Francoist Repression and Incarceration in Contemporary Spanish Culture: Justice through Memory (Palgrave Studies in Cultural Heritage and Conflict) 3031133919, 9783031133916

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PALGRAVE STUDIES IN CULTURAL HERITAGE AND CONFLICT

Francoist Repression and Incarceration in Contemporary Spanish Culture Justice through Memory Maureen Tobin Stanley

Palgrave Studies in Cultural Heritage and Conflict Series Editors

Ihab Saloul University of Amsterdam Amsterdam, Noord-Holland, The Netherlands Rob van der Laarse University of Amsterdam Amsterdam, Noord-Holland, The Netherlands Britt Baillie McDonald Institute of Archaeology University of Cambridge Cambridge, UK

This book series explores the relationship between cultural heritage and conflict. The key themes of the series are the heritage and memory of war and conflict, contested heritage, and competing memories. The series editors seek books that analyze the dynamics of the past from the perspective of tangible and intangible remnants, spaces, and traces as well as heritage appropriations and restitutions, significations, musealizations, and mediatizations in the present. Books in the series should address topics such as the politics of heritage and conflict, identity and trauma, mourning and reconciliation, nationalism and ethnicity, diaspora and intergenerational memories, painful heritage and terrorscapes, as well as the mediated reenactments of conflicted pasts.

Maureen Tobin Stanley

Francoist Repression and Incarceration in Contemporary Spanish Culture Justice through Memory

Maureen Tobin Stanley World Languages and Cultures University of Minnesota Duluth, MN, USA

ISSN 2634-6419     ISSN 2634-6427 (electronic) Palgrave Studies in Cultural Heritage and Conflict ISBN 978-3-031-13391-6    ISBN 978-3-031-13392-3 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13392-3 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Lori Ellis / Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

To Ángel Fernández, my inspiration

Acknowledgments

This project could not have come to fruition without the support and guidance of so many people. I am immensely grateful to all. My place of work, the University of Minnesota, particularly the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (formerly the College of Liberal Arts) at the Duluth campus (UMD), has provided an environment of intellectual freedom in which to explore and grow in the twenty years of my employment. Myriad funding sources and opportunities have supported the research for this book: a sabbatical in spring 2020, a U of M Grant-in-Aid of Artistry and Research, an Imagine Grant, several Chancellor’s Small Grants, and collegiate research grants, as well as yearly faculty development funds. I am immeasurably thankful to Ángel Fernández whose stories of trauma, incarceration, and memory activism prompted the greater project. Our correspondence over the years, our face-to-face interaction at his home in Toulouse, France, and his generosity in terms of time, energy, and materials, I hope are duly honored in this volume. Deep thanks go to scholar, researcher, and memory activist Santiago de Córdoba Ortega, and his generous wife María Luisa Estepa, who opened their home in Jaén, their hearts, and their wealth of knowledge to me. A world of gratitude goes to filmmaker Almudena Carracedo for her openness to my requests and questions, and especially for her infectious, transformative engagement. Thanks to Dominique Fernandez for sharing his story, his writings, his passion for activism, and his love for Ángel. I humbly extend my appreciation to all the conference organizers and attendees over the years for the ability to present pieces of the book at vii

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

different stages and receive valuable feedback. Thanks to Cindy Christian of the Royal D. Alworth, Jr., Institute for International Studies, for the invitations to present my work at UMD. My gratitude extends to the team at Palgrave Macmillan, especially Camille Davies and particularly Antony Sami. Final thanks go to those close to me whose constant daily support, love, and cheerleading pushed the project forward—especially during the challenges of the pandemic. Thank you Kärin Haidos and my children, Gabriel Thomas Stanley and Elena Montserrat Stanley, for reading portions of the book and providing valuable feedback. I am deeply grateful to my dear friend, colleague, and department head, Jennifer Brady, whose enthusiasm for the project as well as editing and publishing expertise gave me the wherewithal to continue moving forward. Words do not suffice to convey my infinite gratitude to my life partner, Thomas Stanley, whose love and support has been a constant over the last three decades. I thank all from the bottom of my heart for their kindness and generosity of spirit.

Praise for Francoist Repression and Incarceration in Contemporary Spanish Culture “Professor Tobin-Stanley’s Francoist Repression and Incarceration in Contemporary Spanish Culture: Justice through Memory is an essential addition to the field of memory studies in contemporary Spain. Her close readings of literary and filmic texts—both well-known (El lápiz del carpintero, Pa negre, La voz dormida, El lector de Julio Verne)-and lesser-known (the biopic Ángel, Si ha los tres años no he vuelto, the documentary El silencio de otros)—is combined with a solid critical and theoretical approach to provide the reader with profound insights into this crucial topic of justice through memory.” —Thomas Deveny, Professor Emeritus, MacDaniel College, Maryland, USA “A remarkable book that engages with the important topic of memory and violence during the Spanish dictatorship, with original analysis and intellectual rigor. Francoist Repression and Incarceration in Contemporary Spanish Culture: Justice through Memory contests Francoist oblivion by examining the literary and filmic experience of repression during the darkest period of modern Spanish history. This book will appeal to specialists and general readers interested in Spain and the ethics of remembering. It is a fundamental contribution to the education of students interested in learning the cultural history of twentieth century Spain.” —Cristina Moreiras-Menor, University of Michigan, Michigan, USA “The Spanish Civil War and its aftermath continue to provoke outrage in Spain and abroad as mounting evidence reveals in historical fiction, in films and documentaries, and oral testimonies—especially “femimemories”—nothing less than the Francoist genocide, a history smothered but not extinguished. Concomitantly, the victims demand recognition and justice in the name of historical memory. As Dr. Tobin-Stanley has concluded in this splendid assemblage of incisive and welldocumented essays, Spanish transgenerational trauma is the terrifying, on-going legacy of the War and the Franco dictatorship.” —Nancy Membrez, Professor, University of Texas at San Antonio, Texas, USA

“This timely and well-curated book does much to further the field of the recuperation of the historical memory in contemporary Spanish cultural productions. Anchored by critical theory, it explores the role of memory in various facets of suppressed stories of the trauma inflicted by the Francoist regime. Justice through Memory provides valuable insights and is an indispensable read for scholars and students of contemporary Spanish literature and culture.” —Victoria Ketz, Professor, La Salle University, Pennsylvania, USA “Through insightful, informed readings of key works and moments, Francoist Repression and Incarceration in Contemporary Spanish Culture shows how memory work in dictatorial and post-Franco Spain has served to expose, denounce, and counteract the massive injustice of Francoism—and the woeful lack of attention to matters of justice in the democratic transition that followed it. Maureen Tobin Stanley’s valiant book is an original, necessary—and, at times, moving—contribution to Iberian memory studies.” —Sebastiaan Faber, Professor, Oberlin College, Ohio, USA

Contents

1 Introduction:  Legislation, the Banality of Evil, and the Moral Imperative of Memory  1 Laws and Legislation   3 Laws: Killing and Incarceration   3 Laws: The Removal of Children   4 Laws: Legislated Impunity   6 Laws: Justice for Victims   6 To Rub History Against the Grain: The Moral Imperative of Memory  10 A Cartography of Ubiquitous Repression  22 Works Cited  22 2 The  Aestheticized Pilgrimage from Fragmentation to Community: The Journey from the Testimonial Page to the Documentary Screen of Ángel Fernández Vicente (b. 1928), Anti-fascist Resistant, Political Prisoner, and Expatriate 25 Introduction  25 Brief Biography of Ángel Fernández Vicente  28 Description and Overview of the Works  29 Testimony  32 Aestheticizing Trauma  38 Aestheticizing Trauma: Federico García Lorca as a Universal Symbol  42 xi

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Aesthetics: Ángel’s Poetic and Pictorial Language of Incarceration  45 Aesthetics: Catalyst of Memory  48 Aesthetics of Remembrance: Remembering the Mother through the Artifice of Guernica  50 The Omnipresence of the Absent Mother: Solace, Flight, and Fugue  54 Bird Imagery  56 Memory Activism  60 Testimony’s Forward Gaze  60 Written Testimonies  62 3 The  Pórtico de la Gloria in Manuel Rivas’ Postwar Novel O lapis do carpinteiro (The Carpenter’s Pencil): Art and Hagiography as a Metaphor That Subverts the Glory of Franco’s New Spain 65 Introduction  65 Manuel Rivas: Renown, Writing, and Resurrection of Galician Memory and Letters  67 Repression of Galicia  68 History and Memory  70 Mythmaking and Counter-memory  72 The Portico of Glory  74 Subversion of the Nationalized Consecration of Victory  76 Haunting, Ethics of Remembrance, and Justice  81 Works Cited  90 4 The  Path to Ambiguous Monstrosity: Illness, Martyrdom, and Castration in Emili Teixidor’s 2003 Novel and Agustí Villaronga’s Eponymous 2010 Film Pa negre (Black Bread) 93 Introduction  93 Symbiosis: Arcadian Childhood and Feminine Imagery Before the War  98 Nationalized Catholicism 101 Illness and Racial Hygiene: “Vae victis!,” Say the Victors 102 Communion 109 Martyrs, Martyrdom, Saints, and Christ Imagery 112 Castration: In the Novel and Film 119 The Ambiguation of Monstrosity 126 Conclusions 130 Works Cited 131

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5 Transgenerational  Feminist Memory in Dulce Chacón’s 2002 Novel La voz dormida (The Sleeping Voice)135 Introduction 135 Plot Summary, Narrative, Structure, and Chacón’s Purpose of Femimemory 140 Early Spanish Feminism as a Context for Chacón’s Novel: Rights Won, Rights Lost, and Reprisals 144 The Nationalist Construct of Rojas 147 Repression: Criminalization, Incarceration, Sentencing, and Execution 148 Torture, Interrogation, and Trauma: The Regime’s Fiction of Power 150 Torture in Zambrano’s Cinematic Adaptation of Chacón’s La voz dormida: The Male Gaze 163 Maternal-Sororal Interdependency, Matrilineage, and Matrilineal Legacy 172 Maternity and Biological Matrilineage 172 Hortensia’s Notebooks: Transformational Literacy and Transgenerational Legacy 174 Transgenerational Political Legacy 180 Conclusions and Hopeful Beginnings 182 Works Cited 185 6 Miscarriage  of Justice: The Perverted Fairy Tale of Maternity and State-Sanctioned Removal of Children from Political Prisoners in Ana Cañil’s 2011 Novel Si a los tres años no he vuelto (If I Have Not Returned in Three Years)189 Introduction 189 “Els nens perduts”: Legislation and the Removal of Children 192 The Importance of Testimony 193 The Construct of Gender: Feminism, Fascism, and Anti-­feminism  196 Franco’s Penitentiary Universe 200 The Penitentiary Galaxy for Women: Ventas, Oropesa, and San Isidro 201 Repression: Interrogation, Gendered Torture, and Sexual Violence  203 Incarcerated Children 213 María Topete Fernández 219 Propaganda and Redención 224

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A Romance’s Restitution and a Fairy-Tale Ending 233 Works Cited 235 7 Lessons  Learned in Almudena Grandes’ 2012 Bildungsroman El lector de Julio Verne (The Reader of Jules Verne): Gender, Repression, and Resistance239 Introduction 239 Almudena Grandes’ Literary Corpus and Literature’s Memory 242 Constructing a Shared Past: The Legacy of Galdós in Grandes’ Episodios de una Guerra Interminable  243 The Reality of Terror in Andalusia and the Nationalist Narrative of Manly Justice 245 The Repression of Women 246 Hegemonic Masculinity: Antonino as a Paradoxical Role Model 248 Repressed and Resistant Alternative Role Models 253 The Repression of Women and Their Resistance 255 Filomena 257 Miraculous Pregnancies 262 Female Interrogation 263 Pastora 265 Doña Elena and the Artifacts of Memory 268 Conclusions and New Beginnings: Memory and Morality 271 Works Cited 272 8 Opening  Graves and Seeking Closure: Remembering the Dismembered Beloved on the Quest for Justice in Almudena Carracedo and Robert Bahar’s 2018 Documentary El silencio de otros (The Silence of Others)277 Introduction 277 La Querella Argentina (the Argentine Lawsuit) 279 Distrust Versus Documentaries 283 Amnesty, Amnesia, and the “Democratic Impunity” of the Transition 286 Laws: Steps Toward Human Rights 289 Defining Memory and the Role of El silencio de otros in Both Communicative and Cultural Memory 292 Exhuming the Dearly Dispatched: María Martín and Ascensión Mendieta’s Quests 295

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María Martín’s Buried—But Not Forgotten—Mother: Faustina López 300 Ascensión Mendieta’s Fruitful Quest: The Homecoming of Timoteo Mendieta’s Remains 306 Conclusion: El silencio de otros as an Instrument of Justice 316 Works Cited 318 Epilogue323 Works Cited327 Index329

About the Author

Maureen  Tobin  Stanley  (b. 1969 Torrejón de Ardoz, PhD, Michigan State University, 2000) is Professor of Hispanic Studies (University of Minnesota Duluth). She has published two co-edited volumes on female exile (Palgrave Macmillan 2012, 2007), as well as co-edited anthologies on hybridity in Spanish culture and on the recovery of historical memory in post-Franco Spain (2011, 2016). Her research includes the filmic, literary, testimonial, and photographic representation of the Spanish Nazi camp experience. She has also published on contemporary cinema and narrative. Her projects relate to the vindication of Franco’s political prisoners, the literary and cinematic representation of migration, and female crime fiction.

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List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 The Iberian Peninsula behind barbed wires in Rebelde I46 Fig. 2.2 Ángel’s recontextualization of Picasso’s Guernica in Fragments d’Histoire d’une enfance brisée51 Fig. 2.3 Ángel’s illustration of the bombing in Figueres and dying children reminiscent of Picasso’s Guernica in Fragments d’Histoire d’une enfance brisée53 Fig. 2.4 Ángel’s drawing of his friend and fellow inmate Eusebio in Reblede I58 Fig. 8.1 Description: María Martín sits by the road which covers the mass grave containing her mother’s remains. © Semilla Verde Productions. (Photo Credit: Almudena Carracedo) 302 Fig. 8.2 Description: Ascensión Mendieta enters the cemetery where her father’s remains are buried in a mass grave. © Semilla Verde Productions. (Photo Credit: Modesto Aranda) 311 Fig. 8.3 Description: The statues featured in The Silence of Others, on a mountaintop in the Valley of Jerte, by sculptor Francisco Cedenilla. © Semilla Verde Productions. (Photo Credit: Álvaro Minguito)313 Fig. 8.4 Description: The statues featured in The Silence of Others, on a mountaintop in the Valley of Jerte, by sculptor Francisco Cedenilla. © Semilla Verde Productions. (Photo Credit: Álvaro Minguito)313

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Legislation, the Banality of Evil, and the Moral Imperative of Memory

The injustices of Franco’s justice system were the fruit of the strategized manipulation of the law, in effect, what former Minister of the Interior, Ramón Serrano Suñer, described in his memoirs as “backwards justice.” Memory, as elucidated in the works studied in this book, bears a moral imperative to vindicate, seek justice through remembrance, and re-­member the dis-membered traumatized lives and bodies. Memory is a phenomenon with political and ethical implications (Erll, Memory 4). As such, remembering is a purposeful act of belonging (J. Assmann 114) that contends against assimilatory forgetting (A. Assmann 99). Each of the works studied in this book combats the assimilatory forgetting mandated by the victors and implemented through slaughter, fear, and shame. The remembrance carried out by the authors and filmmakers may not balance the scales of justice, but it certainly tips them, lessening the enduring oppressive weight of Francoist injustice in the present. When the cartography of the Iberian nation was blue and the defeat of the legitimate Republic was patent, General Francisco Franco, head of the New Spanish State, declared there to be two million criminals. These so-­ called lawbreakers were the vanquished Republicans who did not necessarily commit a crime under the rule of law, justice, and order, but rather were individuals whose ties to the Republic following the Nationalist victory rendered them the collective “red” enemy of the new Francoist © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Tobin Stanley, Francoist Repression and Incarceration in Contemporary Spanish Culture, Palgrave Studies in Cultural Heritage and Conflict, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13392-3_1

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authoritarian state. The Civil War Archive, also known as the Document Center of Historical Memory, houses millions of “fichas” or dockets on individuals linked to the Republic, be they teachers, public functionaries, politicians, or combatants. Many index cards in what seem to be an infinite number of drawers do not state a crime, but rather “desafecto al régimen” (disaffection for the regime), an emotional term in a carnivalesque, topsy-­ turvy world. Having a “ficha” automatically suspended the rights and privileges of any individual “fichado,” such as the right to work, rendering an individual socially and economically impotent, transforming him or her into a sociopolitical economic castrate. Justice through Memory: Francoist Repression and Incarceration in Contemporary Spanish Culture Studies is about the cultural articulation of how History (official, monumental History until now fashioned by the victors) and histories (remembered personal, transgenerational, meaningful experiences) are represented, expressed, and made to be understood at a human level. In a general sense, this book explores how pain and trauma are experienced and transmitted transgenerationally. It analyzes the manner in which real people and fictional characters experience the rupture of incarceration or postwar repression, as their voices create a vindicating collective memory that counters the authoritarian narrative that demonized them and the fascist laws that criminalized and repressed them. Justice through Memory sheds light on not just the repressed defeated, but also the doubly vulnerable within the hypermasculinized authoritarian regime: the children of war and women. The works by and about women participate in what I term “femimemory,” a transgenerational gynocentric recovery of the past whose bidirectional ethical gaze regards and transmits the past as it looks forward to a more just future. This book breaks the persistent cycle of the denial of Francoist malfeasance. The works studied attest to personal and collective trauma, a trauma that demands acknowledgment, vindication of its victims, and accountability for its perpetrators—at both the individual and institutional levels. Repression in Francoist Spain took many forms. Not only did it take livelihoods, it made many lives not worth living and, in the maximum expression of authoritarianism, murdered indiscriminately. Manuel Rivas in the prologue to La fuerza de la razón comments on “los crímenes del franquismo” (the crimes of Francoism) and describes the postwar period as characterized by “una represión sin piedad” (a merciless repression) (Rivas 15). Thousands of Republican children were stolen. Tens of thousands of Republicans were arrested, many of whom disappeared by what

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the European Council (el Consejo de Europa) has termed Francoist death squads. This loss of human life on Iberian soil has been referred to as the Spanish Holocaust (Rivas 16). A bureaucratic coordination of laws made possible the injustices of Franco’s justice system. The transition to democracy’s 1977 Amnesty Law cemented the impunity surrounding the dictatorship’s human rights violations.

Laws and Legislation In order to claim power, the Nationalists strategically manipulated legislation so that they would be on the right side of the law and their opponents were stripped of any recourse. The Machiavellian processes legitimized the military coup and ensuing New State, deemed the Republic illegal, criminalized any anti-Nationalist resistance or sentiment with the charge of rebellion, and criminalized communism. The laws that contextualize the works studied can be divided into four categories: those that make killing and incarceration possible, legalize the removal of children, foster impunity for the victimizers, and seek justice for victims.

Laws: Killing and Incarceration On July 28, 1936, the Nationalist rebel’s National Defense Council (Junta de Defensa Nacional) termed the uprising a legal act, declared a state of war for the entirety of Spain—not just the zones they had taken over—and decreed that all those resisting Nationalist forces would be charged with rebellion and punished accordingly (Ruiz 23). Those found to be rebels were to redeem themselves through hard labor. Franco’s justice also included executions, imprisonment, fines, and purging from the workforce (functionary posts, professions, labor) (Ruiz 25). Spain would be under martial law until April 1948, making military justice the adjudicating mechanism during and after the war (Ruiz 24). Franco’s justice was not limited to only those with blood on their hands, but potentially also included anyone living in a Republican zone. In December 1938, Franco’s brother-in-law and Minister of the Interior, Ramón Serrano Suñer, charged a special commission, the Comisión Bellón, with “proving” the legitimacy of the New State and the illegality of the Republic. In this report, due six weeks after the mandate to complete it, the military uprising was not to be referred to as a rebellion. The Republican government was to be deemed retroactively illegal before the military coup on the basis

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that the Frente Popular (the Popular Front) had allegedly falsified the election results, and as a result the Republican organizations were criminal (Ruiz 19–21). In his study La justicia de Franco: La represión en Madrid tras la Guerra Civil, historian Julius Ruiz considers the Bellón Commission Report a parody of the truth (21). Between April 1939 and 1940, military courts had sentenced 40,000 individuals on the charge of rebellion. Ruiz references Serrano Suñer’s memoirs from 1977 (two years after Franco’s death) in which he refers to the charge of rebellion as “absurd” and was simply “la justicia al revés” (backwards justice) (24). The nineteenth-century Ley de Fugas (Flight Law) permits the shooting of prisoners or detainees who flee. In effect, this law allows for the indiscriminate killing of captives without judicial process or orders. The 1939 Ley de Burgos, Ley de Sanciones y Responsabilidades Civiles (Law of Civil Sanctions and Responsibilities), was retroactive to 1934, made the Republic illegal, criminalized supporters of the Republic, and opened the door for persecution and extermination. In March 1940, the Ley sobre la Represión de la Masonería y del Comunismo (the Law on the Repression of Masonry and Communism) criminalized the international movements of masonry and communism, scapegoating them for the supposed degeneration and decadence in Spain (Ruiz 26). In April 1940, Franco’s Minister of Justice requested an investigation and a complete report on the criminality under Marxism (i.e., the Republic). The report, released in 1943, concluded that on July 18, 1936, General Franco led the “legítimo movimiento de defensa” (legitimate movement of defense) (Ruiz 22–23).

Laws: The Removal of Children Dr. Antonio Vallejo Nágera, Comandante Psiquiatra (Psychiatrist Commander), who pathologized political dissidence, is the architect of family separations. In March 1936, Vallejo Nágera publishes the “Eugenics of Spanishness [Hispanidad] and the Regeneration of the Race,” in which he links the true Spanish race to medieval crusaders and relates the origins of others to falsely converted fourteenth-century Sephardic Jews. These theories led, subsequently, Vallejo Nágera to propose a modern inquisition with a Corps of Inquisitors. In the summer of 1938, Vallejo Nágera requests authorization to create the unprecedented Gabinete de Investigaciones Psicológicas (Cabinet of Psychological Research) in which he would conduct experiments on captured Republicans to research the

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“raíces biopsíquicas del marxismo” (biopsychological roots of Marxism) (Vinyes, Armengou, Belis 31). The conclusions of the investigations made manifest the inferiority of the political adversary, arming the authoritarian regime with “scientific” proof, reasoning, and taxonomy to be weaponized against the enemy (Vinyes et al. 32). Vallejo Nágera’s study of fifty female inmates of the Málaga prison found that 20% were social imbeciles and that 24% were antisocial psychopaths. The supposedly empirical study provided the scientific justification to legislate the separation of children from their Republican parents. Based on eugenics—whose aim was to staunch the degeneration of the race and spur on its generation—these findings regarding female prisoners led to the removal of children from their inmate mothers. The Ministry of Justice order (March 30, 1940), in insidious doublespeak, promulgated mothers’ right to nurse their children until the age of three, but in actuality implemented the forced separation of children from their mothers (Vinyes et al. 57). The Protection of Orphans decree of November 23, 1940, places wards in beneficence institutions and confers upon said institutions the status of legal guardians, thus ending parents’ guardianship and custody of their offspring “en beneficio del Estado franquista” (in benefit of the Francoist state) (Vinyes et  al. 62). Legal guardianship was reserved for “personas irreprochables desde el triple punto de vista religioso, ético y nacional” (people [deemed] irreproachable from the triple religious, ethical, and national point of view), that as Vinyes, Armengou, and Belis underscore, “en el periodo de posguerra tenía una significación política obvia, muy diferente de la de los padres y madres encarcelados” (during the postwar period had an obvious political meaning, very different from that of the incarcerated fathers and mothers) (63). The “Inscripción de Niños” (Inscription/Registry of Children) Law of December 4, 1941, allows for children’s name changes within the Civil Registry, thus making it impossible for their Republican families to find them and be reunited. Separated from their parents, children who could not remember their own names, had been repatriated, or whose parents were missing according to the Juvenile Courts, could be inscribed in the Civil Registry with new names. This renaming of the children of the incarcerated, executed, exiled, or missing—now wards of the state or religious institutions—not only made way for irregular adoptions, but also made tracing of the children problematic and family reunification nearly impossible. What Vinyes et al. term the punitive politics of the dictatorship bureaucratically

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institutionalized “la division perpetua del país entre vencedores y vencidos” (the perpetual division of the country between victors and vanquished) (64).

Laws: Legislated Impunity Six years before the dictator’s death, the 1969 decree of prescripción nullified and decriminalized crimes committed before April 1, 1939 (i.e., the official end of the Spanish Civil War)—in other words, retroactively imposing a type of statute of limitations and giving full impunity and immunity to the perpetrators. The result, then, was that victims—who had been political detainees—could not seek justice against their perpetrators. Presumption of innocence only comes about in 1978 with Article 24.2 of the current Spanish constitution. While many Republicans were labeled as criminals, incarcerated, tortured, and executed by the victors, not one charge has been brought against a nacional for having victimized a republicano. Francoist legislation and the 1977 Amnesty Law attest to the lack of justice in the justice system. In fact, laws such as the Protection of Orphans and Amnesty are irrefutably insidious. While the former purports protecting the young left vulnerable by war, in reality it was a tool and weapon to erase Republicanism by cutting off the offspring of “reds” from their families and placing them in eugenically hygienic environments, thus reversing nature through nurture. While the Amnesty Law, perhaps more duplicitous in its double speak, under the guise of wiping the slate clean, seemingly expunged the record of those incarcerated for political crimes, this apparently magnanimous law conferred impunity to all who perpetrated crimes against the defeated. If justice entails the equal application of the law, a law that whitewashes the past and precludes holding kidnappers, torturers, and murderers accountable is unjust. Perpetrators were the fists, trigger fingers, and sexual organs of the institutional organism. While the Amnesty Law liberated political prisoners from bondage, it also liberated fascist perpetrators from the possibility of prosecution.

Laws: Justice for Victims The 2007 Law of Historical Memory condemns Francoism, as contained in the European Council Parliamentary Report signed on March 17, 2006, denounces “las graves violaciones de Derechos Humanos cometidas en España entre los años 1939 y 1975” (the grave human rights violations

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committed in Spain between the years 1939 and 1975) and proclaims the “carácter injusto” (unjust character) of the dictatorship’s sentences, sanctions, and personal violence that were politically and ideologically motivated (53410). Article 3 declares the illegitimacy of the courts and administrative bodies that infringed upon the right to due process, and the illegitimacy of sanctions based on political, ideological, or religious beliefs. It unequivocally underscores that sentences and dispositions contrary to human rights are now judicially invalid. Furthermore, the Law of Historical Memory contributes to “la rehabilitación moral de quienes sufrieron tan injustas sanciones y condenas” (the moral rehabilitation of those who suffered such unjust sanctions and sentences) and promotes the “reparación moral y la recuperación de su memoria personal y familiar” (moral reparation and recovery of the personal and family memory) of those who suffered violence or persecution during the civil war or dictatorship (53410–11). However, the “reparación moral” (moral reparation) granted by the Law of Historical Memory, according to Judge Baltasar Garzón, is “lejos de los estandartes de justicia, verdad y reparación como los entiende el derecho internacional” (far from the standards of justice, truth, and reparation as understood in international law) (Fuerza 45). Given the fact that universal law is based on the principle of seeking justice for the victims and fighting against impunity, cases not prosecuted successfully or at all in their places of occurrence can gain traction under universal jurisdiction. Garzón underscores that an independent judge may always “exigir el enjuiciamiento, desarrollar la investigación y conseguir la protección de las víctimas garantizándoles … verdad y reparación” (demand legal process, unfold an investigation, and attain protection of the victims guaranteeing them truth and reparation) (Fuerza 71). When human rights abuses are not addressed through domestic legal proceedings, complaints can be processed regionally and internationally in order to ensure the respect of human rights and enforcement of international standards. (United Nations. Foundation for International Human Rights Law). International Law protects human rights regardless of victims’ nationality. Judge Garzón has been decisive in demanding justice related to terrorism, drug trafficking, and organized crime, and has been a defender of human rights and international jurisdiction. He is internationally known for cases against the Basque separatist terrorist organization ETA and genocidal Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. In May 2010, the Consejo General del Poder Judicial (General Council of Judicial Power)

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provisionally suspended the magistrate from the bench for investigating “los crímenes del franquismo” (the crimes of Francoism) (Garzón, Fuerza 35). Manuel Rivas proclaims Garzón to be a symbol of democratic Spain and considers the fact that he was under investigation for investigating Francoist criminals and crimes of the early postwar period to be “la trama de un cruel oxímoron” (the plot of a cruel oxymoron) (“Prólogo” 16). Garzón is the lynchpin that releases the legal cover-up of tens of thousands of disappeared and thousands of stolen children. The passage of Spain’s 2007 Ley de memoria histórica (Law of Historical Memory), the ongoing negotiation of exhuming bodies from mass graves, Judge Baltasar Garzón’s removal from the bench, and the anniversaries of key moments in Spain’s democratic transition have all contributed to the production of extensive commentary and reflections on the recent past in the Spanish media as well as in academic publications. This interest has spilled over into areas of artistic expression as well, where reevaluating events, recreating versions of what happened during the civil war and the Franco years, and attempting to fill in gaps from those periods have become a central focus. The trauma and tragedy of the war and the regime persist and have found expression in a proliferation of works. Maryse Bertand de Muñoz calculates that between 1996 and 2011, more than 400 novels on the civil war were published. In this current book on some well-known works and others that have yet to receive much critical attention, I explore the role of memory and the facing of trauma as a means of recovering justice in recent Spanish narrative, testimony, and film. While the name given to Spain’s 2007 Law of Historical Memory might seem to be an oxymoron given Pierre Nora’s discreet division between “histoire” and “mémoire,” it aimed to remember and vindicate a past (and individual memories and suffering) that had been officially erased from the annals of history by the forty-year fascist dictatorship that ended in 1975. The law aspires to restore justice by recognizing the victims of persecution and reprisals, vindicating their personal and familial tragedies, and reconfering citizenship and nationality to political exiles and their descendants. In spite of great promise, the law has proven to be ineffectual, leaving victims, their families, and memory associations to seek justice of their own accord. In September 2020, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s1 cabinet approved the Law of Democratic Memory, which complements the 2007 Law of 1

 Sánchez belongs to PSOE (the Socialist Party).

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Historical Memory through reparations, nullification of unjust sentences, identification of mass graves, and exhumation of victims, among other measures. Nonetheless, the 2020 Law of Democratic Memory does not propose overturning the 1977 Amnesty Law, nor has the Parliament approved it at the time of writing this manuscript. The debate on history and memory is heated and inconclusive. Within the Spanish context, on one end of the spectrum is Santos Juliá, for whom history is the objective truth and academic knowledge about the past and memory refers to all other representations. Sebastiaan Faber views this binary approach as epistemologically flawed (“Usted” 15). On the other end of the spectrum from Juliá, Jesús Izquierdo Martín and Pablo Sánchez León (48–64) argue for a supplemental historiography that underscores solidarity and compassion. Yet Faber cautions against a discussion framed in hierarchical binary opposition: “objectivity vs. subjectivity, interestedness vs. disinterestedness, [or] truth vs. falsity” (“Usted” 16). Joan Ramon Resina underscores that the memorialistic reconstruction of the past must be balanced with factual reality if it is to have moral authority (119). Purported objectivity creates the myth of a single reading of the past, instead of a complex multifaceted, holistic, poly-experiential reality. According to Faber, history and collective memory are interdependent and reciprocally nourish and contest each other (20–21). Memory checks and reins in the supremacy of facticity. In Tratado de la injusticia, Manuel Reyes Mate states, “Sin memoria la injusticia deja de ser actual y, lo que es más grave, deja de ser” (Without memory, injustice ceases to be current, and more gravely, ceases to be) (27). Memory, inextricably linked to the victim’s gaze and concomitant remembrance of wrongdoing, is the starting point to rectify injustice. Today, in the third decade of the twenty-first century, Spain continues to face the fact that its inheritance is trauma. While both the so-called two Spains were ravaged by war and families were fractured, the defeated were prohibited from acknowledging the persecution and reprisals, the cleansing and cruelty that the victors—with impunity—waged upon them. For the victim of injustice, to not articulate the victimization, to be blamed for his or her own suffering, and to absolve the agent of the suffering of accountability signify a secondary or perhaps exponential victimization. The silence enshrouding the injustices wreaked by the Francoist justice system applied not only to those who were the direct objects of violence but also to those indirectly affected by violence; in other words, all who lived on Spanish soil were immersed in the ubiquitous and omnipresent

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fear of reprisals. Silence is the unsaid, that which has not been recounted. Silence is also the complicity of all who do not acknowledge the past or take steps to remedy wrongdoing. The Nationalist victory and the Republican defeat were constructed as a rigid binary oppositional paradigm. A paradigm that posits one versus the other, us versus them, worthy of value versus not, deserving of dignity versus not, is inherently dehumanizing. While the Nationalists viewed themselves as being on the right side, entitled and human, the defeated were viewed in exactly opposite terms: inhuman and entitled to nothing, not even the right to be remembered. When gender is added to this paradigm, the condition of femaleness further inferiorizes and dismisses las rojas (regardless of being viewed by the androcentric victors or their androcentric fellow defeated comrades). This topic of the female penal system will be treated in three of the chapters. The works analyzed in this book give voice and presence to the fictional and factual victims of the crimes of Francoism. In so doing, they rewrite the plot of the cruel oxymoron set in motion with Franco’s backwards justice.

To Rub History Against the Grain: The Moral Imperative of Memory Walter Benjamin considers the documents of culture to be documents of barbarism; in other words, culture is based on the plundering carried out by the victors of history. Given cultural transmission from the past to the present, Benjamin maintains an onus to “rub history against the grain” (Caygill 73). The defeated had been robbed of their place in History. Mediated remembrance combats the assimilatory forgetting imposed by the regime and attests to belonging. The works by (and about) Ángel Fernández, by Manuel Rivas, Emili Teixidor, Agustí Villaronga, Dulce Chacón, Ana Cañil, Almudena Grandes, Almudena Carracedo, and Robert Bahar, as counternarratives, demand victims’ due vindication as they rub against the grain of History. These works and the present study attest to the fact that the victims matter, that they were wronged, that they merit acknowledgment, and that their perpetrators and the regime working in consort must be held accountable—even if this means their plight being known and understood and, as a result, having its rightful place in the collective cultural imaginary.

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The need for memory is based on the need to cope with trauma and horror. According to psychoanalyst Ángeles Córcoles, horror is transmitted from one generation to the next when a subject cannot represent or articulate the violence he or she suffered (423). For Gómez Marín and Hernández Jiménez in their study on postwar transgenerational psychosocial trauma, an individual’s trauma cannot be separated from society or its institutions (474). As José María Vargas indicates, the war “left the entirety of Spanish society traumatized” (4). Sophie Milquet echoes the sentiment as does María Guerrero for whom the purpose of contemporary Spanish works is to help survivors work through trauma (14). Hence, the nature and importance of this project is that it fosters healing (on a collective and transgenerational level) by allowing students, readers, and scholars to become co-owners and participants (Felman and Laub) in the testimonialized personal and national trauma. Hannah Arendt asserts that totalitarianism “ultimately escapes human comprehension because its horror … is in the realm of the unreal” and is characterized by the “banality of evil” (Kristeva 144). This radical evil, or banality of evil, “always entails the destruction of thinking (a destruction that is surreptitious, generalized, imperceptible and thus banal, though it is also scandalous) which prefigures the scandalous annihilation of life” (Kristeva 144). Totalitarianism neutralizes thinking, so that perpetrators desist in independent thought and willingly obey their superiors’ orders. Distilling Arendt’s theories on the underpinnings of Nazism, Julia Kristeva synthesizes that the majority of those who obeyed Nazi orders “were not sadistic murderers or inveterate torturers,” rather their banality was the commonplace renunciation of “personal judgment.” Nonetheless, the banal condition is a far cry from innocence (Kristeva 148–49). Arendt finds banality frightening for its thoughtlessness. Kristeva encapsulates, “neither perverse nor sadistic ‘frighteningly normal’ people, in perfectly good conscience, commit crimes on a whole new scale. Incapable of judging, they take it upon themselves ‘to determine who should and who should not inhabit the world’” (Kristeva 149). In spite of the fact that Franco’s military justice did not have, as Ruiz asserts, a “carácter de exterminio” (character of extermination) for it did not strategize extermination, but rather was of evil and perversion or lack

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(16–17), Nationalist torturers, paseadores, and rapists exemplify the thoughtlessness and banality of evil. This Pontius Pilate mentality, a lack of personal accountability, “implies a perversion of the moral imperative and its underlying judgment” (Kristeva 150). On the other hand, memory presupposes personal responsibility and accountability to others. Memory bears a moral imperative to vindicate, to seek justice through remembrance, and to re-member the dis-membered traumatized lives and bodies. Memory is a reproduction and repetition transmitted to reflect and encapsulate identity; as such, it is the reconstruction of the past in the present moment (Halbwachs 46–47). “The mind reconstructs its memories under the pressure of society” (Halbwachs 51). Given the current memory battles in Spain, as Faber has referred to the ongoing debate on memory, the works studied in this book not just reflect lived realities and fictionalized lived experiences of a bloodstained past but also reveal the fragmentation, the vast diversity of experiences, and ways of thinking. While each of the works reveals and denounces atrocities in the search for justice through memory, this collection does not demonize. The understanding of misfeasance and malfeasance does not exculpate the perpetrators nor does it confer them impunity. Rather, comprehension and empathy acknowledge the humanity of even those whose actions and intent dehumanized the Other. Maurice Halbwachs surmises, the framework of collective memory confines and binds our most intimate remembrances to each other. It is not necessary that the group be familiar with them. It suffices that we cannot consider them except from the outside—that is, by putting ourselves in the position of others—and that in order to retrieve these remembrances we must tread the same path that others would have followed had they been in our position. (53)

Several of the characters who populate the works studied exemplify the banality of evil and perversion or lack of judgment discerned by Arendt and Kristeva. Herbal in Rivas’ O lapis do carpinteiro (The Carpenter’s Pencil)2 is a paseador; Antonino in Grandes’ El lector de Julio Verne (The Reader of Jules Verne) is a civil guard during the Triennium of Terror; Andreu in Teixidor’s Black Bread sides with his father’s persecutors; 2  I reference works translated into English with their English titles. Others I reference in the original with my translation to English within parenthesis.

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and María Topete in Cañil’s Si a los tres años no he vuelto (If I Have Not Returned in Three Years) is a key player in the removal of children from their red mothers. The current study showcases the effect of the war and Franco’s justice or the prison system on children: Andreu, Luisito (Si a los tres años), and María Bueno’s daughter (The Silence of Others) are removed from their parents; Ángel (Ángel), Tensi (The Sleeping Voice), and Andreu are orphaned. The insidious and far-reaching influence of fascist legislation on women (in The Sleeping Voice, El lector, Si a los tres años, and The Silence of Others) is evident in the myriad fashions in which femaleness was weaponized against women: gendered torture, sexual violence, theft of children— all under the aegis of law or protected with impunity. This book is about the cultural articulation of how Historia (official, monumental History until now fashioned by the victors) and historia (remembered personal, transgenerational, meaningful experiences) are represented, expressed, and made to be understood at a human level. This study explores how pain and trauma are experienced and transmitted transgenerationally. It analyzes the manner in which factual protagonists and fictional characters experience the breakage and rupture of incarceration or postwar repression, as their voices become a vindicating collective memory that counters the authoritarian narrative that demonized them and the fascist laws that criminalized and repressed them. To narrativize is to shape not just the story but also how the story will be remembered. As a mnemonic tool, “Stories ‘stick’” (Rigney 347). The way in which an event or history is communicated is the medium. Memory is inextricably linked to remediation and premediation. Remediation is the repeated medial representation of memorable events (“a canon of existent medial constructions”), while premediation constitutes the shaping of future representation (Erll, “Literature” 392). The works studied both draw upon the canon of medial constructions and shape the way memorable events will be conceived of in the future. Former political prisoner Ángel Fernández aestheticizes his remembrance of trauma through Guernica, just as documentaries on him draw from the poetry of Lorca and passages from The Sleeping Voice. The latter novel remediates testimony, official documents, and letters and has been adapted to both the screen and the stage. Similarly, Black Bread and The Carpenter’s Pencil have theatrical and cinematic adaptations. The works by Chacón, Teixidor, and Rivas are essential to the memorialistic canon that denounces Francoist

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repression and writes the victims they represent into the narrative of cultural memory. Both remembering and forgetting are essential elements in the phenomenon of memory. The interplay between the two, as Assmann3 has observed, takes both active and passive forms. The contemporary Spanish works studied respond to the maximum expression of active forgetting: the erasure that constituted postwar executions and incarcerations, and the concomitant coerced assimilatory forgetting prompted by fear. To remember is to belong. The forced forgetting made clear that the defeated did not belong, that their homeland was no longer, and that there was no community. The recovery of memory, then, prompted by an ethical commitment, takes back and recreates a sense of belonging. Through narrativization, works of memory reconstruct the lives and collective life experiences rubbed out by Francoism and its henchmen. While authoritarian regimes might tout themselves as the embodiment of law and order, one could disambiguate “law”—the overarching abstract concept—and understand it more accurately to signify “laws” (in the plural, promulgated) and “terror” rather than “order.” Ironically, the law and order postulation presupposes an appeal to a sense of justice (an aspiration) and an equitable application of the laws (universal implementation). Yet justice is not synonymous with the law as is evident in the regime’s laws and decrees that targeted and persecuted the defeated, stripping them of rights, criminalizing them, taking away their children, turning a blind eye to cruelty waged upon them, and conferring impunity upon their ill-­ doers. The present study is about accountability, about redress, if not repair. Franco’s justice was a humorless parody: criminality cross-dressed as the rule of law. It was malicious vindictiveness donning the garb of Catholicized salvation, which fostered cognitive dissonance so that “believers” would want to believe that the cruelty was a lovely tale of redemption. Hence, Franco’s justice is not just. It is on the one hand “lawful” in that laws are created, but on the other, the regime’s laws purposefully persecuted the defeated. The arbitrary and capricious application of laws gave decision-makers free rein—without requiring moral reasoning—over the lives of others, over the lives of their enemies. This is where cognitive dissonance makes the banality of evil possible. Franco’s perpetrators, such as a paseador, an interrogator-rapist, a judge at a mass summary trial, a 3

 See chapter on The Silence of Others.

