Скачать или смотреть prof. Julio Ponce Alberca - "Franco’s Contested Legacy and Spanish “Historical Memory” Laws"

PROF. JULIO PONCE ALBERCA
is Professor in Contemporary History at the University of Seville. He has been the Vice Dean for Student, International and Institutional Relations at the Faculty of Geography and History. He has also presided over the Geography and History Section of the Ateneo de Sevilla. He is a member of the Real Academia de Ciencias, Buenas Letras y Nobles Artes of Cordoba (Spain). He has evaluated papers for publication in peer-reviewed journals and has been expert evaluator for different entities in Spain and other countries, including the European Commision. He has been a visiting professor and/or researcher at several international universities and research centres: EVTEK University (currently Metropolia, Finland); Rafael Landívar University (Guatemala); Leiden University (Netherlands); Georgetown University (United States); McGill University (Canada); Babes-Bolyai University (Romania), among others. His main research areas are focused on the Political History of the State and its Administration, Politics and Policies and Gibraltar and Spain during the 20th century.

ABSTRACT:
This lecture focuses on how Spain’s past has been tackled by the democratic regime created after the Constitution of 1978. Undoubtedly, Franco’s dictatorship legacy was a difficult matter to deal with. The Franco regime came to power following its victory in the Civil War and this was a crucial step in the establishment of the current monarchy system. The original illegitimacy of the dictatorship gave way to a monarchy and the first question for debate emerges easily: was the monarchy as illegitimate as the dictatorship was? Another relevant legacy was the trauma of the Spanish Civil War which had produced victims on both sides. With the democratic transition, the first steps were taken to overcome the past because reconciliation was a basic requirement for a successful political change. Yet by the beginning of the 21st century - already 20 years later - the situation had changed dramatically. New public narratives about the past were being established which came to view the dictatorship as a version of durable fascism for decades (until 1975 at least), the democratic transition as a kind of betrayal, the monarchy as a creation of General Franco’s and the victims of the Civil War (only those killed on one side) being neglected. Under these frames, two “memory laws” have faced this contested legacy in 2007 and, more recently, in 2022. In this lecture, both of them are analysed to understand their root causes, meanings and effects.

The project has been supported by a grant from the Priority Research Area (Heritage) under the Strategic Programme Excellence Initiative at the Jagiellonian University.