Lectures / 19/02/2009 6:00 pm

Discussion: The Current Discourse in Spain Regarding the Spanish civil war

The Spanish Civil War resulted in the deaths of about 500,000 people and in victory for General Franco, whose forces received massive support from Germany and Italy. Following the end of the Franco regime in 1975, all of Spain’s political parties agreed to a pacto de silencio that was to enable the country to make a clean break with the past. ARMH–Association to Recover Historical Memory (www.memoriahistorica.org/) is now confronting how Spanish society has been dealing with this chapter of its history. Since it was founded in 2000, this organization has been sponsoring initiatives to come to terms with the events of the Spanish Civil War from 1936 to 1939 and 1945 to 1949. ARMH became known in conjunction with the exhumation and identification of the bodies of war victims, an action that triggered heated public discussions.