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jailer who snatches away inmates’ toddlers, or a torturer, carried out their malfeasance in the name of justice. In spite of all objective and incontrovertible evidence of their vicious cruelty, they thoughtlessly accepted that their actions were just and, in the kingdom of nationalized Catholicism, morally right. To think would be to question, to be conflicted. This type of denial of malfeasance is not unlike denial that persists today. When interviewed by Almudena Carracedo for the 2018 documentary The Silence of Others, Franco Foundation’s Jaime Alonso unblinkingly proclaims, “Lo más importante, en mi opinión, para recordar a Franco, es que no se equivocó nunca. Franco preserva a la civilización occidental y cristiana de la tiranía comunista” (In my opinion, the most important thing to remember about Franco is that he was never wrong. Franco saved Christian Western civilization from communist tyranny). By claiming that Franco never erred, Alonso is postulating blind faith in the infallibility of a mythical leader. His claim is devoid of moral reasoning. Actions are based on beliefs, laws, policy, and ideology. Francoist state-­ sanctioned rape, mutilation, baby-snatching, and killing could not be possible without several elements: the official demonization of the collective Other via laws, rhetoric, propaganda, and (Catholic) proselytization; the lack of mechanisms or standards to curb behaviors to “acceptable” standards, ultimately resulting in cruelty without limits; impunity conferred to perpetrators; and denial of malfeasance. These four elements created a cycle of denial that persists in contemporary Spain as clearly captured in the “Make Spain Great Again” assembly or the singing of Francoist hymn “Cara al sol” in The Silence of Others. The current project aims at breaking this cycle of denial. The works studied attest to personal and collective trauma, trauma that demands acknowledgment, vindication of its victims, and accountability for its perpetrators—at the individual and institutional levels. In spite of the Querella Argentina that appeals to international law, while approval of the 2020 Law of Democratic Memory is still pending, and while there may not be resolution or legal justice for the victims of Francoism in the foreseeable future, acknowledgment of suffering is, in fact, a form of moral reparation. Understanding the past is inextricably linked to the moral imperative of memory. It vindicates past victims, strips victimizers of their impunity, and aspires to a more just future.

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Overview of Chapters The chapters are organized in the following fashion. The initial chapter highlights the little known figure of Ángel Fernández (b. 1928), a child of the war, who spent a decade and a half in Franco’s jails as a political prisoner, and who has dedicated his life to telling his story in search of justice. This book concludes with my study of Almudena Carracedo and Robert Bahar’s award-winning documentary El silencio de otros (The Silence of Others), which follows protagonist plaintiffs in their personal quest for justice through international law. These two chapters frame the remainder (on Manuel Rivas, Emili Teixidor, Agustí Villaronga, Dulce Chacón, Ana Cañil, and Almudena Grandes) within the context of perpetuation. In other words, justice is a quest, past transgressions have yet to be acknowledged, and past trauma persists in the present. The chapter on nonagenarian Ángel Fernández explores his mediated pilgrimage from fragmentation to community. As a survivor of the cumulative traumas of war, exile, and political imprisonment, his journey to make his story known and his memory activism reach the apex of communication in the 2016 documentary Ángel, a film that embodies what Brett Ashley Kaplan and Marianne Hirsch have, respectively, termed unwanted beauty and the aesthetics of remembrance. Resistant fighter, sixteen-year political prisoner in Franco’s jails, and current expatriate, Ángel Fernández has penned several written testimonies, has participated in the documentaries Te doy mi palabra (I Give You My Word, 2012, dir. Quino González) and Au temps des roses rouges (Time of the Red Roses, 2013, dir. Francis Lapeyre), and protagonizes Stéphane Fernandez 2016 biopic Ángel. These works are a testament to his commitment to justice through memory. Applying theories on testimony, aestheticization of trauma, and memory activism, this chapter investigates how giving voice to personal and collective traumas of repression intertwines not only the content of a fragmented life with the broken form of the expression but also the manner in which aestheticized life-telling ultimately forges community. Just as the filmmakers and Ángel remediate memory of his traumas through iconic works—Picasso’s Guernica, Lorca’s poetry, and Chacón’s novel among others—Manuel Rivas mediates an icon of Galicia. The Carpenter’s Pencil takes place primarily in the immediate post-civil war period in the political prison facing the Cathedral of St. James the Elder (patron saint of Spain) in the emblematic Galician city, Santiago de

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Compostela. This chapter, titled “The Pórtico de la Gloria in Manuel Rivas’ Postwar Novel The Carpenter’s Pencil: Art and Hagiography as a Metaphor That Subverts the Glory of Franco’s New Spain,” studies Rivas’ recontextualization of art and artists, painting and pictorial narratives, sculptures and scriptures as a counter-memory of the Nationalist victors’ mythmaking. Applying Derrida’s hauntologie, Colmeiro’s national ghostliness, and Nora’s places of memory, this chapter explores symbols of identities and ideologies, the sociopolitical manipulation, and subsequent ironic subversion of cultural icons in Rivas’ novel. Rivas’ novel reveals Pierre Nora’s theories and “inventories” of loci memoriae (places, historical figures, emblems) that codify a quintessential nation and create a symbolic realm, space, or place which roots or grounds identity. The reframed polyvalent symbols and spaces delegitimize Nationalist rhetoric that imbued meaning to and consecrated its institutionally sanctioned genocide. While Rivas reappropriates a Galician symbol whose meaning the Nationalists plundered for their aggrandizement, Emili Teixidor transforms Catholic martyrs into representations of multiple marginalizations through which the protagonist assuages his self-loathing. The chapter on Pa negre investigates Illness, Martyrdom, and Castration in Teixidor’s 2003 novel and Agustí Villaronga’s eponymous 2010 film. Situated during the aftermath of the civil war and peppered with flashbacks to the Republic, the bildungsroman recounts the path that the protagonist Andreu took to dissociate himself from his family, erase the memory of his incarcerated father, and ally himself with the triumphant transgressors. This betrayal is a fearful response to real and perceived acts of violence: vengeful punishments, such as the likely torture and certain death of Andreu’s father (at the hands of the nacionales), the castration of Marcel Saurí (Pitorliua) in the film, and morbid tales of Catholic martyrs that become the lens through which Andreu imagines the physical repression of political prisoners and the ostracized homosexual patients at the Camillus convent. This chapter will trace the trajectory that leads to the inevitability of Andreu’s self-proclaimed monstrosity within the context of nationalized Catholicism and racial politics that purges the “degeneration” by “regeneration” of the race. Andreu imbues Catholic martyrs with new meaning, conferring saintliness upon his defeated father in the novel and eroticizing the perceived violence of the object of his homoerotic desires, an adolescent consumptive patient. Teixidor’s Andreu perceives both his father’s death and the object of his desire through the imagery of violence and martyrdom reminiscent of castration. The fear of castration

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(to different degrees in the novel and the film) ultimately determines Andreu’s choice and ambiguates his self-identified “monstrosity.” The polyvalent meaning of “monster” in Pa negre, on the one hand, signifies the intersectional linkage of alterities—non-heteronormative, non-­ hygienic (by the eugenic standards of racial purity), and non-hegemonic (Catholic, fascist, Castilian, landholding). On the other hand, it represents the iniquities and violations of the regime. This coming-of-age story closes with paradoxical promise and denunciation of Andreu’s stable future in an inhospitable world where he conforms to be accepted, yet cannot accept himself. The next three chapters on novels by Dulce Chacón, Almudena Grandes, and Ana Cañil address the Nationalist weaponization of femaleness against Republican women. The experiencing of the past of a singular or collective Other with its concomitant engagement is the phenomenon that Alison Landsberg and Marianne Hirsch, respectively, term prosthetic memory and postmemory. Dulce Chacón (1954–2003) and Ana Cañil participate in what I term “femimemory.” This gynocentric recovery of memory entails the following: an acknowledgment that patriarchy molds historiography through a masculine lens that inferiorizes or omits the female sex; the moral imperative that drives both the recovery and the vindication of women in history or the past; the empathetic identification with trauma and events lived by women; and the commitment to justice through the transmission of narratives by and about women. Chacón’s La voz dormida (The Sleeping Voice) (2002) attests to the injustice of Franco’s justice system and attempts to right the wrongs of the past through transgenerational feminist memory. Republican women, like Chacón’s characters, were a double threat to the single-voiced discourse of Francoism. As red women they opposed the nationalized Catholic ideal of femininity: relegation to the private, domestic sphere and silent, obedient submission to the will of the patriarch (father, husband, God). Upon questioning the fragile construct of virility and challenging the misogyny inherent in nationalism, Republican women were a collective enemy whose gender was weaponized against them. The eye-for-an-eye and tooth-for-a-tooth Francoist draconianism was meted out as an eye-for-a-vagina and a tooth-­ for-­a-breast. Public sanctioning and private torture cruelly defiled feminine beauty, domestic privateness, cleanliness, chastity, and maternity. Despite Madrid’s Ventas’ purposefully intimidating setting, which housed primarily political prisoners, Chacón depicts interdependence, solidarity, and palliative spaces of feminine refuge. La voz dormida bears witness to

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the inhumanity of inflicted trauma, as well as to the humanity of intergenerational sisterhood. Chacón celebrates precisely the gynocentric, symbiotic ideology within this literally gynocentric space ruled by a phallocratic-phallocentric order. Also situated in female correctional facilities, Ana Cañil’s novel narrativizes the cruelest measure against incarcerated Republican women: the removal of their children. The 2011 novel Si a los tres años no he vuelto is a fictionalized representation of real-life female jailers (including the infamous María Topete) and inmates in Ventas, Madrid’s prison for nursing mothers, and Toledo’s prison for “fallen women.” Referencing the key testimonial tomes by Mercè Nunez Targa, Juana Doña, and Tomasa Cuevas, Cañil weaves the fictionalized tale of state-sanctioned child abduction. The novel is framed within the oral popular culture genre of the ballad (romance), particularly “La loba parda” and “El Conde Sol,” whose verse “Si a los tres años no he vuelto” (If I have not returned in three years) titles the novel. Cañil spins a tale of envy, love, frustration, and malice as a personalized battle between Jimena Bartolomé, an unjustly imprisoned political inmate who gave birth in Ventas, and the historical character María Topete. The insurmountable maternal envy of the latter, masqueraded as nationalized Catholic duty, prompts her to orchestrate indefatigably the removal of children from their inmate mothers. Drawing upon the ballad and fairy-tale tropes, the conclusion reveals Jimena’s release from prison, a reunited family, restored order, and a family that lives happily ever after in exile. The fairy-tale ending rewrites the tragic reality of neglect, high infant mortality, and the forced disappearance of children. Franco’s propaganda machine spun an equally fantastic, yet more sinister, tale of mythical maternity, the sanctity of thriving cherubs, and the pious magnanimity of the state. Under the pretext of touting family and motherhood as sacrosanct, the San Isidro prison for nursing mothers emblematized the immaculate propagandized image of the regime’s redemption of errant female political prisoners. Publicity photos in the publication Redención (Redemption) hyped the correctional facility as a utopian space in a successful effort to cast a veil over the sordid reality of malnutrition, illness, death, and the irregular adoption of children commonly referred to as the stolen children of Francoism. This chapter investigates Cañil’s fairy-­ tale-­like ending as a counter tale to the equally fictional narratives in the propaganda publication Rendención. Similarly, Almudena Grandes’ novel boasts a happy conclusion. The protagonist of her postwar bildungsroman observes gendered models (of

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toxic hegemonic masculinity and anti-hegemonic resistance), ultimately to become a resistant, a political prisoner, and a candidate in the first democratic elections. This chapter investigates the gendered spaces and resulting resistance techniques in Almudena Grandes’ El lector de Julio Verne. The novel is part of Episodios de una Guerra Interminable (Episodes of an Endless War). Situated during the bloody Triennium of Terror (1947–1949) in postwar Jaén, Grandes lays out her gallery of characters and their daily struggles through the innocent eyes of Nino, the young son of a guardia civil whose job is to ferret out and quash rebellion. Living in the casa-cuartel (barracks house), Nino is an auditory witness to psychological torture, including sexual intimidation of female prisoners. The hierarchized male order, toxic masculinity, and violence of the barracks stand in stark contrast to another gendered space, the home of doña Elena, Nino’s tutor: El Cortijo. This secluded, woodsy space inhabited by single Republican women of various ages and backgrounds is a modernized postwar hortus amoenus. Not a sexualized feminine space, as normally attributed to the archetype, El Cortijo represents freedom from repression and the hegemonic masculinity embodied by the guardia civil. This home emblematizes various forms of female resistance that serve as models as Nino comes of age. It is the locus of one of the “milagrosos embarazos” (miraculous pregnancies), that is, pregnancies resulting from rojas coupling with their partners, resistants who lived in the mountains or who would transit between Toulouse, France, and southern Spain to carry out their underground activities. In this constructed narrative of female resistance, Grandes’ characters best the economic repression against Andalusian republicanas, subverting the guardia civil’s authority through their sale of criminalized contraband. These models of anti-fascist resistance prompt the child to become a resistant, leading to his own political incarceration as an adult, and running for political office during the transition, thus attesting to the “presence of the living and the memory of the dead” (Grandes 401) of Sierra Sur. The final chapter presents an analysis of the poeticized representation of trauma in the search for justice in Almudena Carracedo and Robert Bahar’s El silencio de otros. The immediate postwar reign of terror resulted in tens of thousands of unidentified cadavers in mass graves, mutilated bodies, fragmented families, and intergenerational trauma. The 1977 Law of Amnesty, known as the Pact of Forgetting, unabashedly confers impunity to transgressors. While the 2007 Law of Historical Memory promises moral reparation, the grassroots Association for the Recovery of Historical

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Memory exhumes the disappeared to return them to their still mourning loved ones. Similarly, the 2020 Law of Democratic Memory, still awaiting approval, shows that Spain’s traumatic past continues to be a gaping wound. The collective of interviewees and plaintiffs in the documentary is an array of memory activists who seek justice through international law: sexagenarian former protesters tortured during the dictatorship, late middle-­aged mothers whose out-of-wedlock children were abducted by Francoist authorities under the pretext of nationalized Catholic morality, and octogenarians bent on locating the mass graves where their parents lie. Of the three foci of injustice and representative protagonists in The Silence of Others, María Martín and Ascensión Mendieta Ibarra are elderly orphans who seek the remains of their parents, murdered by the Francoists. Through the aesthetic and sensorial experience, the viewer engages with the humanity of those who had been dehumanized and with their loved ones who continue to embrace their longing for the departed. This cinematic rendering of disinterment—the opening of the grave in the quest for closure—cradling the remains, bespeaks the baroque trope of womb and tomb and pays homage to the dead. Ultimately, the mediation and narrativization of the exhumation quest combats assimilatory forgetting, reverts the necropower of Francoism, and secures victims’ rightful place in the community of the meaningful. The works analyzed in the present study strive for justice through memory. While jurisprudential justice may not be on the horizon, it is irrefutable that these works blend poetry with truth, even if poetic justice is out of reach. Ugliness and beauty intermingle in the telling of stories that need to be told. El silencio de otros poetically documents the longing articulated by the founder of the ARMH (Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory), Emilio Silva, as he reflected on his grandfather’s exhumation: “Cuando estábamos excavando la fosa de mi abuelo, yo decía: ‘Ojalá este agujero que estamos haciendo aquí comience a agujerear ese silencio y todas estas historias formen parte de la Historia’” (When we were excavating my grandfather’s pit, I thought: I wish the hole we are digging here begins to make holes in the silence and that these stories might become a part of History) (El Pais, 2003). As celebrated historian Helen Graham professed, “Telling big stories through individual lives is a very powerful way of doing history” (Faber, Memory 92). In remembering dismembered lives, the authors, testimonial subjects, and filmmakers studied in Justice through Memory, like Carracedo and Bahar, tell the “big story” of Francoist repression. They poetically piece together fragments of

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the past as they reconstruct their personal histories/stories and collective history that Francoism and its legacy aimed to shatter, pulverize, and sweep into oblivion.

A Cartography of Ubiquitous Repression This book presents a selective cartography of Spain’s loci of repression, laying bare the insidious eradication of the Other in northwest, northeast, central, and southern Spain at distinct moments when the Nationalists occupied and exerted absolute control. Rivas’ novel takes place in Galicia, in northwest Spain, that came under Nationalist rule immediately following the military uprising. The bloodshed did not take place during battles, but rather was a surgical strike to purge mercilessly. Catalonia, reflected in two of the chapters (on Ángel Fernández and Pa negre/Black Bread), fell just weeks before the end of the war. The chapter on Ángel Fernández explores the childhood trauma during the war in Barcelona, forced exile, and subsequent political imprisonment, while the Black Bread chapter explores the postwar reprisals in rural Catalonia and transgenerational trauma and guilt. Three chapters are largely situated in Madrid that fell just days before the official end of the war. Two of those feature the Ventas prison for women. The third, on Almudena Carracedo and Robert Bahar’s documentary The Silence of Others, while set primarily in Madrid, spreads to the reality of repression, injustice, and the enduring legacy throughout Spain while documenting the fight for justice under international law. The chapter on Almudena Grandes’ novel fictionalizes the lives affected by the Triennium of Terror in the southern community of Jaén (Andalucía). The chapters that follow take the reader on an itinerary of mediated trauma, remembered repression, and the search for justice.

Works Cited Arendt, Hannah. Hannah Arendt, edited by Julia Kristeva, Columbia UP, 2001. Assmann, Aleida. “Canon and Archive.” A Cultural Companion to Cultural Memory Studies, edited by Astrid Erll and Ansgar Nünning De Gruyter, 2010a, pp. 97–108. Assmann, Jan. “Communicative and Cultural Memory.” A Cultural Companion to Cultural Memory Studies, edited by Astrid Erll and Ansgar Nünning De Gruyter, 2010b, pp. 109–18.

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Bertand de Muñoz, Maryse. “Las grandes tendencias de la novela de la guerra civil en el siglo XXI.” Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos, La guerra civil española: un dolor que no se calla. vol. 36, no. 1, otoño/fall 2011, pp. 207–25. Caygill, Howard. “Walter Benjamin’s Concept of Cultural History.” The Cambridge Companion to Walter Benjamin, edited by David Ferris, Cambridge UP, 2004, pp. 73–96. Córcoles, Ángeles. “Las heridas del silencio. El silencio des-trama.” Clínica e investigación relacional. Revista electrónica de psicoterapia, vol. 4, no. 2, 2010, pp. 419–28. Erll, Astrid. “Literature, Film, and the Mediality of Cultural Memory.” A Cultural Companion to Cultural Memory Studies, edited by Astrid Erll and Ansgar Nünning De Gruyter, 2010, pp. 389–98. ———. Memory in Culture. Translated by Sara B. Young, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. Faber, Sebastiaan. Memory Battles of the Spanish Civil War: History, Fiction, Photography. Vanderbilt UP, 2018. ———. “‘¿Usted, qué sabe?’ History, Memory, and the Voice of the Witness’”Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos: “La guerra civil española: un dolor que no se calla,” vol. 36, no. 1, otoño/fall 2011, pp. 9–27. Felman, Shoshana and Dori Laub. Testimony: The Crisis of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis and History. Routledge, 1992. Garzón, Baltasar. La fuerza de la razón, prologue by Manuel Rivas, Debate, 2011. Gómez Marín, Inmaculada and José Antonio Hernández Jiménez. “Revisión de la Guerra Civil Española y de la Posguerra como fuente de traumas psicológicos desde un punto de vista transgeneracional.” Clínica de Investigación Relacional 5, 3 (octubre 2011): 473–491. Guerrero, María. Reconfiguring the Spanish Identity: Historic Memory, Documentary Films and Documentary Novels in Spain (2000–2002). Dissertation. University of Florida, 2010. Halbwachs, Maurice. On Collective Memory. U Chicago P, 1992. Hirsch, Marianne. The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture After the Holocaust. Columbia UP, 2012. Izquierdo Martín, Jesús and Pablo Sánchez León. La guerra que nos han contado. 1936 y nosotros. Madrid: Alianza, 2006. Kaplan, Brett Ashley. Unwanted Beauty: Aesthetic Pleasure in Holocaust Representation. U of Illinois P, 2007. Kristeva, Julia. Hannah Arendt, Columbia UP, 2001. Landsberg, Alison. Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture. Columbia UP, 2004. Ley de Memoria Histórica. Ley 52/2007. Boletín Oficial del Estado, vol. 310, pp. 53410–53416. Nora, Pierre. “Between Memory and History: Les lieux de mémoire.” Translated by Marc Roudebush. Representations, vol. 26, Spring 1989, pp. 7–24.

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Milquet, Sophie. “Escribir el trauma en femenino: las obras de Agustin Gomez-­ Arcos y Dulce Chacón.” Bulletin of Spanish Studies, vol. LXXXIX, no. 7–8, 2012, pp. 109–22. Resina, Joan Ramon. “Short of Memory: The Reclamation of the Past Since the Spanish Transition to Democracy.” Disremembering the Dictatorship: The Politics of Memory in the Spanish Transition to Democracy, edited by Joan Ramon Resina, Rodopi, 2000, pp. 83–126. Reyes Mate, Manuel. Tratado de la injusticia. Anthropos, 2011. Rigney, Ann. “The Dynamics of Remembrance: Texts Between Monumentality and Morphing.” A Cultural Companion to Cultural Memory Studies, edited by Astrid Erll and Ansgar Nünning De Gruyter, 2010, pp. 345–53. Rivas, Manuel. Prologue: “Una injusticia en España.” La fuerza de la razón. Baltasar Garzón. Debate, 2011, pp. 15–24. Ruiz-Vargas, José María. “Trauma y memoria de la Guerra Civil y la dictadura franquista.” Hispania Nova. Revista de Historia Contemporánea, Vol. 6, 2006, http://hispanianova.rediris.es/. Accessed March 18, 2022. Vinyes, Ricard, Montse Armengou and Ricard Belis. Los niños perdidos del franquismo. Plaza Janés, 2002.

CHAPTER 2

The Aestheticized Pilgrimage from Fragmentation to Community: The Journey from the Testimonial Page to the Documentary Screen of Ángel Fernández Vicente (b. 1928), Anti-fascist Resistant, Political Prisoner, and Expatriate

Introduction Ángel Fernández Vicente is a survivor of the cumulative traumas of war, exile, and political imprisonment. His journey to make his story known and memory activism reach the apex of communication in the 2016 documentary Ángel, a film that embodies what Brett Ashley Kaplan and Marianne Hirsch have, respectively, termed unwanted beauty and the aesthetics of remembrance. This chapter explores what I denote Ángel Fernández’s pilgrimage from fragmentation to community.1

1  I met Ángel Fernández in December 2009, in Barcelona, Spain, at the Conference of the Grupo del Estudio del Exilio Literario (GEXEL). Mary Vásquez of Davidson College presented on Rebelde and Ángel was in attendance. Mary Vásquez introduced me to him, and he and I have been in contact since then.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Tobin Stanley, Francoist Repression and Incarceration in Contemporary Spanish Culture, Palgrave Studies in Cultural Heritage and Conflict, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13392-3_2

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Resistant fighter, sixteen-year political prisoner in Franco’s jails, and current expatriate, Ángel Fernández has penned several testimonies (Rebelde [Rebel], volumes I [2005] and II [2009], A mis nietos: Voy a contar el cuento de Angelito [To My Grandchildren: I Am Going to Tell the Tale of Angelito, 2009], Traumas: Niños de la guerra y del exilio [Traumas: Children of War and Exile, 2010], and Fragments d’Histoire d’une enfance brisée [Fragments of History of a Shattered Childhood, 2016]), has participated in the documentary films Te doy mi palabra (I Give You My Word, 2012, dir. Quino González) and Au temps des roses rouges (Time of the Red Roses, 2013, dir. Francis Lapeyre), and protagonizes the biopic Ángel (2016, dir. Stéphane Fernandez). These works are a testament to his commitment to justice through memory in spoken and written narratives. He articulates his story (historia—lower case) and the multiple intertwined stories of his comrades and colleagues in an effort to nourish history (Historia—upper case).2 In this current chapter, I explore how the personal and collective traumas of repression, reprisals, and incarceration not only debase and dehumanize the individual, as Holocaust scholar Alain Parrau avers in Écrire les camps (Writing the Camps), but also snatches away the capacity to verbally re/construct the experience. While the result of exponential trauma is silence—and the object of political repression is silence coupled with olvido (oblivion/cultural amnesia/forgetting)—years of cumulative abuse and mistreatment demand expression, albeit illogical, lacunae at times and fragmented.3 In Fernández’s testimonies, I study the poignancy and intermingling of the content of his fragmented life and the broken form of giving voice to what had been the shared silence of the Republican victims of fascism. The recovered past and broken silence ultimately result in a reconstructed, aestheticized life-­ telling that seeks out, finds, and forges community. Through the rescued and surviving word, this now expatriate individual embarks on a quest to piece together an identity mutilated in the 30s, 40s, and 50s, but also the identity of an entire nation: “un pays qui n’existe plus” (a country that no longer exists, Fragments 2), the Spanish Republic. While the Republic ceased to exist within geographic borders in 1939, it currently persists in 2  In Spain’s current climate of historical memory, historia (lower case) refers to the personal and subjective story or experience, whereas Historia (capitalized) refers to monumental history. The debate on memory is ongoing. 3  In Traumas, he writes, “pero no olvidéis nunca que nuestra narración sobre este particular puede tener alguna que otra laguna” (don’t ever forget that our narration on this matter can have lacunae) (374).

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the collective imagination with its concomitant cultural production and is reaffirmed with reparative legislation, juridical acts, grassroots associations, and vindicating pilgrimages to the sites of repression and trauma. Scholars Elaine Scarry (in The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World) and Sara Horowitz (in Voicing the Void: Muteness and Memory) underscore the muteness, inadequacy of language, difficulty of articulation, and simplified almost poetic expression that follows the lived trauma, or what Parrau deems a mutilated life. Post-concentrationary trauma finds voice through the “recours salvateur” (saving recourse) of poetry (Parrau 271). Prison or concentration camp expression can achieve a poignant poetic and essentialist quality in which common imagery (or dreams [rêves]) surfaces and, thus, creates a “communauté de rêveurs” (community of dreamers) (Parrau 262).4 Shattered, the life recounted with shards of imperfect language and fragments of past suffering fashions unwanted beauty, a painfully exquisite mosaic of a reconstructed identity. In Fernández’s testimonies, the reader, listener, or viewer discerns the glimmer of the fusion between his fragmented life and the aestheticized, broken, and hybrid form that articulates and illustrates the silence imposed upon and shared by the victims of authoritarianism. With his exuberance and prolific production of his testimonies, compilation of documents, participation in documentaries, presence at commemorative events, and indefatigable engagement in memory activism, Ángel Fernández Vicente has connected with others who also seek to re-­ member their dis-membered lives. Through legislation and grassroots efforts, individuals-cum-a-collective have forged a space of community. The inevitable topic of memory (since Spain’s 2007 Law of Historical Memory) in the twenty-first century transcends physical public space and coexists in virtual space, accessible to all with a server, computer, or mobile device, as Mary Anne Dellinger has noted in “‘Historical Memory’ as a Spanish Paradigm: The Role of Mass Media (1936–2006).” The memorialistic efforts to work toward justice through memory are evident in early efforts such as FEDIP (Federación Española de Deportados e Internados Políticos [1945–2006], the Spanish Federation of Deportees and Political Prisoners), the contemporary grassroots Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory, the State Federation of Forums for Memory, and the Portal of Spanish Archives. In spite of the abundance of oral, written, virtual, and novelized testimonies, survivors of multiple traumas of Francisco 4

 A common, shared dream is flight (Parrau 262).

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Franco’s fascist dictatorship persist in the twofold need to find expression and to be understood. The articulation of suffering generates further expression of such in testimonial, cinematic, artistic, and scholarly form.

Brief Biography of Ángel Fernández Vicente Ángel Fernández Vicente (b. 1928, Barcelona) incarnates the Spanish Civil War and its aftermath. His life has been a series of traumas coupled with the solidary fight for justice. As a child, during an air raid in July 1937, while fleeing with his family toward shelter, he witnessed a bomb mortally wound his mother as he stopped to tie his alpargatas (shoes). Upon his mother’s death, Ángel and his younger siblings were interned in the children’s refugee camp in La Cellera del Ter (near Girona) as their father fought in the war against the military insurgents. When the fascists took over Spain, he was evacuated to refugee camps in France, where he was separated from his siblings, and was later placed with foster families until he and his siblings could be reunited with their ex-combatant father. As an adolescent in 1947, he joined the anti-fascist resistance, was subsequently captured, was charged with banditry, and, later, became a political prisoner, who, unlike most of his comrades, escaped execution. He was sentenced to death, but his sentence was commuted and he was released after sixteen years of imprisonment. In his nineties, today he lives in Toulouse, the capital of Spanish exile in France. As a memory activist, he fights indefatigably to document, preserve, and make known not only his story but also those of countless others, with the goal to contribute to the greater, supplementary narrative that would complete history. He meticulously archives materials and references. This plethora of documents and official papers corroborates his narrative and life writing, and they bear witness to the repression that he faced. Not unlike hostile witnesses on the witness stand, these reams of official documents, letters, petitions, denials, and logs faithfully recount and reflect the overt and insidious repression of the regime and its legacy in subsequent administrations. Since the commuting of his death sentence and his release from prison, his mission has been to reconstruct in exile the shards of his fragmented life. Ángel Fernández’s narrative is in five written and three filmic works summarized in this chapter.

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Description and Overview of the Works Rebelde I (2005), 391 pp.: This testimonial tome begins during Ángel’s childhood. It provides an overview of war, his experiences as a child of war in the children’s camps, exile, resistance, detention and jail (including the first fifty-five days of detention), and his death sentence and commutation of the sentence. This volume encapsulates Ángel’s childhood through early adulthood. Rebelde II (2009), 345 pp.: In this work that picks up where the previous one ends, Ángel narrates his transfer to prison in 1949, following the conviction. He describes living conditions in prison, his solidarity with others, the transfer to different prisons (San Miguel de los Reyes, Ocaña, Torrero), the legal battle to be released, and his release from prison and parole in 1964 and integration to society. This volume contains a plethora of documents, descriptions, and tabulation of manners in which prisoners died (Rebelde II 65–72). Traumas: Niños de la guerra y del exilio (2010), 491 pp.: This 2010 compilation published by the Asociació per a la Memòria Històrica i Democràtica del Baix Llobregat (the Baix Llobregat Association for Historical and Democratic Memory) consists of thirty-eight testimonies of now aging adults who were children during the war before going into exile. Ángel’s testimony, the twenty-eighth of the collection, includes twenty-one pages that are an edited and slightly abridged version of pages 53–79 of Rebelde I (the chapter titled “La tragedia vivida por mis hermanos y yo mismo [Asesinaron a mi madre]”5) and page 9 of Rebelde II (summary of the arrest, charge, conviction, and sentencing of Ángel and his comrades). A mis nietos: Voy a contar el cuento de Angelito (December 25, 2009), 93 pp.: In this family memoire, Ángel narrates to his explicit narratees: his three grandchildren. The narrative, illustrated by Ángel, begins with his parents falling in love, retrospectively to tell the story of his grandparents, then that of his own childhood including the birth of his younger siblings (José Fernández Vicente [a.k.a. Pepetin], b. 1935, and Máxima Fernández Vicente [a.k.a. Maxi], b. 1933), and his grandfather’s death and loss of the family business coinciding with the beginning of the civil war. This ninety-­ three-­page, self-published memoire is an unambiguous prequel to Rebelde.

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 The Tragedy Lived by My Siblings and Myself (They Murdered My Mother).

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Fragments d’Histoire d’une enfance brisée (2016) 174 pp.: In Fragments, Ángel revisits, retells, and deepens seminal moments of his life (e.g., his mother’s death, the sense of alienation and abandonment in the children’s camps, the retreat). Here, he dedicates sections to his father, his brother, and his sister, and he adds an annex about an interrogation by German officials during the Nazi occupation of France in February 1944. The opening chapter on the Spanish Civil War and resulting loss of the Republic, and the final annex on Nazism, functions as bookends, providing a historical context for the catastrophic impact European fascism had on human lives and interpersonal relationships. Te doy mi palabra (2009, dir. Quino González): This fifty-two-minute documentary in Spanish (subtitled “testimony of the epic” [testimonio de la epopeya]), from the Association Mémoires Partagées, Ediciones Tirésias and C4 Productions, gathers disparate voices of Spanish exile. The filmmakers interview twenty individuals6 regarding exile to France as part of the Retirada in the winter of 1938–1939 (including the civil war, evacuation, refugee camps, the Second World War and Nazi occupation of France, anti-fascist resistance, postwar France, expatriation and the reluctance to repatriate, and the complex matter of diasporic identity). Some were children, youths, or adults when exiled; others were children of the exiled. Ángel’s segment pertains to his mother’s death, the bombings, planes gunning down refugees during the flight to France, orphanhood, his father’s anti-fascist fight and resulting sense of abandonment, the cold and hunger of the refugee camp, and his own anti-fascist resistance. The interviews are intercalated with images of Spain, of the Pyrenees, of refugee camps, of monuments and memorials, of words with their definitions (“revolución,” “compromiso” [engagement], “bombardear” [to bomb], “destino” [destiny], “solidaridad” [solidarity], among others), along with poems by Antonio Machado, Federico García Lorca, and Miguel Hernández, all icons of the lost Republic. The film concludes with the

6  Marina Aguayo, Santiago Benítez, Sara Berenguer, Francisco Bernal, Emilio Caballero, José Caballero, Redención Castellvi, Delia Escuer, Ángel Fernández, Francisco Giné, Ángel Gómez, Aimable Marcellan, Progreso Marín, Miguel Martínez, Henric Melich, Veronique Olivares, Luis Royo, Raymond Sangeroteo, Ramiro Santisteban, and Miguel Vera. Susana Koska, in her documentary Mujeres en pie de guerra, also interviewed Sara Berenguer. Santiago Benítez, Francisco Bernal, Emilio Caballero, and Ramiro Santisteban are exdeportees to Mauthausen.

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commemorative march of the seventieth anniversary of the Retirada followed by the word “Retirada”7 and its definition. Au temps des roses rouges (Time of the Red Roses) (2013, dir. Francis Lapeyre): This sixty-eight-minute film in French, with some Spanish with French voice-over translation, is an exquisitely artistic project. Au temps des roses rouges perfectly embodies Hirsch’s aesthetics of remembrance and Kaplan’s unwanted beauty. The film includes flamenco guitar music and singing, paintings by Dominque Baur, testimony, and poetry and is framed with a narrator and her laptop before a screen on which images are displayed. The literary excerpts are from Dulce Chacón’s La voz dormida, Juana Doña’s Desde la noche y la niebla, Pepita Carpeña’s Graine d’anarchiste, Marcos Ana’s Decidme cómo es un árbol, Ángeles García Madrid’s Requiem por la libertad, and, of course, Ángel Fernández’s Rebelde. Ángel, one of the several interviewees, rather than a protagonist, narrates the trauma of his mother’s violent death recounted in Rebelde I, Traumas, and Fragments. He also speaks about his executed fellow resistant fighters who lay in a common grave in the Torrero Cemetery, bombings, the Retirada, his internment in the children’s colony in La Cellera del Ter, and separation from his father. The early sequence features Ángel recounting, then cuts to images (of art, archival footage, photos of Ángel and his family) layered with a narrator reciting passages from Rebelde. The artistic representation and the cinematic techniques appeal to sentiment, to the intellect, and to a sense of aesthetics to raise consciousness in the viewer. In other words, the aesthetics catalyze remembrance. Ángel (2016, dir. Stéphane Fernandez): The seventy-minute documentary, as the title indicates, is the life story of Ángel Fernández Vicente. In French, Spanish, and Catalan, with French, Spanish, and English subtitles, Ángel reflects the polyglot phenomenon of the displaced, the sociolinguistics of diasporic identities and lives. Drawing directly from Ángel’s previous testimonies, especially Fragments (including its illustrations), the documentary constitutes a type of “road trip” in which the protagonist unwalks the journey that led him to France, visiting sites of memory. The lines between what Pierre Nora denotes mémoire and histoire are blurred. Memory is subjective and personal, while History (capitalized) is monumental, official, and supposedly shared by all. Dominique Fernandez (who is not related to Ángel, but is the father of the director of the film and who 7  Literally, the “retreat,” but signifying this particular mass evacuation or flight during the final months of the Spanish Civil War.

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authored the play Fragments d’exil) accompanies Ángel on this road trip from France (Toulouse), crossing the Pyrenees, visiting his former home in Barcelona, the children’s refuge near Girona, the Torrero jail in Zaragoza, and its concomitant cemetery replete with his annihilated comrades. Dominique made his acquaintance with the ex-prisoner due to the organization IRIS—Mémoires d’Espagne—of which he is the president. As the protagonist, Ángel references that which is contained in both volumes of Rebelde: childhood, war, children’s refugee camps, French refugee camps, resistance, imprisonment, liberation, reintegration to society, and the fight to make his story known. It is the story of his quest for justice through memory. The particularly poetic and artistic elements of these works exemplify Hirsch’s “aesthetics of remembrance” and Kaplan’s “unwanted beauty.” Overall, Ángel Fernández’s memorialistic corpus, as life-writing and life-­ recounting, aesthetically and poetically bears witness to his particular and unique experiences, but also to the universal phenomenon of diasporic and hyphenated existence. Both documentaries, Ángel and Te doy mi palabra, are pilgrimage films. These films follow the itinerary to sites that honor his trauma and that of others, but more importantly, the journey demands the reflection of the itinerants and, by extension, of us, the viewers. The journey pays homage and consecrates, and it memorializes and paradoxically evidences solidarity with others and the uniqueness of each individual. Ángel’s shared quest, journey, and pilgrimage to the sites of loss and trauma, accompanied by his listening and empathetic friend, retired psychoanalyst Dominique Fernandez, with the aestheticization and poeticization of the protagonist’s testimony, make the road trip documentary Ángel the climax of Ángel Fernández Vicente’s cumulative testimonial narrative.

Testimony Adhering to theories on trauma, testimony, and nonviolent communication, I propose that it is the need for justice of this particular victim of trauma from which must be distilled the need to be heard (to connect with the interlocutor, listener, or viewer who empathizes). The power of the word is utmost (not simply the spoken or heard word, but rather the word that is absorbed and shared with and by the interlocutor, reader, or viewer), and hence, precisely, through the word, trauma is shared and the past suffering that persists in the present is assuaged.

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Thanks to Holocaust studies, research on testimony abounds. Dori Laub and Shoshana Felman theorize that testimony comes to be the act of being or having been the subject of or witness to traumatic events. In spite of the fact that the telling or narration takes place atemporally, in the moment of presenting or narrating the testimony (be it oral or written), the witness relives the experiences with the purpose of surviving the trauma by facing and attempting to cope or overcome it, years, decades, or an entire life after the events took place. Another key element of testimony, according to Laub and Felman, is based not on the testimonial subject, but on the dynamic and connection established with the reader or the listener. The reader or listener not only becomes a participant in the trauma, but also co-owner of it. If we apply Marianne Hirsch’s theories on postmemory and Alison Landsberg’s on prosthetic memory, three important elements stand out: the transgenerational phenomenon, empathy, and the awakening of consciousness that spurs on an engagement (possibly political) with the future. Curiously, Landsberg underscores that prosthetic memory comes about in part when a bond has been broken, when a piece is missing. In the case of Spain, due to the imposed terror of the forty-year dictatorship and resulting silence, what is missing is the word that communicates, that serves as a bridge, between the past and the present, between those who have suffered and those who feel the legacy of trauma, such as the phantasm pain so eloquently novelized by Manuel Rivas.8 Exemplifying Hannah Arendt’s assertion that each generation bears the burden of its parents’ sins and has also been blessed with the deeds of its ancestors (in Baer and Sznaider 2, Arendt 298), in A mis nietos, Ángel states explicitly his purpose for transmitting this family memoire, a gift given to his grandchildren on Christmas 2009: “Veréis como esta historia tiene mucha importancia para mejor comprender ‘el Ayer y el Presente’” (A mis nietos 24) (You will see how this story is very important to better understand ‘Yesterday and the Present’). The context in which he gave this gift to his grandchildren was his awareness of his age (eighty at the time) and the inevitability of his mortality. Given the descriptions of his admiration for his own grandfather, Saturnino, and the latter’s passing, his legacy on Ángel himself—an unwavering belief in a more human/e and 8  For a more in-depth and nuanced application of these theories to contemporary Spanish literature, please see my chapter in (Re)collecting the Past: Historical Memory in Spanish Literature and Culture.

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solidary world (A mis nietos 22)—the reader can infer that Ángel wishes his grandchildren to learn from the past so that they, too, may engage with the present and work toward future solidarity and kindness. In Rebelde II, in the section titled “¿Por qué escribir todo esto?” (Why Write This?), Ángel contemplates his reasoning to recount and relive the trauma of his political imprisonment: Escribir para quién y para qué es un razonamiento que merece mucha atención. Hacerse daño hasta verter lágrimas de sangre, ¿para qué? Somos parte del pasado. En algún lugar, ocupamos un espacio que condiciona nuestra existencia y la de otros. Cuando se pasan tantos años de cárcel, siempre se está en cautiverio. Escribir sobre nuestro pasado, es descubrirse a sí mismo para mejor comprender lo que somos hoy en día … Escribir su pasado … [es] una necesidad de recordar, de transmitir a las nuevas generaciones una experiencia…[Sufro] más y más a medida que escribo estas páginas … [Siempre] guardé la luz del eterno sueño. (Rebelde II 109–10) (To write for whom and why is a reasoning that requires great attention. Why cause oneself pain to the point of shedding tears of blood? We are part of the past. Some place, we occupy a space that conditions our existence and that of others. When one has spent so many years imprisoned, one is always in captivity. To write about our past is to discover/uncover oneself to understand better what we are today  …To write one’s past  … [is] a need to remember, to transmit an experience to new generations, … [I suffer] more and more as I write these pages…I [always] kept the light of the eternal dream.) (Rebelde II 109–10)

Fragments opens with Ángel’s poeticized, pressing, time-bound need to transmit the lived traumas before he passes away: “Quelques pages souvenir/ avant que le poids de mes 88 ans,/ éteigne ma voix” (Some remembrance pages/ before the weight of my 88 years/ extinguishes my voice) (Fragments 1). In Traumas, Ángel unambiguously states his obligation to bear witness to the injustices and collateral damage he and other children of war endured: “Cierto es que los niños de entonces tendremos que hacer saber nuestro sufrimiento, nuestra desesperación… Éramos muy pequeños y fueron muchas las cosas que vivimos en poco tiempo” (my emphasis, 374) (It is true that we children from then have to make our suffering and our desperation known … We were very little and lived through so much in such little time [374]). Yet verbalization of pain is inherently problematic. As Scarry observes, pain is unlike other states of consciousness and lacks referential content: “It is not of or for anything. It is precisely because

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it takes no object that it, more than any other phenomenon, resists objectification in language” (5). The question remains, then, how can survivors verbalize an occurrence that is linguistically crippled? With regard to bearing witness and testimony, the manner in which the inexpressible is expressed, the strategies employed to confer authority or credibility upon the expression—whose truth or facticity has been questioned—and the vehicle through which the message is transmitted and, above all, is received at its destination, in other words, is heard, felt, and shared, require attention. In L’écriture ou la vie, Jorge Semprún writes on how to transmit the concentrationary experience: “Raconter bien, ça veut dire: de façon a être entendus. On n’y parviendra pas sans un peu d’artifice. Suffisamment d’artifice pour que ça devienne de l’art” (To tell a story well means to do it in a way that it is understood. It will not reach its destination without a little bit of artifice. Just enough artifice so that it becomes art) (Semprún 165). For Parrau, “Raconter la vérité définit le témoignage. Mais le témoignage en appelle toujurs à autrui, à un communautè possible, qui garantit la transmission du vrai en lui donnant la figure d’un partage realisé. Le témoignage est le partage de la vérité; mais il est aussi la vérité comme partage, le partage comme réalité du vrai” (Parrau 39) (Telling the truth defines testimony. But testimony always appeals to others, to a possible community, that guarantees the transmission of what is true by giving it the shape of a fulfilled sharing [a shared experience]. Testimony is the sharing of truth; but it is also truth as sharing, sharing as the reality of truth [emphasis in the original, Parrau 39]). Various strategies stand out in Ángel’s testimonies: recounting his own story, telling the stories of others, narrating History, and incorporating quotes, poems, personal photos, official photos, maps/blueprints, judicial documents, or simply those by “authorities,” among others, whose inclusion, by extension, confers authority to the texts. The multiplicity of visual and written texts ultimately becomes a polyphonic discourse and a multilayered collage that tells the paradoxically individual and collective story. The survivor’s story becomes intertwined with those who perished; subjective narratives become inextricably linked to eyewitness testimony penned in the third-person perspective as well as what is objective, such as documents and photographs. Not unlike a medium, Ángel channels the voice of the dead. As Ángel indicated to me when I interviewed him at his home on July 12, 2017, “Hablo para muchos que han sufrido mucho más que yo” (I speak for many who have suffered much more than I have).

