Narrative accounts of the Spanish Civil War and Franco’s dictatorship: translation and memory at a crossroad

Abstract

This collection of articles endeavours to establish a new dialogue between translation and memory studies. By using a contemporary approach, this collection focuses on the cultural representations of the Spanish Civil War (1936War ( -1939 and the following Franco dictatorship to explore the effects and significance of translation within Spain. This contemporary reassessment in literature has led to new avenues of analysis and the examination of pending issues with current implications regarding the censorship that was applied during the dictatorship.Since the end of the dictatorship, especially since the 1990s, a new spirit of inquiry has led to a proliferation of books, films, and documentaries about the Civil War and the subsequent dictatorship. The work carried out by the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory, for example, led to the search and recovery of the remains of nearly 2,000 victims of the Francoist Repression. These factors have created an atmosphere of 'the right to memory', which means granting victims and their families the right to be remembered. In this way, 'the right to memory' is an ongoing debate, not only among those seeking their relatives, but also in the public arena, including different spheres, like politics, the media, and the cultural world of film and literature. This shift towards 'the right to memory' also implies turning toward social justice.Translation and memory encompass an emerging field that bridges the gap between these disciplines within Spanish Studies to provide a solid background for further analysis and research. The following articles give further visibility to this field, which needs to be explored in-depth, as it has the potential to be inserted within a larger map of narratives that deal with both translation and memory. Recent studies that analyse and reassess translation and memory have started to gain increasing significance in academic contexts, namely, literature, visual arts, history, and politics. This challenging and complex new field calls for these disciplines to create a space that critically analyses how cultural artefacts travel between different languages, cultures, and time periods. Although the nexus between translation and memory is relatively new, there are important contributions to the field that include works by Brownlie