Memoria y cultura: un analisis del caso audiovisual espanol

Abstract

Democratic memory is an issue that continues to be very present in public debate in Spain. Even today, there are still sectors of society that legitimise the figure of Franco, while the main right-wing parties question the need for political institutions to address the issue of memory. In this context, film, from civil society, has played an important role in constructing a collective memory through a narrative that is critically opposed to the official truth put forward by Franco's regime and currently defended by revisionism. The aim of this article is to examine this role played by cinema in the Spanish context, starting from the defence that the audiovisual medium is appropriate and capable of influencing individuals and is especially gifted for the representation of memory. We will also propose a contextualisation of the Spanish case, paying particular attention to the use of the audiovisual medium during the dictatorship, and how the regime made use of it in the construction of a favourable narrative, while at the same time limiting the possibilities of opposition from the cinematographic medium. We will delimit the type of cinema we are going to deal with, focusing on those productions that have an intentionally memorial character in relation to the Civil War and Franco's dictatorship. We will assess how, even during the dictatorship, the first critical approaches to the Civil War and the post-war period were made by some filmmakers, within a complex relationship with censorship. We will analyse how, since the end of the dictatorship, the subject has been dealt with expressly, particularly assessing the role that this type of film currently plays in the current public debate on democratic memory