Unearthing Franco's Legacy

"For anyone interested in understanding the lasting impact of the Spanish Civil War on contemporary society, Unearthing Franco's Legacy is required reading. The editors of this book have brought together, and placed in constructive dialogue, a comprehensive group of international authors whose contributions result in a sweeping and devastating account of the war's deep wounds on individual lives and collective histories. Meticulously studying Franco's policies, their impact on the war's victims, and representations of the war's stories, both those unearthed and others that continue to be buried, this book makes terribly clear that the Spanish Civil War and its memory continue to teach us lessons about the responsibility of scholarship in deciphering the complexities of the past." —Jordana Mendelson, New York University

"Unearthing Franco's Legacy is a timely contribution to a subject that has provoked serious discussion both in Spain and abroad. The scholars and practitioners whose work is represented in this volume address the issue of historical memory from different disciplinary angles, and the interdisciplinarity of the approaches adds much to the book's value and to the debates that persist regarding this topic." —David T. Gies, Commonwealth Professor of Spanish, University of Virginia

“The contributors to this volume memorialize victims by looking at a number of phenomena that illustrate their faces and voices. . . . Each section begins with commentaries that engage in intelligent dialogue with the ensuing essays. . . . Unearthing Franco’s Legacy is a seminal reference for Spanish Memory Studies.” —The Volunteer

“The volume . . . deals primarily with some of the main features and achievements of the historical memory movement and with the theoretical and methodological problems that the movement raises. . . . The achievement of this volume is that it introduces English-language readers to the issue of historical memory in Spain.” —American Historical Review

“Unearthing Franco’s Legacy is a significant contribution to the field of transitional justice. Not only does it highlight how a country attempts to come to terms with a past in the face of oblivion and silence but it also brings to the fore questions related to peace agreements, how they affect individual victims and how they relate to broader issues of international law and crimes against humanity.” —The International Journal of Transitional Justice

“The illuminating, often riveting essays published shortly after the landmark legislation in Carlos Jerez-Farrán's and Samuel Amago’s important edited volume, similarly propose to navigate what contributor Francisco Ferrandiz has deemed ‘a formerly neglected cartography of terror and repression’ and to interpret the complex, intersecting pathways of political history, collective memory and cultural reforms of representation that emerge from the place of the exhumations. . . A great strength of this collection as a whole is the wealth of disciplinary perspectives brought to bear by renowned historians, anthropologists, literacy and cultural studies scholars, and journalists.” —Bulletin of Spanish Studies