Disrupting ‘Wills to Truth’. How Catalan TV documentary contributed to the democratization of Spanish Civil War narratives

Abstract

Catalan television journalism disrupted the existing hegemonic discourses of the 1990s and 2000s by broaching unknown or silenced topics regarding civilian suffering and the post-Civil War atrocities of Franco’s fascist dictatorship. The author introduces the concept of ‘narrative democratization’ to highlight the existence of alternative narratives regarding the Spanish Civil War and its consequences, paying special attention to a number of documentaries by award-winning journalists Montserrat Armengou and Ricard Belis. It is suggested that narrative democratization is grounded in four discourse strategies: giving the victims a voice, unveiling untold or unknown stories, representing remembrance as an act of justice and internationalizing the narratives of the Civil War. Taking a Foucauldian approach to the concept of ‘will to truth’ ( volonté de vérité), the author argues that television documentaries presented new perspectives on the public story of the Spanish Civil War.

Narratives of memory in commemorative Spanish documentaries about the democratic transition: Adolfo Suárez. Mi historia and Bucarest, la memoria perdida

“…It also incorporates a broad ethical, political, juridical and historiographical debate (Espinosa, 2010) which questions the memory documentary’s capacity to reflect on collective Spanish identity at the beginning of the twenty-first century (Estrada, 2013: 3–4). This kind of question underlies Les fosses del silenci ( The Graves of Silence , Montse Armengou and Ricard Belis, 2003), a production made for the Catalan television station TV3, which has been appreciated for its combination of historical investigation and democratic conscience (Herrmann, 2008) as well as critical discourse and the imperatives of memory (Castelló, 2014).…”

Wind on the fog: A reflection on the policy of historical memory at Televisió de Catalunya through the documentary Perseguits i salvats

“…From the outset, it embarked on a dialectically ambitious project that, while it would address various periods of history, would inevitably arrive at the theme of the policy on historical memory at the time of the Spanish Transition; a policy that, as accurately described by Marta Rovira (2014), had been and continues to be an exercise in the appropriation of history, founded in dishonest practices, negotiated silences and the construction of a self-serving, quasi-mythological discursive hegemony (centred on the King, the Constitution and its 'fathers', etc.). As many authors have remarked (Castelló 2014;Herrmann 2008), among the documentaries that have most seriously contested this discourse there are those produced by Montse Armengou and Ricard Belis, which deal with some of the darkest and unknown episodes of repression under Franco. In this sense, TVC's attitude towards the traumatic past has been different from the Spanish public channel TVE which, although it has also covered some of these issues -specially during the socialists terms of Rodríguez Zapatero -has traditionally taken a more soft position in regards of denouncing Francoist's atrocities.…”

Reimagining Spain

“…The work of Armengou and Belis has been broadcast on numerous occasions on Catalan and Spanish television as well as in special sessions in cultural venues. And, being one of the first documentaries in the genre of the "historical memory" they have been a reference for the works produced after and have been a source of analysis in various scholarly publications (see Sánchez-Biosca 2005;Herrmann 2008;Estrada 2010a;Faber 2011;Coronado Ruiz and Martín Sánchez 2012;Estrada 2013;Espinós Felipe 2014;Ribeiro de Menezes 2014;Castelló 2014). Whereas the Spanish National Television mostly produced romanticized and depoliticized versions of the recent past, 187 avoiding a more critical research based account, it was the local television stations in the peripheral autonomous regions like Catalonia or Basque Country who were eager to produce a more critical account (Estrada 2010a;Castelló 2014).…”