ((PSCHC))

Abstract

There has been a dramatic shift in Spain’s memory politics since 2000, shaped in large part by the campaign to exhume the mass graves of Franco’s civilian victims. For many, the exhumations have enabled the illumination of family history and a process of mourning. However, this chapter argues that there are major limitations in the way the identities of the dead are remembered and publicly represented. The historical significance of these graves lies in the lived identities, agency, and achievements of the dead, which cannot be recovered through their human remains alone. A fuller archaeology of the period should encompass the material traces of Republicans’ pre-war lives and their contribution to politics and civil society during a time of radical change.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Angela Cenarro, “Memory Beyond the Public Sphere,” History and Memory 14, no. 1–2 (2002), 165–88.

  2. 2.

    Layla Renshaw, Exhuming Loss: Memory, Materiality and Mass Graves of the Spanish Civil War (Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press , 2011).

  3. 3.

    Layla Renshaw, “The Scientific and Affective Identification of Republican Civilian Victims from the Spanish Civil War ,” Journal of Material Culture 15, no. 4 (2010), 449–63.

  4. 4.

    Francisco Ferrándiz, “The Return of Civil War Ghosts: The Ethnography of Exhumations in Contemporary Spain ,” Anthropology Today 22, no. 3 (2006), 7–12.

  5. 5.

    Ermengol Gassiot Ballbé, Joaquim Oltra Puigdoménech, Elena Sintes Olives, and Dawnie Wolfe Steadman, “The Archaeology of the Spanish Civil War : Recovering Memory and Historical Justice,” in Archaeology and Capitalism: From Ethics to Politics, ed. Yannis Hamilakis and Philip Duke (Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press , 2007), 235–46.

  6. 6.

    Renshaw, Exhuming Loss, 143.

  7. 7.

    Ignacio Fernández de Mata, “The ‘Logics’ of Violence and Franco’s Mass Graves: An Ethnohistorical Approach,” International Journal of the Humanities 2, no. 3 (2004), 2527–35.

  8. 8.

    Paul Preston, The Spanish Holocaust : Inquisition and Extermination in Twentieth-Century Spain (London: Harper, 2012).

  9. 9.

    Alfredo González-Ruibal , “The Need for a Decaying Past: An Archaeology of Oblivion in Contemporary Galicia (NW Spain ),” Home Cultures 2, no. 2 (2005), 129–52.

  10. 10.

    Alfredo González-Ruibal, “From the Battlefield to the Labour Camp: Archaeology of Civil War and Dictatorship in Spain ,” Antiquity 86 (2012), 456–73.

  11. 11.

    Alfredo González-Ruibal , “Making Things Public: Archaeologies of the Spanish Civil War ,” Public Archaeology 6, no. 4 (2007), 203–26; Alfredo González-Ruibal , “The Archaeology of Internment in Francoist Spain (1936–1952),” in Archaeologies of Internment, ed. Adrian Myers and Gabriel Moshenska (New York: Springer, 2011); González-Ruibal, “From the Battlefield to the Labour Camp,” 456–73.

  12. 12.

    González-Ruibal, “From the Battlefield to the Labour Camp,” 456.

  13. 13.

    Javier Rodrigo, Cautivos: Campos de Concentracion en la Espana Franquista (1936–1947) (Barcelona: Critica, 2005); Gutmaro Gómez Bravo, El Exilio Interior: Cárcel y Represión en la España Franquista 1939–1950 (Madrid : Taurus, 2010).

  14. 14.

    González-Ruibal, “Making Things Public” and “From the Battlefield to the Labour Camp.”

  15. 15.

    González-Ruibal, “The Archaeology of Internment,” 62.

  16. 16.

    González-Ruibal, “The Archaeology of Internment,” 54.

  17. 17.

    Helen Graham, “The Spanish Civil War , 1936–2003: The Return of Republican Memory,” Science and Society 68, no. 3 (2004), 313–28.

  18. 18.

    Antonio Ruiz Vilaplana, Burgos Justice: A Year’s Experience of Nationalist Spain (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1938); Renshaw, Exhuming Loss.

  19. 19.

    Sandie Holguin, Creating Spaniards : Culture and National Identity in Republican Spain (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press , 2002).

  20. 20.

    Alfonso Castelao, Galicia Mártir (1937), reissued Galicia Martyr: Prints by Castelao (Madrid : Akal, 1976).

  21. 21.

    Richard Barrett, Benabarre: The Modernization of a Spanish Village (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1974); Ruth Behar, Santa María del Monté: The Presence of the Past in a Spanish Village (Princeton University Press , 1986); Jane Collier, From Duty to Desire: Remaking Families in a Spanish Village (Princeton University Press , 1997).

  22. 22.

    Jerome Mintz, The Anarchists of Casas Viejas (Bloomington: Indiana University Press , 1982).

  23. 23.

    González-Ruibal, “The Need for a Decaying Past.”

  24. 24.

    Victor Buchli, An Archaeology of Socialism (Oxford: Berg, 2000).

  25. 25.

    Renshaw, Exhuming Loss, 45.

  26. 26.

    Matthew Johnson, An Archaeology of Capitalism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996).

  27. 27.

