Memories of violence in Spain

Nicole Iturriaga

- completed -

From 2018-2019, Nicole worked on completing and submitting the following three papers. The first is “At the Foot of the Grave: Challenging Collective Memories of Violence in Post-Franco Spain,” a paper that focuses on human rights activists with the Spanish Association for the Historical Memory (ARMH) and their use of multiple tactics (de-politicized science framing, action-oriented objects, and embodiment) to deliver a counter-memory of the Spanish Civil War and Franco regime, to make moral and transitional justice claims. This research shows how victims’ remains and personal objects found in graves also provoke the desired meaning that emotionally connects those listening to the classes to the victims and the ARMH’s counter-memory. This paper was submitted in November 2018, accepted in December 2018, and published March 2019. Her second paper, “Ending the Double Death: Moral Claims to Rebury the Missing, Science, and Rewriting Spain’s Violent Past,” argues that homage and reburial ceremonies put on by the Spanish Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory (ARMH) force local Spanish communities, and the larger Spanish society, to view the consequences of the violence, which remains ‘present in the lived experience’ of the victims. She further contends that activists, during this display of grief, simultaneously make public demands for transitional justice efforts on the part of the state and political elites. Moreover, she posits that these reburial and homage ceremonies offer an interesting perspective on how these delayed death rites not only create a public space to grieve and mourn, but also to critique established power, such as the state. This paper was submitted in August 2019 and given a revise and resubmit in October 2019.