Transnational Soldiers vs Resistance National Accounts: The Legend of la Nueve and the “Spanish” Liberation of Paris

Abstract

The reconstruction of the History of the Resistance in France, the memories of former combatants and their relatives, and an important culture industry have all been developed within a national context, thereby hiding the transnational character of this resistance over the years. This paper shows first how the French State came to “Frenchify” this Resistance and, decades later, civil society and that culture industry tried to “Spanishise” the Liberation of Paris through the construction of the legend of “la Nueve”. With this in mind, the current paper focuses mainly on a historical and memorial analysis of the French infantry company la Nueve, through the recollections and experiences of numerous transnational soldiers, in order to stress the “a la carte” reconstruction of its history, and highlighting the particular role played by the French-Spanish collective memory over the last twenty years.