Considering the suffering that was endured during the Spanish
Civil War and the ensuing Franco era, it is not surprising that the
witnesses from that time have long remained silent.
Until now, those who lived through the horror of the Civil War
and the repression under General Francisco Franco have chosen, or
have been forced, to keep quiet about what they saw and
experienced.
Now, however, with encouragement from the Socialist Party and
the fact that many of these witnesses are aged and dying, there is
an urgency for their stories to be told.
Film
Tonight, 7 p.m. Royce 314
Out of this urgency comes the documentary film series,
“Politics of Memory,” organized by UCLA Professor John
Dagenais and Assistant Professor Maite Zubiaurre of the Spanish and
Portuguese Department.
New York University is co-sponsoring the series, which runs till
the end of the calendar year and explores the voices of those
previously forced into silence.
The first film, director Günter Schwaiger’s
“Santa Cruz, Por Ejemplo,” will screen tonight at 7
p.m. in Royce 314.
The film investigates the exhumation of a mass grave, one of the
many created during the Franco era, when suspected dissidents of
every kind were killed and buried in anonymity.
“The title (of this film) is very important: “˜Por
ejemplo’ means “˜for example,’ and this grave is
only one of many throughout the country,” Zubiaurre said.
In fact, one of these mass graves is under much dispute, as it
is the resting place of poet Federico GarcÃa Lorca, killed by
the Franco regime.
Many people in Spain want to exhume his grave, but his family
remains strongly opposed because of the action’s assured
rekindling of painful feelings.
“People are in some ways eager to let go of the
past,” Zubiaurre said. “Spaniards decided they
couldn’t talk. There was a pacto de silencio (pact of
silence) to prevent another civil war. Silence was a tactic for
Franco and for the transition to democracy.”
However, it seems appropriate that the newfound loquaciousness
about what exactly happened should be accompanied by the exhumation
of graves to provide important pieces of historical evidence to
accompany firsthand testimonies.
According to both Dagenais and Zubiaurre, the film series is
important because witnesses are dying and the younger generations
have no memory of the horrific events.
“In the ’80s, and particularly the ’90s, I saw
all these kids who’ve grown up since ’75 (post-Franco)
and they’re just like kids in Los Angeles,” said
Dagenais.
Younger generations of Spaniards, like the rest of the world, do
not know what happened because no one has told the story. However,
even now, some of the witnesses are remaining close-lipped.
“Now that the people are talking, it is almost hard to get
them to stop,” Zubiaurre said.
“But not all of them,” Dagenais added.
Thankfully, the government is supporting the telling of these
unheard stories with its “proyectos de paz” (projects
of peace), and the Association for the Recovery of Historical
Memory is also aiding in the effort to give these stories an
outlet.
“The Socialist Party in Spain wants to give voice to the
victims,” Zubiaurre said. “Enough time has passed;
democracy is full-fledged, strong enough to deal with the
truth.”
Both the first and the last films of the series are made by
directors who are not from Spain.
The first, Schwaiger, is Austrian and the last, Cristina Hardt,
is American of Spanish heritage.
The foreign perspective not only allows a different look at one
country’s history, but also shows the reverberations it
caused and affirms the idea of a transnational world.
And, indeed, the films echo with other historical issues: The
third film of the series, “Los Presos del Silencio”
(The Prisoners of the Silence), is about the political prisoners
who were captured in the south of France and taken to Nazi
concentration camps.
The connections to German history do not stop there. Many
Germans were reticent about what happened during World War II, and
the work of the Shoah Foundation in compiling testimonies of
Holocaust survivors brought those stories to the surface.
These documentaries do the same service for these tales of the
Spanish Civil War that have been waiting to be told.
And even though these tales are in danger of being forgotten,
the stories of the past can still be seen in the stories of
today.
“These films are important because there exist lots of
resonances with current events. The trading of freedoms for
stability; the ethics of war and power; the fact that innocent
victims are always a part of warfare, for example,” Dagenais
said.
“People who come to these films will find some new things
to think about war,” he said.