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Testimony, as a way of expressing “truth,” has been criticized for its lack of veracity. Yet within testimony, fuzziness or blurriness relates to arguably immaterial details. Truth—what Semprún deems the essential truth in La escritura o la vida (141)—resides in testimony. Laub cites the case of an Auschwitz survivor, who recalled that there were four crematoria ovens in the death camp where many were exterminated and that their respective chimneys were in operation around the clock on the days referenced. Historians, states Laub, dismissed the veracity of this survivor’s testimony regarding the revolt/riot that took place, in part, because the witness erred in the exact number of crematoria ovens and chimneys (60–62). The testimony was disregarded due to the numerical imprecision regarding the Nazi mechanism to dispose of their victims’ corpses. The essential truth of the testimony lies in the magnitude of the genocide at the death camp. In Ángel’s testimony, as in the aforementioned example, there are historical facts abounding with their details (as well as omissions— “alguna que otra laguna” [an occasional lacuna] [Traumas 374] and subjective selectivity). In his chapter “Resumen breve sobre las dos Españas” (Brief Summary about the Two Spains), Ángel narrates History to set the stage for his own story. On the one hand, “La España del exilio,” he writes, is that of “quinientas mil personas albergadas en los campos de concentración, huyendo por tierras de Francia para escapar a las persecuciones de las autoridades francesas o alemanas … [con] la ilusión …de volver … a sus hogares” (Rebelde I, 124). (The Spain of exile of five hundred thousand people lodged in concentration camps, fleeing through France to escape persecution from French or German authorities … [with] the dream of returning to their homes (Rebelde I 124).) On the other hand, La otra España era esa piel de toro de tras los Pirineos. Una prisión toda ella. Campos de concentración, cárceles y plazas de toros, repletos de hombres y mujeres medio muertos y destrozados por la desesperanza del vencido … Los hogares de España no eran más que un vivero de rehenes de la represión esperando el momento en que algún individuo de la cruzada viniera a sacar el ser querido para ‘interrogarlo’ y hacerlo desaparecer después de un paseo. (Rebelde I 124) (The other Spain was that bull hide on the other side of the Pyrenees. A prison all of it. Concentration camps, jails and bullrings, crammed with men and women who were half dead and destroyed by the despair of the defeated … Homes in Spain were a breeding ground for the hostages of

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repression awaiting the moment when some individual of the crusade would take out the loved one to ‘interrogate’ him and disappear him after going for a stroll.

Readers and interlocutors must distill the essence and the essential truth: to wit, the suffering, the injustice, the engagement with the future of humanity, and the desire to recount but also to be heard or read so that the reader, viewer, or listener can become a participant and co-owner of the trauma, and as such feel empathy with the future of humanity. The objective of testimony is compassionate and solidary reception. Psychologist Marshall Rosenberg developed the practice of nonviolent communication (also known as compassionate communication) precisely to ameliorate apparently irreconcilable relationships, be they interpersonal, community, political, or cultural. At first blush, the goals appear simple: the exposition of the speaker, the affirmation or acknowledgment by the interlocutor of that which has been articulated by the speaker, and, of course, the empathy or shared feelings. The elements of nonviolent communication are observation (the articulation of what objectively took place), the speaker’s expression of his/her feelings, the statement of the need, the request of how to fulfill or satisfy the need, and, of course, the interlocutor’s appropriate response affirming what the speaker shared. The first three elements are visible in Ángel’s written testimonies and in the films. These texts (written and cinematic) present the objective case (both personal story [historia] and monumental History [Historia]). They also express emotion and present a request (be it implicit or explicit): awareness, understanding, raised consciousness, solidarity, and engagement. The missing piece is the empathetic response of the reader or viewer. The onus, then, is on the receptor to complete the nonviolent communication. For the testimony to fulfill its purpose, the reader, listener, or viewer must approach the testimonialized revelation with intimacy and humanity. Referencing Rosenberg (that the goal of communication is to be heard, not just to express oneself), and drawing from Laub, Felman, Hirsch, and Landsberg (that the purpose of testimony is for the reader/listener to feel empathy with the victim and become engaged with the future), I wish to adhere to theories on the aesthetic representation of trauma. Brett Ashley Kaplan in Unwanted Beauty proposes that aesthetic pleasure at the time of suffering facilitates survival, and when remembering the trauma, aesthetic pleasure transforms “a painful past into a more tolerable present” (54). This is precisely why the documentary Ángel is the culmination of the

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testimonial corpus, for Dominique is the co-owner of Ángel’s traumas on the pilgrimage, as the film aestheticizes the traumas with animation based on Ángel’s own sketches. I posit that artistic or cultural representation ultimately fulfills, through Semprún’s “artifice,” the goal of communication. Moreover, aestheticization of the written works and films (with poetry, music, images, plastic arts, and testimony) communicates more effectively at a human level than only the print testimonies with the documentation. The documentation is vital for the purposes of credibility, for the naysayers who prefer to believe a whitewashed version of history that confers impunity to the victors in spite of their transgressions. The documentation is evidence of incontrovertible facts. The latter is understood and internalized at an intellectual level. My use of the term “communication” carries with it the empathy theorized by the aforementioned scholars. The cultural product’s aesthetic representation makes this deeper, intimate, and human understanding of the lived trauma possible. Poetic and literary language, as well as visual, plastic, and cinematographic language, also reflects the fragmentation, the lack of “truth” or precision, in order to capture the essential truth of the lived experiences of victims and survivors of fascist repression such as Ángel and all those whose stories he tells.

Aestheticizing Trauma In contemporary Spain, it is not uncommon to hear those that balk at historical memory and question the importance of “remover el pasado” (stirring up the past). The answer lies in the fact that the Spanish twentieth century is one of historical trauma. Between 1936 and 1939, a ferocious fratricidal war raged on Iberian soil. Death reigned. Mothers, fathers, daughters, sons, brothers, sisters, and cousins died from violent death on the battlefield, in extra-official executions, in bombings, in collapsed buildings, and from the collateral violence of famine, illness, and neglect. Following the war, the victors who had set the fratricidal conflict in motion with the military uprising conferred impunity to their transgressors and categorized the defeated as criminals, thus rewriting history to portray the legitimate Republican government and its supporters as the instigators of the war responsible for the bloodshed and ancillary suffering. Due to the well-founded fear for their safety, many went into exile, evacuated children, some continued the clandestine fight, and others, of course, fell into the paralyzing silence in order to survive and protect theirs in the New

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Spain. Its motto, “Una, Grande y Libre” (One, Great and Free), would be comical if it had not been used to whitewash the bloodstained reality of repression. For José Colmeiro (2011), Spain is a nation of phantoms, haunted by a spectral past, perhaps by the ghost of what Ángel has indicated to be the Republic, a country that no longer exists.9 As a result, exiles such as Ángel Fernández persist in what Jorge Semprún considers the “desarraigo y desasosiego del exilio” (the uprootedness and unease of exile).10 In response to why it is relevant to stir up the past, the answer is absurdly simple: because pain is felt in the present, because pain can be coped with by expressing, understanding, and sharing it. The more relevant question would be, how can suffering from past trauma be expressed so that, ultimately, the reader, listener, or viewer could feel (ideally empathy)? I propose that the communication of trauma is carried out with traumatic language and the prism of art. The aesthetic medium sensitizes and solidarizes the receptor with the testimonializing transmitter. Not unlike vindicating literatures and those that tout their authenticity, such as l’écriture feminine, testimony avails itself of the language of marginalization and strategies to “center” that which is peripheral. L’écriture feminine acknowledges a distinct form of expression that is not inferior to the hegemonic discourse, but rather different. Hélène Cixous proposes writing with the white ink of maternal milk and the red ink of menstrual blood, or, as Luce Irigaray proposes, to speak and write with authenticity as a woman. Similarly, I offer, testimony bears structural, conceptual, and linguistic tendencies, such as disparate genres, an episodic structure when recounting the lives of others, bursts of memory and interruption in the narration, the vocabulary of trauma, the grammar of pain, the articulation of silence and what Sarah Kofman terms “paroles suffoquées”11 (choked words). In the note to the reader in the first volume of Rebelde, Joan Ramón i Cinca refers to Ángel’s act of “remover recuerdos” (stirring up memories) 9  “Un pays que n’existe plus: REPUBLIQUE ESPAGNOLE [sic]” (A country that no longer exists: Spanish Republic) is the title of the first chapter of Fragments d’Histoire d’une enfance brisée (Fragments of a Shattered Childhood). 10  See my publication, “El tránsito, el transporte y la trascendencia: El exilio y la deportación en Jorge Semprún.” El exilio republicano de 1939 y la segunda generación. Ed. Manuel Aznar. Sevilla: Renacimiento, Biblioteca del Exilio, Anejos XV, 2011. 590–97. 11  Sarah Kofman’s 1987 Parole suffoquées is a study on the conflict between the need to bear witness to the horrors of Auschwitz and the stymied ability to verbalize.

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as “un calvario” (a calvary, the locus of Christ’s crucifixion) in which he risked his health: “las frases de este testimonio no están escritas con tinta, están escritas con sangre y dolor” (the sentences of this testimony are not written with ink—they are written with blood and suffering) (1). In Fragments, Ángel pens, “Cette histoire est pleine de larmes, de sang et de cendres” (This story is full of tears, blood and ashes) (Fragments 4). In Rebelde I, during the very early months of incarceration, Ángel describes his anguish following his fellow inmate Eusebio’s torture and death: “El corneta tocó las notas de silencio, parecían lágrimas que salían de su instrumento” (Rebelde I 326); “Cuando pasó el ataúd delante de nosotros, un grito de horror quedó atascado en mi garganta. Por desgracia, no sería éste el último crimen que presenciaría curvando mi cabeza para esconder mis lágrimas” (Rebelde I, 329). (The bugler played the notes of silence; they seemed to be tears that came from his instrument. When the coffin passed before us, a scream of horror was stuck in my throat. Sadly, this would not be the last crime I would witness, hanging my head to hide my tears.) Given his self-censorship or “choked words” to express his horror at the unjust cruelty, the author displaces his own emotions by personifying an instrument of musical expression. This passage reveals several key elements: his acknowledgment of another’s trauma, his acknowledgment of his horror but also his inability to share his dread openly, and clearly the non-reception of the non-transmitted fear. As Elaine Scary has studied, a tortured prisoner “experiences an annihilating negation so hugely felt throughout his own body that it overflows into the spaces before his eyes and in his ears and mouth … These physical realities … [are] translated into verbal realities…in order to make what is taking place in terms of pain take place in terms of power” (36). In other words, torture forces a power structure that silences and dehumanizes the victim. While acknowledging the physical and psychological trauma he experienced and that which he witnessed, Ángel persists in his humanity and his voice, “La souffrance a forgé mon corps/ Le rêve l’a rendu humain. Ángel” (Suffering has forged my body/ The dream has rendered it human. Ángel) (Fragments 1). In order to “Sacar a esta generación del silencio en que está sumergida,” he writes, “Seguiré escribiendo tal como empecé … digo lo vivido y lo que otros amigos me contaron con sencillez” (Rebelde I, 31) (pull this generation out of the silence in which it is submerged, … I will continue writing as I began … I recount what I lived and what other friends told me with simplicity). Ángel’s purported “simplicity,” upon close scrutiny, distills the essential truth of remembrance often through aesthetic media.

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To aestheticize trauma is to liberate it and free the survivor of the unspeakable past memory as well as the present affective and intellectual experience. Cruelty cannot be intellectualized or understood; rather, it must be acknowledged as what it is. Kaplan analyzes works that “insist that we continue to examine how the Holocaust resides in our thoughts; because they are beautiful, these works entice our reflection, our attention, and our questioning” (1). In his written works, Ángel aestheticizes through poetic prose, poetic imagery, poems, artwork, and references to Republican icons (such as poet García Lorca and his poetry, Picasso’s Guernica). The documentaries on Ángel bring to fruition director Francis Lapeyre’s articulated vision, “Faire du beau avec du laid … magnifier la laideur” (to make beauty out of ugliness … to magnify the ugliness).12 The trajectory from Ángel’s written testimonies to their transmuted cinematic form exemplifies Kaplan’s assertion that “aesthetic pleasure has itself been transformed from its earlier use as a survival mechanism into its later use as a means of catalyzing” memory (13). As a memory catalyst, Au temps des roses rouges remembers and pays homage to the victims of fascism through the leitmotif of red rose petals gliding on the surface of flowing water. When the story of the Republic is recounted, the petals flow in one direction, when that of fascism is told, they flow in the other direction. In other words, the current has changed. This motif is a direct reference to the 13 young women executed on August 5, 1939, known as las Trece Rosas Rojas (the Thirteen Red Roses). Excerpts from Dulce Chacón’s novel La voz dormida and Juana Doña’s testimonial novel Noche y niebla further elucidate Francoist repression of women in the microcosm of Madrid’s Ventas jail. As historian Irene Abad Buil indicates in the film, the regime masculinized the state and, hence, deemed Republican women a transgression against the state. The following song encapsulates the message of the film: “Españoles, salisteis de vuestra patria después de haber luchado  …  Juramos volver a nuestra España para vengar la afrenta contra la humanidad…Franco traidor y asesino de mujeres y niños y del pueblo español” (Spaniards, you left your homeland after having fought … We vow to return to our Spain to avenge the assault on humanity…Franco traitor and murderer of women and children and the Spanish people). Through the iconic Spanish medium of canto,13 the lyrics acknowledge the fight for human rights, the flight and  Quoted on the back cover of the DVD.  Flamenco singing.

12 13

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exile, the aspiration to avenge the Francoist crimes against humanity, and a scathing denunciation of the dictator’s victimization of the children and women.

Aestheticizing Trauma: Federico García Lorca as a Universal Symbol Just as the Thirteen Red Roses are legendary and have become part of Spanish iconography, Federico García Lorca (1898–1936) has incontrovertibly come to emblematize the denunciation of fascist transgressions against the Republican ideals of beauty and humanity. Federico García Lorca, of the poetic Generation of 1927, was murdered by the Nationalists one month after the war broke out, was thrown in a mass grave, and in today’s culture of memory and memory activism has become an icon honored and representative of all the victims of Nationalist persecution and repression. In relation to the works by and about Ángel, Lorca plays a distinct role. While Lorca’s poetry is not included in Roses rouges, the film opens with a reference to him and Pablo Picasso: “Pablo [Picasso] est mort. Federico [García Lorca] est mort” (Pablo is dead. Federico is dead) (https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xmn2tt). A short clip of Ángel follows, in which he recounts he was twenty years old when he and fellow resistants were sentenced to death, most of whom were executed. Poignantly, Ángel’s words are recited and resuscitated, but filtered through art, as a voice-over narrator recites Ángel’s testimony, as images of victims appear and slowly fade, aestheticizing the disappearance of the victims themselves. The frame cuts to the projection of a paredón (execution wall) riddled with bullet holes as a flamenco singer mournfully croons, “En una fosa común en la memoria del olvido … todos los hombres y mujeres en huesos se han convertido. Todos los hombres y mujeres tienen nombres ya perdidos” (In a common grave in the memory of oblivion/forgetting/ cultural amnesia, all the men and women have turned to bones. All the men and women whose names are now lost). The artistic medium of flamenco is also a nod to Lorca given that he denounced persecution of the marginalized in his neopopularist poetry tomes that directly reference flamenco and Romani Andalusians: Poema del cante jondo and Romancero gitano. A clear example relates to Antonio Torres Heredia, protagonist of Lorca’s ballad (romance), arrested for what the reader can only infer was stealing lemons (to toss them playfully in the water), but in actuality was targeted for racial purging:

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Si te llamaras Camborio, hubieras hecho una fuente de sangre con cinco chorros. … ¡Se acabaron los gitanos que iban por el monte solos! Están los viejos cuchillos tiritando bajo el polvo. (If your name were Camborio/ you would have made a blood fountain with five jets/… The time is up for gypsies who used to wander alone on the mountain!)

Antoñito’s murder at the hands of the guardias civiles constituted institutionalized and juridically sanctioned malfeasance, an act met with impunity. Hence, the reference to Lorca is most fitting given the homage paid to the Thirteen Roses who were also unjustly imprisoned and executed. The film Te doy mi palabra includes excerpts of poems by three dead Republican poets: Federico García Lorca; Antonio Machado who fled during the mass exodus known as the Retirada in January 1939 and died of pneumonia weeks before the end of the war in Collioure, France; and Miguel Hernández who died of tuberculosis while incarcerated in 1942.14 This triumvirate of dead anti-fascist poets constitutes a secular trinity whose poetic corpus in the aggregate professes a credo, a proclamation on the one hand of a belief in humanity, solidarity, and beauty and on the other hand an acerbic denunciation of dehumanization taken to its extreme: erasure of more than ideas, erasure of human beings and the memory of them. This silencing and rubbing out, as Te doy and Roses rouges attest, have unwittingly invited a powerful response, thus cementing an engagement with memory and a commitment to remember and learn from the past so it does not recur. Ángel’s poem “La tristeza de una noche sin luna” (Sadness of a Moonless Night) (Rebelde I 30) accompanies his drawing of a bird, to be analyzed at a later point, which also appears in Fragments and seems to have inspired animation in Ángel. The following is the entirety of Ángel’s poem. Qué triste es una noche sin luna Dónde está tu luna, García Lorca Dónde se ha escondido la luna  The poems, respectively, are “Soledad,” “El camino III,” and “Triste guerra.”

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Para no ver a tus asesinos Qué triste es una noche con nubes de tormenta Rodeado de vampiros sedientos de sangre poeta No sé dónde está tu luna, Lorca La encontré una noche de plenilunio Tras los barrotes de mi celda de condenado a muerte Se fue con la esperanza al pozo del olvido Qué triste es una noche sin luna, amigo. (Rebelde I 30) (How sad is a moonless night Where is your moon, García Lorca Where has it hidden To not see your killers How sad is a night with storm clouds Surrounded by vampires thirsty for poet blood I do not know where your moon is, Lorca I found it a night of full moon Behind the bars of my cell sentenced to death It went away with hope to the pit of oblivion How sad is a moonless night, friend.) (Rebelde I 30)

Other than three commas, each to denote the lyric voice’s apostrophe of Lorca, and the final period, there is no other punctuation. It would be customary to have an exclamation with “How sad  …” and a question mark with “Where is your moon.” Rather, the breaks lie with each new line of poetry. The apostrophe “friend” followed by the only period closes the poem. This free verse poem makes use of a handful of poetic tropes: the anaphora of “donde  …  donde” and “que  …  que”; the antithetical parallel of seen and hidden; the conceptual synonymic parallels among hidden, forgotten, behind bars, and the pit, as well as between moon and hope. In spite of the fact that there is no set rhyme pattern, Ángel Fernández avails himself of both consonant and assonant rhyme: consonant rhyme is evident in the repetitions luna-luna and Lorca-Lorca; and assonant rhyme in asesinos-olvido-amigo. This latter trio proves most poignant as it explicitly denounces trauma and injustice, implicitly cries out for justice, and depicts the unjust trauma as shared, in both the experience and the interlocution. Lorca, here poeticized, is polyvalent for literal significance and symbolic relevance—for he is a known victim of fascist bloodshed, whose perpetrators enjoy impunity. Lorca, then, incarnates the denunciation of Francoist carnage and becomes a banner of beauty among that which is painfully heinous.

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Aesthetics: Ángel’s Poetic and Pictorial Language of Incarceration Ángel makes use of both poetic and pictorial imagery of incarceration and freedom in his works. The conclusion of Rebelde II describes the exact moment of his release in August 1950: “el cerrojo de la puerta del primer rastrillo chirrió, dejándome salir esposado entre dos Guardias Civiles para pasar la frontera de mi pasado, quedando detrás de mí, esos muros que tanta carne humana vieron devorar en estado de putrefaccion” (the bolt of the door of the first grate screeched, letting me exit handcuffed between two Civil Guards to cross that border of my past, leaving behind me those walls that saw so much human flesh be devoured in a state of putrefaction) (Rebelde II 380). This imagery of being escorted by the Civil Guards is also reminiscent of Lorca’s Antoñito el Camborio whom “guardia civil caminera/lo llevó codo con codo” (the civil guard on patrol/ took him away elbow to elbow). Yet in this instance, it is ironized, for Ángel is released rather than detained. Ángel’s personification of the walls that see, as with the bugle and its tear-notes, constitutes a displacement. The walls are witnesses to the carnage, the devouring of human flesh. In Spanish, “carne” signifies both meat (the animal product) and human flesh. The usage in this passage reduces human flesh to animal meat for consumption with the adjectival prepositional phrase “of putrefaction.” This high-­ register noun further debases the flesh and denounces, by extension, the unnamed collective and institutional perpetrator. The imagery of consumption evident in the “vampires thirsty for poet blood” resurfaces in the “devoured human flesh.” The epilogue of Rebelde II reads, “A los 16 años, creí que para ser libre bastaba con romper cadenas. Pasados los 70, sé que la libertad sigue siendo un sueño” (When I was 16, I thought that to be free, it would suffice to break chains. Now in my seventies, I know that freedom continues to be a dream) (Rebelde II 390). The captivity coupled with hope poeticized in “Tristeza de una noche sin luna” recurs in this epilogue. As Parrau indicates, “L’oeuvre est l’effort et l’espoir de romper ce soliloque de la verité par les ressources de l’art” (41) (the work is the effort and the hope to break the soliloquy of truth through the resource of art). Ángel’s aestheticization of imprisonment is a survival tactic that allows him to pronounce the choked words of trauma (Fig. 2.1). Angel’s individual sense of captivity extends to collective identity as is evident in his pictorial and poetic representations. Identity can be how one

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Fig. 2.1  The Iberian Peninsula behind barbed wires in Rebelde I

sees oneself, or the groups or collectives to which one belongs, or perhaps from whence one comes. As a selective process of self-definition based on internal as well as external factors, identity is inextricably linked to (although not perfectly concurrent with) authenticity and freedom to express that authenticity. It is the awareness of being who one is (whatever that might be) and the prerogative to express oneself. If we consider Ángel and hundreds of thousands of Spaniards like him, within the Francoist context it becomes patently clear that there was a great conflict between authenticity and freedom to express oneself. The following pictorial expressions paired with the poetic from Rebelde I prove most revealing. In the drawing of the Iberian Peninsula, Spain, southern France, Portugal, and the tip of Africa are visible. Three strands of barbed wire stretch across the Peninsula in diagonal lines from northeast to southwest. Below the sketch, a paragraph of poetic prose poignantly complements it: Acuérdate de esa España donde se quedaron enterrados los sueños, las lágrimas de las madres, los llantos de los niños, la sangre de los bravos y donde los sobrevivientes fueron exiliados o presos de la Cruzada esperando el momento en que apaguen la luz de la esperanza. No mentir más, fue la derrota de la libertad ante la brutalidad y la esclavitud. Nos quitaron el país, nos quemaron el futuro. Solo quedaron torturados y verdugos. (Rebelde I 176)

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(Remember that Spain where dreams, mothers’ tears, children’s screams and brave men’s blood were buried, and where survivors were exiled or taken prisoner by the Crusade awaiting the moment to snuff out the light of their hope. Stop the lying; it was the overthrow/defeat of liberty in the face of brutality and slavery. They took away our country, they burnt our future. Only the tortured and the executioners remained.) (Rebelde I 176)

While not written as a poem, it bears poetic elements. Assonant rhyme is evident among “España,” “Cruzada,” “esperanza,” “más,” “brutalidad,” and “libertad,” as well as among “quedaron,” “enterrados,” “llantos,” “bravos,” “exiliados,” “esperando,” “quitaron,” “quedaron,” “quemaron,” and “torturados,” and between “futuro” and “verdugos.” The expression of trauma is enumerated in the synonymic parallels “las lágrimas de las madres, los llantos de los niños, la sangre de los bravos” (mothers’ tears, children’s screams, and brave men’s blood). The first-­ person plural possessive adjective in the line “nos quemaron el futuro” reinforces the multiple manifestations of suffering. The rich crusade reference denotes the Francoist pseudo-religious fervor that, arguably, is parallel to the Spanish Inquisition’s fanaticism fused with juridical power, particularly in light of the allusions to burning, torture, and execution. The captivity metaphor recurs: “overthrow of freedom,” “slavery,” “taken prisoner.” The anaphora “nos … nos” builds tension, not unlike a climax, leading up to the juxtaposed rhyming antithetical concepts “future” and “executioner” that bring this poetic prose to a close. While Ángel does not write the term “land,” the concept is implicit in “Spain,” “buried,” and “country.” The land is polyvalent for it is the nation of Spain, but it is also the earth where “tears,” “cries,” and “blood” are buried. The cries and body fluids of suffering constitute a  synecdoche for their owners who might literally be buried. A drawing from Rebelde I accompanies a five-line poem. The drawing, framed within a rectangle, depicts two fists grasping bars. Although the sketch is in black and white, it appears the flag that serves as background is three colors, most likely the red-yellow-purple Republican flag. The following free verse poem accompanies the artwork: “Ingresé en una parcela de la vida/ donde se rompe la noción del tiempo/ solo muerte y olvido se respira/ Encadenado noche y día/ largos años soñé con la libertad perdida” (Rebelde I 214) (I entered a parcel of life/ where broken is the notion of time/ breathing in death and oblivion/ I am chained by day and by night/ dreaming for years of my freedom lost) (Rebelde I 214). The

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imagery and the assonant rhyme in four of the five lines give the poem unity. The imagery consists of antithetical parallels between life and death, freedom and imprisonment, hope and despair. This poem exemplifies Parrau’s “recours salvateur” (271). The sketches paired with their respective poetic expressions communicate that the individual repression and squashing of identity, of erasure of humans and of ideas, is a shared experience that forges a traumatized anti-­ fascist community. I assert that the reconfigured identity lies in the word, the expression, but above all in the communication in which the subjective experience is shared. Through the empathy of the transgenerational reader, viewer, or listener, a community link is forged. Ángel’s identity includes remembering the past, celebrating authenticity, standing against the snuffing out of one’s authenticity, and forging a community. Ángel was able to express his prison trauma through Semprún’s “artifice” and Parrau’s “mise en oeuvre” (43) which facilitate communication (i.e., the reception of the transmitted message).

Aesthetics: Catalyst of Memory The documentary Ángel further aestheticizes some of the illustrations in the written testimonies. Stéphane Fernandez’s road trip documentary with animation segments follows Ángel on a quest for the pieces of a fractured past, an exploration of imposed traumas and shattered dreams, an adventure whose objective is not so much the arrival at the destination but rather the introspection and sharing with his companion Dominique that unfolds throughout the voyage. The genre defragments and orders (to a certain point) the shards and mangled pieces of what Parrau terms a mutilated life. Similar to Francis Lapeyre’s15 2012 documentary Au temps des roses rouges (Time of the Red Roses) that combines poetry, literary fragments on political incarceration, canto flamenco, plastic arts, and historical narration voice-over, Stephane Fernandez’s road trip documentary integrates a special genre: animation inspired by Ángel’s drawings. The animation with Ángel’s voice-over metaphorizes and poignantly captures various elements. Certain images are literal, while others are allegorical. For example, the light birds represent happiness and the freedom of childhood; as they 15  Francis Lapeyre also has another film on the Spanish Civil War: the 2011 Pères républicains espagnols, héros vaincus?

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transform and darken, they become harbingers of war. Of note is the fact that sketched narratives such as the graphic novels 11-M: La novela gráfica ([11 March: The Graphic Novel] 2009, Gálves and Guiral) and Maus (1980–1981, Art Spiegelman), or animated films such as Waltz with Bashir (2008, dir. Ari Folman), Persépolis (2007, dirs. Vincent Paronnaud y Marjane Satrapi), or Tower (2016, dir. Keith Maitland), appropriate a traditionally intranscendent, light, and perhaps trivial form to capture the unspeakability and make sense of the atrocities such as the Holocaust, or the terrorist attack in Madrid on March 11, 2004. Stéphane Fernandez’s film also makes sense of Ángel’s experiences so that the protagonist might reconcile with his past. The bombing of Barcelona that mortally wounded his mother before his very eyes and orphaned him inaugurates Ángel’s misfortunes. In the road trip documentary, Ángel and Dominique travel from Toulouse to Barcelona to Ángel’s old neighborhood before and during the first year of the war. The protagonist recounts to his empathetic interlocutor childhood moments: playing with friends, altercations, riding a bicycle with his sister, the beginning of the war, the distribution of arms to the anarchist civilians. A black and white animation sequence depicts a young boy with a younger girl on a bicycle, gleefully pedaling through the streets, extending their arms, and morphing into a white bird that freely soars to the sky. The sky darkens, as does the bird, to become an instrument of death, dropping myriad bombs. The scene cuts to Ángel and Dominique in one of Barcelona’s preserved bomb shelters where the protagonist recounts the bombing in July 1937 that extinguished his mother’s life. The shots vary between medium to close. The camera frames the figures symmetrically positioned as near mirror images. The camera pans to Dominique and zooms in. Dominique, now the sole figure in the frame, is listening intently. The camera travels to frame and zoom in on Ángel who is choked up. In other words, his most traumatic experience is stifled by the “paroles suffoqueés.” The camera cuts to a close-up of the bomb shelter wall, a textured, haptic image that both subtly communicates the trauma of the bombing and confers dignity and privacy to Ángel. The following childhood incident, while literal, also metaphorizes and becomes a synecdoche for the acknowledgment that repair and redress victims, such as Ángel, would desire from the architects of their misfortune. In Ángel, Ángel recounts an episode also described in Fragments. Most of the children had been evacuated from Madrid to La Cellera del Ter (Girona, Catalonia). In the film, Dominique, Ángel’s companion and

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interlocutor, prompts, “Cuéntame qué pasó” (Tell me what happened). The third chapter of Fragments, titled “De la cruauté peut naitre une amitié” (Friendship Can Spring [be borne] from Cruelty), describes a turning point in the children’s refugee camp. Pascal, a boy who had bullied Ángel, and his younger siblings, Pepitin and Maxi, after the incident, with tears in his eyes, asked them for forgiveness and hugged them (Fragments 11). He writes,“Je n’oublierai jamais ce moment, et aujourd’hui, en l’écrivant, je ne peux pas retenir les larmes de gratitude  …  Maintenant, nous étions tous amis, pas de différence d’autres régions, nous étions simplement des enfants que cette maudite guerre, nous avait éloignés des êtres que nous aimions” (11) (I will never forget that moment, and today as I write, I cannot contain my tears of gratitude…. Now we were friends, with regional differences, we were simply children that that damn war had separated us from our loved ones). As Baer and Sznaider note, “Remember atrocity, honor the victims, learn for the future—these have become morally relevant universals … [R]econciliation between former enemies can only be achieved when justice is being done to all former victims” (Baer and Sznaider 5). Forgiveness is possible when accompanied by denunciation and acknowledgment of remembered injustice.

Aesthetics of Remembrance: Remembering the Mother through the Artifice of Guernica Ángel Fernández’s pictorial transmutations of Pablo Picasso’s Guernica become a vehicle to express the rupture in his life catalyzed by the bombing—as a type of origin story—as well as that of the Spanish Republic and other collateral victims. A recontextualized Guernica greets the reader on the second page of Fragments, situated above the title of the first chapter or episode (“Un pays qui n’existe plus: REPUBLIQUE ESPAGNOLE [sic]” (A Country That No Longer Exists: SPANISH REPUBLIC). A replica of the masterpiece is modified as follows. A tricolor rainbow (red, yellow, and purple) symbolizing the Republic appears to pass through part of the painting just below the horse and appears above. The arc spans from the lower-left quadrant to the upper-right edge. As the Republican flag-­ rainbow nears the top, a red-yellow-red Nationalist sword severs the rainbow and penetrates the replica of Picasso’s masterpiece from behind, to impale the chest of the anguished figure on the right whose upturned head,

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gaping mouth, and outstretched arms emit suffering. The tip of the sword, outside the frame of Guernica, pierces what appears to be the tip of the northeastern tip of Spain, colored red and yellow (Fragments 2) (Fig. 2.2). The chapter titled “La longue marche forcé” (The Long Forced March) recounts the evacuation from the children’s refugee camp as they heard the roar of the “pavas” (the German bomber planes). Ángel narrates, “La première explosion, me rappelle ma mère” (13); “Ce scène horrible de terreur qui ne m’abandonne pas, réapparaît devant moi” (13) (The first explosion reminds me of my mother. That terrific scene of terror will never abandon me, it reappears before me). Curiously, in this traumatic scene

Fig. 2.2  Ángel’s recontextualization of Picasso’s Guernica in Fragments d’Histoire d’une enfance brisée

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that resuscitates the trauma of witnessing the bombing that mortally wounded his mother, Ángel briefly shifts the implicit narratee to an explicit collective narratee: all of the Madrilenian mothers who sent their offspring to the children’s refugee camp. The description concludes with “Dans leur dernier soupir, ils ont trouvé la forcé d’appeller ‘Maman!’” (In their final sigh, they found the strength to cry out Mamma!). Then this shared trauma between a child of war and exile (Ángel) with the mothers of other children of war and exile bears a purpose—to assuage the suffering of absence. The expression of trauma and the act of sharing are not limited to the written word but also extend to pictorial representation. Like the previous image, Ángel Fernández includes an illustration that also pays homage to and dialogues with Pablo Picasso’s 1937 Guernica painted after the horrific Nazi-Nationalist bombing of civilians in April of that year. While Picasso’s masterpiece is part of world iconography that emblematizes and denounces the cruel and intentional erasure of civilians, Ángel captures the scene in the bombed chapel in Figueres and the fear, the anguish, and the pain of the innocent children. A comparison of Ángel’s sketch to the grand painting proves revealing. To the right of the sketch, the figure with arms raised and head turned up in a scream of anguish and terror directly references Guernica and anchors the viewer in all that the work conveys. To the left, we also see a reference to the opus magnum of the malagueño artist, but in direct dialogue, almost as if it were a response. In Guernica, the anguished mother holds her deceased infant and cries in agony. In Ángel’s sketch, there is no mother, only children, some of whom lie lifeless. Arrows point to the mass of young over whom boldly stands a singular word in capital script with two emphatic exclamations: “MADRE!!” Upon scrutiny, this illustration presents a childlike and child’s response to the maternal anguish Picasso so poignantly captured and immortalized. The sketch, as a mise-en-oeuvre, enunciates not only the unpronounceable heartache through synesthesia but also the absence and above all the paradox of presence-absence. Although absent or deceased, the objects of love have an eternal emotional and psychological presence for those who love them. Ángel poignantly encapsulates the paradoxically alienating yet shared traumas of war and exile (Fig. 2.3). Ángel’s renditions of Guernica provide him respite and palliate his anguish. Kaplan underscores that the “focus on the modes of memory turns [survivors’] testimonies, literature, and art into powerful examinations of how to survive trauma by seeking respite through aesthetic

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Fig. 2.3  Ángel’s illustration of the bombing in Figueres and dying children reminiscent of Picasso’s Guernica in Fragments d’Histoire d’une enfance brisée

pleasure” (Kaplan 76). The back cover of A mis nietos depicts Ángel looking pensive and nostalgic as a print of Guernica hangs on the wall behind him. The bombing of Guernica appears in his works and works about him. Picasso’s emblematic masterpiece confers meaning to Ángel’s own experiences. The particular and unique bombing in Guernica has universal meaning and application. Picasso’s work, as part of anti-fascist world iconography, and works that reference it document the April 1937 bombing of civilians but also become a saving recourse for survivors and a memory catalyst.

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The Omnipresence of the Absent Mother: Solace, Flight, and Fugue In Ángel’s testimonies, the written works as well as in the documentaries, examples of maternal love abound, as does the search or nostalgia for the absent mother. As in so many testimonial works, those who bear witness recount what others had seen or felt or witnessed. In the following scene, Ángel writes of the longing for the absent mother, a conversation with his sister Maxi and her doll in which the young child counsels her doll on how to cope with the absence of her mother: to wit, to allow another to take her place and caress her. Subsequently, Ángel shifts the narratee and addresses his mother directly in the narration: “Oh Maman, que je souffre en écrivant ces lignes!” (Oh, Mamma, how I suffer writing these lines !) (Fragments 40). Ángel writes to his mother to communicate that Maxi does not remember her—“Mais toi, Maman, tu n’étais pas là” (But you, Mamma, were not there) (Fragments 46)—and underscores the need of human bonds. A phrase (or similar phrases/expressions) repeated throughout the testimony includes “Quand Maman fut assassinée par l’aviation allemande au service du dictateur Franco…” (Fragments 48) (When Mamma was murdered by the German aviation at the service of the dictator Franco). Parts of his testimony—all with respect to his mother—are not a way of resuscitating his mother, but rather a means of facing the ghosts of the past, as encapsulated in Jacques Derrida’s theory of hauntologie. The past haunts and constitutes a constant testimony of the past. I posit that one who bears testimony is an haunté (one who is haunted) that is witness to the perpetual and paradoxical absence-presence of the deceased and the surrounding traumas. In fact, the chapter on the death of Ángel’s mother is titled “L’aube de tous nos malheures” (The Dawn of All Our Misfortunes), a moment that inaugurates an era of uprootedness and severed bonds (alienation). This need to connect to the mother is perhaps not met but ameliorated with the sense of community. While no one can replace the mother, the co-fraternal bonds and shared trauma mitigate the suffering, the presence-absence of the void left from the mother’s gruesome and doubly traumatic death, traumatic for her and her son (bystander of her trauma and protagonist of his own loss). Ángel apostrophizes his mother in the section on his brother José, who was orphaned at the age of two and traumatically witnessed the execution of six maquis (resistance fighters): “Tu sais, Maman, maintenant que je me suis décidé à écrire ces souvenirs qui font partie de la vie de José, je passe

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la moitié de la nuit en éveil sans pouvoir retenir les larmes” (54) (You know, Mamma, now that I have decided to write these memories that are part of José’s life, I spent half the night awake unable to contain my tears). In other words, the deceased mother is transformed into an interlocutor, an explicit narratee. The maternal absence leads to anecdotes that attempt to fulfill a need. For example, after José ran away, sisters find him and their mother takes him in, she feeds him, and she caresses him, the latter of which is underscored as: “le plus important c’est qu’il a eu droit à des caresses, à des câlins” (59) (the most important thing is that he had a right to caresses and hugs). The author identifies with his youngest sibling’s loss and with the unmet need of affection and solace. Ángel’s mother not only represents kindness, she is also a refuge, a destination when he is in a state of fugue. As Ángel contemplates, his mother becomes his interlocutor. Ending one’s life would have been an escape, a type of flight or fugue. He is in fugue during torture and cruelty. In one of the instances, the cruelty consisted of ordering prisoners (Ángel and his comrades Yvars, Ferrer, Vidal, and Tuñon) who awaited interrogation to remain standing until given the order to move. Hours passed and the guards beat the prisoners who fell. Ángel writes, “Yo seguía de pie, firme auto-condicionado casi sin respirar. Mi cuerpo estaba presente, pero mi ego se había volatizado. Me encontraba con mi Madre. … Una eternidad me separaba de aquel lugar” (Rebelde II 129) (I continued standing, firm, self-conditioned almost without breathing. My body was present, but my ego had flown away. I met up with my Mother … An eternity separated me from that place). Once placed in isolation for thirty days, “Solo recuerdo de ese instante que me senté sobre el petate y mirando a los barrotes de la ventanilla, volví a huir de aquel lugar” (Rebelde II 130) (I only recall from that instance that I sat on my duffle and looking at the bars of the window, I fled again from that place). During his incarceration, when one of the times Ángel contemplates suicide, his deceased mother becomes his interlocutor. In the episode titled “En el manantial, te he vuelto a encontrar, Madre” (At the [Natural] Spring I Encountered You Again, Mother), he reflects, No sé por qué he dejado pasar tanto tiempo sin hablar contigo y el amigo Cristo  … Sigo el camino que me enseñaste de pequeño…No conocí al amigo Cristo. Tú me hablabas de él sin comentar su poder divino. Siempre decías, el amigo Cristo. Y así es como lo comparo con otros [que…] me tendieron una mano cuando las arenas movedizas me engullían. (Rebelde II 217)

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(I do not know why I have allowed so much time to pass without speaking with you and friend Christ  …  I follow that path that you taught me when I was a child…I never met the friend Christ. You used to talk to me about him without mentioning his divine power. You would always say, the friend Christ. That is how I compare him with others….[that] gave me their hand when quick sand would swallow me up.)

He then recalls two friends, Piñeiro in the children’s refugee camp and Cervera at his trial, who sacrificed for him and saved his life, while they died. Así es como concibo el amigo Cristo del que me hablaste. Otra cosa te quiero decir, Madre. Tu amigo Cristo tuvo más suerte que nosotros. Cierto es que mucho sufrió, pero a él, nunca le faltó su madre … Yo, si ejecuto mi decisión de suicidarme, no tendré a nadie. Solo me acompañará la ilusión de tu presencia y el sueño de tu caricia. (Rebelde II 218–219) (That is how I conceive of the friend Christ you told me about. There is one more thing, Mother. Your friend Christ was luckier than we were. It’s true he suffered very much, but his mother was never missing … If I carry out my decision to commit suicide, I won’t have anybody. The only thing that accompanies me is the illusion of your presence and the dream of your caress.)

As with the passage on Pepitin, Ángel highlights the need for touch and affection. He articulates the dream or hope (ilusión) of her presence that he personifies. The image of being consumed or swallowed resurfaces. Its antithesis is the maternal embrace. In the documentary Ángel, subsequent to the visit to the Torrero Cemetery memorial of the more than 3500 executed in the Zaragoza prison, that contains a marker for his friend Cervera, Ángel recounts his conversations with his mother while imprisoned. The film’s animation sequence depicts a young man in a prison cell. A birdlike human female figure appears through the barred window and embraces the young inmate seated on his cot.

