The limits of remembrance during the Spanish Transition: Questioning the ‘Pact of Oblivion’ through the analysis of a censored film and a mass-grave exhumation

Abstract

The corpses of those who were defeated in the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) first emerged in the public sphere during the country’s Transition to democracy (1973–1982). For many, the end of the dictatorship was an opportunity to come to terms with memories of the conflict through cultural and social practices. However, the memories of the defeated could not be retrieved. This state of amnesia became known as the ‘Pact of Oblivion’, a supposed tacit agreement that eventually became an assumed ‘historical truth’. In our view, no such pact of oblivion ever actually existed. We suggest that, although there were indeed initiatives of remembrance, these were contained. In this way, the so-called ‘Pact of Oblivion’ was more of an imposition than a ‘social contract’. To show this, we undertake a comparative analysis of two cases from very different fields: the documentary Rocío (1980) and a mass-grave exhumation in the small village of Casas de Don Pedro (1978). Both share clear similarities regarding the limits of remembrance during the Spanish Transition. They also indicate how subtle power relations and structural power mechanisms prevented memory from entering into the regime of visibility.