    Sandie Holguin, “Navigating the Historical Labyrinth of the Spanish Civil War ,” in Teaching Representations of the Spanish Civil War , ed. Noël Valis (New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 2007), 23–32.

  28. 28.

    Lu Ann De Cunzo, and Julie Ernstein, “Landscapes, Ideology and Experience in Historical Archaeology ,” in The Cambridge Companion to Historical Archaeology, ed. Dan Hicks and Mary Beaudry (Cambridge University Press , 2006), 255–70.

  29. 29.

    Laurie Wilkie, “Black Sharecroppers and White Frat Boys: Living Communities and the Appropriation of Their Archaeological Pasts,” in Archaeologies of the Contemporary Past, ed. Victor Buchli and Gavin Lucas (London: Routledge, 2001), 108–19.

  30. 30.

    Wilkie, “Black Sharecroppers,” 112.

  31. 31.

    Renshaw, Exhuming Loss, 59.

  32. 32.

    Dacia Viejo-Rose, Reconstructing Spain : Cultural Heritage and Memory after Civil War (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press , 2011); Olivia Munoz-Rojas, Ashes and Granite: Destruction and Reconstruction in the Spanish Civil War and Its Aftermath (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press , 2011); Alfredo González-Ruibal , “Beyond the Mass Grave: Producing and Remembering Landscapes of Violence in Francoist Spain ,” in Legacies of Violence in Contemporary Spain , ed. Ofelia Ferrán and Lisa Hilbink (London: Routledge, 2016), 93–117.

  33. 33.

    John Schofield, “Peace Site: An Archaeology of Protest at Greenham Common Air Base,” British Archaeology 104 (2009), 44–49.

  34. 34.

    Ludlow Collective, “Archaeology of the Colarado Coal Field War 1913–1914,” in Archaeologies of the Contemporary Past, ed. Victor Buchli and Gavin Lucas, 108–19.

  35. 35.

    Dean Saitta, “Ethics, Objectivity and Emancipatory Archaeology ,” in Archaeology and Capitalism: From Ethics to Politics, edited by Yannis Hamilakis and Philip Duke (Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press, 2007), 267–80.

  36. 36.

    Sarah Tarlow, “Excavating Utopia: Why Archaeologists Should Study ‘Ideal’ Communities of the Nineteenth Century,” International Journal of Historical Archaeology 6, no. 4 (2002), 299–323.

  37. 37.

    Kirsten Harjes, “Stumbling Stones: Holocaust Memorials, National Identity and Democratic Inclusion in Berlin ,” German Politics and Society 23, no. 1 (Spring 2005), 138–51.

  38. 38.

    For further information see the website, https://www.needleberlin.com/2010/08/23/nazi-vicitms-and-stumbling-blocks-to-memory, 2010.

  39. 39.

    James Young, The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning (New Haven: Yale University Press , 1993).

  40. 40.

    Alex King, Memorials of the Great War : The Symbolism and Politics of Remembrance (Oxford: Berg, 1998).

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  • ———. “The Archaeology of Internment in Francoist Spain (1936–1952).” In Archaeologies of Internment, ed. Adrian Myers and Gabriel Moshenska. New York: Springer, 2011.

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  • ———. “From the Battlefield to the Labour Camp: Archaeology of Civil War and Dictatorship in Spain.” Antiquity 86 (2012), 456–73.

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  • Ludlow Collective. “Archaeology of the Colarado Coal Field War 1913–1914.” In Archaeologies of the Contemporary Past, ed. Victor Buchli and Gavin Lucas, 94–107. London: Routledge, 2001.

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  • Rodrigo, Javier. Cautivos: Campos de Concentracion en la Espana Franquista (1936–1947). Barcelona: Critica, 2005.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ruiz Vilaplana, Antonio. Burgos Justice: A Year’s Experience of Nationalist Spain. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1938.

    Google Scholar 

  • Saitta, Dean. “Ethics, Objectivity and Emancipatory Archaeology.” In Archaeology and Capitalism: From Ethics to Politics, ed. Yannis Hamilakis and Philip Duke, 267–80. Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press, 2007.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schofield, John. “Peace Site: An Archaeology of Protest at Greenham Common Air Base.” British Archaeology, 104 (2009), 44–49.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tarlow, Sarah. “Excavating Utopia: Why Archaeologists Should Study ‘Ideal’ Communities of the Nineteenth Century.” International Journal of Historical Archaeology 6, no. 4 (2002): 299–323.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Viejo-Rose, Dacia. Reconstructing Spain: Cultural Heritage & Memory after Civil War. Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2011.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wilkie, Laurie. “Black Sharecroppers and White Frat Boys: Living Communities and the Appropriation of Their Archaeological Pasts.” In Archaeologies of the Contemporary Past, ed. Victor Buchli and Gavin Lucas, 108–19. London: Routledge, 2001.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Kingston University, Kingston upon Thames, UK

    Layla Renshaw

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  1. Layla Renshaw
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Warwick, Coventry, UK

    Alison Ribeiro de Menezes

  2. Trent University, Peterborough, ON, Canada

    Antonio Cazorla-Sánchez

  3. York University, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Adrian Shubert

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Renshaw, L. (2018). Thinking Outside the Grave: The Material Traces of Republican Lives Before the Spanish Civil War. 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_7

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