Bird Imagery Birds and flight in Ángel’s writings represent an escape from the locus of trauma and the environs of cruelty. Ángel’s birds connote hope, fleeing, freedom, death, and solace in connection. The following anecdote of the bird in the episode titled “La historia que tanto me intrigaba era la siguiente” (The Story That So Intrigued Me Is the Following) reveals the

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bond between living creatures, but also death associated with a winged creature and the concomitant escape from the carceral reality. The literal and symbolic bars separate the innates from life outside, from the freedom to choose. Birds are the only creatures that transit between the two. Naturally, then, this motif recurs. Ángel writes, Algunos presos cuidaban pajaritos que caían de los nidos que los pájaros construían en los techos de la prisión. Un día, el Tribunal Militar condenó a la Pena de Muerte a cinco presos republicanos. El pajarito visitaba todos los días a su amo, condenado a muerte, pasando entre los barrotes de la celda. Los presos le daban cigarrillos y algún que otro papelito con escritos para el amigo en la “jaula”. Un día, el pájaro no encontró a su amigo, el humano. Los cinco fueron fusilados antes del amanecer. El pajarito volvió al patio con el cigarrillo, lo posó sobre uno de los bancos de piedra y se escondió entre los hierros de la marquesina. Rechazó todos los alimentos que los presos le ofrecían. Se dejó morir en esa esquina del patio, donde el humano lo alimentaba y lo cuidaba. Murió el pajarito de añoranza ante el crimen cometido con su amigo. Los presos le rindieron homenaje. (Rebelde II 92) (Some inmates would care for birds that fell from the nests they built in the roof of the prison. One day, the Military Tribunal sentenced five Republican prisoners to death. The little bird used to visit his master, sentenced to death, every day, passing through the bars of the cell. The prisoners used to give cigarettes and papers with writings to the friend in the “cage.” One day, the bird did not find his friend, the human. The five were executed at dawn. The little bird returned to the patio with the cigarette, he placed it on one of the stone benches and hid himself between the roof irons. He rejected the food they offered him. He let himself die in a corner of the patio, where the human used to feed and care for him. The little bird died of longing in the face of the crime committed against his friend. The prisoners paid homage to him.)

Ángel finds expression in birds and bars in both written and pictorial imagery. In the following episode accompanied by a sketch, the viewer/ reader is situated within, not just the prison in the recounting, but also specifically in the cell in the visual narrative (Fig. 2.4). The caption beneath the drawing reads, “La muerte lloró cuando vio a Eusebio en la celda” (Death cried when it saw Eusebio in the cell). The drawing and the story of Ángel’s friend and fellow inmate Eusebio follows. Ángel at this point had only been in jail for three months. He describes himself as “un novato en ese mundo carcelario” (a novice in that

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Fig. 2.4  Ángel’s drawing of his friend and fellow inmate Eusebio in Reblede I

prison world) (Rebelde I 325). Eusebio had been incarcerated for stealing hens. He was young and handsome: “Esa belleza de hombre le costó muchos sufrimientos y hoy la muerte” (That male beauty cost him many sufferings and today his death) (Rebelde I 326). Particularly, over a period, several guards repeatedly raped, beat, and tortured him. When the guards would release him from the holding cell to the general patio, the young man would not allow anyone near him, “pues arañaba y pegaba patadas. Se quedaba largas horas acurrucado en un rincón, sin hablar, sin llorar, con la mirada fija en el cielo … [Luego] se lo llevaban de nuevo a la celda aislado” (for he would scratch and kick. He would stay in a corner curled up, without speaking, without crying, with his gaze fixed on the sky … [Later] they would take him away again to the isolation cell) (Rebelde I 328). Ultimately, when Eusebio perished, the inmates in the general patio felt a change: “De repente todos dejamos de andar. El patio pareció muerto. Nos miramos fijamente unos a otros…Las miradas de Cruz y las de los demás eran respuestas que no comprendía. Me parecía ver cuervos por todas partes, como si estuvieran observando el patio esperando la

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muerte … ¿Qué pasa?, susurré a Cruz. Los cuervos están de vuelta, murmuró Cruz” (Suddenly we all stopped walking. The courtyard seemed dead. We stared at each other … Cruz’s gaze and that of the others were answers that I did not understand. I thought I saw crows everywhere, as if they were observing the courtyard awaiting death … What’s going on, I asked Cruz. The crows are back, murmured Cruz) (my emphasis, Rebelde I 329). The crows—a common vision and symbol among the prisoners— prove paradoxical. While they are harbingers of death, they are not ominous. It is not death in this anecdote that the inmates fear or that fills them with sadness; rather, it is the institutionalized cruelty and impunity conferred upon the guards. Hence, the lugubrious crows emblematize the passage from captivity, not unlike the mythological boatman Charon who accompanies the newly deceased across the river Styx. Parrau writes, “Le rêve, le paysage, le poème: présence d’une ‘beauté’ soustraite a l’appression refuge inviolable ou le détenu reconnait son humanité” (The dream, the landscape, the poem: presence of a ‘beauty’ subtracted from the aggression, inviolable refuge where the detainee recognizes his humanity) (262), for the prisoner is part of a “communauté de rêveurs” (262), a community of dreamers who share a dream or an image, such as flight.16 Ángel’s visual and verbal bird imagery culminates in the animation sequences in the documentary Ángel, morphing from childhood freedom to a vehicle of death, to fugue in moments of duress and loneliness as a maternal winged embrace. The trajectory from Ángel’s drawings to documentary animation exemplifies Kaplan’s assertion that aestheticization as an initial survival tactic ultimately becomes a catalyst for memory. Director Stéphane Fernandez, as previously indicated in the bombing sequence and the mother’s apparition in the cell, perfectly and poignantly captures and transmits the complexities and nuances of Ángel’s bird imagery to culminate in a shared trauma with the animated mother and the real-life fellow traveler and memory activist Dominique Fernandez. Just as archetypal images such as birds connoting flight (fleeing, escape, refuge, and freedom) unite a community of dreamers, so does memory activism.

 As in Primo Levi’s If This Is a Man.

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Memory Activism One of the ways that Ángel has both communicated and further developed the telling of his story is through memory activism. Remembrance activism today reflects community and collectivity. The point of departure of the memory phenomenon is always the individual, victim of the trauma or the loved one affected, in search of an affective bond with others who share the suffering. The unavoidable topic of memory in the twenty-first century transcends the psychic space of the victims and becomes manifest in virtual space of mass media, as Mary Anne Dellinger has elucidated. The narrative frame in Roses rouges with the projectionist/narrator and her laptop perfectly depicts the role of virtuality and interconnectedness. The mediation of memory has led to countless cultural products, be they plastic arts, written testimonies, interviews, novels, documentaries, or other genres. That notwithstanding, the pain of trauma (or the multiple traumas of Francoism), in spite of being shared, continues and seeks expression and community. The memory forum IRIS-Mémoires d’Espagne fosters an exchange of ideas, the communion of testimonies, and artistic and literary expressions. Thanks to IRIS-Mémoires d’Espagne, the director Stephane Fernandez (whose father Dominique is president of said association) and the former political prisoner Ángel Fernández connected in solidarity to make this documentary. Ángel Fernández’s indefatigable personal efforts to combat cultural amnesia have borne fruit. This memory activism exemplifies the collective and solidary phenomenon. Precisely, Ángel Fernández’s involvement and telling of his story in myriad forums, connecting with others, who also share their trauma and combat alienation and injustice, led not just to his participation in Te doy and Roses rouges, but also to the apex of his testimonial cinematic involvement, the film in which he is the star: Ángel.

Testimony’s Forward Gaze The corpus of works by and about Ángel Fernández studied in this chapter exemplifies and contributes to twenty-first-century political anti-fascist memory and reveals the solidary efforts that revolve around a figure whose multiple traumas and subsequent expressions constitute an undeniable example not only of him but also of those who suffered traumas and injustices due to the war, displacement, imprisonment, exile, and the eternal condition of uprootedness (desarraigo). The remembrance of malfeasance

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builds the foundation for human rights. The politics of memory, as a human right, bears an intergenerational responsibility “grounded in the dystopian consciousness of a fragile world” (Baer and Sznaider xix). Baer and Sznaider aver that human rights are “based on memories of evil, which are then translated into the hope that such evil will not recur” (Baer and Sznaider i). When faced with a collapsed world order and an uncertain future, hope must be nurtured “by maintaining a dialog between present and past” (Baer and Sznaider 3). Hope for the future lies, then, in the approach to vulnerability and the need to act. The essence of memory activism and the politics of memory are exemplified in works by and about Ángel Fernández. These works underscore the imperative to acknowledge vulnerability and trauma, to communicate it and share it in a solidary fashion, to connect the past malfeasance to the future and, hence, establish an intergenerational bond in the hopes of actively preventing the recurrence of dehumanization. In the films and testimonies that exemplify the aesthetics of remembrance and unwanted beauty, we have seen fragmentation, rupture, mutilated lives, the theme and form of breakage, but also the attempt to confer meaning through the aesthetic medium that evokes empathy and communicates trauma so that the viewer, listener, or reader might become co-owner and engage with the future. Through the articulated and heard word, injustice is recognized. As a result, the shared expression—especially artistic or poetic— redeems suffering from the abyss17 and rebuilds a fractured, rich, and complex life. This is fulfilled in the climax Ángel, as the protagonist recounts to the viewer and, more importantly, to his empathetic companion who communes in his own loss, as together they visit sites of memory and relive the traumas aestheticized in animated form. When I met Ángel in 2017 and asked him what he wanted out of his relentless telling and writing of his story, he responded that his experience not be for nothing. In other words, his drive is to find meaning in his multiple traumas not solely for himself but also for his children and grandchildren, for other victims who survived and those who did not, for their families, and simply for all humanity so that both his story (su historia) and History (la Historia) are not repeated. Solidarity efforts recognize injustice and promote justice through the recovery of silenced, omitted, or forgotten voices. To conclude, the obligation to right past wrongs is 17  Brett Ashley Kaplan references Aharon Appelfeld: “Only art has the capacity of redeeming suffering from the abyss.” Beyond Despair, xv.

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inextricably linked to acknowledgment of the past. In other words, memory in and of itself is solidary. I close this chapter with Ángel Fernández’s poignant intergenerational supplication to his deceased mother: “Accepter l’oubli c’est nier notre existence … Aide-moi, Maman … Cette Histoire, notre Histroire, doit survivre” (Fragments 54) (To accept oblivion/amnesia is to deny our existence  … Help me, Mamma  … This History, our story, must survive.)

Written Testimonies Ángel Fernández Vicente. “La tragedia vivida por mis hermanos y yo mismo [Asesinaron a mi madre].” Traumas: Niños de la guerra y del exilio, edited by Associació per la memoria històrica i democrática del Baix Llobregat, De Barris, 2010, pp. 361–82. ———. “Llegada a la prisión provincial,” excerpt from Rebelde pp.  289–304. Letras Peninsulares, Fall 2001, pp. 321–30. ———. A mis nietos. Voy a contar el cuento de Angelito. Messages Imprimerie, 2009a. ———. Fragments d’Histoire d’une enfance brisée. Messages Imprimerie, 2016. ———. Rebelde: Loco de amor por la libertad y la justicia. Tomo I.  Messages Imprimerie, 2005. ———. Rebelde. Tomo II. Messages Imprimerie, 2009b.

Films Ángel. Directed by Stéphane Fernandez. Le-Lokal Production, 2016. Au temps des roses rouges. Directed by Francis Lapeyre. L’Harmattan/Les Films de la Clape, 2013. Te doy mi palabra. Directed by Joaquín (Quino) González. Association Mémoires Partagées, Ediciones Tirésias y C4 Productions, 2009.

Works Cited Appelfeld, Aharon. Beyond Despair. Translated by Jeffrey M.  Green. Fromm International Publishing, 1994. Arendt, Hannah. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. Viking P, 1963. Baer, Alejandro and Natan Sznaider. Memory and Forgetting in the Post-Holocaust Era: The Ethics of Never Again. Routledge, 2017. Cixous, Hélène. “The Laugh of the Medusa” (1975). Feminisms Redux: An Anthology of Literary Theory and Criticism, edited by Robin Warhol-Down and Diane Price Herndl, Rutgers UP, 2009, pp. 416–31.

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Colmeiro, José. “A Nation of Ghosts? Haunting, Historical Memory and Forgetting in Post-Franco’s Spain.” Electronic Journal of Literature and Comparative Literature, vol. 4, 2011, pp. 17–34. Derridà, Jacques. Specters of Marx. Routledge, 1994. Dellinger, Mary Anne. “‘Historical Memory’ as a Spanish Paradigm: The Role of Mass Media (1936–2006).” (Re)collecting the Past: Historical Memory in Spanish Literature and Culture, edited by Jacky Collins, Melissa Stewart, Maureen Tobin Stanley and Nancy Vosburg, Cambridge Scholars, 2016, pp. 175–84. Felman, Shoshana and Dori Laub. Testimony: Crisis in Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis and History. Routledge, 1992. Hirsch, Marianne. The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture After the Holocaust. Columbia UP, 2012. Horowitz, Sara. Voicing the Void: Muteness and Memory in Holocaust Fiction. State Universities of New York P, 1997. Irigaray, Luce. “When Our Lips Speak Together.” Modern Feminisms: Political, Literary, Cultural, edited by Maggie Humm. Columbia UP, 1992, pp. 207–10. Kaplan, Brett Ashley. Unwanted Beauty: Aesthetic Pleasure in Holocaust Representation. University of Illinois P, 2007. Kofman, Sarah. Paroles suffoquées. Editions Galilée, 1987. Landsberg, Alison. Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture. Columbia UP, 2004. Parrau, Alain. Écrire les camps. Éditions Belin, 1995. Rosenberg, Marshall. Nonviolent Communication. Puddle Dancer P, 2003. Scarry, Elaine. The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World. Oxford UP, 1985. Semprún, Jorge. L’écriture ou la vie. Éditions Gallimar, 1994. ———. La escritura o la vida. Tusquets, 1995. Tobin Stanley, Maureen. “The Accusatory Gaze of Children: Memory and Victimization in Fortes’s Waiting for Robert Capa, Muñoz Molina’s ‘Silencing Everything’ and Rodoreda’s ‘Night and Fog’.” (Re)collecting the Past: Historical Memory in Spanish Literature and Culture, edited by Jacky Collins, Melissa Stewart, M. Tobin Stanley and Nancy Vosburg, Cambridge Scholars P, 2016, pp. 47–67.

CHAPTER 3

The Pórtico de la Gloria in Manuel Rivas’ Postwar Novel O lapis do carpinteiro (The Carpenter’s Pencil): Art and Hagiography as a Metaphor That Subverts the Glory of Franco’s New Spain

Introduction The Carpenter’s Pencil takes place primarily in the immediate post-civil war period in the political prison facing the Cathedral of St. James the Elder (patron saint of Spain) in the emblematic Galician city, Santiago de Compostela. Three bloody years of fratricidal conflict and the defeat of the legitimate Republican government definitively gave way to General Francisco Franco’s Nationalist dictatorship in April 1939, yet by August of 1936, Galicia was already under the control of the military insurgents headed by General Emilio Mola and under direct orders to purge dissent. In his 1998 novel, The Carpenter’s Pencil, Manuel Rivas utilizes art and artists, painting and pictorial narratives, and sculptures and scriptures to put into question the so-called glory of post-civil war Spain so propagandized by the Nationalist victors. The literary work incorporates an iconic architectural and artistic work: the Pórtico de la Gloria, the entrance into the Cathedral whose name connotes the entrance into “la gloria” or heaven. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Tobin Stanley, Francoist Repression and Incarceration in Contemporary Spanish Culture, Palgrave Studies in Cultural Heritage and Conflict, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13392-3_3

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In light of theories of the haunting or ghostly past (Derrida, Colmeiro) and the location of memory (Nora), this chapter explores symbols of identities and ideologies depicted in Rivas’ novel in order to explore the sociopolitical manipulation and subsequent ironic subversion of cultural icons. Rivas’ novel scrutinizes Pierre Nora’s theories and “inventories” of loci memoriae (places, historical figures, emblems) that codify a quintessential nation and create a symbolic realm, space, or place, which roots or grounds identity. The symbols and spaces in The Carpenter’s Pencil are polyvalent, and, as such, subvert the meaning imbued to them by the Nationalist rhetoric that legitimated carnage. Among the backdrop of the Francoist death squads that caused the disappearance of between 136,062–152,236 Republicans, a historical phenomenon that Rivas refers to as the Spanish Holocaust (Fuerza 16), this Galician author ironizes the rationalization of institutionally sanctioned genocide.1 Elucidating Jacques Derrida’s theories on hauntologie (haunting origins or past), Rivas’ novel, The Carpenter’s Pencil, is a ghost story. A secondary character, an executioner named Herbal, is haunted by the memory (in form of a phantasm or hallucination) of the unnamed painter, the political prisoner that he executed under orders in the early months of the Spanish Civil War. Part of Herbal’s job as a military guard in the prison is to observe the incarcerated and routinely (and mercilessly) shoot the selected prisoners under cover of night. Herbal is presented as a victimizer who is transformed after executing the painter (someone who “painted ideas” [Rivas 47]), and who salvages a trophy: the pencil that the victim perpetually wore behind his ear. This pencil, a metonymic extension of the decedent, becomes a vehicle through which the victim and the victimizer become one; the executioner feels, hears, and sees the ubiquitous presence of the absent artist. The pencil symbolizes the historical memory of those destined for extermination by the transgressors against humanity and is used to represent and record visual narratives, appropriated by Herbal. The writing utensil speaks to the persistence of the ideas of those erased by Spain’s genocidal victors, and it also becomes a reminder of the connection between victimizers and their victims, a statement to the fact that those who took countless lives under orders in the name of the greatness 1  The number of 150,000 Republican executions is, according to Preston, the “most reliable, yet still tentative, figure for deaths at the hands of the military rebels and their supporters” (xviii). Preston uses the term Spanish Holocaust for his tome. This term is polemic and, in my opinion, is better suited to the Nazi persecution of the Jews in the 30s and 40s.

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of God and nation may not have been entirely immune to the suffering and bloodshed of which they were agents. While the Francoist Nationalists attempted to wipe out all traces of the Republic (symbols, ideas, and people), the memory, history, and stories of the silenced hauntologically persist and, thus, subvert the propagandized greatness of New Spain.

Manuel Rivas: Renown, Writing, and Resurrection of Galician Memory and Letters A common theme in this critically and commercially successful author’s texts is the recovery of memory that gives voice to the silenced and visibility to the erased, as seen in Los libros arden mal2 about the book burning in August 1936 of Coruña’s libraries, “La lengua de las mariposas” about the persecution of free-thinking educators, and, of course, The Carpenter’s Pencil. Rivas’ literature probes “el campo traumático de las memorias aniquiladas” (the traumatic field of annihilated memories) (Gómez-­ Montero 410) in relation to the regime’s single-voiced discourse that aimed to legitimize its rise to power and the bloody dictatorship that followed. This Galician writer’s literary canonization on both the Spanish and European stage came about with the 1995 Torrente Ballester Award and the 1996 National Narrative Award for the short story collection Que me queres, amor? (¿Qué me quieres, amor?), an anthology that included “A lingua das bolboretas” (“La lengua de las mariposas”) (Vilavedra 91). The Carpenter’s Pencil is the “most critically acclaimed and commercially successful” novel written in Galician (Tronsgard 505). It has been adapted to the stage by director Ánxeles Cuña in conjunction with the Compañía Sarabela Teatro, and to the big screen by Antón Reixa (2003). Both adaptations, according to María Teresa García-Abad, underscore the relevance of memory in the construction of collective identity (304). Along with the recovery of memory, love, emigration, and Galicia are common expressions in Rivas’ writings (Vilavedra 88). In fact, he insists

2  In Los libros arden mal, Rivas carries out a project of “rememoración y reconstrucción de memoria colectiva, concebida en los términos de una memoria social obliterada” (remembrance and reconstruction of collective memory within the context of an obliterated social memory) (Gómez- Montero 408).

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on the vindication of Galician aesthetic memory (Villanueva 61).3 Galicia is the “patria sentimental a la que siempre vuelve” (sentimental homeland to which he always returns) (Vilavedra 88). Vilavedra considers his literature “un gesto de resistencia ante la invisibilización del origen gallego” (an act of resistance in the face of Galician heritage being rendered invisible) (89). Rivas’ canonization as a writer is linked to the “dialectic tension” between his poetic production and his narrative, the latter of which has played a vital role in what is considered the definitive modernization of Galician letters (Vilaverde 89). As the most known and read contemporary Galician author, Rivas’ renown has shined a light not just on Galician cultural heritage and letters but also on the unrestrained bloodstained subjugation of Galicia at the hands of the Nationalists.

Repression of Galicia In Galicia, according to Hugh Thomas, the repression “was disproportionate to the limited scale of resistance” (209). The military rebels launched their overthrow of the legitimate government on July 18, 1936. The war efforts against Galicia, along with Navarre, Castile, and León, fell under the supervision of General Mola. In spite of the fact that “the military camp was almost immediately successful and left-wing resistance minimal [in these deeply conservative areas],” Paul Preston writes that General Mola’s “application of terror … was disproportionately severe” (xiv). At a meeting of regional mayors on July 19, near Pamplona, immediately after the war launched, General Mola declared, “It is necessary to spread an atmosphere of terror. We have to create the impression of mastery … Anyone who is overtly or secretly a supporter of the Popular Front must be shot” (qtd. in Thomas 249). Thomas states, “Repression was an act of policy” (249). Mola propagated, “This war can end only with the extermination of the enemies of Spain” (qtd. in Preston 180).4 By July 20, the Nationalists were in control of Galicia. In the first few days, there were just over 100 deaths, but between August 1 and the end of December, the execution toll exceeded 2500. By the publication of Preston’s tome 3  He also highlights that irony is “ese xogo tan intelixente que nos permite poñer en cuestión todo” (that very intelligent game that allows us to question everything); irony enables writers to put the quality of the world and their writing to a test (Villanueva 61). 4  Mola was also adamantly opposed to the exchange of prisoners. When Dr. M. Junod of the Red Cross requested an exchange of political prisoners, Mola replied that he could not exchange a “Spanish gentleman for a red dog” (Thomas 252).

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(2012), the substantiated number of individuals executed in Galicia was 4560, of whom 179 were women (Preston 209). The case of Galicia provides evidence that “the rebels aimed not just to defeat the left but to eradicate an ideal and to terrorize the population into subservience” (Preston 209). Santiago quickly fell to the Nationalists and the military trials began on July 26: “murders began on 14 August; many of those who had been sentenced to imprisonment were taken from jail illegally and shot” (Preston 213). The targets of Mola’s purging were, as he stated, “Those who do not think as we do” (Preston xv), in other words, those opposed to or different from the Spanish Confederation of Autonomous Rights (Confederación Española de Derechas Autónomas [CEDA]). The tenets of the CEDA were religion, fatherland, family, order, work, and prosperity that Preston deems “the untouchable elements of social and economic life in Spain before 1931” (Preston xv). “To protect all of these tenets, in the areas occupied by the rebels, the immediate victims were  …  schoolteachers, Freemasons, liberal doctors and lawyers, intellectuals and trade union leaders—those who might have propagated ideas” (Preston xv-xvi). Of course, Rivas’ painter “painted ideas.” In Galicia, the Nationalists’ “elimination of leftists, trade unionists and supposed supporters of the Republic was immediate and thorough” (Preston 428). In his chapter “Mola’s Terror: The Purging of Navarre, Galicia, Castile and León,” Preston states, “Both the short- and the long-term objectives of terror would be more easily accomplished in conservative small holding areas of Galicia, Old Castile and Navarre” (Preston 179). Franco’s “war effort was conceived ever more as an investment in terror which would facilitate the establishment of his dictatorship. The post-war machinery of trials, executions, prisons and concentration camps consolidated that investment” (Preston xv). Power was Franco’s return on his investment. The institutionalization of the postwar Francoist penitentiary system, according to Ángela Cenarro, boasted the peculiarities of the exercise of power of the dictatorship: the pervasive abuse and neglect (hunger, cold, illness) that subdued and dehumanized the inmates (470).5 Sites of execution and jails, for Gómez-Montero, are a collective “locus oblivionis,” a place of amnesia (411) and “locus horroris,” a place of violence and fear (412). Unlike the community performance in the iconic final scene of Rivas’ short story “La lengua de las mariposas” in which the child 5  These are the prison conditions Concepción Arenal denounced in the nineteenth century and Victoria Kent sought to revolutionize during the Republic.

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protagonist complicitly participates in the public shaming of the apprehended in the locus horroris of the town’s main plaza, the locus horroris in The Carpenter’s Pencil is tied to a moment in time. It could be considered a locus et tempus horroris et oblivionis (a place and time of fear, violence, and forgetting/amnesia). Executioners such as Herbal earn their euphemistic name of paseadores6 under cover of night (or the dark of the very early morning hours) in distasteful, marginal spaces such as the Campo de la Rata (Rat’s Field). Euphemisms aid in forgetting, suppressing, or denying the heinousness.

History and Memory Since the dictator’s death in 1975, Spain has witnessed the transition to democracy with its concomitant “pact of silence,” the accord to reconcile, the 1978 Constitution, and the 2007 Law of Historical Memory that denounces the military uprising and acknowledges the suffering of the victims of repression. The pact of silence arguably attempted to safeguard against retribution (or perhaps retributive justice), but if the past, as memory, is not recognized, then, restorative justice is impossible. Restorative justice demands acknowledgment of suffering, requires stripping away the layers of whitewash that blinded to the reality of genocide, and necessitates facing the unscrupulous confabulation of history by the victors, the blatant denial of their malfeasance and the erasure of memory of those who lost. Rivas’ executioner is transformed as he awakens to feeling and sensibilities, as empathy begins to stir within him. Does the killer, haunted by his victim, embody (in literary form) a type of restorative justice? Before exploring the vindication of memory and subversion of the Nationalist construction of history through the manipulation of cultural icons, let us turn to Nora’s conceptualization of history and memory. Nora differentiates between “real memory” and “history,” between what he refers to as “our memory” and “dictatorial memory,” which is “all-­ powerful, … a memory without a past that ceaselessly reinvents tradition, likening the history of its ancestors to the undifferentiated time of heroes, origins, and myth” (8). Collective memory and historical memory are vastly different for Nora. The former is personal and felt at an individual and group level, belonging to one and all, whereas the latter, the historical 6  Paseadores, literally, strollers, are the guards who tell prisoners that are going “de paseo,” on a walk. The paseo is a euphemism for the execution.

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construction of memory, is taught and perpetuated. Memory is lived and experienced by an individual or group, and it is in constant evolution, experienced subjectively in the present pertaining to what was, whereas history is a selection, solidified and perpetuated regarding the past and disseminated as purportedly objective (belonging to all, yet to no one). Nora writes, “Memory is life … in permanent evolution, open to the dialectic of remembering and forgetting … History, on the other hand, is the reconstruction, always problematic and incomplete, of what is no longer. Memory is a perpetually actual phenomenon, a bond tying us to the eternal present; history is a representation of the past” (8). Memory claims “universal authority” and aspires to “annihilate what has in reality taken place” (9). Nora theorizes on lieux de mémoire, places or realms of memory such as archives, objects, monuments, constitutions, historical figures, and cultural icons and claims that “if history did not besiege memory, deforming and transforming it, penetrating and petrifying it, there would be no lieux de mémoire” (Nora 12). All lieux de mémoire are objects mises en abime (infinitely self-reflective, cast into the abyss), reflecting, creating, and distorting their own image while making it appear eternal. William Nichols applies Maurice Halbwachs’ theory of lived (individual) memory and learned (collective) memory within the framework of Pierre Nora’s lieux de mémoire to reveal the manners in which the oral tradition of Rivas’ novel subverts and challenges “los principios ordenadores de la escritura—sea ya oficial, periodística, o novelística” (the ordering principles of writing—be it official, journalistic, or novelistic) (157). Oral tradition—as exemplified by the painter’s voice and artistic view of aesthetic symbols in the “haunting” of his executioner—defies hegemonic discourse as it reinserts into collective consciousness “las voces suprimidas por la escritura” (voices suppressed by writing) and resists “los efectos alienadores de la historiografía oficial” (the alienating effects of official historiography) (Nichols 157). For Colmeiro (Memoria), historical memory entails an ethical and intellectual obligation: “conciencia histórica de la memoria” (historical conscience of memory) bears the legacy of the Enlightenment, in which the rights of “man and citizen”7 boast the inseparable link between individual rights and societal responsibilities and are founded on the belief that society’s betterment is possible through reason. Hence, historical memory for Colmeiro demands “una conceptualizacion 7  In the eighteenth century, the term used was “man” rather than the contemporary and more inclusive “human.”

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crítica de acontecimientos de signo histórico compartidos colectivamente” (a critical conceptualization of historical and collectively shared events) characterized by “auto-reflexión sobre la función de la memoria” (self-­ reflection on the function of memory) (Colmeiro, Memoria 17–18, referenced in Trongsgard 513). Historical memory is a re-visioned and reconstructed History, reconstructed by those whose subjectivities were interred and obscured from sight by the architects of their obscurity. If official History—written by the winners—silences or omits non-­hegemonic voices, then, memory is a counternarrative that complements and destabilizes the victors’ flat, monologic invented image. Memory breathes life into and gives dimension to the hierarchized two-dimensionality of official History.

Mythmaking and Counter-memory The regime subsumed myriad symbols of Spain’s illustrious past. Let us recall Arturo Reque Meruvia’s (“Kemer”) 1949 mural “Allegory of Franco and the Crusade” that was commissioned for the Valley of Fallen, but purportedly not installed in the basilica to Spanish nationalism due to the artist’s Bolivian nationality. Kemer’s opus, now stored at the Military History Archive in Ávila and unavailable for viewing, depicts el Caudillo as a medieval knight, while Santiago Matamoros (Saint James the Moor Slayer) on his white steed hovers above him, as a gallery of ecclesiastical and military figures and symbols flanks the victorious leader. Yet in New Spain, the new-fangled infidels were the communists, anarchists, socialists, catalanistas, and galleguistas (like the political prisoners in Rivas’ novel).8 If we define mythmaking as the creation of a narrative linked to identifiable symbols in order to glorify a belief system, we can discern that the mythmaking apparatus that created the cult to St. James the Elder (the Moor-slayer version of Spain’s patron saint) is not that dissimilar to the Franco-Nationalist rhetoric that exalted the nation’s greatness, in reality a country torn apart by war, whose cruel government inculcated and preyed upon the fear of its constituency, stripped away the rights of those who were believed to hold “desafecto al régimen” (disaffect or lack of affection for the regime), and viciously disappeared tens of thousands of the collective domestic enemy now scattered throughout Spain in mass graves. 8  Respectively, political supporters of Catalan and Galician language, culture, identity, and autonomy.

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Colmeiro identifies three distinct moments in contemporary Spanish history that “shaped the construction of memory and collective identity”: (1) the post-bellum dictatorship, (2) the transition to democracy, and (3) the subsequent process of integration into the European Union and globalization (24). Following the civil war and the ensuing Francoist regime, avers Colmeiro, memory became a site of ideological struggle. Memories of the civil war were officially repressed, the war was rewritten as a religious Crusade, and historical memory was substituted by nostalgia for a long lost imperial past, when not literally exiled, as hundreds of thousands died, were imprisoned or disappeared in the post-war diaspora. A unified Spanish national identity was imposed from above (one culture, one language, one religion), as different national identities from the periphery (Basque, Catalan, and Galician in particular) were subjugated, cultural rights suppressed and censored by the state apparatus. Repressed historical memory formed a vast corpus of oppositional counter-memories as forms of cultural resistance (particularly in literature, film, and popular song) many of them produced clandestinely or from exile. (“Nation” 24)

Rivas’ work functions precisely as an oppositional counter-memory, carrying out a project of cultural resistance through the subversion of symbols (most particularly aestheticized Galician Christian symbols) appropriated and perpetuated by the regime. Rivas’ dialogue between narrative and plastic arts is first seen in Os comedores de patacas (The Potato Eaters, 1991) that draws its title from Vincent Van Gogh’s eponymous work and resurfaces again in his 1995 short story collection Que me queres, amor? that includes “A leiteira de Vermeer” (Vermeer’s Milkmaid) and in As chamadas perdidas’ “O escape” (Missed Calls’ “The Escape”). As this Galician author paints with words, directly alludes to artworks, and is committed to making visible Galician letters and culture, it is not surprising that his novel would showcase the jewel of Galician Romanesque: the Cathedral of Saint James the Elder and its Portico of Glory. The legend of St. James the Elder is essential to The Carpenter’s Pencil given the setting of Rivas’ work, the fact that his fictional painter sketches the twelfth-century Romanesque Pórtico de la Gloria superimposing the faces of his fellow political prisoners, and that, historically, the Nationalists adopted and adapted the crusade motif in their rhetoric and imagery.

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The Portico of Glory Mercedes Tasende examines The Carpenter’s Pencil in light of Saint John’s Apocalypse which prophesizes the end of days, Christ’s kingdom, and the triumph of good over evil, and inspired Maestro Mateo’s Romanesque masterpiece, the Portico of Glory (298). Saint John depicts “la gran epopeya de la esperanza cristiana y el triunfo de la iglesia perseguida” (the great epic of Christian hope and the triumph of the persecuted church), the promise of solace and justice for the victims of injustice and punishment for “los cobardes, los incrédulos, los abominables, los asesinos y los impuros” (cowards, disbelievers, the abominable, killers and the impure) (Tasende 298–99). Tasende discerns that the Portico of Glory symbolically frames the novel as it “resume la magnitud de la tragedia y el sentido apocalíptico que caracteriza este episodio de la historia de España” (summarizes the magnitude of the tragedy and apocalyptic sense that characterizes this episode in Spain’s history) (298). The twelfth-century Romanesque Portico of Glory is grounded in the Pantocrátor (the Romanesque depiction of Christ in his majesty, in final judgment), surrounded by Old and New Testament figures: Moses with the Tablets of Law, the four evangelists, Saint Paul, and the orchestra of the Apocalypse, among others. Rivas’ novel transmutes medieval hagiography housed in the temple erected to Spain’s patron saint within a twentieth-­century Iberian context and, thus, invites readers to contemplate and question the manipulation of cultural identity markers in the transmission of memory in the current era. The painter’s fictional artwork of the nearly thousand-year-old architectural entrance reads as follows: The painter would talk about the Pórtico da Gloria. He had drawn it with the thick, red pencil he always carried, like a carpenter, behind his ear. Each of the figures in the drawing turned out to be one of his friends from A Falcona. ‘You, Casal,’ he said to the former mayor of Santiago, ‘you’re Moses with the Tablets of the Law. You, Pasín,’ he said to the one who was in the union of railway men, ‘you’re Saint John the Evangelist, with his feet on top of the eagle. Saint Paul, that’s you, my captain,’ he said to Lieutenant Martínez, who had been a border guard and then a councilor under the Republic … He went around everyone and showed them their likeness on the sheet. And he explained that the base of the Pórtico da Gloria was full of monsters, … and hearing this they all went quiet … Herbal could feel their gaze fixed on his silhouette as he stood there, a silent witness. And finally the

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painter spoke about the prophet Daniel  … ‘That, Da Barca, is you.’ (Carpenter’s 25–26)9

Given the fact that the author represents the Final Judgment with Christ, seated on his throne to judge the actions of the living and the dead and to sentence them accordingly, surrounded by figures upon whom were placed the faces of victims of political persecution, we must consider the significance of the recontextualized powerful imagery. Is Rivas inviting readers to ponder what is just? The first biblical figure cited is Moses with the Tablets of Law, underscoring the Judeo-Christian code of moral conduct with its concomitant punishment for violation. Yet the Ten Commandments—as a divine moral mandate and implicit draconian justice for noncompliance—are ironized given the immorality and injustice of incarcerating inmates for newly criminalized beliefs and extra-officially executing countless numbers of them.10 Art historian Serafín Moralejo Álvarez explains the representation of the prophet Daniel in the Portico. He “is smiling, perhaps because he’s young … In the Bible he is …presented as the champion of young people, defender of the young Susanna and witness to the freeing of the three young Jews condemned by the King of Babylon to be cast into a fiery furnace.” (5). The three Jews in the furnace represent “the faithful Jewish people, waiting in Hell for the arrival of the Messiah who would deliver them” (Moralejo Álvarez 5). Persecution and imprisonment are parallels between the figures represented in the Portico and Rivas’ characters. 9  “El pintor hablaba del Pórtico de la Gloria. Lo había dibujado con un lápiz gordo y rojo, que llevaba constantemente en la oreja, como un carpintero. Cada una de las figuras resultaba ser en el retrato uno de sus compañeros de la Falcona. Parecía satisfecho. Tú, Casal, dijo al que había sido alcalde de Compostela, eres Moisés con las Tablas de la Ley. Y tú, Pasín, le dijo a uno que era del sindicato ferroviario, tú eres San Juan Evangelista, con los pies sobre el águila. Y San Pablo eres tú, mi capitán, le dijo al teniente Martínez, que había sido carabinero y se metió de concejal republicano… Y así a todos, que salieron tal cual, como luego se pudo ver en el papel. Y el pintor explicó que el zócalo del Pórtico de la Gloria estaba poblado de monstruos, … y cuando oyeron eso todos callaron, … Herbal bien que notaba todos los ojos clavados en su silueta de testigo mudo. Y por fin se decidió a hablar del profeta Daniel. … Ése eres tú, Da Barca” (Lápiz 41–42). 10  García-Donoso considers Da Barca and his fellow inmates “un compendio conmemorativo de la élite intellectual progresista de la Galicia republicana” (a commemorative compendium of the progressive intellectual elite of Republican Galicia) as well as “un trasunto coral de la popular retranca gallega” (a choral transcript of the popular Galician retranca) (GarcíaDonoso 212).

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Tasende notes Da Barca and the prophet Daniel both stand out because of their intelligence, wisdom, and magnetism. They perform miraculous acts (the prophet’s prophecies, the doctor’s healing and ability to change perception), are accused by enemies and as a result are imprisoned (and sentenced to death or thrown to the lions), yet survive against great odds, and are unflappable in the defense and propagation of their ideals (Tasende 303–06). Da Barca is also prophetic in that his message of hope and solidarity functions as “un bálsamo para sus heridas físicas y espirituales” (a balm for the physical and spiritual wounds) of his mates (Tasende 307). Both men’s prophetic messages aim to “sostener la fe en unos ideales y la esperanza de un cambio” (maintain the faith in ideals and the hope for change) as they preach through example and remain faithful to their ideals even under the pressure of their oppressors (Tasende 308). Prophet Daniel also revealed corruption and prognosticated the downfall of blasphemers in power. Da Barca is a success story, outliving Franco, repatriating after his exile to Mexico, and becoming a local hero11 (García-Donoso 211) who is interviewed about his life before he passes away (and into the cultural amnesia that is dismemory). Such exponentially allusive depictions point to a revelation (dream or hope) of future justice.

Subversion of the Nationalized Consecration of Victory While the Pórtico de la Gloria is the entrance to the cathedral, it is imperative to understand the miracle and legend surrounding the patron saint for whom it was erected. As legend has it, Santiago (the apostle St. James the Elder) was martyred in Jerusalem in 44 C.E. and miraculously appeared in 844 C.E. on the battleground of Clavijo (in La Rioja) to aid in the fight against Islam. In 1212, the battle of Navas de Tolosa (Santa Elena, Jaén) served to confer religious relevance onto (in other words, to consecrate) the combined political Christian efforts of the kings of Castile, Navarre, and Aragon (respectively, Alphonse the VIII, Sancho VII, and Peter II), the Archbishop of Toledo (Rodrigo Ximénez of Rada), and Pope Innocent III, the latter of whom decreed the Reconquest a crusade. Centuries later, fictional and factual Nationalists also rationalize their ambitions as part of a holy mission. Herbal’s commander pontificates: 11  Daniel Da Barca fictionalizes the life of galleguista doctor Francisco Comesaña who was the object of reprisals during the postwar and exiled to Mexico upon release (Vilavedra 92–93).

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“We are fighting a relentless war against evil, the salvation of Christendom depends on our victory…[we are fighting] for God and country” (Carpenter’s 45).12 Overt parallels between the Spanish Civil War and the Reconquest include the fratricidal nature, the church-sanctioned political slaughter, and, ultimately, the weight of the Pope in consecrating a Christian victory in order to construct history. Once the war concluded on April 1, 1939, the Nationalist victory was consecrated with a mass. Victory Day, celebrated yearly, as Reig Tapia claims, definitively marked a new order (12) and was a feast day for the Nationalist victors, a dastardly day of remembrance and a reminder that victory, not peace, was commemorated, reconciliation was repudiated, and the defeated were to be humiliated (11). García-Donoso underscores that Rivas’ novel “pone precisamente sobre la mesa la conjunción de una sistemática y violenta depuración de la enfermedad republicana con la resacralización de una vida pública bajo el nacionalcatolicismo de Franco” (precisely lays out the merger of a systematic and violent purge of the Republican illness with the re-sacralization of public life under Franco’s national-Catholicism) (213). In Rivas’ novel, the prison’s chaplain in his homily during the High Mass states, “Today we are celebrating the victory of God.” The narrator explains, “Authorities were in attendance and the governor did not want unpleasant surprises, insurrections of laughter or coughing, as had happened on previous occasions when some preacher had rubbed salt into the wound, blessed the war he called a Crusade and urged them to repent, fallen angels of the band of Beelzebub, and to ask for divine protection for General Franco” (84). The chaplain professed, the worst [sin] of … all … that … possessed a part of Spain in Recent years, betraying her essential being, is the Sin of History. … This terribly pernicious … Sin takes root … in the ignorance of simpler folk, who are swept along by temptations in the form of revolutions and ludicrous social Utopias. … And, as the Scriptures clearly tell us, the wrath of God exists …. God chooses the instruments of his victory. God’s chosen ones. The Chaplain read out the telegram Pope Pius XII sent Franco on 31 March, ‘Lifting up our hearts to God, we give sincere thanks to His Excellency for the victory of Catholic Spain’. (Carpenter’s 83–84)

12  “Libramos una guerra implacable contra el mal, de nuestra victoria depende la salvación de la cristiandad … [luchamos] por Dios y la patria” (Lápiz 66).

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When the chaplain read the Pope’s telegram congratulating Franco to his captive audience, the prisoners began to cough in dissent (84), infuriating the chaplain. In the English translation from the original Galician, the narrator explains, “today was Victory Day and if things carried on as they were they would be celebrating it with a massacre” (the Castilian translation from Galician reads: “como la cosa siguiese así iban a tener que celebrarlo con una carnicería” [111 Lápiz]). In Castilian to “say mass” is “celebrar la misa” (literally to celebrate the mass). The term “celebrar” (to celebrate) is ambiguous and polyvalent. Is the Victory Day, then, celebrated (as in with festivities), or is it consecrated (as in with a mass), or both? The other curious element of the passage is the adverbial prepositional phrase “with a massacre” (“con una carnicería”). Here, the term “celebrate” is ironized and, thus, paradoxical. If “to celebrate” connotes to have a festivity, massive death would be contrary to what those partaking in the celebration would experience. If “to celebrate” is being adapted from “celebrar la misa” and reapplied to “celebrating it with a massacre” (“celebrarlo con una carnicería”), then a direct parallel is established between the liturgy and the massacre/carnicería that could have ensued. Transubstantiation and communion commemorate an ontological moment in Christian doctrine: martyrdom, sacrifice, and redemption—in other words, the conferral of meaning upon ritualized and hegemonically sanctioned execution of an innocent. Is Rivas (and are his translators), with these lexical choices, underscoring the innocence of these prisoners (for their only transgression is what was termed “desafecto al regimen”)? Furthermore, are we the readers to understand that meaning is conferred upon their suffering? That their imprisonment (and unjustifiable potential demise) is not meaningless but rather gains symbolic significance to a collective? Let’s compare the terms “carnicería” and “massacre.” A massacre is the bloody eradication of a massive group of human beings. Such is not the case with the term “carnicería” whose possible translations would include “slaughter,” “carnage,” and “butchering.” The Castilian and Galician13 terms, then, bring the reader closer to the concept of a sacrifice, the ritualized slaughter of an innocent, a scapegoat. Following a doubling or mimesis, such as with the fratricidal Cain and Abel, by displacing of blame and ritualizing killing, as Rene Girard elaborates throughout The Scapegoat, death gains symbolic or iconic significance and purportedly brings unity to  The Galician is almost identical to the Castilian carnicería and celebrar la/a misa.

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a community—as with Christianity—yet it ultimately reveals the folly of those who embrace it. Rivas, in the most complex fashion, subverts the Christian imagery previously employed by the victors who considered themselves messianic, saving Spain from the red beast. Tasende notes the Nationalist appropriation of the imagery of Saint John’s Apocalypse to demonize the leftists and portray themselves and the Caudillo as triumphantly messianic as  was widely propagandized, indoctrinated, and disseminated in the following texts. Futura grandeza de España by the parish priest of Ribadeo was a 1940s bestseller in Galicia and recommended for institutes of learning, while José María Pemán’s epic Poema de la Bestia y el Ángel was so widely received that it came to represent the Glorious Uprising (300–01). Rivas references Saint John’s Apocalypse in the Portico (Tasende 302–03) as well as in apocalyptic-messianic rhetoric in the Victory mass scene as the chaplain blesses Franco’s crusade against Beelzebub’s fallen angels (Tasende 301). Rivas subverts the single-voiced Nationalist rhetoric that consecrated their roles as victors through the appropriation of Catholic apocalyptic imagery. By donning the Christ-like image or by depicting the Nationalist fight as a crusade, the Francoists seemed immune to the rational rebuttal of their beliefs. Yet, the way to counter the consecrated imagery (and by extension rhetoric) of the genocidal victors is through the counter-­ memory of cultural production. The following image in Rivas of the “death train” of the defeated perfectly transmutes, and thus transforms, the Christian symbolism usurped by the subjugators and underscores martyrdom rather than salvation and ironizes the point of departure. Da Barca was being transferred from Valencia (the prison hospital named Porta Coeli) to Galicia where his “crime” was “destacado elemento desafecto al régimen” (“prominent element opposed to the regime” [Carpenter’s]) and was sentenced to life imprisonment. It was “a transfer mission that would cause him to travel the breadth of Spain, on trains that crawled along like penitents with the cross on their shoulders” (Carpenter’s 145).14 The name of the prison hospital, in Latin, is synonymous with that of the entrance to the Cathedral of Santiago. Both connote the gateway to Heaven. Hence the train on the locomotive equivalent of the via crucis lumbers and stumbles away from the promise of salvation, a fact further 14  “una misión de traslado que le haría recorrer España todo a lo largo, en trenes que se arrastraban como penitentes con la cruz a cuestas” (Lápiz 184).

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ironized when considering the nomenclature of the regime’s Patronato para la Redención de Penas por el Trabajo (Patronage for the Redemption of Sentences through Work)15 in which the incarcerated, through hard labor, toiled toward (political) redemption. Further subversion of the regime’s penchant for consecration of their status as the chosen ones is evident in the profanation of the Holiest of Holies: the body and blood or the chalice and Eucharist. In one of the sacas, as the guards take out the prisoners about to be executed, a shiver runs down Herbal’s spine as a priest whom he had seen “alzar el cáliz en una ceremonia oficial y que ahora llevaba camisa azul y pistola al cinto” (71) was an accessory to this sanctioned extermination. The English translation omits the reference to the chalice and reads, “a priest he had come across at an official ceremony, now wearing a blue shirt and with a pistol on his belt” (50). The chalice, of course, is integral to the sacrament of Holy Communion and symbolically (and, according to transubstantiation, literally) contains the blood of Christ. The juxtaposition of the blood-­ bearing chalice and pistol on the belt underscores the hypocrisy of the church. As a synecdoche of the Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church and as a metonymy for Pope Pius XII, the priest wearing the pistol paradoxically endorses the contemporary bloodshed of those persecuted by the state and imbues new meaning to holy blood. The polyvalence—made possible by reframing the chalice in the context of the deadly weapon— establishes direct parallels between the prisoners’ imminent bloodshed, state-sanctioned persecution, unjust apprehension, and imprisonment, and that of Christ. The purported infidels are Christ-like martyrs, innocents persecuted and murdered for their beliefs that differ from the ideology of their captors. The guards scoured the jail “cosechando los hombres de una lista” (harvesting men) for the strange and bitter fruit of death. Herbal territorially stakes his claim on Daniel Da Barca and ritualizes his assault, “Arrastró al doctor Da Barca hasta el arenal. Lo tumbó de rodillas, de un puñetazo en el vientre. Lo agarró por los cabellos. Abre la boca, hostia” (72, emphasis mine). The exclamation “hostia” literally means host or Eucharist. The English translation omits the allusion to church liturgy, “He dragged Doctor Da Barca down to the sand punched him in the stomach and brought him to his knees. He grabbed his hair, ‘Open your mouth, for 15  Chapter 5 of the present study explores the role of the Patronato’s resemantization of political prisoners and their treatment in the correctional system.

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Christ’s sake’” (51). In this profanation of the act of communion, the quintessential rite of Catholicism, rather than articulate “body of Christ” and place the host in the kneeling communicant’s mouth, Herbal blasphemes the host, sticks the gun in Da Barca’s mouth, and pulls the trigger. The next day, the washing women come upon Da Barca, who had been left for dead. The jail’s chaplain comments on Da Barca, “Mother of God! It makes me want to believe in a miracle, a message. Even in hell there are certain rules … Wait until the court-martial. Then they can shoot him as God intended” (Carpenter’s 52).16 The juxtaposition of court-martial and “as God intended” establishes an odd parallel: both allude to a sense of justice. The Nationalists’ killing of the political prisoners can only be viewed as a type of retributive justice, underscored and subverted by Rivas, particularly as it refers to the execution of the character whose trophy is the title of the novel.

Haunting, Ethics of Remembrance, and Justice The painter who, following his death, becomes a part of his executioner, raises awareness of an altogether different type of justice. This is precisely why the transformation of Herbal, the character who embodies the two Spains, is so poignant. Herbal describes how the painter’s ghost became a part of him. He likens the experience of mercifully taking the painter’s life17 to that of his uncle, a trapper, who would arguably feel compassion for the foxes he trapped and killed: I’m sorry, pal … A look would flash between my uncle, the trapper, and his prey. His eyes would be saying, and I heard the murmur, that there was nothing he could do. This is what I felt before the painter … I murmured to myself that I was sorry, … I don’t know what he thought when our eyes met, … but I want to believe that he understood … [and] I blew off his

16  “¡Virgen Santísima! Casi creería que esto es un milagro, un mensaje. Incluso en el infierno hay ciertas reglas … Que esperen por el consejo de guerra. Podrán fusilarlo como Dios manda” (Lápiz 72). 17  For García-Abad, Herbal’s execution of the painter was merciful within the Francoist context of violence and horror (313).

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head. And then I remembered the pencil. The pencil he carried behind his ear. This pencil. (Carpenter’s 12)18

The writing implement is the means by which memory of the defeated— as the counternarrative to monolithic hegemonic discourse—and the concomitant understanding are transferred. Physical objects embody remembrance. For Nichols, they are relics that “resucitan la ‘memoria vivida’” (resurrect “lived memory”) and represent the archeological remains of “historias individuales enterradas bajo el peso de una visión oficial del pasado” (individual stories buried under the weight of official version of the past) (171). Rivas’ pencil, for Tronsgard, is a “tangible symbol” of “intercultural and memorialistic exchange” that echoes lineage and the “inheritance of narrative … maintained across generations” (507), having been in the possession of three carpenters, the painter, Herbal throughout the novel, and at the conclusion and into the future Maria. The writing implement, according to Vilavedra, has supernatural powers. Not only does it become the executioner’s conscience and the symbol of the memory of that other world of beauty, intelligence, and kindness depicted by the artist and lived by Da Barca, but it is also the inheritance he leaves to the young prostitute, Maria da Visitaçao, for whom it becomes the “arma con la que conjurar la sordidez de su existir” (the weapon with which to drive away the sordidness of her existence) (Vilavedra 93). The selfless act of surrendering the article to Maria came at the ghost’s prompting, thus underscoring the link between materiality and marginality in this “memory transfer” as the “line of ownership goes from Republican prisoner to Nationalist guard to illegal immigrant” (Tronsgard 508). The bequeathed or inherited pencil, within the novel, materializes the theory embraced by Da Barca, Dr. Nóvoa Santos’ intelligent reality (García-Abad 314) that proposes the threads of interconnectedness and the transmission of ethical imperative. In a parallel fashion, readers of the narrative inherit the call to justice through memory. A carpenter’s pencil, the object on which the title of the novel is based, was initially included with the purchase of the book. 18  “Lo siento mucho, socio. … Entre mi tío el trampero y su presa había el instante de una mirada. Él le decía con los ojos, y yo oí ese murmullo, que no tenía más remedio. Eso fue lo que sentí ante el pintor. … murmuré por dentro que lo sentía mucho, … no sé lo que él pensó cuando su mirada se cruzó con la mía, un destello húmedo en la noche, pero quiero creer que él entendió [y], le … reventé la cabeza. Y luego me acordé del lápiz [que] llevaba en la oreja. Este lápiz” (23).

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Through its physicality, the readers are the moral heirs to “memories … not their own” (Tronsgard 508) and the “perpetuación de la voz del pintor, del arte y del amor más allá de la muerte” (perpetuation of the painter’s voice, art, and love beyond death) (García-Abad 310). Both to the characters and to the readers, the pencil is the legacy of an aestheticized ethical imperative to share in the recovery of memory (García-­ Abad 305). Just as the writing instrument carries with it symbolic meaning, so does the representation of the body in The Carpenter’s Pencil. Throughout the novel, Herbal has chest pains and trouble breathing. Gómez-Montero discerns that the “ocultación de la memoria” (hiding of memory) opens or staunches what he terms “llagas mnésicas en las practices de somatización” (memory wounds in somatization practices) (420). Herbal’s heart condition reveals the physical effects of harboring secrets of suppressing memory and of avoiding his role in the injustice. Without atoning, he somaticizes his guilt. Near the conclusion, Dr. Da Barca diagnoses him with a heart condition, and we learn that he has finally “gotten things off his chest” matters that did not appear to have affected him. While cliché, the heart is a universal trope for feeling. Herbal’s pseudo-confession can take place because of his connection to another human being. While fear or lack of self-esteem or envy motivates his actions throughout the novel, his bond with four individuals reveals his evolution. He “confesses” to Maria da Visitaçao, he “loves” Marisa (Da Barca’s fiancée) from afar (thus explaining his envy of Da Barca), he feels loyalty for his sister (who loses her mind in her abusive marriage), and heeds the ethical guidance of the painter. Once Herbal has killed and then internalized the latter, the painter assists him in cultivating his sensibilities, in making decisions based on a human connection rather than on fear. The painter reveals to him what it means to understand the suffering of others through the poetic imagery of romantic artist Joseph Turner’s 1840 The Slave Ship painting: “His shipwreck of a slave traders’ boat is the most astonishing image of the sea that exists. In it, you can hear the sea. In the shout of the slaves. Slaves who possibly knew no more about the sea than the rolling of the hold” (Carpenter’s).19 This is precisely the effect of Rivas’ narrative: to paint the war from inside the prison, from inside the head of an executioner who hears the voices of the dead. The third-person 19  “La imagen más impresionante que existe del mar es su naufragio de un barco de negreros. Allí se escucha el mar. Es el grito de los esclavos, esclavos que quizá no conociesen del mar más que el vaivén en las bodegas” (Lápiz 95).

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omniscient narrator elucidates, “When he felt the pencil, when they spoke of these things…the guard Herbal noticed how the feeling of breathlessness would disappear, as if by magic.”20 Rivas’ poetic narrative sheds light on what it really meant to be a political prisoner, to be persecuted, but also what it must have been like to be a blindly (and bloodily) obedient executioner, one of the persecutors. Not only is Herbal taciturn, not expressing his own voice much, he also suffers from blindness. In spite of being a guard, the eyes and ears, so to speak, of the Nationalist jailers, he is unable to process information through two of his senses. With more than 150,000 executed without justice, cast in unmarked common pits or graves throughout the Spanish landscape, fictional Herbal incarnates the Brigadiers of Dawn. These real life prison guards, at times without judicial process and at other times with sham proceedings, obediently carried out orders, turning a so-called blind eye and a deaf ear to what they were doing and how their actions would impact their direct victims, the families, subsequent generations, the country, and, remarkably, themselves. The dialectic between the official written historiography (represented by Herbal) and the orality of the painter’s ghost, according to Nichols, destabilizes hegemonic discourse and reveals possible interpretations for the presence of the deceased painter—a ghost that physically appears to Herbal, the symbolic representation of Herbal’s conscience, and the mental image or memory Herbal conjures of him. Nonetheless, the apparition represents “un pasado inextinguible que se niega a ser enterrado” (an inextinguishable past that refuses to be buried) (Nichols 168). According to García-Donoso, the ghost becomes the epicenter of meaning in the novel, for it signifies “un campo semántico a la noción del duelo y, por extensión, el dolor” (a semantic field to the notion of mourning and, by extension, pain) (213). As the victimizer has internalized the voice of his victim who stands for countless fictional and factual victims, this haunting represents the “losa de la responsabilidad histórica para con los vencidos republicanos que se colocó sobre los vencedores franquistas” (slab of historical responsibility to the defeated Republicans that has been placed on the Francoist victors) (García-Donoso 214). The ghostly victim’s “symbiotic possession” (García-Donoso 215) or “occupation” humanizes his living murderer (Loureiro 150), becomes the foundation of the guard’s subjectivity and individualism, and ultimately 20  “Cuando sentía el lápiz, cuando hablaban de esas cosas, … el guardia Herbal notaba que le desaparecían los ahogos como por ensalmo.”

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secures the guard’s salvation and redemption (Nichols 168). For Tascende, “gracias a la influencia de unos seres sublimes como el Pintor y Daniel da Barca, desarrolla una cierta sensibilidad que le permitirá contemplar la horrible realidad de la guerra y la posguerra con la perspectiva única del artista y que le llevará a afirmar al final de la novela que ‘Ellos fueron lo mejor que la vida [le] ha dado’” (thanks to the influence of sublime beings such as the Painter and Daniel da Barca, [Herbal] develops a certain sensibility that allows him to contemplate the horrible reality of war and the postwar period with the unique perspective of the artist and will have him affirm at the end of the novel that “They were the best that life had given [him]”) (Tascende 298). The painter’s ghost inhabits Herbal’s mind to humanize him, rather than to torment him (García-Donoso 214). In other words, this haunting assists him in being a better version of himself, of living with a painful past, of acknowledging his connection to it, and in so doing, Herbal’s present actions are impacted. Perhaps Herbal does not reflect or scrutinize, but he is undeniably affected by the victim’s voice. He becomes aware how someone different from him—someone he harmed— thought and felt. With this knowledge, his actions reflect the ethics of remembrance. The plot and character development contribute to a type of restorative justice, not retributive justice. Restorative justice begins with an acknowledgment of wrongdoing, of transgression, in the path to restoring the humanity or personhood of those harmed. Essential to this rehumanization is memory. While retributive justice could arguably newly arouse and perpetuate hatred, restorative justice and authentic reconciliation—not the travesty proposed by the pacto de silencio—honor the suffering transpired without demonizing the transgressors. As Colin Greer claims, “acknowledgement is crucial if healing is to go on and if the undercurrents of conflict are not to be left simmering” (Greer n.p., qtd. in Faber 153). Denial leads to amnesia. For healing to take place, admission of what transpired is imperative before moving forward. Greer paraphrases Bishop Desmond Tutu with regard to South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission: “one way of making sure the past will continue to haunt society is to maintain that it is past” (Greer n.p. qtd. in Faber 153). In Building Peace: Sustainable Reconciliation in Divided Societies (1998), John Paul Lederach affirms that reconciliation can take place only in social (not political) space when sustained by four elements: truth, mercy,

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justice, and peace. The Law of Historical Memory (Ley 52/ of 2007)21 stipulates its purposes to include the recognition and broadening of rights of those who suffered persecution or violence during the war or dictatorship. Said law reiterates the spirit of reconciliation, concord (concordia), and pluralism of ideas stipulated in the 1978 Constitution while underscoring the “voluntad de reencuentro de los españoles” and the “vocación integradora” (p. 53410) (the Spanish will to reencounter and the integrative vocation [my translation]). Herbal’s haunting perfectly elaborates in literary form the reencounter and integration of Spaniards, or in other words, of the two Spains. While Herbal might not have chosen to internalize his victim, the executioner constantly hears the dead painter’s voice as his pencil, his legacy, rests behind his ear. The push to silence and erase, to quell and obliterate, or to obliviate and relegate to the void of the unremembered was ineffective and fostered the need to express suffering. Herbal’s hearing of the painter’s voice and his own suffering that results from his agency and complicity in a murderous regime could be viewed as hauntological imagery parallel to the phantom pain depicted in the novel. Phantom pain is the persistence of pain or feeling originating from a missing body part. In an episode in the infirmary, Herbal witnesses Da Barca minister to an amputee screaming from the excruciating pain in his right foot that had been missing for nine months (Carpenter’s 88). When Herbal inquires of the painter if he knew of phantom pain, the ghost replies, “Apparently it’s the worst pain you can get, a pain that becomes unbearable. The memory of pain. The pain of what you have lost” (Carpenter’s 91). The hauntological depiction of the amputee’s plight perfectly encapsulates the recurring theme of this entire novel: pain provoked by absence. The constant awareness of absence highlights its paradoxical (absent) presence. Like an artistic or literary palimpsest, a painted over image, or a scratched out writing, memory acknowledges not simply nothingness, but rather the deletion of something. Physical trauma such as a mutilation or amputation perfectly metaphorizes the effect of civil war: a previously whole body left incomplete and fragmented while the memory 21  The “exposición de motivos” of the Ley 52/2007, 26 de diciembre: “por la que se reconocen y amplían derechos y se establecen medidas en favor de quienes padecieron persecución o violencia durante la guerra civil y la dictadura” underscores the “espíritu de reconciliación y concordia” of the pluralism of ideas and resulted in the 1978 Constitution, thus expressing the “voluntad de reencuentro de los españoles” and the “vocación integradora” (p. 53410).

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of able-bodiedness is fused with the remembrance of the traumatic act and, additionally, the lasting physical and emotional suffering is accompanied by the expectation to continue to function in the midst of implicit and explicit denial of the trauma. While following the end of the dictatorship in 1975, the “pact of silence” and agreement on reconciliation, to not stir up the past, to ignore (through many senses) the regime’s persecution of its opponents were touted as integral to the transition to democracy, such state-sanctioned silence and blindness denied the trauma suffered by half of Spain. In “Trauma y memoria de la Guerra Civil y la dictadura franquista,” José María Ruiz-Vargas avers that the fierce repression and abuse of the defeated hindered the ability to overcome trauma and resulted in post-traumatic stress (n.p.): Lo terrible e injusto de la situación de posguerra fue que mientras los vencedores pudieron dedicarse plenamente a superar sus pérdidas, los derrotados física y/o moralmente y sus familias se vieron condenados al peor de los castigos: ser cautivos en su propia tierra, en su propio pueblo, en su propia casa, desposeídos de sus derechos y estigmatizados de por vida—el franquismo no incluyó en sus planes ni el perdón ni la reconciliación … Resulta difícil desde el conocimiento actual sobre los trastornos y enfermedades del estado de ánimo, entender cómo aquella media España condenada al silencio y al sometimiento de sus iguales pudo sobrellevar, durante tanto tiempo, un destrozo emocional y moral tan profundo. (Ruiz-Vargas n.p.) (What was terrible and unjust of the postwar situation was that while the victors fully dedicated themselves to overcome their losses, the defeated and their families were physically and/or morally condemned to the worst of punishments: to be captives in their own (home)land, in their own towns, in their own homes, stripped of their rights and stigmatized for life—Francoism did not include pardon/forgiveness or reconciliation in its plans … It is difficult from current knowledge on disorders and mental illnesses to understand how that half of Spain [that was] condemned to silence and subjugation to their peers could cope, for so long, such a profound emotional and moral break.)

Ruiz-Vargas offers that feeling the pain of others, vindicating historical memory, and recovering the wounded memory of the victims are inextricably linked and essential to healing (n.p.). Similarly, professors in bioethics and human rights, respectively, Jodi Halpern and Harvey Weinstein, maintain that to heal following fratricidal conflict, one must feel the pain

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of others. Halpern and Weinstein affirm, “To reverse the destruction of social and familiar networks that normally sustain health and well-being, a process of rehumanization must occur. … [The] promotion of empathy is a critical component of reconciliation” (562). Furthermore, “healthy psychological and physical functioning requires overcoming the hatred … this depends upon seeing their recent enemies in human terms” (Halpern and Weinstein 562). They stress rehumanization and empathy as critical to reconciliation, in other words, “[seeing] former enemies as real people” (562). Sebastiaan Faber22 finds that the relatively recent Spanish cultural production that responds to the “pact of silence” has three salient commonalities: the shock value of the facts revealed, the resilience of the survivors, and finally the level of denial among perpetrators, accomplices, and descendants. The changing narrative voice of Rivas’ novel, curiously, presents, the three truths underscored by Faber. The varied narration glides between an omniscient narrator in the third-person perspective, Herbal’s inner monologue, and the tales that he recounts to Maria da Visitaçao (the undocumented young prostitute of color who works at the bar-brothel owned by Herbal’s partner). In a profane simulacrum of a confessional and haunted by the painter, the executioner bares his soul to one who, while perhaps not silent or silenced, is erased from societal importance by her multiply marginalized status: her race, her extreme youth, her undocumented immigration status, and her low position in the sex traffic industry. These factors render her nearly nonexistent within society; as such, she is an ideal interlocutor (as a literary artifice) to whom present plot fragments in this polyphonic work. The context in which Herbal breaks his silence (and implicit denial of his past actions) is the fictional current day. He is presently employed in a type of limbo, on the Luso-Hispanic border near Fronteira, bereft of any of the symbols of nationalism so fervently fought for. The bar-brothel is not a lieu de mémoire, but perhaps a lieu d’oubli (not a place of remembrance of monumental history and supposed greatness, but rather a locus of forgetting where past and present disappear into oblivion and nothingness). Hence, Herbal’s monologues eke out remembrance and memory, anchoring the plot in a character who contains within him the two Spains: himself (the role he played for the regime) and the painter’s hauntological

 Faber writes on works published or released from 2001–2004.

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presence and voice attached to the pencil Herbal later bestows upon his multiply marginalized interlocutor. Situated on the border during the time of democracy, the roadside brothel (locus of Herbal’s confession) and the timeless Cathedral (like all sacrosanct symbols appropriated by the regime as lieux de mémoire) are at odds. While Francoism adapted Christian imagery to reconstruct the past and legitimize malfeasance, the pseudo confession in the border town whorehouse during the transition destabilizes and desanctifies the previously consecrated History. By recounting what he saw, did, and felt, Herbal is reliving the past. Given Nora’s use of mémoire, Herbal in the present relives and shares his subjective memory. Franco’s use of lieux de la mémoire split Spain in two: the victors and the collective other, to be humiliated and dehumanized. Rivas artfully dedychotomizes the two Spains, blurring the division through the use of understanding and empathy. To empathize is to feel what another feels. By internalizing the painter, Herbal, who had coldly followed murderous orders, becomes sensitized to the plight of others. Herbal is a damaged individual, a victim of physical and mental abuse as a child. By internalizing his cruel father’s negative regard, he appropriated it as his own. Without an autonomous sense of self-worth, the heteronomous merit conferred upon him as he rose in rank within the Nationalist hierarchy was a pale substitute for unconditional positive self-regard. Yet in the ironic denouement of the novel, we readers learn that the jailer was later jailed for murder—not for following orders and heartlessly taking the lives of political prisoners under cover of night, but rather for avenging and killing his abused sister’s malicious batterer. The painter’s ghost stayed with Herbal and was a constant reminder of sensibilities and feeling. Only in the curiously safe space of the roadside bordello to his multiply marginalized interlocutor during the transition can the executioner verbalize the past, and hence relive, feel, and face in the present moment what had been. Colmeiro underscores the “spectral nature of Spanish history” and posits that Spain is a “nation full of ghosts” (32), “invisible but ever present” (28), “still waiting recovery, resolution, and reparation” (32). Rivas’ novel indisputably denounces and subverts the Nationalist drive to homogenize heterogeneous peoples, whitewash genocide and human rights violations, and indoctrinate those remaining on Hispano-Iberian soil following the defeat of the Republic with a sense of supremacy based on empty rhetoric and insidiously manipulated cultural icons. Herbal, haunted by his victim,

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awakens to the plight of those he killed, comes to feel and be possessed by understanding. If Spanish ghosts await justice and resolution, Rivas has created a haunted executioner that extends to the reader an implicit invitation to exorcise the phantom past through restorative justice.

Works Cited Colmeiro, José. Memoria histórica e identidad cultural: de la posguerra a la posmodernidad, Anthropos, 2005. ———. “A Nation of Ghosts?: Haunting, Historical Memory and Forgetting in Post-Franco Spain.” 452°F: Electronic Journal of Literature and Comparative Literature, vol. 4, pp.  17–34. http://www.452f.com/index.php/en/jose-­ colmeiro.html. Derrida, Jacques. Specters of Marx, translated by Peggy Kamuf, Routledge, 1994. Faber, Sebastiaan. “Revis(it)ing the Past: Truth, Justice and Reconciliation in Post-Franco Spain, a Review-Article (Second Part).” RHM, vol. LIX, 2006, pp. 141–54. García-Abad García, María Teresa. “‘El ajuar de la memoria’: Un imperativo ético y estético en El lápiz del carpintero, de Rivas, Cuña y Reixa.” Teatro y sociedad en la España actual, edited by María Francisca Vilches de Frutos and Wilfried Floeck, Iberoamericana Vervuert, 2004, pp. 303–20. García-Donoso, Daniel. “La risa del fantasma: humor y memoria en El lápiz del carpintero de Manuel Rivas.” Romance Studies, vol. 33, no. 3–4, 2015, pp. 208–17. Girard, René. The Scapegoat. Johns Hopkins P, 1986. Greer, Colin. “The World Is Hungry for Goodness.” Parade Magazine, January 11, 1998. Reprinted at http://www.forgivenessday.org/tutu.htm Gómez-Montero, Javier. “El conjuro amnésico de Os libros arden mal de Manuel Rivas.” Romanistisches Jahrbuch, vol. 62, 2011, pp. 405–24. Halpern, Jodi and Harvey Weinstein. “Rehumanizing the Other: Empathy and Reconciliation.” Human Rights Quarterly, vol. 26, 2004, pp. 561–83. Lederach, John Paul. Building Peace: Sustainable Reconciliation in Divided Societies. United States Institute of Peace, 1998. Ley de Memoria Histórica. Ley 52/2007. Boletín Oficial del Estado, vol. 310, pp. 53410–53416. Moralejo Álvarez, Serafín. The Portico of Glory, translated by Nick Shaw, Fundación Pedro Barrié de la Maza, 2008. Nichols, William J. “La narración oral, la escritura y los ‘lieux de mémoire’ en El lápiz del carpintero de Manuel Rivas.” Lugares de memoria de la Guerra Civil y el franquismo: representaciones literarias y visuales, edited by Ulrich Winter, Iberoamericana Vervuert, 2006, pp. 155–76.

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Nora, Pierre. “Between Memory and History: Les lieux de mémoire.” Translated by Marc Roudebush. Representations, vol. 26, Spring 1989, pp. 7–24. Preston, Paul. The Spanish Holocaust: Inquisition and Extermination in Twentieth-­ Century Spain. Norton, 2013. Reig Tapia, Alberto. Memoria de la Guerra Civil. Alianza, 1999. Rivas, Manuel. The Carpenter’s Pencil: A Novel of the Spanish Civil War. Translated from Galician by Jonathan Dunne. Overlook Press, 2001. ———. El lápiz del carpintero, translated from Galician by Dolores Vilavedra, Santillana, 1998. ———. Prologue: “Una injusticia en España.” La fuerza de la razón. Baltasar Garzón. Debate, 2011, pp. 15–24. Ruiz-Vargas, José María. “Trauma y memoria de la Guerra Civil y la dictadura franquista.” Hispania Nova. Revista de Historia Contemporánea, Vol. 6, 2006, http://hispanianova.rediris.es/. Accessed March 18, 2022. Tasende, Mercedes. “La guerra civil española como apocalipsis: la función del Pórtico de la Gloria en El lápiz del carpintero.” Alba de América, vol. 23, no. 43–44, 2004, pp. 297–312. Thomas, Hugh. The Spanish Civil War. Penguin, 2001. 1st edtion 1961. Tronsgard, Jordan. “Migration and Identity in Manuel Rivas’s El lápiz del carpintero and Almudena Grandes’s Malena es un nombre de tango.” Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos, vol. 36, 2012, pp. 501–17. Villanueva, Darío. “La Tabla Redonda de escritores.” La Tabla Redonda: Anuario de Estudios Torrentinos, no. 1, 2003, pp. 55–64. Vilavedra, Dolores. “La obra literaria de Manuel Rivas: Notas para una lectura macrotextual.” Romance Notes, Vol. 51, no. 1, 2011, pp. 87–96.

CHAPTER 4

The Path to Ambiguous Monstrosity: Illness, Martyrdom, and Castration in Emili Teixidor’s 2003 Novel and Agustí Villaronga’s Eponymous 2010 Film Pa negre (Black Bread) Introduction Emili Teixidor’s 2003 novel Pa negre and Agustí Villaronga’s eponymous 2010 film1 respond to the fact that “history is written by those who wield power and who distort, misrepresent, or conceal facts to suit their 1  As Glenn (2012) notes, both the film and the novel have been highly acclaimed. The written work was awarded the “Joan Crexells, Lletra d’Or, M. Àngels Anglada, and the Nacional de Literatura prizes; the 2010 film was honored with thirteen Gaudí and nine Goya awards and [was] acclaimed at festivals in Spain and the United States” (Glenn 2012, 53). Glenn studies Teixidor’s written work and its adaptation. A cinematic adaptation is “a reading” and “a re-vision” of the literary work. Applying Geoffrey Wagner’s three levels of fidelity regarding film adaptations—to wit, transposition, commentary, and analogy—Glenn deems Villaronga’s work nearly an analogy of Teixidor’s. Meaning that the “director does not attempt to reproduce the original but departs from it substantially in order to make another work of art” (Glenn 2012, 55). She also considers, applying Dudley Andrew’s tripartite film-text relationship of “borrowing, intersecting or transforming,” that Villaronga transforms Teixidor’s novel (2012, 55) by “cut[ting] much of Teixidor’s 400-page Pa negre” “ “in his 108-minute film, and in order to incorporate material from [the author’s] Retrat and Sic transit” (Glenn 2012, 61).

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Tobin Stanley, Francoist Repression and Incarceration in Contemporary Spanish Culture, Palgrave Studies in Cultural Heritage and Conflict, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13392-3_4

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purposes” (Glenn, “Reclaiming” 52). In La lectura y la vida, Teixidor writes, “Los libros son la memoria del mundo… Gracias a los libros podemos hablar con los muertos... Pero los libros son mucho más que las voces del pasado, nos dicen más cosas que la auténtica historia” (Books are the memory of the world…Thanks to books, we can speak with the dead…But books are much more than the voices of the past, they tell us more things than authentic history) (9–10). The author underscores the role narrative plays in understanding reality.2 Reading literature, such as Pa negre, is “biblioterapia,” the means to understand, cope with, and solve one’s own problems and make sense of the world (Teixidor, “En teoría” 14–15). During the Spanish postwar period, the repressive regime normalized cruelty, implemented draconian measures and punitive (in)justice, silenced the vanquished, gas-lighted the perception of its human rights violations, and whitewashed its bloodstained history. Pa negre, in narrativizing the tale of Andreu, sheds light on the persistence of complicit silence. Teixidor’s historical memory Bildungsroman, followed by Agustí Villaronga’s Bildungsfilm, remedies injustice by “counteract[ing] distortions and omissions propagated by official history, with its monologic vision and single-voiced discourse” (Glenn, “From Page” 62). As Kathleen Glenn notes, Pa negre embodies the need for remembrance expressed by Josefina Aldecoa in La fuerza del destino: “Venganza no, pero memoria sí”; “Perdonad, pero no olvidéis” (Not vengeance, but memory; forgive, but do not forget) (Aldecoa 75; Glenn, “Reclaiming” 56).3 While primarily focused on Teixidor’s novel, direct reference to Villaronga’s filmic adaptation-analogy is woven herein and is explored in the film’s cave-castration scene (based on Teixidor’s Retrat d’un  assassí

2  “Para vivir, los humanos forjamos historias sobre nosotros mismos y sobre los demás, y de esta manera imaginamos el pasado y el futuro. Damos sentido a lo que nos ocurre transformándolo en narraciones con un principio y un final, buscando causas y efectos, estableciendo similitudes y distinciones, ordenándolo todo” (To live, we human beings forge stories about ourselves and about others, and thus we imagine the past and the future. We make sense of what happens to us transforming it in narrations with a beginning and an end, seeking causes and effects, establishing similarities and differences, putting it all in order) (Teixidor, “En teoría: la literatura juvenil” 12). 3  Stated by the character Gabriela in Josefina Aldecoa’s La fuerza del destino (1997).

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d’ocells).4 Situated during the aftermath of the civil war and peppered with flashbacks to the Republic, the novel Pa negre5 is the story of a young boy, Andreu,6 who, as an adult, recounts the path that he took to dissociate himself from his family, erase the memory of his incarcerated father, and ally himself with the triumphant transgressors. This betrayal is a fearful response to real and perceived acts of violence: vengeful punishments, such as the likely torture and certain death of Andreu’s father (at the hands of the nacionales), the castration of Marcel Saurí (Pitorliua) in the film, and morbid tales of Catholic martyrs7 that become the lens through which Andreu imagines the physical repression of political prisoners and the ostracized homosexual patients at the Camillus convent. In these Bildungs, the protagonist responds to implicit threats and explicit acts of violence and coercion, urging him to safeguard himself by affiliating with the victors. Andreu, for Glenn, “does not grow up (a word implying ascension to a higher state) but down, experiencing a descent into adulthood” 4  Villaronga’s inclusion of Teixidor’s novel Retrat d’un assassí d’ocells (Caza menor in Spanish), according to Deveny, offers the elements of utmost importance to the filmic narrative: “el despeñamiento, la entra en la gruta (en una concentración de personajes, Núria sustituye a Roge de esta novela), la escena de la castración, y la identidad del padre de Andreu como el asesino” (the fall/being thrown off the cliff, entering the cave [in a concentration of characters, Núria substitutes that novel’s Roge], the castration scene, and Andreu’s father’s identity as a killer)(404). 5  The original version in Catalan, Pa negre, was translated by the author. Both versions were published by Seix Barral in 2003 and 2004. In paperback in 2010, the novel was further reprinted five times in 2011. 6  Referenced by Aguilar, Schuman and Scott (1989) studied memory and historical events on several different generations of the same country (US). They found that World War II or the Vietnam War signified different things for different people based on the historical event taking place during a key period in their coming-of-age (which they determined to be 17–25 years of age). The shame of defeat in Vietnam resulted in the glorification and justification of WWII. The young men who lived during the time of Vietnam—and the defeat—mythicized the previous war (Aguilar 3). Andreu, like Schuman and Scott’s subjects, is too young to have participated in the war, yet the shame of the Republican defeat could lead to, not perhaps his glorification of the war itself, but his siding with the victors. 7  Andreu lives in a violent childhood world. The fierce hierarchy is multifaceted and revealed in myriad fashions. Among the protagonist’s playthings are cards of saints and martyrs, perhaps not unlike US baseball trading cards, “estampas … como las de san Tarsicio con la palma de martirio, santa Lucía con los ojos arrancados y exhibidos en una bandeja, san Luis Gonzaga con el lirio de la pureza en la mano y los ojos mirando al cielo, san Andreu crucificado cabeza abajo en una cruz en forma de equis …, y sobre todo san Camilo de Lelis, completamente vestido de blanco con la cruz colorada en el pecho, rodeado de leprosos, ciegos, tullidos, pobres y niños andrajosos que esperaban la salvación y la cura” (Teixidor 34).

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(italics in the original, “Reclaiming” 61). Similarly, Thomas Deveny underscores that the devastating consequences of war and its aftermath transform this child-victim into a monster, such that his “formación” (education) is really a “deformación” (399). Both Teixidor’s novel and Villaronga’s film tell the story of a child who hurts8 and, consequently, betrays his heritage to side with his family’s oppressors. In a way, it is a story that invites the reader or viewer to understand how a society, one that does not operate under the rules of kindness, dignity, and morality, betrays the child protagonist. Unsafe in a senseless and inhospitable world, Andreu seeks safety, physical well-being, and economic security. In so doing, he internalizes a sense of guilt, a self-­ proclaimed monstrosity that intertwines a host of complexities: poverty, hunger, defeat, illness, homosexuality, and powerlessness, all of which are forms of castration. In the no longer innocent eyes of Andreu, the complexities are loathsome and are objectively repudiated by others in implicit and explicit fashions. This chapter will trace the trajectory that leads to the inevitability of Andreu’s monstrosity within the context of nationalized Catholicism and racial politics that purges the “degeneration” by “regeneration” of the race. The symbiotic Arcadian childhood is disrupted with the literal, rhetorical, and psychological violence of nationalized Catholicism with its concomitant sacramentalized conversion of the defeated through forced communion. Yet Andreu imbues the pre-communion lessons on saints and martyrs with new meaning, for he confers saintliness upon his defeated father in the novel and he eroticizes the perceived violence of the object of his budding homoerotic desires, an adolescent consumptive patient. Teixidor’s Andreu perceives both his father’s death and the object of his desire through the imagery of violence and martyrdom reminiscent of castration. Villaronga, in his filmic adaptation, distills the essence and analogizes the sexualized aggression and eroticized violence from the novel by incorporating a plot sequence from Teixidor’s Retrat in which the protagonist’s father literally castrates a young homosexual with whom the protagonist identifies. The fear of castration (to different degrees in the novel and the film) ultimately determines Andreu’s choice, and that ambiguates his “monstrosity.” On the one hand, the polyvalent meaning of “monster” in Pa negre signifies the intersectional linkage of alterities—non-heteronormative, 8

 Here I use “hurt” in the intransitive sense. Andreu feels pain.

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non-hygienic (by the eugenic standards of racial purity), and non-­ hegemonic (Catholic, fascist, Castilianized, landholding). On the other hand, it represents the iniquities and violations of the regime. In the final instance, this coming-of-age story closes with a single word, a first-person declaration, admission, and acknowledgment of the term “monster.” This paradoxical and ambiguous term marries the meaning of progeny of the criminalized defeated, economically underprivileged, and pathologized homosexual with that of traitor to all that is honorable. This fusion into one repudiated monster with the sociopolitically privileged monster simultaneously vindicates the Other and denounces the transgressive victors. However, the vindication and denunciation are pyric. Just as with the martyrs and saints depicted throughout the novel (parallel to the birds and angelic references in the film9), these tortured and mutilated beings are othered and marginalized by the hegemony and yet extoled for their sanctity. The monstrosity that Andreu embodies couples his otherness and fear of persecution and dismemberment with his soon-­to-­be-had hegemonic privilege which will empower him to victimize. He is both the object and (future) agent of marginality/marginalization/persecution. In this interstitial, liminal stage of his life, as the protagonist of the Bildungsroman and the film, he must reflect, as Deveny has observed, on what he has seen and learned and take action (400). He acknowledges his family’s idealism and their fight for rights (e.g., education, fair compensation, equitable working conditions) as well as his budding homoeroticism; and yet, in the novel, he recognizes the criminalization of the defeated as well as the pathologization and (in the film) castration of homosexuals.10 The historical trauma forces Andreu to choose, not between good and evil, but rather what sort of monster he will be. Will he be hated for his sexual orientation and fear castration (symbolically in the novel and literally in the film), or will he hate himself for cutting his ties with his Republic, defeated family, and executed father and for turning his back on the fight for social justice and Catalan heritage?11 He is not brave, noble, or heroic. He is simply human. Unlike his executed father (or castrated and murdered Marcel 9  For Allbritton, “the freedom symbolized through the bird and angel” is linked to “the monstrous experiences of death and loss” (“Recovering” 633). 10  Ten-year-old Andreu “gains awareness of his own sexual difference alongside the taboo sexual and political dealings of a hate crime, the castrating and killing of a gay man, in which his father and fellow townspeople in rural Catalonia participated” (Hogan 2). 11  By becoming a part of the Manubens family, “Andreu disavows his homosexual, Republican, Catalan, and working class difference” (Hogan 3).

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Saurí/Pitorliua in the film), Andreu survives. He will be haunted by the ghosts of history and by his secrets.12 While “good” does not “triumph over Fascist ‘evil’” in Pa negre, B.  Dean Allbritton proposes that “there must be something productive about negativity” (Allbritton, “Recovering” 634). The productivity lies in the reflection and understanding of the role fear plays in capitulation to and complicity with oppressors.

Symbiosis: Arcadian Childhood and Feminine Imagery Before the War The metaphor of castration alludes to the social, economic, and political reality lived by repressed and persecuted Spaniards during the regime. The victims of reprisals, like the protagonist’s father, became sociopolitical eunuchs. The novel counterpoises feminine environments with phallic actions. Each gendered approach depicts a disparate worldview. Spaces that nurture and embrace (such as the grandmother’s home, the hearth, the shelter of the plum tree) are juxtaposed with imposing, castigating institutions where heteronormative phallocentrism evokes fear. The novel opens in the grove on the lands overseen by the grandmother and her family, with the description of the plum tree where Andreu and his two cousins, Núria (aka Lloramicos) and Quirico, hang out. The fork of the  plum tree’s branches is an ample, dark, welcoming space, “como el fondo de un caldero” (like the bottom of a cauldron) (Teixidor 11). The three cousins nest in the comfort of this uterine, symbiotic space where the needs of each are met. This tree and time in their lives, representative of a nurturing safe space, accommodate all. The novel then continues with Andreu’s references to what he witnesses. He defamiliarizes for the reader that which he does not know or understand, only to gain greater agency and active involvement (both in grammatical structure and in his own life). The protagonist-narrator paints a bucolic portrait of a time in his childhood that is rooted in the grandmother’s world. The grove, the plants, and the other natural elements set the stage for the space of her home where she employed her knowledge of medicinal flowers. She embodies the archetype of the witch, an 12  In Villaronga’s film, Álvarez-Sancho links the birds and bird-like characters (the consumptive adolescent and Marcel Saurí/Pitorliua) to both the ghosts of history (given the cruel repression of homosexuality) and the “phantom” (given Farriol’s murders, and castration of Saurí and betrayal of his ideals) (525–56).

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anti-­hegemonic entity who avails herself of alternative ways to subvert power. Throughout the novel, this matriarch doggedly attempts to subvert hegemonic (patriarchal, paternalistic, phallocentric, ecclesiastical, nationalistic) rule. Teixidor, like his fellow Catalonian Mercè Rodoreda in her short story “La salamandra,” alludes to witchcraft (a distinctly gendered, subversive, and, purportedly, threatening power) to undermine the absolutist desire for control and erasure of any glimmer of dissent. The mystique of the grandmother’s elder tree (“saúco”) pervades the home. Andreu narrates how they would leave the windows open, the fragrance of the elder flowers—“la fragrancia de la abuela” (grandmother’s scent)— would penetrate and dispel illnesses (Teixidor 12). Of note is the back window through which the fragrance of the elder blossoms penetrates. The method of entry of the perfume is inconspicuous and discreet. A fragrance is invisible and filters in to affect all, possibly at times without their acknowledging it. The protagonist-narrator describes the elder tree as “inalcanzable, el árbol de la abuela, el prodigio medicinal que restauraba la vida, y lo considerábamos sagrado” (beyond reach, a life-restoring medicinal wonder we thought was sacred) (Teixidor 13).13 This metonymic extension of the matriarch stands for a restorative and sacred approach to life, an approach that is altogether different from a violent hierarchy that founds its power on fear and conformity. The description of the elder tree’s influence (and by extension the grandmother’s impact) metaphorizes the power of the unseen, and urges the reader to ponder the strength and subtly of counterculture, of a worldview that persists and will not be subsumed to a dominant order. The paradisiacal notion of childhood and symbiotic world associated with the grandmother (her home, grove, plum tree, and elder tree), reminiscent of the beatus ille tradition, is in stark contrast with the “half rotten elms” that ominously foreshadow a soon to be lost paradise (Glenn 2008, 57). Andreu was disgusted by the infirm, unapproachable, and phallic elms whose trunk was “demasiado viejo, sucio y agujereado, parecía podrido, y el ramaje era demasiado pequeño para el tamaño del árbol, como el herrador del pueblo y los hombretones que le llevaban los caballos a herrar, que tenían un pecho enorme y la cabeza minúscula. El cerezo era más acogedor” (too old, scabby and perforated, as if they were rotten, and their branches were too small for their size, like the village blacksmith and the brawny men with big chests and small heads who took him their horses  All translations to English of Teixidor’s Pa negre are from Peter Bush.

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to show. The cherry was more welcoming) (Teixidor 12 [12]). Juxtaposed with the welcoming and cozy cherry tree, the portrayal of the elms, reminiscent of the smith, with his small head and large body, is phallic, points to a lack of intellect or reasoning, and underscores physical force. Additionally, the masculine symbol of iron (with which the smith works) is associated with the Roman god of war and virility, Mars. The botany described becomes a metaphor for the land (polyvalently homeland and actual soil, terrain, and grove) as well as politics. While Republican ideology fostered well-being for all, war and the subsequent regime were irrefutably characterized by fear. The protagonist’s inner journey, originating in a space of growth, freedom, and lack of judgment, will lead him through fear of punishment only to arrive at a state of capitulation and affiliation with those he fears. Andreu begins to perceive the adult world as gendered and, ultimately, ruled by a phallocentric power structure: “los hombres … lo señoreaban todo con su grosería, su suciedad, … su retraimiento… [sic] El mundo de las mujeres era más amable y gracioso, pero no era autónomo, giraba siempre en torno de los hombres” (the men…lorded…over everything with their coarseness, their filth… and their sullenness. The world of women was more fun, but it wasn’t independent, it always revolved around men) (Teixidor 32 [30]). Clearly, Andreu discerns a phallic heteronormative society in that the “world” revolves around the masculine, which is violent, powerful, crude, rough, large, dominant, and less pleasant than the symbiotic “feminine.” Andreu’s description reveals his ambivalence. While identifying with the “pleasant” and “amiable” “world of women,” and seeming to feel hesitation or condescension toward the filthy, brusque aspects of the masculine, the narrator-protagonist clearly recognizes the concomitant phallocentrism. In the first two chapters, Andreu alludes to the change of colors of the trees within one year and some other autumn, literally referring to the autumnal hues, and also to the archetype of autumn, when all good things must come to an end. Particularly, in the case of the Spanish Civil War and ensuing dictatorship, a change in colors can connote the change in the state flag as well as Catalonia’s conversion from being a red zone to all of Spain becoming blue; in other words, Nationalist New Spain.

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Nationalized Catholicism In Pa negre, the representation of the triumphant class reflects the legacy of nineteenth-century politico-religious concept that Catholicism and liberalism could not coexist and were irreconcilable.14 During the Republic (April 1931–April 1939), President Manuel Azaña, on October 13, 1931, declared that Spain had ceased to be Catholic and advocated for secularization, which ultimately was a triple hit to the Catholic Church: separation of church and state, dissolution of the Jesuits, and elimination of Catholic education (Valis 49). The Catholic Church abetted the newly empowered Nationalist regime in the stigmatization and repression of the defeated. In his April 16, 1939 telegram, Pope Pius XII congratulated Franco on his victory over atheism, thus, as Santos Juliá avers, endorsing the Spanish Catholic hierarchy’s support of the 1936 military uprising and its collaboration (or complicit silence) with the ensuing repression (Juliá et al. 352). Hilari Raguer Suñer acknowledges the Holy See and the Spanish Episcopate’s “complete support” of the military uprising, yet underscores that “in reality the Vatican was much more human and a lot less bellicose than the Spanish bishops proved to be” (68–69). In order to combat the ideology of the defeated, the Francoist regime charged church-affiliated entities with the eugenic task of purging, reeducation, and cleansing ideas (Juliá 351). Eutimio Martín considers that the Catholic Church sought revenge and aimed at stripping the “demons of Marxism” from the defeated Republicans (Juliá et  al. 352). The victors saw all permutations of the political left as an insidious threat to the hegemonic Catholic Church and deemed the spectrum of the left incompatible with “Traditional Spain” and as such was to be rubbed out (Jerez-Farrán and Amago 7). In Pa negre, the parish priest aspires to reclaim power and, perhaps, to seek revenge when he takes an interest in Andreu’s father and his cousin Núria’s absent, “fugitive” parents. The priest praises Andreu’s mother Florencia as an esteemed worker in the textile sweatshop who bears God’s trial with “resignación ejemplar” (exemplary resignation) (Teixidor 91 [86]). This clergyman does nothing to better the horrid working conditions or the family’s extreme poverty, 14  Valis explores mid- to late nineteenth-century church thinking: “In its extreme ultramontane form, the argument against novels was analogous to the argument against liberalism and other presumed political heresies  …  The question became, could a liberal be Catholic? … A liberal Catholic or a Catholic liberal was a contradiction in terms” (Valis 24). As the title of Felix Sardà’s 1884 tome indicates, El liberalismo es pecado (Liberalism Is a Sin).

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but rather touts their abject life as penance that will purge the “excesses of the past,” in other words, the leftist ideology of the defeated. The priest confuses political bent with religious absolution, framing Alfonso and Mita’s fugitive status as confirmation of their guilt and sanctimoniously pontificating, “Confiemos en que Dios pueda perdonarlos” (Let’s hope God can forgive them) (Teixodor 92 [86]). The protagonist’s aunt and uncle are political exiles who have every reason to fear Francoist reprisals. Alfonso and Mita did not “sin,” nor did they commit any crime, yet under the new order, they are enemies of the state and apparently of the church as well.

Illness and Racial Hygiene: “Vae victis!,” Say the Victors The regime justified the vilification of the defeated by linking nationalized Catholicism and racial politics. Both aim to purge what they deemed to be ill or illness. Fascist scientists and intellectuals, such as Spain’s greatest proponent of eugenics Antonio Vallejo Nágera, embraced and applied eugenics “to improve the [Hispanic] race” and “to legitimize and be the guarantor of the new [Fascist] order” (Capuano and Carli 4). This construct of Spanishness is that of a cultural race, rather than of a biological race. In search of “red gene” or the biopsychological cause of “Marxist Fanaticism” (Serrano n.p.), Vallejo Nágera aimed to pathologize Marxism and propose a remedy. His “scientific” studies on political prisoners confirmed the bias that “Marxist fanatics” lacked intelligence and morality. Eugenics, perceiving society as a type of organism and exploiting the construct of “abnormality,” adopts a two-pronged approach: to limit the decline of the race and implement measures to regenerate the race. To define characteristics of the Spanish race, Vallejo Nágera applied seventeenth-century knightliness, social aristocracy, military discipline, and Catholic religion in order to propose that natural order supersedes human equality (Capuano and Carli 7). In his 1937 speech, “Eugenesia de la Hispanidad y Regeneración de la Raza” (Eugenics of Spanishness and Regeneration of the Race), Vallejo Nágera states that the collective spirit of Spanishness is fused in God, homeland, and the Caudillo, the nexus of which is “el pensamiento católico y filosófico hispano-romano elaborado durante los primeros siete siglos del Cristianismo [sic]” (Catholic and Hispano-Roman philosophical thinking elaborated during the first seven

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centuries of Christianity) (Vallejo Nágera qtd. in Capuano and Carli 9). Reframing fascist Spain in terms of the Reconquest, Imperial Spain, and the Inquisition that ferrets out dissent and punitively and draconianly erases “ideas extranjeras corruptoras de los valores universales hispánicos” (foreign ideas that corrupt universal Spanish values) (Vallejo Nágera 1938, qtd. in Capuano and Carli 9), the Psychiatric Commander sets the stage for an implementation that gravely violated human rights (Capuano and Carli 9). The racial politics of the new fascist state, based on Vallejo Nágera’s “scientific findings,” sought to transform or cure the children of the defeated in various ways: repatriation of exiled/evacuated children of the defeated (and by extension the cleansing of Spanish society), removal of children born to incarcerated women, and placement of the orphans of the executed, prisoners, or defeated in officially authorized venues, such as patronatos or charitable (Catholic, of course) institutions, as decreed in the law of November 23, 1940 (on the protection of orphans). The law of December 4, 1941, permitted children to change their names, including family names—in effect substituting their identity—if they were repatriated, if they did not recall their names, or if the parents were not found (Capuano and Carli 10–11). As Judge Baltasar Garzón notes, in the ten-­ year span between 1944 and 1954, there were 30,960 children, most of whom were children of the defeated, boarded in religious centers and seminaries. It was the Patronato de San Pablo, under the auspices of and in collaboration with the Ministry of Justice, that placed the children (Capuano and Carli 11). The collusion between the church and the state to remove children from the defeated is developed in another chapter of the present study.15 Two legal and political realities are key to Pa negre: the placement of orphaned children of the defeated, executed, or disappeared and the assumption/adoption of a different name if parents were unknown. While Andreu’s situation does not perfectly adhere to these two aforementioned laws, Teixidor distills the essence and applies it to Andreu’s fate: he is placed in a sanctioned venue and assumes an identity and name in line with the thinking of the “Spanish race.” If society is viewed as an organism and republicanism as an illness that can have a future, the infected, contagious, and offensive body part must be excised, amputated, or castrated. Vallejo Nágera’s science, justified by Catholic politics, legitimized extermination and erasure (Capuano and Carli 12). In other words, the Spanish  The chapter on Cañil’s Si a los tres años no he vuelto.

15

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fascist “obligación higiénica” (hygenic obligation) that pathologized and demonized “Marxism” extricated children from families and their homes that were believed to “deform” them. The state-sanctioned guardianship was the legal framework to strip the child-Other of his identity and origins (Capuano and Carli 12). If, as Vallejo Nágera proposed, removing children from the “amoral” environment of their Republican families and placing them in a Catholic and Western (occidental) environment would “propiciaría una mejora en la sociedad y, por consiguiente, una regeneración de la raza” (yield a betterment in society, and consequently, a regeneration of the race) (Capuano and Carli 12), then Andreu is a testament to the success of Vallejo Nágera’s eugenics in fascist Spain. In the film and the novel, the education imparted by the schoolmaster Mr. Madern, an alcoholic pedophile with impunity, exemplifies the hygienic rhetoric. Mr. Madern instructs, “teniendo en cuenta que la historia la escriben los vencedores, y que los vencidos no tienen derecho ni a una nota a pie de página en el gran libro de la historia” (Considering that history is written by the winners, and the defeated don’t have the right even to a footnote in the big book of history… [sic]), and he underscores “que conste que yo estoy siempre a favor de los vencedores. Algún mérito deben tener por encima de los demás cuando han sabido ganar. La victoria no es nunca neutral ni inmerecida. ‘Vae victis!’, decían los romanos. ‘¡Ay de los vencidos!’ Contagian la peste. ¡Alejados de ellos!” (Be aware, nevertheless, that I’m always on the side of the winners. They must have something going for them over the others, if they managed to win. Victory is never neutral or unmerited. “Vae victis!” said the Romans. Woe betide the defeated! They spread the plague. Steer clear of them!) (Teixidor 228 [205]). Throughout this coming-of-age tale, Andreu takes this lesson to heart. This corrupt teacher provides an unforgettable education, guides the protagonist, and is a role model Andreu will emulate. Deveny notes precisely how the schoolmaster’s history lesson is ironized in the novel (Teixidor 201–03, Deveny 401) and the film. Once the schoolmaster completes the dictation in the language of the Spanish Empire, Castilian, he draws a flask from his desk and takes a drink (Deveny 401). Before coughing and then chugging another shot, Deveny cites (from the Spanish subtitles of the Catalan film) and notes that this part of the lesson, the explanation understood by the Catalan children, is imparted in their language: “la Historia la escriben siempre los ganadores.” Drinking alcohol in the classroom is a symptom of the schoolmaster’s inner turmoil and highlights unresolved conflict. Just as Madern cannot reconcile the

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performance of the lesson with his view of defeat, Andreu will also be plagued inwardly, but will perform outwardly. Through Mr. Madern, Andreu learns that his father’s death sentence is not likely to be commuted and the landholding Manubens couple are interested in fostering him (Teixidor 234–35). The verb for “to foster a child” in Spanish is “ahijar,” a religious term that means to become godparents to someone. In the story, Andreu is about to lose his father, a progressive, forward-thinking, enemy of the state, and gain two staunchly traditionalist godparents, who will do their best to re-create him in the image of the Catholic and Hispano-Roman race. Andreu can be understood to be one of the niños perdidos del franquismo, children institutionally removed from the leftist illness of their families as proposed by eugenics scientist Vallejo Nágera (Allbritton 624–25). The underlying connection between his father’s imminent execution and the Manubens’ benefaction is eugenics: purge the unhygienic, regenerate the race, and distance themselves from Luis. The Manubens own La Tora, of which Andreu’s grandmother is the caretaker. As such, we may assume that her son Luis grew up there, worked the land, and had contact with them throughout his life. Andreu is literally Luis’ offspring and could metaphorically be his ideological heir. By indoctrinating him and taking him on, the Manubens create a perfect image of siding with the victors and deter any perception that, by association with Luis, they might have “desafecto al régimen.” While they are “pudientes,”16 landholding, bourgeois Catalonians, they had not previously had the external markers of allegiance with the One, Great, and Free New Spain. Andreu becomes their trophy. As Luis’ son, Andreu becomes the Manubens’ metaphoric trophy to be given to the great nation. In both the film and the novel, the classroom lesson of distancing from the defeated Other—as plagued and contagious—extends to other Others as well. In the film, various characters vilify the “reds”: the mayor in the presence of the priest states there are still many “reds” to purge, Andreu’s playmate Roviretas asserts to other children “de rojos que sois terminaréis como Pitorliua, escondidos en una cueva como monstruos” (as red as you are you will end up like Pitorliua, hiding in a cave like monsters)17 (Deveny 401). In the novel, Roviretas reinforces political otherness as she insults Andreu and his cousin Núria: “nadie sabe dónde tenéis el padre y la madre, que eran unos rojos, rojos más que rojos, que han tenido que huir por  Well-to-do or powerful.  My translation.

16 17

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rojos … no sois nadie … como los pordioseros o los gitanos, dais más pena que los tísicos del convento de los Camilos” (nobody knows where your mother and father are, and they were reds, worse than reds, and that’s why they had to escape … you’re nobody’s children … you don’t have anyone, you are tramps and gypsies, and more pathetic than those degenerates with TB in the Saint Camillus monastery!) (Teixidor 54 [50]). Both Pitorliua (Marcel Saurí) and the consumptive patient are homosexual, the former of whom is overtly persecuted for his sexuality. Mrs. Manubens orders the assault to distance herself openly from her brother and Marcel Saurí’s homosexual relationship. The lesson on selective ancient Roman history reinforces current Hispano-Roman “imperialism”—the coveted white bread eaten by the victors, the Castilianized name at the end (Andreu becomes Andrés Manubens in film and novel), and Roman Catholic Apostolic education. The lesson can be read as promoting the Roman “bread and circus”; to wit, sated hunger and diversion based on blood sport, the spectacle of winning and losing, and the spectators’ concomitant identification with the winners. The circus victors survived to fight another day, while the defeated were ripped to shreds, bathed in blood, and mutilated. This latter reinforces the concept of castration as a literal loss of a body part, as well as the symbolic lack of power, potential loss of life, and subsequent vilification for the defeated. The Roman history lesson, imparted in Castilian, refers to the triumphant Romans and the defeated Other, and analogizes that the contemporary vanquished be vilified as plague-ridden. The history taught insidiously drives home the current ideology. So, the language of the empire is also the logos of imperialism. The imperialism of the school lesson signifies conquest: victors and defeated, the right side and the wrong side. This hierarchized binary eliminates and precludes the possibility of inclusion and acceptance; rather, it is monolithic and monologic. Is this precisely the context that Teixidor and Villaronga wish readers and viewers to scrutinize as it informs the protagonist’s reflection and decisions? If Andreu’s choices are reduced to the binary of “with the winners” or “against,” clearly, he chooses to become one of them, yet the complexity and paradoxes lie in the following facts: “with” does not connote solidarity; rather, it signifies association as a defense mechanism for self-preservation. In her chapter “Historical Trauma and Male Subjectivity,” Kaja Silverman investigates “the castrations through which the male subject is constituted to the pound of flesh which is his price of entry into the symbolic order, as well as to the other

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losses that punctuate his history” (Male Subjectivity 52). By choosing security (abundance of quality food such as white bread, comfort beyond basic shelter, education, future possibilities to integrate into society as a privileged man with all that that entails), Andreu ironically limits himself and, in essence, affectively and emotionally interpersonally castrates himself, transforming himself into the monster he self-deprecatingly repeats in the final chapter. While not wanting to become a jumble of interwoven (or intersectional) monstrous realities that connote a social castration (poor, defeated, “pathologized” like the tubercular patient who is likely just ostracized for his homosexuality or literally castrated like Pitorliua/Saurí), Andreu self-castrates, self-alienates. Under the heading “Sexual and political difference as abjection and contagion: the cases of Pitorliua, Andreu and the consumptive patient,” Hogan notes, “The permeation of barriers in the film risks contagion, either of the tuberculosis that afflicts a population convalescing at the town’s monastery or of Republican politics” (10). Hogan deems the schoolteacher’s lesson and warning to distance oneself from the defeated, likening Republicanism to the plague, to be reminiscent of Vallejo Nágera’s postulations in his 1938 speech on racial politics, racial hygiene, and the biopsychic expansion of the race in which he links a paganized, soft (“muelle”), and sensual environment to tuberculosis (Vallejo Nágera 1938, 3; Hogan 11). As Sontag affirms, “Consumption is symbolically a disease of passion and excess” (Hogan 12, referencing Sontag, 1978, 20–22). In other words, pleasurable settings purportedly degrade individuals, degenerate the race, propagate tuberculosis, and, one can infer, spread gayness. Andreu’s coming-of-age narrative reveals how he learns who the Other is, who is at the margins or at the center, privileged or persecuted, racially ill or hygienic. The protagonist’s burgeoning knowledge of the world he inhabits broadens to an understanding of the prescriptive nature of heteronormativity and the imposed alterity that intersects political marginality with images of illness, contagion, and homoeroticism. When Andreu and his cousins find coarse blankets at their home, the children are first told that this bedding comes from the tuberculosis infirm that convalesced at the Camillus convent and that, later, they were touched by Republican soldiers. The protagonist narrator describes the ill in the “huerto de los pensamientos” (heartease garden): “cuerpos desnudos y esqueléticos, todos hombres jóvenes … testigos de una enfermedad contagiosa … una enfermedad maldita que se contraía por los vicios y la mala

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vida … testimonios del castigo del pecado … envueltos en sábanas blancas … Y nunca habíamos visto que llevaran ni una manta” (naked, skeletal bodies stretched out, all young men … victims of a contagious disease…an accursed disease, contracted as a result of an errant life of vice … proof of the deity’s pitiless punishment of sin, swaddled in white sheets … Yet we’d never seen one under a blanket) (Teixidor 27–28 [25–26]). The chromatic sketch of the flowers politicizes the tableau-esque scene: yellow daisies, red poppies, and purple pansies (27 [26]). Furthermore, the tricolor Republican flag boasted exactly these three colors. Teixidor, then, in this martyred depiction of the ill, homosexual, ostracized young men, intertwines physical and social marginalization with chromatic symbols of the defeated Republic and Republicans. The next mention of the blankets, “Pero otro día, seguramente, otro otoño” (However one day, surely another autumn) (29 [27]), signals another era and sociopolitical context during Andreu’s youth. This time Aunt Bina cautions the children from touching the blankets because they had been touched by Republican soldiers: “¡Vete a saber de dónde las han sacado los frailes de la puñeta! Seguro que las recogieron después de la guerra, al regresar al convento que los piojosos milicianos ocuparon  …  la misma iglesia está llena de mierda, las gallinas corrían por el altar y los corderos estaban guardados en la capilla del Santísimo… uff, llenas de chinches … hay que lavarlas por lo menos diez veces” (God knows where those damned friars found them! I expect they collected them up after the war, when they returned to the monastery the lice-ridden militia had occupied like a barracks, and the church was full of shit, with hens running round the altar and sheep penned up in the Chapel of the Most Holy Spirit) (Teixidor 29 [27]). In his investigation into the link between self-body-citizenship and illness-­ health through the lens of gender, Allbritton surmises that “sick masculinities” reveal “national health” as an image-making construct (“Live” iii). Andreu’s same-sex identification with the consumptive adolescent destabilizes “gender practices through the metaphors of illness” and fosters an understanding of the fragile construct of citizenship that “cannot be divorced from illness” (Albritton, “Live” 8). Andreu learns that the explanations given about the blankets are a lie. Nearing the conclusion, the reader gleans that the family—namely the women—would wash them for the resistants living in hiding. Nonetheless, the blankets should be viewed as an example of metonymy. Earlier, the blankets were an extension of the homoeroticized infirm, young, naked men at the convent of the Camillus. Now, these blankets are linked to the Republican militiamen,

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described as lice-infested, who had turned the church into a “shit-filled” barracks (Teixidor 29). The protagonist begins to piece together that the portrayal of homosexuals and the defeated as an infirm, collective Other, an untouchable, profane caste, reflects the monologic discourse that reinforced heteronormative church-sanctioned triumphant nationalism. Teixidor shatters the binary, Manicheist Francoist rhetoric that portrayed the Republicans and homosexuals as equally contagion-riddled monsters and outsiders, while it manipulated the saint, martyr, and redeemer imagery to consecrate and sacramentalize the Nationalist victors.

Communion The illness rhetoric to construct the Other positioned the regime as the redemptive mechanism to cure, remedy, purge, and extirpate for the national health of the Spanish race. Nationalized Catholicism provided the optimal public means to sacramentalize Republican children’s integration into the Francoist communitas: Holy Communion. “A refashioned Eucharist becomes … the symbolic hinge of the world,” writes Valis, and speaks to “the inseparability of individual and community” (Valis 142). The communion chapter reveals a psychological, social, and narratological transformation in the protagonist-narrator. This marks the point in which he openly identifies himself: “Andreu era yo” (I was Andreu) (Teixidor 82 [76]). Until this time, the protagonist-narrator would simply recount what he witnessed, heard, and learned from observing the adults in his life. Yet now Andreu gains agency in his own narration. With first-person agency comes ownership of decisions and actions, as well as, ultimately, compliance and complicity with those in power. The parish priest, characterized by imposition and intolerance, forces those within the jurisdiction of his congregation to bend to his will and that of the new Nationalist order (“el párroco aprieta”18 [81]). The methodology is to coerce the younger children in Andreu’s family to celebrate First Communion publicly. Andreu’s Aunt Bina articulates, “Quieren que la hija pague por los pecados del padre, quieren ver cómo la hija del rebelde inclina la cabeza” (They want the daughter to atone for the sins of her father; they want to see the rebel’s daughter bow her head!) (Teixidor 82 [77]). Here the parish functions as a synecdoche for the entirety of the 18  Colloquial usage that I would roughly translate as “the parish priest puts the squeeze [on them]” to signify pressuring them.

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nation. Parroquia is a miniature of patria. The insidious socio-political-­ ecclesiastical authorities force the children of the defeated to be integrated into Catholic New Spain. Whereas Nationalized Catholicism during the dictatorship was “eagerly embraced by adherents,” Valis postulates it was “force-fed to the rest, effectively politicizing and thus secularizing religion through the abuse of power” and understandably resulted in disaffection toward religion (Valis 8). Not unlike Benito Pérez Galdós who adopted “the imagery of Catholic Communion to a secularist vison of any unforgiving, class-conscious world” (Valis 120), Teixidor’s novel similarly reflects the ingestion of or repugnance toward the Eucharist as, respectively, internalization of and resistance against imposed Nationalist Catholic societal order. Andreu’s family members strategize a plan of resistance: one week before communion, Núria would feign illness. Andreu and his cousin Quirico recount Núria’s illness to the schoolmaster as a red throat and fever, perhaps from scarlet fever, maladies which emblematize political opposition for they boast a color associated with the defeated Republic. The throat is the locus of the voice, which connotes influence, having a say, expressing one’s authenticity, and steering one’s destiny. The insistence on the part of the clergy to have one orally ingest a symbol bound up with the new government is the equivalent of the victors forcing the defeated to internalize their beliefs and ideology. Of course, the family is thwarted in the resistance and must give in to the pressure of the public show of subjugation to the church. The Eucharist is “more than a symbol or a representation”; it is “the supreme imaginative act [that] … creates a community of witnesses who participate in the act” (Valis 141). The sacrament becomes a performance in which actor and public create the spectacle. The day of communion, Andreu narrates: “Quizá aquel día se me metió en la cabeza, enterrada para siempre, la semilla invisible que iría creciendo con los años, sin darme cuenta, de que Dios era soledad, aislamiento, silencio” (Perhaps that was the day when the invisible seed of an idea was planted in my head that grew over the years, though I was quite unaware; namely, that God was about solitude, isolation and silence) (Teixidor 104 [97]). Andreu’s First Communion, literal internalization of the host, performs integration into the church community and belief system. The symbolic act of his ingesting and planting the “seed” (“semilla”) he referenced regarding the ideology of the victors, make of him a territory, a land, a field, stripped of its

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previous harvest and now used to cultivate all that for which the victors stand. Having received the seed of Nationalist, Christian rhetoric (coinciding with the preparations for First Communion), Andreu, in his evolution toward becoming a self-declared “monster,” articulates his realization to an implicit interlocutor or reader: “eso me hacía discreto, reflexivo, callado, … prudente … [sic], en una palabra: cobarde. Dios había triunfado en la guerra ayudando a los que luchaban en su nombre, y los incrédulos que habían … burlado sus leyes habían perdido y ahora eran perseguidos, exiliados, presos, vituperados, arrinconados … [sic] ¿Queréis una demostración más clara de su omnipotencia?” (all that made me wary, pensive, cautious, ingenuous, in a word: cowardly. God had vanquished in the war by helping those who had fought in his name, and the non-believers who had burnt temples and mocked his laws had lost and were now persecuted, imprisoned, vilified and blacklisted. Could one ask for clearer proof of his omnipotence?) (Teixidor 93–94 [88]). First Communion is the first time Andreu wears full-length pants (indicative of no longer being a child). They were adult pants, hemmed by his tailor aunt, and as a result looked like golf attire, thus ironizing the event as a game and begging the question of who wins and who loses. On the day of this rite of passage, Andreu’s father, one of the losers, was a ghostly, palimpsestic, and paradoxical absence-presence: “aquel día había una presencia invisible, que parecía advertir todo el mundo: lo de mi padre prisionero, lejano pero presente de algún modo” (On that day … I sensed there was an invisible presence on everybody’s mind: that of my father in prison, who was far away yet somehow present) (Teixidor 99 [93]). We read, “Durante todo el rato que duró el ceremonial noté los ojos de la parroquia clavados en nosotros, y la presencia invisible de mi padre, como un vacío ... Una especie de fantasma” (I could feel the eyes of the whole parish locking on us throughout the ceremony, and Father’s invisible presence, like an empty void …  A kind of ghost) (Teixidor 100 [94]). The sacrament of Communion symbolizes the membership in an in-group. Valis underscores two features of Holy Communion: the “outward appearance of the bread and wine, do not change, but the reality does, emphasizing that Communion is both the re-presentation (and remembering) of Christ’s ultimate sacrifice and the participation in the act” (Valis 141). In Pa negre, this sacrifice is perverted. The communion scene implicitly compares Andreu’s father’s adjudication with Christ’s. Thus, the communion becomes explicit complicity in institutionalized persecution and

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repression. Luis’ absence, exclusion, and erasure from this in-group, compounded with his son’s communing/taking communion, prove most revealing. Integrated into one community, the protagonist is extricated from another as he begins to dissociate from all that his father represents. Similar to the community performance in Trueba’s iconic 1999 film Butterfly (La lengua de las mariposas) as a performance of Nationalist ideology analyzed by Pereira Boán,19 Andreu’s public sacramentalized integration to a new order dissolves one identity as another is constructed; when flight is impossible, survival is based on calculated mimesis resulting in a child-monster that apes “sus creadores, en la communitas monstruosa que lo crea y acoge” (his creators in the monstrous communitas that creates and welcomes him) (Pereira Boán 649).20 Andreu monologues, “con la hostia dentro, no sentía nada” (Once the host was inside me, I felt nothing) (Teixidor 105 [98]), as he is integrated to the community of the victors with this public act of ingesting the holiest of bread, symbol not of love here but of dominance and crushing the will of those who lost the fratricidal war on Iberian soil. This holiest of breads, iconic in the post-­ bellum era’s (con)fusion of the church and state’s absolute power, is in stark binary oppositional contrast with the putrid, black bread of the title, the daily staple for the have-nots, those bereft of voice, of earning power, of political influence, of the right to live as they choose, and, in overt cases of persecution, the right to physical freedom and life. The forced public sacrament of First Communion in conjunction with the incarceration, torture, and death of Andreu’s father, and the legends of Catholic martyrs, catalyzes a conflict within the protagonist and presents choices for him to consider. The punitive violence sterilizes or cleanses the undesirable, while the mandated act of communion connotes implantation of the new hegemonic discourse and marks a clear progression in Andreu’s monstrous metamorphosis.

Martyrs, Martyrdom, Saints, and Christ Imagery Nationalist rhetoric dichotomized the representation of violence. The dead Nationalists “were remembered and glorified as ‘martyrs,’” while the portrayal of Republicans justified the “Church’s support of the revenge on the vanquished” (Fox 37). In her analysis of “martyr narratives of the  Drawing on Louis Althousser (1970).  My translation.

19 20

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Spanish Civil War,” Valis states, “The tradition of martyrdom is associated with the Nationalist side, which depicted its struggle as a holy war and crusade. … the Franco regime’s crusade mentality stigmatized Republicans as an ‘anti-Spain’ that had profaned the sacred territory of the country. Under Franco, faith became nationalized. Faith belongs to the winners” (197). Yet, Republican writers such as Miguel de Unamuno and Ramón Sender utilize and ironize imagery of martyrdom and imbue new meaning to the concept of martyrdom and being tortured for one’s (lack of) beliefs. Not unlike Unamuno or Sender, Teixidor undermines the Nationalist manipulation of Christian imagery for their mythification as the victors and the vilification of the defeated, while at the same time exploring historical trauma in order to confer meaning to the suffering of the defeated. Referring to Sender’s Réquiem por un campesino español (Requiem for a Spanish Peasant), Valis proposes that Paco’s “blood stains… express moral blight, … possess an aura of transcendence as a sign of martyrdom” and are treated “as a kind of relic” (Valis 234). Patricia McDermott categorizes Sender’s Paco as “an ironic Christ figure” for being a revolutionary humanist (in Valis 198). Similarly, Andreu’s father in the novel ironizes the Nationalist rhetoric and mentality of reserving martyrdom status for those on the winning side. Luis’ broken remains attest to political persecution as his ghostly, invisible presence haunts his son’s public integration to the band of his oppressors. Martyrs and resurrection imagery “haunt the writings and art of Republican exiles,” and contemporary narratives21 “are as much about repressed Republican memories as about resurrection embodying the core of narrative” (Valis 236). In Teixidor, there are myriad references to saints, Christ, and martyrs, including their plastic representation (devotional cards [estampas], paintings, sculptures), often with their attributes.22 If the “blood of martyrs is the seed of Christians” (“sanguis martyrum, semen christianorum”) (Valis 203) and “the rhetoric of martyrdom converts 21  Dulce Chacón’s La voz dormida (The Sleeping Voice) (2002) and Manuel Rivas’s El lápiz del carpintero (The Carpenter’s Pencil) (1998). 22  Some of the devotional cards referenced include Saint Tarsicio, Lucia, Luis Gonzaga, Andrew, Camillus of Lelis, with their attributes and symbols of their torture (34). “La palabra ‘mártir’ emparentaba … en mi imaginación la figura blanca y fantasmal de los tísicos con aquel de Pedro Mártir” (185). “el cuerpo del enfermo … como los desnudos de las imágenes de los altares de las iglesias o de las estampas: San Sebastián atravesado de pecho, San Jerónimo dijo  …  San Juan Bautista  …  San Andrés  …, el mismo Cristo desnudo en su cruz … [sic]” (185–86).

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bodies into sacred relics, into the bearers of symbolic significance” (Valis 212), then Teixidor subverts the monolithic and the monologic by repurposing verbal-visual imagery of saints and martyrs, including Christ. With his heretical representation, if you will, of the Other (defeated and/or homosexual) as Christ-like or martyred, Teixidor subverts the widely propagated understanding of martyrdom and sainthood inherent to monolithic mentality of nationalized Catholicism rhetoric. Teixidor’s gallery of new martyrs (including Andreu’s father) ambiguates and subverts nationalized Catholic rhetoric. Perico, the potato thief, was sentenced to the penance of public humiliation in the Communion Procession, presided over by the political and ecclesiastical authorities. Following the public spectacle, Perico (who had been known as Pedro el Carbornero [Charcoal Pete]) was known as Pedro “el ladrón de patatas,” “el ladrón oficial de la población,” and “el ladrón del pueblo” (Charcoal Pete, the thief, the potato thief, the town thief) (50 [46]). It is uncertain if the public shaming and poverty were politically motivated. Andreu perceives the injustice: “Algo dentro de mí me decía que aquella clase de justicia no era digna, que aquella voluntad de anular totalmente a una persona no merecía ningún respeto, … el castigo era excesivo y … lo único que conseguía era subrayar la falta de piedad y la altivez de aquellas autoridades despreciables, y la figura … de Pedro el Carbonero… adquiría un brillo de santidad  …  transfigurado, como un mártir” (Something deep down told me that this kind of justice wasn’t right, that the desire to destroy an individual deserved no respect at all … the punishment was too harsh and simply highlighted the lack of mercy and the arrogance of the contemptible pillars of that society. The wretched, stunted figure of Charcoal Pete … assumed a luminous sanctity … transfigured like a martyr) (Teixidor 50–51 [47]). In spite of the fact that Andreu is awakening to the meaning of justice, questioning his view of it, scrutinizing the authorities’ role in it, and discerning the impact on the marginalized, his empathy toward the publicly humiliated Pedro (denoted by the saintly, martyred depiction) will not outweigh his instinct for self-preservation. At Luis’ funeral, his widow Florencia approaches the local political and ecclesiastical authorities the family refers to as the “cuatro apoderados”23 and states, “¿Qué más queréis? ¡Ya le tenéis muerto! … Me lo sacasteis de casa sano y entero y me lo devolvéis destrozado, roto, arruinado, sin vida. ¿En qué os beneficia su muerte …? … Os sirve para saciar la envidia que  The powerful four.

23

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lleváis dentro, para pisotear una vez más a los que no inclinan la cabeza ante vosotros” (What more do you want? You’ve finally killed him!...You dragged him from his home fine and healthy and you return him to me battered, twisted and lifeless. Pray tell me what you gain from his death? It helped deal with the envy you all harbor, trampling yet again on those who refuse to bow their heads before you!) (269, my emphasis [245]), and continues, “Y a mí ¿Qué me queda ahora? … me habéis destrozado la vida, mi vida … mi única vida, porque Luis era mi vida” (So what do I have now?...you have torn my life to shreds, my life  …  The only life I had because Lluís was my life [sic]) (Teixidor 270 [245]). The terms destrozado and roto prove revealing. Destrozado can mean ruined, but it literally means broken into “trozos,” or pieces, and even connotes dismemberment. Roto signifies broken, again reinforcing the concept of dismemberment. We do not know of what Luis died. Sentenced to death, yet without an announced execution date, his killing is enshrouded in mystery.24 Back at the house, the grieving protagonist reveals, “Yo lo miraba todo … con un sentimiento de impotencia, de desolación, de absoluta desesperanza. Como si el mundo se desmigajara ante mis ojos. Como si un desierto inmenso empezara a instalarse en mi vida” (I looked on…feeling powerless, wretched and totally devoid of hope. As if the world were crumbling before my eyes. As if a vast desert had begun to take over my life) (Teixidor 272 [247]). The articulated impotence is bound up with mutilation imagery. The verb desmigajar is to break into crumbs. As Andreu’s worldview is shattered, the narrator utilizes the bread-based metaphor that takes up the broken/dismembered concept verbalized by his mother regarding his father’s body. The broken bread imagery is reminiscent of the Last Supper and communion that celebrates the resurrection and presence of executed Christ. The mutilated flesh and broken bread imagery bequeaths Andreu a counter-reading that subverts the martyr-messiah narrative of Catholicized racial politics. As Andreu paradoxically makes sense of this nonsensical world, his prepubescent mind melds and overlaps his father’s death with images of the object of his homoerotic fantasies and those of Catholic martyrs: “La muerte de mi padre me había traído la imagen … del enfermo joven expuesto sobre el herbazal, como un san Sebastián derrumbado, abatido en el suelo, … con los pulmones abiertos por heridas que le enrojecían los 24  Roviretas (a young malcreant girl) comments to Andreu on the way back from school that she expected Andreu’s father would be executed, not that he had been sick (292).

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labios y el costillar” (My father’s death had triggered the image … of the sickly youth lying on the lawn …, like a Saint Sebastian who’d been humiliated, thrown to the ground, … his lungs gouged by wounds that bloodied his lips and ribs) (288 [263]); “inmóvil y blanco como una estatua de mármol” (white and motionless like a marble statue) (329 [301]). The images of torture and martyrdom appear more frequently following Luis’ death, hence we cannot overook the connection in the protagonist’s prepubescent mind: “una perfección de mármol, como las imágenes de santa Lucía con los ojos … en una bandeja, de san Sebastián, con el torso desnudo expuesto a las saetas mortales, con los ojos elevados al cielo, … expuesto como el Santo Sacramento en el Ostensorio, o de san Camilo de Lelis, inclinado sobre un leproso casi desnudo, ensangrentado y desfalleciente” (marble perfection like statues of Saint Lucia, her eyes offered up …  on a tray, Saint Sebastian, with his naked torso exposed to lethal arrows, staring into the sky,  …  exposed like the Holy Sacrament in the monstrance, or friar Saint Camillus of Lellis, bending over a half-naked swooning, bloodstained leper) (379–380 [346]). The leitmotif of martyrdom and dismemberment permeates the narrative and becomes the lens through which the protagonist makes sense of his father’s death and his own homoerotic fascination with the consumptive patient. Like Andreu’s father, the martyred innocents were persecuted, tortured, and robbed of life for their convictions. Andreu’s depiction of the object of his desire following his father’s death evokes Valis’ interpretation of Gregorio Fernández’s 1614–15 wooden sculpture Cristo yacente that eroticizes the violence of Christ’s Passion in art, forging “inescapable intimacy” with the uncanny lifeless divinity (Valis 58–59).25 The protagonist is fascinated by the blood-like stains—echoes of the stigmata—of the tubercular’s genitalia and red lips. These stains and relics of eroticism marry abjection and desire. By fusing the erotic with saintly trauma, the child protagonist transforms the reviled 25  “Viewed aesthetically, the polychromed wood of Spanish religious sculpture, along with the dramatic theatricality of glass eyes, horn fingernails, crystal tears, and vividly painted wounds, violates the conventional norms of European high art” (Valis 58). Valis quotes Gridley McKim-Smith who underscores the “eroticized violence” of the “subtext of the Passion in Christian art” and highlights that the Cristo yacente reveals the “unacceptably overt” eroticized violence “by representing a dead-but-desirable divinity with an inescapable intimacy” (Valis 58). Relics such as Cristo yacente, like the automaton and wax figures observed by Freud, approach the uncanny, das unheimliche, “in the unsettling forms of the double and the desire/dread of the reanimated body” (Valis 59).

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and “unhygienic,” the taboo of same-sex desire, into an icon of subversion and dissent. habíamos observado con ojos asustados la hilera de cuerpos desnudos y esqueléticos, todos hombres jóvenes, que tomaban el sol tendidos en aquel prado lleno de [… flores incluso] pensamientos de color violeta tirando a lila o a morado, un color que los camilos sólo vestían en las casullas por Semana Santa. Todos aquellos muchachos, o bien jóvenes, que no habían llegado a los cuarenta, yacían sobre sábanas blanquísimas, algunos con una punta agarrada con la mano para taparse el bajo vientre, la parte que más atraía a nuestros ojos, el punto que nos fascinaba … aquellos genitales ennegrecidos y encogidos, y la maraña de pelos informes como una mancha de sangre negra y obscena… [sic], monstruos a nuestros ojos, fantasmas de un mundo prohibido  …  testigos de una enfermedad contagiosa y supurante…, una enfermedad maldita que se contraía por los vicios y la mala vida … testimonios del castigo del pecado … envueltos en sábanas blancas como cadáveres prematuros en sus sudarios blanquísimos. (We were horrified to see a row of naked, skeletal bodies stretched out, all young men, sunning themselves in a meadow full of [… flowers including] mauve heartsease, the colour of the habits the Saint Camillus order reserved for Holy Week. All those boys, or rather, young men, lay on the whitest of sheets, some clutching a corner to cover their nether parts, the area that most drew our attention, the bit that fascinated us …, those blackened, shrunken genitals and a crop of lank hair like an obscene black bloodstain, …, [sic] monsters in our eyes, phantoms from a forbidden ­ world,…victims of a contagious, suppurating disease … an accursed disease, contracted as a result of an errant life of vice … proof of … the punishment of sin, swaddled in white sheets like premature cadavers in their dazzling white shrouds.) (Teixidor 27–28 [25–26])

This scene richly intersects saint imagery (Holy Week purple) with that of contagion and castration (“genitales … y la maraña de pelos … como una mancha de sangre negra”),  thus ambiguating and subverting Nationalist single-voice discourse. Referring to Villaronga’s film, Allbritton underscores that the Roman Catholic religious order of Saint Camillus draws from Matthew 25, in which Jesus Christ instructs his disciples “that whatever they do to the least of men, they do unto him. This interpretation at once reduces all sick and infirm to ‘the least of men’ while finding divinity in the purported ‘need’ of the sick and in the mandate to help them. By seeing sickness as a type of holiness, the film … emphasizes the angelic otherness of illness and death” (Allbritton 633).

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Thus, the Christian and particularly Christ imagery in Teixidor’s passage prove revealing. Holy Week commemorates the acts preceding and following the passion of Christ, that is to say, the suffering, torture, and execution of one who has not committed any illegal acts, yet is sentenced to death by a powerful political figure. Jesus Christ has become an archetypal example of the blurred lines between justice and law. The narrator’s imagery regarding the infirm could easily be a description of a christ26 (un cristo) on a crucifix, an image repeated ad nauseum in myriad permutations, especially during the Counter-Reformation (whether a serene, aesthetically pleasing, Renaissance christ or a jarringly morbid and bloody Baroque Christ, such as the aforementioned Cristo yacente). Furthermore, the infirm are not yet forty, again bearing a similarity with Jesus Christ, who was executed at the age of thirty-three. The dazzling white sheets are similar to “el paño,” the loincloth with which the nearly naked christs are artistically rendered. The final simile (“como una mancha de sangre negra,” literally, like a stain of black blood) is reminiscent of the stigmata, yet displaced to the groin. While the previous descriptions are more purportedly objective, the simile highlights that the unseen (the pubic area many of the convalescent cover with the white cloth) is a vivid image in the protagonist’s imagination tainted by the ubiquitous Christian imagery he had internalized. The envisaging of the male pubic area “as a stain of black blood” alludes to a dried, bloody wound, evoking the trauma of castration, which would make these infirm young men eunuchs in Andreu’s imagination. The description of the genitals significantly reveals Andreu’s fear of castration—insinuated in the novel and literally present in the film—as well as his abjection and desire/attraction for “monstrous” samesex objects with whom he conflictedly identifies. The consumptive patient’s angelic qualities and aura of saintliness prevail throughout the novel as he is luminous, radiant, brilliant, a representation of perfection: “como un ángel de la iglesia  …  como si su cuerpo irradiara una luz que lo hiciera casi transparente” (like a church angel … as if his body […irradiated] a light that made him almost transparent) (287 [263]), “irradiación solar” (emanating solar rays) and “la piedad vulnerable” [piety in peril] (186 [167]). By enshrouding the tísico in a radiant glow or halo, the narrator sanctifies the object of his desire.

26  Lowercase is utilized for the artistic rendering (“un cristo,” a christ), while upper is used for the historical figure of Christ.

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Andreu’s reflection on his father’s death not only brought to mind the luminous saintliness of the consumptive young men, but it also resulted in the “presentimineto de alguna injusticia única y grandiosa como la muerte, … el presentimiento que tenía cada vez que me venía el recuerdo del adolescente tísico y escuchimizado no tenía nada que ver con la muerte… sino con algún lado oscuro de la vida, con alguna injusticia más hiriente que la muerte y que yo aún desconocía y por eso la visión de aquel cuerpo enfermo y luminoso me inquietaba y me fascinaba tanto” (the presentiment I felt whenever the memory of the languishing, tubercular youth appeared wasn’t connected to death … but to a dark side of life to an injustice even more punishing than death, one I had yet to discover, which is why the vision of that luminous, sickly body preyed on me and fascinated me so) (Teixidor 288 [264]). The gnawing sense of injustice is inextricably linked to the fatal reprisals of his father that overlap with the eroticized violence with which he perceives the tubercular patient.

Castration: In the Novel and Film Martyrdom connotes the conferral of sanctity to the tortured. The dismemberment associated with martyrs is a form of castration, a way to render them powerless and less offensive to the hegemonic forces. Andreu’s coming-of-age fuses and confuses bloody images resulting in eroticized violence or perhaps the eroticization of feared violence. Andreu in the novel deems his father’s adjudication to be a castration,27 and he superimposes thoughts of his father’s trauma with that of saints, martyrs, and the consumptive patient. The result is that blending of fear and desire, in other words, eroticized trauma. Nationalized-Catholic imagery— learned and indoctrinated during the communion lessons—with politically motivated personal trauma to his father that falls within overarching historical trauma, becomes a vehicle through which Andrew sublimates his budding sexuality and eroticizes the perceived violence to the consumptive patient. In Male Subjectivity at the Margins, Silverman investigates “forms of male subjectivity that eschew Oedipal normalization, while  …  remaining … within signification, symbolic castration, and desire” (2), and she 27  With regard to Villaronga’s Tras el cristal, Allbritton writes that “violence creates law, that it upholds it, and that new forms of violence is birthed in its lawmaking and law-upholding capacities” (Allbritton, “Live” 82–83).

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defines historical trauma as a “historically precipitated but psychoanalytically specific disruption, with ramifications extending beyond the individual psyche … [A] historical event, whether socially engineered or of natural occurrence, which brings a large group of male subjects into such an intimate relation with lack that they are…unable to sustain an imaginary relation with the phallus, and so withdraw their belief from the dominant fiction” (55). The ten Hollywood films from the mid-1940s studied in the book “vividly dramatize the centrality of the penis/phallus equation to the survival of our ‘world’” (54) and the “vulnerability of conventional masculinity and the larger dominant fiction to ‘historical trauma’” (Silverman 53). Just as the so-called heroes of the films that Silverman analyzes are marked as deficient because they have been wounded physically or psychologically as a result of WWII, are “dislodged from the narratives and subject positions which make up the dominant fiction” and “no longer [feel] ‘at home’” (Male Subjectivity 53), so has Andreu’s father—in both the novel and the film—been rendered incomplete or lacking. In the novel, Andreu’s father is imprisoned and killed for political reasons, “guilty of the ‘crime’ of tenir idees and significar-se massa both before and after the Civil War” (Glenn 2012, 61).28 Andreu comes to suspect the injustice of Luis’ death. Neither the reader nor Andreu knows “de qué mal había muerto mi padre” (which sickness had killed my father), yet the newly orphaned protagonist conjectures. Suponía que del mismo [mal] del que tuvieron que operarlo a toda prisa un par de años antes, cáncer de estómago, y recordaba cuando mi madre contaba los pormenores a tía Bina … le detallaba los alambres y las agujas que tenían que meterle para ‘sondarlo’ una palabra nueva que ya siempre me repelió … y mi madre continuaba … ‘los hombres lo tienen más difícil, un agujero tan pequeño, es terrible, te rechinan los dientes’, y yo imaginaba detalles que me horrorizaban y me decía que no podía ser verdad lo que pensaba, ‘y no había nada que hacer’, … ‘es un mal delicado’, ‘un mal feo’. (I imagined it was the one they’d had to operate on in a rush a couple of years before, stomach cancer, and I remember Mother explaining the details to Aunt Ció … [she] described the wires and needles they stuck in him to ‘take a sounding,’ a new word that was to horrify me for evermore, … Mother went on, ‘It’s more difficult for men, it’s such a small hole, it’s terrible, it 28  The expressions tenir idees and significar-se massa are euphemisms for revealing one’s leftist ideology and in so doing incriminating oneself. Literally, they, respectively, mean “to have ideas” and “to signify too much.”

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makes you grit your teeth,’ and I imagined the details that appalled me and told myself that what I was thinking couldn’t be true, ‘and they can do nothing,’ … ‘it’s a tricky illness,’ ‘a nasty illness.’) (Teixidor 293 [268])

Andreu fears his father’s death resulted from trauma to his genitalia, in other words, castration. While neither Andreu nor the reader knows the exact cause of death, what is certain is the Nationalist’s overt cruelty and erasure of the defeated and the concomitant inescapable climate of dread. The protagonist-narrator’s fear reflects the terror in the early years of the regime.29 Luis’ death is a sociopolitical castration. He, in his person, is literally the victim of trauma, and, as a synecdoche of the Republic and of the massive collective of criminalized defeated, he represents the victors’ expurgation of the vanquished. In “Medusa’s Head: Male Hysteria under Political Pressure,” Neil Hertz investigates “the representation of what would seem to be a political threat as if it were a sexual threat” (27). He explores symbolism and mythical iconography adopted, adapted, and transmuted from the classical era to pre- and post-revolutionary France. He surmises that the representation of political power or ideological alignment is rooted in the fear of the Medusa—a visible reminder of potential loss of power, that is petrification-erection and subsequent castration. The Medusa head, replete with tis serpent-riddled head of would-be hair, mimics the female vulva, the inescapable visual-voyeuristic reminder of the lack of penis. Hertz avers that symbols of political (phallic) power30 are psychosexual and connote “both the possession and the lack of phallic power” (Hertz 47). The rhetoric of male hysteria (with its concomitant underlying Medusa fantasies) reveals the feminization of that which is repudiated as well as the repudiation of that which is perceived as feminine (or

29  In Mi guerra civil, Pablo Uriel delineates the atmosphere of fear during the regime’s repression: “la amenaza del terror es la atmósfera  …; en esta atmósfera, la vida está más envenenada que durante la acción efectiva del terror” (qtd. in Moreno 277). Terror existed not only during the application of violence, but more significantly as a constant threat. Francisco Moreno avers that the cold terror followed the heated terror in the immediate postwar period with one purpose: complete erasure of republicanism for fear that it would sprout up and reorganize (277). 30  Such as the Phrygian cap, the bonnet rouge, and erected monuments that Hertz studies.

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castrated/castrating) (Hertz 40).31 Applying Hertz’s view of the rhetoric of male hysteria regarding understanding and representation of (gendered) political symbols,32 I posit that the “intensity” of post-civil war ­nationalized Catholic rhetoric that sanctifies the triumphant and “purges” the defeated is also “psycho-sexual in origins” and reveals a mentality indicative of “both the possession and the lack of phallic power” (Hertz 47). Touting strength, power, or potency conceals weakness or fear of losing potency. Affirmation of conquest or an identity as re-conqueror reveals fear of becoming that which is repudiated: the defeated. Freud notes on the head of Medusa that “To decapitate=to castrate [sic]. The terror of the Medusa is thus a terror of castration that is linked to the sight of something. … [It] occurs when a boy, who has hitherto been unwilling to believe the threat of castration, catches sight of the female genitals … surrounded by hair” (Medusa’s Head 212–13, qtd. in Hertz 30). Andreu’s depiction of the othered tubercular young man’s genital area (reminiscent of a menstruating vagina analyzed in the martyr section of this chapter) is precisely the terror of castration linked to the “sight of something.”33 The belief of his father’s genital trauma, viewed in his mind’s eye, highlights the phallus as vulnerable to historical trauma. As Silverman indicates, “the phallus is always the product of the dominant fiction”; when the dominant fiction “proves incapable of mastering the stimulus of historical trauma, the male subject will no longer be able to find himself within its idealizing configuration” (Silverman, “Historical” 127). Teixidor’s Andreu identifies with two “eunuchs” or castrati—his emasculated father and the tubercular patient—and sees his own exclusion from the dominant fiction. Villaronga’s protagonist identifies with the patient and with gelded Pitorliua/Saurí. During a press conference at the San Sebastián Film Festival, Villaronga makes explicit that the opening sequence with the murders of Culet and Dionís as well as the castration of Marcel Saurí (aka Pitorliua) represents the civil war and its omnipresent and ubiquitous impact on all the characters (Álvarez-Sancho 529, note 11). The aforementioned characters, 31  Hertz studies three writers (Tocqueville, du Champ, and Hugo) on the French Revolution whose depiction of revolutionary women (and confrontation with women and their phallic lack) emblematize “what revolutionary violence is all about”: Medusa fantasies/ fears (Hertz 40). 32  Classical headdress, the bonnet rouge of the French Revolution. 33  “aquellos genitales ennegrecidos y encogidos, y la maraña de pelos informes como una mancha de sangre negra y obscena … [sic], monstruos a nuestros ojos” (Teixidor 27).

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from Teixodor’s novel Retrat d’un assassí d’ocells integrated to the film, are essential to the development of Villaronga’s storyline and to Andreu’s reflection and choices. The film opens with an unknown figure bludgeoning a man, depositing the victim in his horse-drawn wagon, and hurling the man, the wagon (containing the victim’s son), and the horse over a cliff. At the base of cliff, Andreu comes upon the still living boy, his friend Culet, who whispers “Pitorliua.” As the plot unfolds, we learn that Mrs. Manuben hired Andreu’s father (named Farriol in the film) twice to do her lawless bidding. In the current crime, she hired Farriol to murder Dionís who was blackmailing her for her involvement in Saurí’s death. Previously, she had contracted Farriol and other townsmen (including Dionís) to harangue Marcel Saurí, her brother’s lover. In this homophobic hate crime in a cave where Marcel had been hiding, they castrate him and he ultimately dies. Andreu learns his father betrayed his ideals, was responsible for three deaths, and wreaked sexualized violence upon an individual with whom the protagonist identifies. The castration scene in the film is an oneiric sequence that takes place in what is likely years after Saurí’s victimization. In the current time of the film, during the Jewkilling popular festivity,34 Andreu enters the cave that he and Núria had already visited. He imagines Saurí entering the cave alone and leisurely undressing, removing his shirt. A man in all white carrying a cane, the epitome of a bourgeois dandy, enters. The camera cuts to an unruly mob of townsmen carrying torches. They enter the cave en masse, apprehend Saurí, pin him to the floor of the cave, and strip him as he futilely cries out and struggles against the assault. The camera in close to medium shots reveals Dionís’ face, then, Farriol’s. Tension quickly builds as an extreme close-up shows hands opening a pouch, extracting the pig castrating wire (alluded to by Mrs. Manubens) and, in a slight pan out, stretching it taut. In close-up, Farriol looks at Andreu (whose point of view the viewer shares) as the surrounding commotion foreshadows the violent climax. In a brutally abrupt movement, Farriol pulls apart the ends of wire, thus completing the castration and, in Andreu’s imagining, revealing his culpability in the hate crime.

34  Josep Maria Huertas Claveria (2006): Mites i gent de Barcelona. Barcelona: Edicions 62. Pàg. 92–93. Cites writer Josep Pla who describes the festivities on Holy Thursday when children carried clubs, cans, or sticks and would beat anything or make noise. http://etimologies.dites.cat/2009/04/matar-jueus.html.

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Bernhard Chappuzeau, who studies the connection between historical trauma and erotic transgression in Villaronga, observes that erotic transgression (and I will add sexualized violence) reflects and responds to fascism (91–92). Villaronga’s films Tras el cristal (1986), El mar (2000), and Pa negre (2010) are set in or represent historical trauma, sexual abuse, and authoritarian power relations. His debut film Tras el cristal falls within the sadiconazista film genre,35 in which the “linkage of non-normative sexuality and fascism” is not uncommon (Church 134). In fact, Marcus Stiglegger underscores that said genre’s “sadomasochistic model [is] based on the principles of totalitarian politics and hierarchies” (n.p.; qtd. in Church 140). In the tongue-in-cheek passage in La vida amorosa en tiempos de Franco by Rafael Torres, as Deveny underscores, the official position was to deny the existence of homosexuality, to displace it onto the Republicans, and to violently bully anyone who displayed “suspicious refinement” (Deveny 405, Torres 145, 150).36 If as Torres states there were no gays during Francoism, and if there had been they would have gotten rid of them or in effect castrated them, then Villaronga’s castration scene would certainly exemplify the principles of fascist politics and hierarchies especially as fascist abuse and sexual transgression are recurring themes in minimally three of Villaronga’s films. Completing the triumvirate of representatives of the hegemony with the mayor and the priest who, respectively, stand for government authority and church power, Mrs. Manubens represents the bourgeois landholding class. As such, she is the constant gardener of Nationalist values, pruning degeneration in order to regenerate Spanishness with all that it entails. In Villaronga’s film, Andreu’s fear of castration exceeds the fear of impotence or the unfounded fear of genital trauma in the novel. The film’s disturbing homophobic castration scene as imagined by Andreu is undeniably traumatizing, as his niggling suspicion of his homosexuality

35  Il portiere de note (dir. Liliana Cavai, 1974) and Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma (dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1975), listed in Church. 36  “Eso era cosa del liberalism marxista y republicanismo, … y no del régimen que se desvivía por los valores de la raza, raza de hombres machos y de mujeres virtuosas. No había maricones [en la España de Franco]  …  y si algún individuo daba muestras de sospechosa finura … se le pegaba una paliza” (Deveny 405, Torres 145, 150).

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becomes awareness.37 The cave is a locus of double revelation: Andreu’s homosexuality and his father’s murderous, castrating past (Deveny 409, Andrés del Pozo 23). As Andrés del Pozo notes, the cave symbolizes for Andreu that which Abraham Nicholas and Maria Torok define as the crypt, the repository of past secrets “where the memories of our parents and grandparents are buried,” where painful, “too embarrassing, too revealing” stories are stored; and the crypt, where “the secrets of our own genesis may be buried,” is unaware to the subject who harbors the painful (transgenerational) secrets (qtd. in Punter 263, qtd. in Andrés del Pozo 22). Both Andrés del Pozo and Moreiras consider the Bauma cave, Saurí’s hideout and site of his castration, to be the site of Andreu’s rebirth. Andrés del Pozo deems Villaronga’s dark, moist, uterine cave reminiscent of Cervantes’ Quijote’s Cueva de Montesinos where the symbolic death of one stage is inextricably linked to a birth (20–21). For Moreira, New Spain’s subject is born. As a witness to multiple traumas—the brutal homophobic castration in a dreamlike sequence, the sexual trauma to his mother, the trauma of secrets, the bloody postwar purging—Andreu is reborn as a victor marked by monstrosity and trauma (Moreiras 447). By assuming the values of his family’s oppressors, Andreu resigns himself to what Siegfried Kracauer deems “ideological fatigue,” a loss in a previously embraced system of beliefs, which, according to Silverman, includes the loss of belief in “the adequacy of the male subject” (“Historical” 118).

37  Deveny traces the trajectory of Andreu’s sexual awakening in Villaronga’s Bildungsfilm. Andreu discovers heterosexuality through voyeurism involving his mother: his parents’ lovemaking and his mother offering the mayor sex in exchange for his leniency toward her imprisoned husband (Deveny 406). Villaronga’s protagonist awakens to his own homosexuality in a constellation of incidents: his lack of interest in Nùria as she places his hand on her genitals while they are alone in the woods and he learns of her sexual relationship with the schoolteacher; Quirze’s disclosure of his belief that the secluded all-male tuberculosis patients promiscuously bounce from bed to bed; and Quirze’s likening of the patients to Marcel Saurí/Pitorliua (Deveny 406). The protagonist follows the evolution of “future inverts [homosexuals]” described by Sigmund Freud who “proceed from a narcissistic basis, and look for a young man that resembles themselves and whom they may love as their mother loved them” (emphasis in the original, Freud, Three Essays 11).

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The historical and genital traumas he has witnessed or perceived play a vital role in his “monstrification.”38

The Ambiguation of Monstrosity A recurring theme in Villaronga’s filmic corpus is the perversion or corruption of innocence that results in the victims’ “monstrosity” and their transformation into victimizers. Rather than denouncing “individuals’ moral flaws,” Church states, “the root of violence … can be located in the inescapable history of fascistic patriarchy” (Church 142). A flawed or deviant character can be read as a construction, a violent subject, and a product of a perverted culture (Church 142). Particularly, Pereira Boán underscores that Francoist Spain, as depicted in films such as Pa negre and J.L. Cuerda’s Butterfly, is a “monster-maker, a pledging society that both creates and accepts the monster-child as a peer” (639). Pa negre imbues monstrosity with new meaning. It becomes polyvalent and paradoxical. On the one hand, Andreu’s monstrosity is the betrayal of his family and siding with their oppressors. On the other hand, it is Andreu’s hidden—cherished, yet loathed—secret homosexuality, his aberration, and desire. He is a “neo-Pitorliua.”39 The consumptive patient fascinates him. Both homoerotic models are framed as ill or monstrous and yet are conflictingly desirable in the young boy’s eyes. The protagonist is cognizant of the fact that Francoist ideology “promoted racial purity,” “violently enforced heteronormativity,” and “violently marginalized” homosexuality (Hogan 7–8). The reproductive futurism and temporality de rigueur during the dictatorship placed great import on family ties and transgenerational transmission as vehicles for perpetuating wealth, morals, or values, connecting “the family to the historical past of the nation” and 38  Pereira Boán uses the term “monstrificación” for the ignominy of the dominant discourse of the victors whose mores have produced/created/fashioned monsters (Pereira Boán 658). Pereira Boán analyzes the “mimetic conflictive operations” in Villaronga’s Black Bread and Cuerda’s Butterfly “which flourish during coming of age experiences in times of social crisis” (Pereira Boán 639). 39  Pitorliua becomes “a surrogate symbol of his [Andreu’s] sexual desire, a reminder of the potential cruelty of those you may love the most, and a nightmare” (Allbritton, “Recovering” 632). Andreu “is set up as a sort of neo-Pitorliua … So, the sexualized violence that lies at the heart of Pitorliua’s story strikes a painful chord with Andreu” because of his father’s hypocrisy and “because he sees himself echoed in the story in his own nascent homoerotic feelings” (Allbritton, “Recovering” 632).

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looking “ahead to connect family to the future of both familial and national stability” (Halberstam 5, qtd. in Hogan 7). Under the guardianship of the Manubens family who are fulfilling their Hispano-Roman Catholic hygienic obligation, Hogan deems Andreu a “ghostly gay child [who] comprehends the life-or-death impossibility of his sexuality” (Hogan 7–8). Along with the two homosexual models, Álvarez-Sancho adds a third character to complete the triumvirate of Villaronga’s monsters: Farriol. The monstrosity of Pitorliua/Saurí, the consumptive patient, and Farriol resides in the fact that they are in hiding or confinement for reasons initially unknown to the viewer, are plagued by an illness, wound, or physical deformity, are fodder for ghostly tales, and bear a connection to historical victims (528). In exploring the unspeakable transgenerational secrets (the “phantom”) and history’s ghosts (the injustices seeking justice), this film reveals the intimate relationship between victims of Francoism and those portrayed as monsters (Álvarez-Sancho 532). These monstrified victims attest to harsh repression and represent for Andreu an—albeit short-lived—escape from it (528). Both Teixidor and Villaronga beatify the “unhygienic” Other (by sanctifying, respectively, with martyr imagery and angelic characteristics). Martyrs were outsiders persecuted for their expressed difference from the dominant discourse. Villaronga’s Pitorliua and the tísic40 are depicted as angelic or winged.41 The paradox of Andreu’s self-proclaimed monstrosity is rooted in his identification with these neo-martyrs/angels. As a result, he subverts the victors’ martyrdom rhetoric that sacramentalized and masked their atrocity. At the same time, the protagonist is a monster for internalizing and perpetuating the draconian injuriousness of hygienic New Spain. In spite of Andreu’s awareness of the incongruence of the Nationalists’ coupling messianic rhetoric with genocidal actions, it is more palatable for the protagonist to believe he is a monster than to openly admit to himself that he is unsafe in the care of his church- and statesanctioned caretakers. In his study on liminality, Pereira Boán synthesizes Jeffrey Cohen’s theory on the monster as a cultural body that inhabits a threshold of 40  In the cast list in IMDB, the consumptive patient is listing only by tísic (i.e., tubercular patient in Catalan). 41  From Florència, his mother, Andreu learns Pitorliua was “an angel  …  subjected to a cruel accident” (Allbritton 2014, 632). The tísic flaps his “wings” (shoulder blades) and reveals his flight fantasy to Andreu.

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simultaneous abjection and desire, of repulsion and attraction (641). According to Julia Kristeva, abjection results from blurred boundaries, from the threat to or the destabilization of binaries; rather than “lack of cleanliness or health,” it is that which “disturbs identity, system [or] order” that causes abjection (Kristeva 4, 1982; qtd. in Hogan 8). The etymology of the term monster (monstrare) denotes a visible or seen warning that cautions against mistakes and notifies the punishment for transgressing socially prescribed and clearly demarcated codes of conduct (Pereira Boán 642). Pereira Boán likens the liminality of the monster (within-without, [hu]man-non[hu]man) to that of the Derridian specter (living-dead; present-absent; past-present); similarly, Erin Hogan applies Kathryn Bond Stockton’s theory of the “ghostly gay child” to discern the intersection of ghostliness, abjection, and monstrosity in Villaronga’s queering of postwar childhood (Hogan 6). While Jo Labanyi has applied Jacques Derrida’s theory of hauntologie to Spanish Civil War cultural production, in which the ghostly past haunts the present and seeks reparation for the preterit injustice, Hogan focuses on ghostliness and homo-spectrality (Pitorliua’s appearance or, I would posit, apparitions) and “phantom intertexts” (Hogan 6): “Pitorliua does not return from the grave … to demand justice for his wrongful death. Rather, allusions to Pitorliua’s story hint at Andreu’s sexual stirrings and warn the boy to escape a similar fate”42 (Hogan 7). For Andreu, then, Pitorliua becomes a hauntological ghostmonster, a warning, a shown example of what might tragically transpire. In spite of the differences between their works, Teixidor and Villaronga present a former innocent who betrays his loved ones. Perverted by a dreadful milieu, Andreu opts for survival and self-preservation. While the environment is portrayed as toxic and the protagonist’s actions are revealed for what they are—traitorous actions—Pa negre invites the viewer/reader to understand (or attempt to understand) the psychological and social mechanisms that led to the protagonist’s agency. As a civil war narrative that avoids Manicheism, Pa negre (both novel and film) masterfully guides its readers and viewers away from ideological zeal of oversentimentality, as well as from desensitized overintellectualism. The works narrativize the trauma—that is, both the actions and the impact—of the civil war and the postwar repression. The injustice of the regime was and continues to be traumatic. To understand the dynamic of trauma, one must reason and engage the intellect, but also empathize with  As does Santi in El espinazo del diablo, G. del Toro, 2001.

42

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an Other (comprehend at a deep human level and be co-owner of the Other’s pain). In this lies the mastery of Teixidor and Villaronga. We intellectually cognize and empathically understand the characters and their choices. We hurt for them and with them. We cannot dismiss or demonize them as evil—in spite of the fact that we acknowledge their actions as loathsome—nor can we confer impunity upon them. We (readers and viewers) hurt for the boy Andreu had been, but we do not identify with the callous, self-loathing future adult he will be. While he admits to himself as well as to us the readers/viewers his self-loathing and self-regard as a monster, he does not express remorse. We do not excuse his behavior, in spite of understanding his reasoning and reflection. Andreu embodies antagonistic affiliations: the degenerate and the regenerative. He incarnates that which is considered past illness as well as future hygiene in Nationalist Spain. The protagonist is a synecdoche of his Republican father and a homosexual, but he is also the ahijado of the privileged. He harbors ghosts and secrets of historical trauma, as he recreates himself in the image of the Spanish race. He must choose to become a victimizer or a victim. Not unlike the prototype pícaro, Lazarillo, who rationalizes his motives for “arrimarse a los buenos,”43 Teixidor’s and Villaronga’s protagonist has learned that survival depends on affiliation with those in power—in spite of their lack of scruples—and dissociation from the marginalized. As the novel concludes, Andreu understands that otherness and contrariness to the dominant discourse (whether sexual orientation or political bent) lead to physical reprisals. He acknowledges the phallocentric, heteronormative, draconian Francoist discourse that sanctifies the winners as messianic and reviles the defeated as plague-ridden. Andreu outwardly forsakes his otherness (the spectrality of his budding homosexuality, the hauntologie of his father’s reprisals). In the film, he psychically buries the transgenerational phantom of Farriol’s crimes. “Godmothered” (ahijado) by the landholding Mrs. Manubens, the constant gardener of nationalized Catholic Spanishness, Andreu capitulates to “plantarme en aquella casa y dar la espalda … al mundo completo de antes” (root myself in that house and turn my back … on my whole previous world) (Teixidor 430 [392]). 43  Literally “to draw near to the good ones,” but this is a euphemism for establishing an association with those in power for personal benefit. Inherent in this sixteenth-century euphemistic expression is the denunciation of the corruption and perversity of those in power and their predation on the most vulnerable.

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He will knowingly lead a double life, suppress his darker side and desires (“el bosque permanecía debajo, inmóvil, secreto” [the woods remained down below, secret, still] [Teixidor 430 (393)]), and self-identify as a monster, a term he articulates four times in the final sentence of the last paragraph (430).44

Conclusions In Pa negre, the unseen corpses of the protagonist’s father and Pitorliua have become what Jerez-Farrán and Amago have termed an “alive” dead body, a living memento “of the dead to speak [mutely but eloquently] beyond … language” (1). Mutilated, these characters are a type of ghost, a paradoxical and compound absence-presence, a silence-voice. By the conclusion of Pa negre, the reader learns that the events and memories narrated constitute “imaginatively engage[d] … apparitions,” “ghosts that tie present subjects to past histories” (Radway viii). These missing pieces of the past haunt Andreu into a later stage in life from which he tells his tale. Luis, “destrozado,” “roto” as his widow had stated at his memorial service, and castrated Marcel Saurí are dis-membered; through Andreu’s first-person narrative and filmic gaze they are re-membered. Not unlike the martyrs45 alluded to throughout the novel, Luis/Farriol, Marcel Saurí, or the real-life Republican victims of erasure, these mutilated and tortured bodies become a legacy to the present. The ghosts of the factual and fictional victims of Francoist repression are a re-membered collective sanctified castrati, all damaged, irreparably impotent eunuchs within the hegemonic structure and the dominant climate that Andreu inevitably embraced. Decades later, their silence speaks, their impotence is powerful, and they continue to haunt into the present. In a time of memory culture, Teixidor’s novel and Villaronga’s film have resonated with contemporary critics, readers, and viewers. If, as Teixidor writes, bibliotherapy helps us make sense of our world, Pa negre assists readers—and generations who lived the dictatorship or its legacy that prevails today—in exploring how a generation who experiences transgenerational trauma can opt to “turn its back,” to succumb to “olvido” 44  “un monstruo capaz de reunir en un solo cuerpo, en una sola vida, dos naturalezas distintas, dos experiencias contrarias” (430). 45  Myriad of images of dismembered martyrs populate page 401 and could be considered a summary of those referenced throughout the novel.

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(dismemory or cultural amnesia), and to be complicit in the silence that erases the memory of the past, of ideas, and of people. This novel and film are about the effects of incarceration, of the transgenerational trauma of repression, of self-loathing that results from opting to survive over fighting for ideals or what is universizably right. By narrativizing the trajectory of Andreu’s monstrification, the film and novel elucidate precisely that the protagonist’s choice was an illusion. Andreu’s capitulation was inevitable. His inner proclamation of monstrosity is, on the one hand, self-flagellation for his forbidden homosexual desires, for cutting ties with the family that loved him, for preferring comfort and safety over the implicit and explicit threat of violence, and on the other hand, it is a denunciation of a cruel, hypocritical society whose rhetoric of saintliness and health masks abomination.

Works Cited Abraham, Nicholas and Maria Torok. The Shell and the Kernel: Renewals of Psychoanalysis. Edited by Nichals T. Rand, U of Chicago P, 1994. Allbritton, Dean. Live Cultures: Illness, Mortality, and Masculinity in Contemporary Spanish Film. Dissertation. Stony Brook University. 2011. ———. “Recovering Childhood: Virulence, Ghosts and Black Bread.” BHS, vol. 91.6, 2014, pp. 619–36. Aldecoa, Josefina. La fuerza del destino. Anagrama, 1997. Althousser, Louis. Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays. Monthly Review P, 1971. Álvarez-Sancho, Isabel. “Pa negre y los otros fantasmas de la postmemoria: El ‘phantom’ y los intertextos con La plaça del Diamant, El espíritu de la colmena y El laberinto del fauno.” MLN, vol. 131, 2016, pp. 517–35. Andrés del Pozo, Natalia. “Pa negre: Lobos con piel de cordero o la expulsión de una Arcadia soñada.” Hispanet Journal, vol. 4, December 2011, pp. 1–32. Capuano, Claudio Francisco and Alberto Carli. “Antonio Vallejo Nágera (1889–1960) y la eugenesia en a España Franquista. Cuando la ciencia fue el argumento para la apropiación de la descendencia.” Revista de Bioética y Derecho, vol. 26, September 2012, pp. 3–12. Chappuzeau, Bernhard. “Memoria histórica de la guerra civil y esteticismo de la violencia: los discursos de erotismo de poder en El mar de Agustí Villaronga (1999).” Miradas glocales: cine español en el cambio de milenio, edited by Burkhard Pohl, Jörg Türschmann and Bernhard Chappuzeau. Iberoamericana Vervuert, 2007, pp. 89–105. Church, David. “Revisiting the Cruel Apparatus: Disability, Queerness and Taste in In a Glass Cage.” Nazisploitation!: the Nazi Image in Low-brow Cinema and

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Culture, edited by Daniel Magilow, Daniel Bridges and Kristin Vander Lugt, Continuum, 2012, pp. 134–54. Davies, Ann. “Spanish Gothic Cinema: The Hidden Continuities of a Hidden Genre.” Global Genres, Local Films: the Transnational Dimension of Spanish Cinema, edited by Beatriz Oria, Elena Oliete-Aldea, Juan Tarancón, Bloomsbury Academic, pp. 115–26. Derrida, Jacques. Specters of Marx. Routledge, 1994. Deveny, Thomas. “Pa negre (Pan negro): Bildungsroman/Bildungsfilm de memoria histórica.” La Nueva Literatura Hispánica, 2012, pp. 397–416. Díaz Plaja, Fernando. La vida cotidiana en la España de la Guerra Civil. EDAF, 1994. Freud, Sigmund. “Medusa’s Head” in Sexuality and the Psychology of Love, edited by Phillip Rieff, New York, 1963. ———. An Outline of Psychoanalysis. Translated by James Strachey, Norton, 1949. ———. Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality. Translated and newly edited by James Strachey, Basic Books, 1962. Fox, Soledad. “Violence and Silence: The Repressed History of the Franco Regime.” Unearthing Franco’s Legacy: Mass Graves and Recovery of Historical Memory in Spain. Eds. Carlos Jerez-Farrán and Samuel Amago. U of Notre Dame P, 2010, pp. 30–41. Glenn, Kathleen. “From Page to Screen: Emili Teixidor’s and Agustí Villaronga’s Pa negre.” Journal of Catalan Studies, vol. 15, 2012, pp. 52–68. ———. “Reclaiming the Past: Les veus del Pamano and Pa negre” Journal of Catalan Studies, 2008, pp. 49–64. Gordon, Avery. Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination. U Minnesota P, 2008. Hertz, Neil. “Medusa’s Head: Male Hysteria under Political Pressure.” Representations, vol. 4, Autumn 1983, pp. 27–54. Hogan, Erin. “Queering Post-War Childhood: Pa negre (Agustí Villaronga, Spain 2010).” Hispanic Research Journal, Vol. 17 No. 1, February 2016, pp. 1–18. Huertas Claveria, Josep Maria. Mites i gent de Barcelona. Edicions 62, 2006, pp. 92–93. http://etimologies.dites.cat/2009/04/matar-­jueus.html. Jerez-Farrán, Carlos and Samuel Amago. Introduction. Unearthing Franco’s Legacy: Mass Graves and Recovery of Historical Memory in Spain. U of Notre Dame P, 2010a, pp. 1–29. ———, eds. Unearthing Franco’s Legacy: Mass Graves and Recovery of Historical Memory in Spain. U of Notre Dame P, 2010b. Juliá, Santos (coordinator), Julián Casanova, Josep Maria Solé i Sabaté, Joan Villarroya and Francisco Moreno. Víctimas de la Guerra Civil: Una aportación imprescindible a un debate que sigue abierto. Temas de Hoy, 2006.

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Moreiras-Menor, Cristina. “La mirada traidora y el saber del síntoma: Pa negre en texto y en imagen.” Revista de Estudios Hispánicos, vol. 52, no. 2, June 2018, pp. 433–54. Moreno, Francisco. “La represión en la posguerra.” Víctimas de la Guerra Civil: una aportación imprescindible a un debate que sigue abierto. Edited by Santos Juliá et al. Temas de Hoy, 2006, pp. 275–406. Pa negre/Black Bread. 1993, dir. Agustí Villaronga (Savor). Pereira Boán, Xosé. “Liminaridad y mímesis monstruosa en La lengua de las mariposas y Pa negre.” Revista de Estudios Hispánicos, vol. 52, no. 2, June 2018, pp. 639–66. Punter, David. “Spectral Criticism.” Introducing Criticism at the 21st Century, edited by Julian Woffreys, Edinburgh UP, 2002, pp. 259–78. Radway, Janice. Forward to Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination. U Minnesota P, 2008, pp. vii–xiv. Raguer Suñer, Hilari. “The Spanish Church and the Civil War: Between Persecution and Repression.” Unearthing Franco’s Legacy: Mass Graves and Recovery of Historical Memory in Spain. Edited by Carlos Jerez-Farrán and Samuel Amago, U of Notre Dame P, 2010, pp. 68–89. Rivas, Manuel. Prologue: “Una injusticia en España.” La fuerza de la razón. Baltasar Garzón. Debate, 2011, pp. 15–24. Serrano, Rodolfo. “La psiquiatría de Franco. En busca del ‘gen rojo’: Antonio Vallejo Nágera dirigió en 1938 un estudio sobre prisioneros de guerra para determinar qué malformación llevaba al marxismo.” El País, 6 January 1996, n.p. https://elpais.com/diario/1996/01/07/espana/8209692222_850215. html, accessed 1 April, 2020. Silverman, Kaja. “Historical Trauma and Male Subjectivity.” Psychoanalysis and Cinema, edited by Ann Kaplan, Routledge, 1990, pp. 110–27. ———. Male Subjectivity at the Margins. Routledge, 1992. Stiglegger, Marcus. “Beyond Good and Evil? Sadomasochism and Politics in the Cinema of the 1970s.” Translated by Kathrin Zeitz, Ikonen: Magazin für Kunst, Kultur, und Lebensart, http://www.ikonenmagazin.de/artikel/ Nightporter.htm, accessed March 31, 2020. Solé i Sabaté, Josep and Joan Villarroya. “Mayo de 1937–abril de 1939.” Víctimas de la Guerra Civil: Una aportación imprescindible a un debate que sigue abierto. Edited by Santos Juliá et al. Temas de Hoy, 2006, pp. 179–274. Sontag, Susan. Illness as a Metaphor. Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1978. Teixidor, Emili. Black Bread. Translated from Catalan to English by Peter Bush. Biblioasis, 2016. ———. “En teoría: La literatura juvenil, ¿un género para adolescentes?” CLIJ: Cuadernos de Literatura Infantil y Juvenil, vol. 13, no. 133, 2000, pp. 7–15. ———. La lectura y la vida: cómo incitar a los niños y los adolescentes a la lectura. Ariel, 2007.

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———. Pan negro. Translated from Catalan to Spanish by the author Emili Teixidor. Seix Barral, 2003. Torres, Rafael. La vida amorosa en tiempos de Franco. Temas de Hoy, 1996. Unamuno, Miguel. San Manuel Bueno, mártir. Verbum, 2016 (1st published 1931). Valis, Noël. Sacred Realism. Yale UP, 2010. Vallejo Nágera, Antonio. “Eugenesia de la Hispanidad y Regeneración de la raza.” Talleres Gráficos el Noticiero. Editorial Española, pp. 110–15. Villaronga, Agustí. Pa negre/Black Bread. 1993 (Savor). Zamora, Andrés. “Perversiones españolas del Holocausto: Tras el cristal de Agustí Villaronga.” Vanderbilt e-Journal of Luso-Hispanic Studies, vol. 6, 2010, /Letras Peninsulares, vol. 22.2, 2010, pp. 147–63.

CHAPTER 5

Transgenerational Feminist Memory in Dulce Chacón’s 2002 Novel La voz dormida (The Sleeping Voice)

Introduction Just as Spain’s 2007 Law of Historical Memory has re-visioned the past, denounced the dictatorship’s transgressions, vindicated the victims of persecutions, and acknowledged their trauma, a proliferation of films and fictional narratives, including La voz dormida  (The Sleeping Voice), has humanized the effects of war and engendered identification with trauma lived by others. This experiencing of the past of a singular or collective Other leads to engagement as theorized by Alison Landsberg (prosthetic memory) and Marianne Hirsch (postmemory). Landsberg discerns a novel relationship between a person and history, a “new form of public cultural memory,” in which the individual’s para-empathetic acquisition or assumption of an Other’s experiences “sutures” the individual “into a larger history” (2). Prosthetic memories, then, through empathy and identification, promote social responsibility and political action (21).1 For Hirsch, memory “promises to propose forms of justice outside of the hegemonic structures of the strictly juridical, and to engage in advocacy and activism on 1  A further elaboration and application of Landsberg’s theory can be found in my chapter in (Re)Collecting the Past: Historical Memory in Spanish Literature and Culture, edited by Jacky Collins et al.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Tobin Stanley, Francoist Repression and Incarceration in Contemporary Spanish Culture, Palgrave Studies in Cultural Heritage and Conflict, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13392-3_5

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behalf of individuals and groups whose lives and stories have not been thought” (Hirsch, Generation 16). Dulce Chacón (1954–2003) participates in what I will term “femimemory.” Femimemory, the gynocentric recovery of memory, consists of the following elements: the acknowledgment that heteronormative patriarchy shapes historiography in the masculine resulting in the inferiorization or omission of the female sex; the moral imperative to recover and vindicate the role of women in history or the past; the empathetic identification with women’s experiences and traumas; and the commitment to a more just world through the transmission of women’s stories.2 Chacón’s La voz dormida is a novel by a woman about diverse women and their relationships in and to a prison for women. Not unlike testimonial accounts of female incarceration that tend to underscore collaboration, interdependency, solidarity, and reciprocal identification, the fictional political prisoners and their loved ones care for each other in the deepest human sense, and, as a result, are driven by a moral imperative to transmit memory across generations and work toward what is just. Feminist scholar bell hooks [sic] aptly avers, “A genuine feminist politics always brings us from bondage to freedom, from lovelessness to loving … There can be no love without justice” (Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics 104). Both Chacón’s and her characters’ loving approach to justice is gendered. The 2002 historical novel evokes empathy (and subsequently creates a prosthetic memory in readers) just as the characters within the work respond empathetically and morally to the need of an Other, known as an ethic of care, and thus implement feminist beliefs.3 The fictionalized stories Chacón recontextualizes from four years of personal interviews rescue the “mujeres rojas” from collective amnesia in two ways: the fight against phallocentrism that construed them as inferior and the fight against fascism that aimed at erasing all traces of the Republic. The novel attests 2  Works that aim to recover women’s past while fetishizing or objectifying their female protagonists do not participate in femimemory for they lack the intersubjectivity of empathetic identification. The civil war films Las trece rosas (dir. Emilio Martínez Lázaro, 2007) and Zambrano’s La voz dormida, among others, fetishize their female protagonists. For a detailed analysis of Zambrano’s fetishization, see the relevant section of this chapter. 3  Carol Gilligan’s studies on the role of gender in moral psychology have revealed an ethic of care as a gendered approach. Her analyses are a key counterpoint to Kohlberg’s justicecentered scale that hierarchizes impartiality and universalizability. Rather, an ethic of care demands a connection to the needs of an Other in order to reason and determine the most sound moral choice.

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to the injustice of Franco’s justice system and attempts to right the wrongs of the past through transgenerational feminist memory. Femimemory counteracts the hypermasculinized authoritarian regime. It is the antithesis of phallo-fascist mandated assimilatory forgetting. Femimemory actively and intentionally foils the legacy of misogynistic omissions or revisionist constructs. Femimemorial cultural production remedies both intentional and unintentional complicity in silence. Chacón’s title speaks volumes, for it clamors against imposed silence, against assimilatory forgetting, and loudly tells the heinous tales based on female testimony that begged not only to be told but also to be heard. Not to participate in femimemory is to contribute, through inaction, to gendered omissions in cultural memory. As Ellie Wiesel reminds, in the face of oppression, abuse, and violence, neutrality and silence aid the perpetrators, not the victims. In other words, silence or a stance of neutrality constitutes a de facto position that supports transgressors and their transgressions. Gynocentric works of memory shed light on the gendered omissions within cultural memory. Precisely, testimony and oral transmission (i.e., communicative memory) yield the content for The Sleeping Voice.4 Communicative memory is ephemeral and lasts three generations, or approximately eighty years.5 By remediating female testimonies and weaving them into a greater work of fiction that is essential within the canon of Spanish memory literature, Chacón institutionalizes the content of women’s trauma and incarceration so that it endures as cultural memory. Benito Zambrano’s film adaptation, as a remediation of Chacón’s novel, attests to the import of Chacón’s work as a prototype of femimemorial premediation. As an exemplar of femimemory, her novel has become a canonical reference point and has forged the way in which Francoist repression of women is perceived and will be perceived. Republican women were a double threat to the single-voiced discourse of Francoism. As women and as reds, they shattered the delicate nationalized Catholic construct of femininity: self-abnegating angel of the hearth who, in the private, domestic sphere, silently and ignorantly deferred to omniscient male wisdom and provided unabashed support and comfort to their personal, political, and divine patriarchs. By questioning the fragile construct of virility and defying the misogyny inherent in nationalism, these women were to become a collective enemy and objects of gendered 4 5

 Cañil’s novel is addressed in a subsequent chapter.  Assmann’s theory is further applied in The Silence of Others chapter.

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punitive measures. The eye-for-an-eye and tooth-for-a-tooth draconianism in late 1930s and 1940s Nationalist Spain may be more adequately described as “eye-for-a-vagina” and “tooth-for-a-breast” for transgressive women of that era. Both public and private sanctioning and interrogation (to be read as nearly synonymous with torture) underscored and demeaned femaleness or the purported feminine ideal. The cruel measures perverted and defiled feminine beauty, domestic privateness, purity, cleanliness, sexual modesty (pudor), chastity, and motherhood. Examples of profanation include, but are not limited to, the shame following the forced ingestion of emetic-laxative substances; being stripped of the iconic symbol of female beauty (i.e., a coiffed head of hair); being paraded in public covered in one’s own vomit and feces; the threat of rape; fondling; rape by one man; gang rape; sustained gang rape over a period of days; electrical shock to the nipples; electrical currents to the vulva; unwanted pregnancy resulting from rape; beatings to the pregnant belly and resulting miscarriage/s; removal of the child/ren (including newborns) from inmate mothers; unlivable prison living conditions for pregnant mothers, lactating mothers, and their babies6 resulting in high infant and child mortality; and using the need to nurse the baby as an instrument of torture.7 In spite of the intentionally hostile environment of Madrid’s Ventas prison for women, its high concentration of political prisoners, the sorority/sisterhood, and sense of interdependence and solidarity created not quite a safe space, but palliative bubbles of refuge. We see this in Chacón’s La voz dormida, as well as in Juana Doña’s Desde la noche y la niebla, in Mercedes Núñez Targa’s Cárcel de Ventas and Ana Cañil’s Si a los tres años no he vuelto, studied in the following chapter. Drawing on testimony, La voz dorminda bears witness to the inhumanity of inflicted trauma, as well as to the humanity of intergenerational sisterhood. In the absence of a humane infrastructure, the inmates created a society in which individuals could provide their talents and knowledge for the common good. Literate women taught illiterate ones to read and write, those skilled imparted their knowledge to the unskilled, midwives tended to the pregnant and new mothers, the ill were treated and cared for, those starving were fed, and those grieving a family member were consoled by their new “family.”

 Lack of hygienic supplies, such as soap and water, scarce and poor quality food.  For withholding the nursing, causing physical and psychological pain to both mother and child. 6 7

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Chacón celebrates precisely the gynocentric, symbiotic ideology within this literally gynocentric space ruled by a phallocratic-phallocentric order. The torture technique of electrical shock to the vulva is a perfect analogy for Ventas. The misogynistic repressors target a quintessentially female anatomical part—analogous to the scrotum—yet cannot penetrate the ineffability of the subject’s self. In other words, the torturers failed in their objective. Officials harmed and killed female political prisoners for their anti-fascist beliefs, yet the perpetrators never managed to erase the intersectionalized rights for women and human beings that the political prisoners in Ventas represented. La voz dormida vindicates the individuals and the collective. Through orality and writing, through fictionalized factuality, Chacón subverts the Francoist gendered persecution of women that the regime deemed non-­ women, thus highlighting the paradoxical effect of the repression. To wit, in spite of wanting to strip away and punish their femaleness by weaponizing elements of their gender against them, the regime further underscored, and, to a point, idealized through martyrdom, their strength and resilience inherent to their identities as women. Today, in the third decade of the twenty-first century, Spain continues to face the fact that its inheritance is trauma. While both the so-called two Spains were ravaged by war and families were fractured, the defeated were prohibited from acknowledging the persecution and reprisals, the cleansing and cruelty that the victors—with impunity—waged upon them. All who live (and have lived) on Spanish soil are heirs to the transgenerational legacy of the omnipresent fear of reprisals, trauma, and silence. Silence is the unsaid, that which has not been articulated and that which has not been recounted. The layers of silence are compounded by shame, fear, and gender. The Nationalists viewed themselves as rightfully triumphant in their phallic power and forged a construct of the defeated enemy as aberrant, godless, and inferior. In war, the enemy is feminized and the victory-­ defeat dynamic is couched in terms of phallic penetration (Goldstein 333). When literal female gender is a factor within this paradigm, the aggressor weaponizes femaleness against the woman enemy. Not unlike the androcentric victors, the male comrades of rojas also devalued Republican women and their concomitant contribution. While the dictatorship aimed at the erasure of the Republic and Republicans through purging and fear, resulting in pages omitted from the written annals of history and official silence, misogynistic thought (regardless of political bent) censored the

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role female protagonists played in the anti-fascist resistance. This chapter’s analysis of Chacón’s novel highlights the awakening of the no longer dormant voice in hopes that readers, too, will awaken and be woke.8

Plot Summary, Narrative, Structure, and Chacón’s Purpose of Femimemory La voz dormida is a transgenerational tale of female resistance against patriarchy and twentieth-century Spanish authoritarianism that showcases a gallery of diverse characters.9 The omniscient narrator interweaves their stories of struggle during the war and for their lives after defeat. From this colorful tapestry of characters, two sisters emerge, Hortensia and Pepita. Hortensia, a miliciana-cum-political prisoner, is executed soon after giving birth.10 Pepita raises the orphaned newborn Tensi and maintains a romantic relationship with the guerrilla leader Jaime/Paulino/Chaqueta Negra, whom she marries after his twenty-year imprisonment. The novel is organized into three parts. The first ends with the April 1, 1939, “parte de guerra” (war communiqué) of Nationalist victory. The second reaches its climax with Hortensia’s labor and Tensi’s birth and concludes in typewriter typography, with Hortensia’s official death sentence decree. Part three, following a poem by César Vallejo, opens with Pepita in possession of Hortensia’s notebooks (labeled, respectively, for her husband Felipe and Tensi) following her execution. Pepita holds the infant in her arms and states, “Tu mamá te ha escrito un libro” ([Your mom has written you a book]11 227), underscoring writing and transgenerational transmission of femimemory as the promise of and/or search for justice in juxtaposition to the injustice of the official death sentence decree. Tensi has a “canasta” (a basket) converted into a “moisés” (bassinet), a term referencing the biblical liberator, Moses. The bassinet and its etymology conjure images of the genocide in the book of Exodus, the raising of Moses who escaped infanticide and persecution, was instrumental in 8  The term “woke” gained significance and momentum with the Black Lives Matter movement. It signifies the awareness of injustice that became inextricably linked to the moral imperative to act toward social justice. 9  For easy reference, many of the characters are listed and described at the end of this chapter. 10  A miliciana is a woman who fought on the Republican side of the Spanish Civil War. Milicianas attest to the radical shift in gender roles and the commitment to social progress. 11  My translation.

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liberation and the ongoing search for social justice. This final section concludes with Jaime’s pardon, release, and instructions for his surveilled integration to society. The narrative structure is that of an omniscient third-person narrator with a considerable amount of dialogue and intercalation of historical realia.12 Chacón includes transcriptions of documents (decrees, official memos) and letters such as those regarding the Thirteen Roses (signed petitions prepared by their mothers requesting clemency, and Julia Conesa’s letter to her mother on the day of the execution, whose final, now famous, line reads, “Que mi nombre no se borre en la historia” [Don’t let my name be erased from history]) (Chacón 199 [134]). The colloquial dialogue is oftentimes riddled with anaphora and the narration will reiterate in a higher linguistic register, that which has just been spoken or pre-states that which will be orally articulated.13 The use of prolepsis, or stated mundanely the literary artifice of “spoiler alert,” disambiguates and reduces tension so that the reader can focus on the moment (Oaknin n.p.) Although we readers read the text, we are witnesses to the same message communicated in both spoken and written speech. This orality and textuality lay bare the tension between History (written, purportedly objective, official) and historia (personal, spoken, or orally transmitted narrative or personal memory). This could be viewed as an example of what Hélène Cixous has termed an “antilogos weapon,” or I would propose it is an anti-phallo-logos femimemory, for it reinscribes women’s oral narrative (historias) into a simulacrum of hegemonic authoritative medium. The plot reveals that Tensi, Hortensia’s daughter, is a transgenerational heir who learned of her mother’s resistance and plight and that of the gallery of female prisoners and supporters, by reading her deceased mother’s journal. Hortensia’s written word, the diary, refutes the possibility of silence, just as Chacón’s narration gives voice to the suppressed past of the defeated: Hortensia’s combat, imprisonment, and execution, but also the resistance of the maquis in the 40s, clandestine activism in Madrid for decades, and, of course, Tensi’s joining the clandestine communist party in the 60s. As the reader and listener of her mother’s notebooks since infancy, Tensi internalizes the collective, paradoxically unique and universal, subjective and objective, stories of female resistance. 12  Realia is a pedagogical term referring to real-life or authentic objects used to elucidate a lesson. 13  For an excellent study of orality in La voz, see Colmeiro.

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La voz dormida has been categorized as “La Guerra Civil vista desde la óptica de las mujeres” (the civil war seen from women’s perspective) (El País, Mar. 9, 2006, n.p.), women’s experience before and after the war (Bucklew n.p.), and “novela histórica femenina” of “carácter dialogante” (women’s historical novel characterized by dialogue) (Ramblado-Minero 361). Critics have referred to the collective of fictionalized voices in Chacón as a tapestry, a mosaic (Ruiz Serrano), a kaleidoscope, a cuentimonio, fusion of the modern with the postmodern (Gil Casado 81), documentary realism (Martín Galván), and a hybrid recollective memory (Colmeiro 200). Chacón’s novel straddles genres, blurs boundaries between fiction and nonfiction, and creates a dialogue between a past generation and subsequent ones in order to reinscribe the stories of the defeated into the history of the present (Ramblado-Minero 367).14 The novel more than recounts women’s history. Through the denunciation of two overlapping systems—the murderous regime and patriarchy—in the search for retroactive justice, it fulfills the promise to write and right a wrong. Chacón reinscribes unseen and unheard fighters and victims into the cultural imaginary as a testament to women’s double fight and a claim to their rightful place. By drawing on testimony and interviewing those who lived repression, the author has authorized acts of witness (Hirsch, Generation 9). As an empathetic transgenerational “listener to trauma,” she and her readers become “participant[s] and a co-owner[s] to the traumatic event[s]” and “partially experience trauma” themselves (Laub 57). In a 2002 interview, Chacón recounts her motivation for writing: La voz dormida surge de una necesidad personal de hace mucho tiempo, de conocer la historia de España que no me contaron, aquella que fue censurada y silenciada. He estado documentando e investigando durante cuatro años … he recogido muchos testimonios orales. Esto fue lo que me motivó a centrar la historia en las mujeres, porque …  son las protagonistas de la Historia que nunca se contó. Esa es la voz silenciada, la figura en la sombra. La historia con minúscula es la que me ha servido para darle carne a los personajes e incorporar a cada uno de ellos en una historia real. (Velázquez n.p.) (The Dormant/Sleeping Voice arises from a long-ago personal need, to know the history of Spain that was never told to me, that which was c­ ensured and silenced. I have been documenting and researching for four years … I have gathered many oral testimonies. That is what motivated me to center 14  For an excellent analysis of how the text creates a dialogue between past and present generations, see Ramblado-Minero 371.

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the story on women, because … they are the protagonists of History that was never told/recounted. That is the silenced voice, the figure in the shadow. The lowercase history (story) that served to give flesh to the characters and incorporate each one of them in a true story.)

The year of the novel’s publication is momentous in contemporary Spanish history. In 2002, the Asociación por la Recuperación de la Memoria Histórica (ARMH) appealed to the United Nations to pressure the Spanish government to fund the exhumation of mass graves containing the regime’s unidentified victims. The novel is a clear reminder that among the persecuted were women. The point of genocide is to produce no witnesses and to make an event unwitnessable, in other words, so horrific that it defies understanding and recounting (Laub 80).15 Chacón belongs to the so-called second generation, the children of the silenced who seek to hear the voices of the past (Leggott 28). While previous silences are understandable, silences in a democracy, she underscores, are incomprehensible (interviewed by Luis García n.p. qtd. in Matz). Chacón fulfills Audre Lorde’s summons: “where the words of women are crying to be heard, we must … recognize our responsibility to seek those words out, to read them and share them and examine them in their pertinence to our lives” (“Transformation” 43). La voz dormida is not unlike the poetry of Irena Klepfisz16 whose poems about women and the Holocaust “flood-­ light a neglected dimension of the resistance to genocide. The survival strategies, the visceral responses, [sic] of women” (Rich 136). The gynocentric poetry reveals a “tension among many forces—language, speechlessness, memory, politics, irony, compassion, hunger for what is lost, hunger for justice still to be made” as contemporary history unfolds (Rich 144). Similarly, Chacón’s writing is an act of resistance that shatters the silence of genocide and persecution in search of ongoing redress. Women’s double defeat—losing the war and losing women’s rights— has yet to be rectified (Chacón in Velázquez s.p.).17 The legacy of the

 Referencing the Holocaust.  Born in 1941, Klepfisz fled Eastern Europe as a child and connected transgenerationally with loss and trauma. 17  Chacón underscores, “La mujer perdió dos veces. Perdió la guerra civil y perdió los derechos civiles que había logrado durante la República” (Women lost twice. They lost the civil war and they lost the civil rights they had obtained during the Republic). 15 16

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regime’s institutionalized misogyny persists,18 states Chacón, and the struggle will not end until “se pueda hablar libremente de él. No es ira ni revancha, sino un deseo legítimo de recuperar una memoria olvidada y secuestrada” (one can speak freely about it. It is not anger or vengeance, but rather a legitimate desire to recover a memory [that was] forgotten and kidnapped) (Velázquez s.p.).19 It is the intent to rectify through remembrance, seeking justice (Hirsch, Generation 16), to connect to the past, mediating and transmitting it “by imaginative investment, projection, and creation” (Hirsch, Generation 5).

Early Spanish Feminism as a Context for Chacón’s Novel: Rights Won, Rights Lost, and Reprisals The 1930s were fraught with the debate on women’s rights. Feminist thinkers who arduously advocated for women in society, the job market, and law did not agree on the nuances. Paradoxically, while three women were in fact elected to Spanish Parliament (Margarita Nelken, Clara Campoamor, and Victoria Kent), neither they nor other women had the right to vote (Johnson 218). By 1932, legislation passed that women could vote in the 1933 elections (Johnson 218). With the establishment of the Sección Femenina of the Falange in 1934, the schism between National anti-feminists and Republican feminists broadened and exacerbated with the civil war (Johnson 219). In 1939, in Madrid alone there were 6000 members of the Sección Femenina of the Falange (Ruiz 71). The famed orators, Anarchist Catalonian Federica Montseny and the Communist Basque Dolores Ibárruri, reached national audiences, “calling for women’s rights to work, equal salaries, paternity investigations, divorce, abortion, and the abolition of sexual discrimination in the professions” (Johnson 219). The organization Mujeres Libres “served the dual purpose of feminism and anarchism, and established a precedent for the dual militancy that typified Republican and Civil War era feminism in Spain” (Johnson 220).

18  Chacón: “La mujer tiene que mostrar su valía doblemente en cualquier campo, porque nuestra sociedad, la sociedad española, sigue siendo muy machista” ([Women have to show their worth doubly in any field, because our society, Spanish society, continues to be very sexist] Velázquez s.p.). 19  My translation.

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Roberta Johnson and Olga Castro trace the trajectory of  first-wave Spanish feminisms and examine the intricacies of the ontology of the wave. For socialist Margarita Nelken, Spanish feminism is rooted in economics (222); Gregorio Martínez Sierra (aka María de la O Lejárraga García) highlights the need for social and legal equality (223); María Aurelia Campany fought for equal rights (224) within Article 25 of the 1931 constitution (225); and Carmen de Burgos advocated for legal parity (227). The 1930s feminism reflects both feminism of equality (i.e., equal [human] rights for all) and feminism of difference (i.e., rights as women).20 There is no consensus on the role of religion in the path to women’s rights, viewed as detrimental by Nelken and favorably by Burgos (Johnson and Castro 229). Similarly, Nelken and Burgos disagreed on the readiness of society and women for female suffrage: “Burgos argues that the law can effect social change, while Nelken believed that social change must occur first and the law affirm that change a posteriori” (229). Federica Montseny, Minister of Health and Social Assistance and a moving orator, exemplifies the “double militancy” of anarchism and feminism (231–32). The plurality and richness of Spanish feminism reflects the chorus of voices and the myriad refractions of the feminist prism. Feminism—all feminisms—is rooted in two self-evident factors: first, the acknowledgment that within patriarchy, women or that which is deemed feminine or feminized is at a disadvantage; and, second, the aspiration to and movement toward that which is fair, just, and/or equitable. Upon considering women in the Republic, the civil war, and the postwar period, it is imperative to recognize there was no consensus on exactly what the role of women could/should be and how to realize it. Nonetheless, on the left—in its plurality and differences of ideas—the view of women parted from the premise that traditional gender roles and the ideology/ ideologies that constructed them positioned women at a disadvantage. As a result, action was necessary to better their (and society’s) situation. On the other hand, the right wing indisputably dismissed the view that tradition disadvantaged women. The war—so to speak—that the Falange and the Nationalists waged on women was doubly militant due to the fact that women who believed in women’s rights challenged the ultimate victors’ 20  As Johnson and Castro underline, these two 1930s feminisms can be viewed through a retrospective postfeminist lens—such as that of Lucía Extebarria and Carmen Alborch—to see beyond the categories of feminism of equality and feminism of difference to allow for the coexistence of femininity and feminism.

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supposition that women were subordinate to men and challenged their hierarchized worldview. Once Spain was under Franco in 1939, the legal and living situation of Spanish women reflected the 1889 Napoleonic Code, confining them to the domestic sphere and precluding or discouraging their work outside the home in every way possible and rigorously controlled by laws. Women were prohibited from taking nocturnal jobs, and they were encouraged to leave jobs they held and return home (after 1942 married women were required to leave their jobs and were to receive a dowry from the state) … The wages of married women who did work could be paid directly to their husbands. Women were barred outright from some professions, such as chief administrator in state jobs  …, diplomat, work inspector, notary, functionary in departments of justice, state lawyer, state police, or administration of the stock market. (Esteves and Johnson 250–51)

During the regime, Spain’s feminist past (that of the nineteenth-­century trailblazers such as Concepción Arenal and Emilia Pardo Bazán) and the “militant feminism of the 1920s and 1930s” were buried and essentially banished to oblivion. Only nineteenth-century Arenal escaped suppression or censorship, yet was dismissed as a “liberal romantic.” While some Spanish feminists such as Martínez Sierra, Nelken, and Kent wrote in exile, many of their works were banned in Spain (Esteves and Johnson 252). Writers such as Ana María Matute and Carmen Laforet subtly incorporated feminist ideals in their fiction (Esteves and Johnson 254), and Simone de Beauvoir’s Second Sex: Woman as Other was known (through smuggled copies). Not until the 1960s and the dictablanda21 did Spain see publications of homegrown feminists such as Lidia Falcón as well as translations of canonical feminist texts (Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique) (Esteves and Johnson 254). Ironically, given the erasure of Spanish feminist texts of the 1920s and 1930s, the later generations of feminists, including Chacón’s generation, were initially unaware of their origins and the lost treasure they would soon recover, for example, in Lidia Falcón and María Aurelia Capmany’s 1970 El feminismo ibérico (Esteves and Johnson 253–554).

 Literally “soft dictatorship.”

21

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Upon scrutiny of the decades following the end of the war, it is impossible to separate the erasure of feminist thought, censorship, and laws that crippled women from the realities of repression of Republican women. The intent was to wipe out all traces, to subjugate any resistance, to make the female enemy the state’s bitch. The New State succeeded.

The Nationalist Construct of Rojas Given that rojas were a frontal blow to the traditional feminine ideal (González Duro 14), the Nationalist construct of red women, such as female political figures, milicianas, and revolutionaries was that of demonized, ridiculed, licentious, butch (marimacho), politically subversive, and socially dangerous entities to be brutally punished (González Duro 34). In Republican zones, the image of the extolled anti-fascist combatant mother (madre combatiente) replaced the miliciana on the front line. Yet in Nationalist zones, they were sketched as monstrous. The fascist psychiatrist Vallejo Nágera’s study on “Marxist female criminals” likens female psychology to that of children and animals, whose instinct for cruelty surpasses “todas las posibilidades imaginadas, precisamente por faltarles las inhibiciones inteligentes y lógicas” (the imagination for their lack of intelligent and logical inhibitions) (qtd. in González Duro 23). In the immediate postwar period, Nationalist publications aimed toward women readers, such as Y, Revista Nacionalista para la Mujer (Y, Nationalist Magazine for Women), conducted a smear campaign.22 The June 1939 issue demonized Republican women as counter to the righteous angel of the hearth and angel of peace. Reds of the female gender were described in juxtaposition to the women of the victors as “arpías que superaron sacrilegios masculinos y que hicieron de la emulación hombruna y de la blasfemia marxista un constante ejercicio” (harpies that surpassed masculine sacrilege and turned manly emulation and Marxist blasphemy into a constant exercise) (F. Casares, qtd. in González Duro 22  The title of the magazine comes from one of the transcriptions of the name of Isabel of Castile: Ysabel.

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32). Playwright Edgar Nelville, in his article “Margarita Nelken o la maldad [or evil]” in the October 1939 issue of Y, pitted the “arpías de los barrios” (neighborhood harpies) with “finas mujeres de la burguesía, blancas y espigadas madrileñas en plena juventud” (refined women of the bourgeoisie, fair and thin Madrilenians in the bloom of their youth)—in other words, “las feas contra las guapas” (the ugly women against the pretty ones) (qtd. in González Duro 33). The “anti-feminine” borders on the anti-Christ of the anti-Spain. Such categorizations and conceptions exalt their binary opposite while demonizing the Other in order to rationalize dehumanizing transgressions. Numerous critics23 note that rojas were doubly persecuted, repressed, defeated, and victimized for being women and Republican. The polarizing masculinization and feminization inherent in military governments (Matousek 67) entrenches extreme demarcation of gender roles, thus further inferiorizing women. An authoritarian system or regime intensifies patriarchal order and imposition (Matousek 67). The New Spanish State targeted “red women” because they transgressed against both the regime’s values and the traditional standards of womanliness. Chacón’s novel destigmatizes the regime’s demonized image of “la mujer roja.”24 As the emblematic “madre combatiente” (warrior mother), Hortensia’s double condition of Republican and woman was undeniably visible as she took up arms on the battlefield while five-months pregnant, just after her father, a political prisoner, died in jail. Reviled as a domestic enemy during the dictatorship, Hortensia is “a Republican war heroine of mythical dimensions” (Guerrero 14).

Repression: Criminalization, Incarceration, Sentencing, and Execution The immediate postwar criminalization of the defeated normalized their persecution throughout the dictatorship. Nearly four decades later in the transition to democracy, the 1977 Law of Amnesty released political prisoners, but also precluded prosecution of perpetrators against the defeated,  Amanda Matousek, María Matz, José Colmeiro, Mary Nash, Enrique González Duro, and Mazal Oaknin, among others. See works cited. 24  Noted by Ramblado-Minero and Matousek. 23

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and effectively perpetuated the injustices suffered by the victims (Matz 83–84). While the war ended on April 1, 1939, the state of war was not lifted until nine years later, dividing the Iberian nation into the victors and the defeated. Matz writes, “los horrores de la guerra dieron paso a los horrores de la paz” (the horrors of war gave way to the horrors of peace) (83). The 1939 Burgos Ley de Sanciones y Responsabilidades Civiles (Law of Sanctions and Civil Responsibilities) was retroactive to 1934, deemed the Republic illegal, considered its supporters criminals, and made way for the extermination and incarceration of those not inclined toward the illegitimate regime (Ruiz Serrano 173). Days after the war ended, unidentified bodies were found in the streets of Madrid (three male cadavers in el Retiro Park, and one of a woman on Castellar Street near the Ventas bullring). This finding openly attests to the repression of women. Public “human debris” inspired fear and acted as a deterrent (Ruiz 73). The message was clear: the victorious Nationalists ruled with an iron fist. No one, regardless of gender, was safe. Of women who were charged, many had purportedly been involved in “delitos colectivos,” “del vandalismo marxista y de la violación del modelo cristiano que debía imperar en la Nueva España” (collective crimes, of Marxist vandalism and violation of the Christian model that should rule in New Spain) (González Duro 15). Having been a female combatant, in fulfillment of Republican ideals, was deemed an attack on public morality (González Duro 16). Female prisoners were guilty of being wives, widows, and mothers of the defeated, yet they were denied the status of political prisoners (Feixa and Agustí 216). In Madrid in the immediate postwar period, detainees were commonly tried en masse. Collective trials averaged a duration between two and three hours. Thirty-eight percent of verdicts in 1939 were death sentences. Of all the death sentences between March 1939 and December 1942, 135 of the 200 total took place in 1939. There were 947 total sentences during that time. After 1940, the rate of sentencing to death declined (Ruiz 149). Women were held  in Ventas, the main prison for women in Madrid, to await trial, sentencing, or execution, or to serve part of the sentence. While it was built during the Republic to rehabilitate rather than punish and was designed for 650 inmates, by April 21 (just three weeks after the end of the war), it held more than 3000 female

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inmates (Ruiz 73). Ruiz calculated that in Madrid between the period of 1939 and 1944, minimally 3113 human beings were executed in Madrid’s cemeteries (including the outskirts), averaging twelve executions per week between April 1939 and April 1944 (Ruiz 150). In the years studied by Ruiz (1939–1944), 57% of all military tribunal death sentences in Madrid took place in the first nine months following Franco’s victory. Of the five-­ year span, 82% took place in the first two years (Ruiz 151). May 1939 saw an average of seventeen death sentences per day, exceeding the total number of death sentences in the 1941–1943 triennium (Ruiz 151). By July 1942, the military tribunal in Madrid had yielded more than 25,000 sentences (Ruiz 35). Sentencing varied by occupation and gender. In his study on the occupations of defendants sentenced to death and those whose sentences were commuted, Ruiz indicates the majority of those sentenced to death (62%) were manual laborers or agricultural workers and had the lowest percentage of commuted sentences. Seventy percent of commuted sentences were inmates “without an occupation,” the majority of whom were homemakers (i.e., women). Overall, women were less likely to be sentenced to death and executed. Of the 3186 death sentences studied by Ruiz, 5.2% (i.e., 166) were to women. Of those, 57% of the death sentences (93) were commuted, whereas 37% of male death sentences were commuted between March 1939 and April 1944 (Ruiz 155–157). The vast majority of the death sentences (2989 of 3189) in Madrid between 1939 and 1944 was for political crimes such as rebellion committed during (not after) the war (Ruiz 159). Because 38% of the total death sentences were commuted in the five-­ year span, Ruiz concludes that Franco’s justice was not an extermination machine (155). Regardless of the label placed on Franco’s justice, the systemic and institutionalized repression obliterated human lives through murder, incarceration, or destroying individuals through torture.

Torture, Interrogation, and Trauma: The Regime’s Fiction of Power In The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World, Elaine Scarry defines torture as “the obsessive display of agency that permits one person’s body to be translated into another person’s voice that allows real human pain to be converted into a regime’s fiction of power” (18). Torture of prisoners following the Nationalist victory was commonplace

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and purportedly implemented to ferret out resistance networks, deter reorganization efforts, and locate guerrillas. Interrogations were brutal and employed various techniques to hinder premature death, such as electric current and increasingly painful positions (Vinyes 158). Detainees apprehended after the “Victory” received worse treatment than those detained before it (Vinyes 158–59). Several characters in La voz dormida are victims of interrogation and torture. While Ruiz Serrano considers Chacón’s treatment of torture to be neutral (179), I would propose that the representation of traumatic experiences reveals reverence and sensitivity to the victims. To describe inflicted trauma intricately could border on revictimization of the victims. By enshrouding them in the agency to articulate at their choosing, they take back the possession of the subjectivity and self that the torturers had aimed to snatch away. Rather than explicitly portraying what Elaine Scarry terms the “weapon” (the actions, the cause of the pain, the infliction), Chacón focuses on the impact. The verbal inexpressibility of pain25 is a lack that becomes apparent through analogy and “as if” constructions that include both an external agent (that which causes the pain) and the other (the “bodily damage that is pictured as accompanying the pain”) (Scarry 15)—in other words, the agential subject and grammatical object. Scarry notes that the description of the agent (the “weapon”) to express the experience of pain (“wound” or “bodily damage”) can be more communicative than describing the sensation of pain itself. The statement, “It feels as if there’s a nail sticking into the bottom of my foot,” is more revelatory than “A nail stuck through my foot” and hence more sharable (Scarry 15–16). The language of agency conflates pain with power (Scarry 18). On the one hand, the omissions in Chacón’s narrative regarding the actual acts of torture could mimic the effect of trauma on the characters. On the other, the relative narrative and dialogical silence on the minutia of torture reflects the inherent unspeakability. The inexpressibility of pain bears political consequences (Scarry 19). The structure of torture, as studied by Scarry, “entails the simultaneous and inseparable occurrence of three events”: “first, the infliction of physical pain; second, the objectification of the [… subjective] central attributes of pain; and third, the translation of those attributes into the insignia of the regime” (Scarry 19). The objectification of the subjective attributes of pain has eight parts. The first  Scarry references V.C. Medvei’s 1948 treatise on pain.

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is averseness, an “immediate sensory rendering of ‘against’” (52). The second and third are “the double experience of agency”: the sense of “one’s own body hurting one,” a sense of self-betrayal and forced exercise (52–53). The fourth interlinks isolation and exposure that is characterized by “the solitude of absolute privacy with none of its safety, all the self-­ exposure of the utterly public with none of its possibility for camaraderie or shared experience” (53). Scarry elaborates: “the prisoner is forced to attend to the most intimate and interior facts of his body (pain, hunger, nausea, sexuality, excretion) at a time when there is no benign privacy…and…no benign public” (54). The fifth is the ability to destroy language. Torturers break off the victim’s “voice, making it their own, making it speak their words… [making it cry] when they want it to cry…silent when they want its silence” (54). The sixth is the obliteration of the contents of consciousness, in other words, the dissolution of the world or the ability to perceive the world and the surroundings (54). The seventh is the totality of pain: “Pain begins by being ‘not oneself’ and ends by having eliminated all that is ‘not itself’” and “systematically destroys anything like language or world extension” (55). Finally, the eighth is pain’s resistance to objectification. Pain is “as incontestably present in the external as in the internal world, and yet it is simultaneously categorically denied” (56). As there is no objective reference, it is inexpressible (52–56). As a result, the elements of pain, enumerated earlier, are translated “into the insignia of power.” The translation constitutes “the conversion of the enlarged map of human suffering into an emblem of the regime’s strength” (Scarry 56). War, persecution, and incarceration traumatize. A plethora of traumatized characters populates La voz dormida. This section will highlight the experiences of five characters: Hortensia, Amalia, Tomasa, Elvira, and Pepita. The narration describing Hortensia’s interrogation begins with a dialogue between the arresting guardias civiles’ in which they joke that they were going to give her chicken soup with plenty of chickpeas, followed by the third-person narration of “Treinta y nueve días pasó en Gobernación. Treinta y nueve días y muchas palizas y muchas horas de rodillas pasó en Gobernación” (She spent thirty-nine days in the interior ministry building. Thirty-nine days with as many beatings, and hour after

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hour kneeling on chickpeas) (134 [88]).26 This chapter intercalates Hortensia’s fond memories of her husband Felipe with recollection of her arrest and interrogation, interweaving images of her husband kissing her, as she presently touches her own knees and recollects the interrogation technique: coercion to remain kneeling on dry chickpeas and salt. Even after she is nearly healed, she has the sensation “de que un garbanzo se ha quedado dentro” (as though one of the chickpeas might still be lodged inside) (134 [88]). Not only does the inner monologue reveal the inexpressibility that seeks recourse in analogy (“as if” the weapon of torture remained within her organism), but it also exemplifies Scarry’s double experience of agency, of one’s own body hurting one and of that betrayal against oneself. Her own anatomy (in this case, her knees) becomes the constant present, a material reminder of the trauma inflicted, the trauma internalized but not articulated. “Treinta y nueve días” appears four times in the twenty-nine-line paragraph. As a type of prose anaphor, duplet or echo, it couples with itself. “Gobernación” appears five times, while “beating” (“paliza”) only once. The repetition of the location and the duration of the detention/interrogation, compared to the single mention of abuse, serves to euphemize the torture. It is a means of stating the unsayable. Touching the foreign body garbanzo in her knee, juxtaposed with the sensation of the quickening fetus growing within her, evokes the recollection of her broken silence (in omniscient third-person narration) and the voice of Manolita, her fellow detainee: “Sólo la rabia mantuvo sus labios apretados. Sólo la rabia los despegó para gritar el dolor en el vientre” (It was rage that succeeded in keeping her mouth shut. Rage that made her open it when the pain in her stomach was too much to bear), as Manolita chastises the torturers, “No le pegues ahí, so bestia, ¿no ves que está preñada?” (Stop that you idiot, can’t you see she’s pregnant?) (135 [89]). Two elements require attention: the foreign body/bodies not-one’s-­ body-­but-part-of-one, and the agency or lack of agency regarding the voice. The garbanzo (experienced as foreign yet part of her) is hurting her—conceptualized or cognized as transitive for the agential subject “it” in active voice indicative “hurts” “her,” the direct object of the action of hurting. In a dissimilar fashion, her belly experiences the pain; it hurts in  All translations of La voz dormida, unless otherwise indicated, are Nick Caistor’s from the 2006 English version published by Harvill Secker. 26

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the intransitive expression. While not conjugated, but rather nominalized (i.e., described with nouns), cognitively the pain is intransitive in English and reflexive in Spanish (“It hurts” and “Me duele”). The subject in both would be “belly”/“vientre” yet not transitively causing Hortensia pain. While the growing fetus is beloved, the garbanzo is the cognitive materialization of averseness. The latter symbolizes her thirty-nine days of interrogation and Hortensia’s sensory and emotive “againstness,” while she views “este niño” (this child) as “fuerte. Muy fuerte” (strong. Very strong),27 with the physical and character attributes of its father whom she remembers, recalls, and conjures lovingly. The agency/lack of agency is evident in the prose anaphora (“Sólo la rabia … Sólo la rabia” [It was rage…Rage]) and highlights that Hortensia is neither the grammatical subject nor the subject within the interrogation chamber, for the infliction has deprived her sense of self and objectified her, thus reflecting Scarry’s destruction of language and world extension. Hortensia is incapable of verbalizing the pain, even through the perspective of the omniscient narrator. Rather “rage” becomes the agential subject of the sentence, sealing and unsealing Hortensia’s lips to “gritar el dolor en el vientre” (open [her mouth] when the pain in her stomach was too much to bear). Manolita, whose voice bespeaks resistance and would sing Carlos Gardel’s tango Tomo y obligo, spoke out to protect Hortensia, in spite of not knowing her at all. Manolita’s torturers definitively silenced and disappeared her. Once transferred to the prison, Hortensia visited the infirmary where the doctor, who in actuality was a dentist, told her “que en la cara no tenía nada” (there was nothing wrong with her face) yet “no podía ni abrir los ojos de la hinchazón” (it was swollen and she couldn’t open her eyes) (135 [89]). The omission of the exact actions that caused the flagrant injury functions in concert with other non-revelatory details: the time (two in the morning), location (the second floor of Gobernación), and number of guards to return her (two). The expression linked to the time “la subían siempre” (they always took her up) proves almost redundant. The use of the imperfect tense in Spanish communicates the habitual nature of the action, yet is reinforced with “always.” In spite of the fact that, other than the garbanzo kneeling, the actions within the interrogation chamber remain ensconced in mystery, Hortensia’s post-torture  My translation.

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status (“la bajaban entre dos, porque ella no podía ni mantenrse derecha” [they had to carry her between two of them, because she couldn’t even walk] [135 (89)]) points to certain possibilities: fatigue, listlessness, disorientation, weakness, unconsciousness, debilitating pain, among others. Other than her inability to walk on her own (which soon remedied itself) and the physical marks (which healed), there is no explicit testament to the trauma inflicted and endured during the “Treinta y nueve días. Treinta y nueve días sin hablar con nadie” (Thirty-nine days. Thirty-nine days without talking to anyone) (135 [89]). The lack of human connection that would be mediated through the communication of trauma reappears months later when Hortensia learns of her death sentence. The narrator poignantly reveals her notebook entry, “El peor dolor es no poder compartir el dolor” (The worst pain is not being able to share her pain) (191 [127]). Silence and omissions also characterize Amalia’s torture. A native of Peñaranda de Bracamonte (Castile-León) and the daughter of the inmate Sole, Amalia was blinded in one eye and maimed during detention and interrogation. Pepita visits this previously sighted and able-bodied young woman, who now wears dark eye glasses and walks with a cane. When asked what happened to her eyes, Amalia simply responds, “He hecho una visita a Gobernación” (I paid a visit to the Ministry) (240 [163]). The narrator elaborates, “Al tiempo que contesta que ha hecho una visita a Gobernación, Amalia se levanta las gafas y muestra la oquedad de su ojo izquierdo” (As she said this, Amalia lifted her glasses and showed her left eye socket). The next paragraph consists of a single word in Spanish: “Vacío” (An empty eye socket) (240 [163]). The euphemism of visiting Gobernación (the Ministry) confirms the inexpressibility as does the physical action of showing the wound. Physical pain is “languagedestroying” (Scarry 19). Torture “mimes  …  this language-destroying capacity in its interrogation,” but the purpose “is not to elicit needed information but visibly to deconstruct the prisoner’s voice.” The deconstruction of the voice in torture is the step-by-step uncreating, reversing, and deconstructing of language (Scarry 20). Pepita inquires of Amalia if she has seen Felipe or the comrades. Her initial wordless, three-part response proves most articulate. First, she frowns, showing perhaps consternation, displeasure, averseness, frustration, aversion. Next, she lifts

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her glasses, revealing what had been hidden from view, whether for her own sense of dignity and identity rooted in being able-bodied and attractive or to shield others from their own aversion. Finally, she showed Pepita the hollow left eye socket, a testament to the captors’ response to her behavior or responses in the interrogation chamber (241). Amalia’s verbal response to Pepita’s query contains four negations and the refusal to provide information: “Yo no le he dicho a nadie a quién he visto ni a quién no he visto” (I haven’t told anyone who I’ve seen or not seen) (my emphasis 241 [164]). Amalia has been branded with the regime’s insignia of power, as her disability manifests eye-for-an-eye draconianism. Yet her silence in the torture chamber emblematized her resistance against her authoritarian abusers. Her silence following the interrogation reflects perhaps fear, but certainly the unspeakability of the unimaginable acts inflicted upon her. The use of silences or omissions in interrogation eclipses the answers of the interrogated. Readers must infer what is said and done to bully the interrogated to speak and “confess.” What is clear in the Amalia episode is the imposition of macabre punitive measures. The detainee who professed not to see anything, in fact, was stripped of sight. While Chacón does not elaborate on the gruesome details of the methods of interrogation, the passage clearly links seeing with knowing, with ideology (the left eye), and with voice. Ironically, because of Amalia’s blindness, she gains a clear perspective, just as naïve and apolitical Pepita comes to see fully the extremes to which interrogators will go. The empty eye socket functions as a constant reminder of what was, of a previous way of seeing, of how victimizers will go to extremes to force her to mimic their way of perceiving. In this respect, it symbolizes and encapsulates the early postwar years, the dictatorship, and the present moment. Erasure of undesirable elements—be they people or ideas—might have disappeared the unwanted human and ideological objects of repression, but the glaring absence is felt just as strongly, if not more so, as their presence. As Amalia’s blinding ironically further reinforced her political views and way of seeing the world, genocide underscores the import of those unjustly “plucked out” for their beliefs. Tomasa, a native of Los Santos de Maimona (Extremadura) and victim of social injustice (poverty, hunger), was also a casualty of the repression, persecution, and the genocidal cruelty of the regime. She witnessed the slaughter of her entire family. The Falangists under El Carnicero de

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Extremadura (The Butcher of Extremadura) hurled them off a fifty-three-­ meter bridge and fired at them as they attempted to reach the shore. Giménez Micó surmises that they let traumatized Tomasa live so that she “transmitiera el horror a otros, pero ella decide callar, decide que no va a colaborar en la propagación del miedo” (would transmit the horror to others, but she decides to keep quiet, she decides not to collaborate in spreading fear) (198, my translation). Upon scrutiny, the exact intentions of sparing her life may not be so clear-cut, just as her silence—given trauma studies—may not have been her choice. Genocide, such as the Holocaust, is an event without a witness given the fact that the Nazis tried to exterminate the physical witnesses of their crimes. The “inherently incomprehensible and deceptive psychological structure of the event precluded its own witnessing, even by its very victims” (Laub 80). Genocidal trauma is inextricably linked to the inability to bear witness for it “extinguishe[s] philosophically the very possibility of address, the possibility of appealing, or of turning to another. But when one cannot turn to a ‘you,’ one cannot say ‘thou’ even to oneself. The Holocaust created …. a world in which one could not bear witness to oneself” (Laub 82). “The historical imperative to bear witness could essentially not be met during the actual occurrence. … [A]n outstanding measure of awareness and … comprehension of the event” was beyond the witness’s ability “to grasp, transmit or imagine” (Laub 84). Tomasa’s trauma, at this point in the narrative, remains unimaginable and, as a result, untransmittable. When Chacón ultimately represents Tomasa reclaiming her voice, it is not to horrify or fearmonger, but rather to reveal part of history covered up by Francoism (Giménez Micó 198). In the jail, she was placed into solitary confinement and questioned for insubordination, the results of which Sole describes as neglect (sores on her legs, knees, and face, and a nose that looks like a red pepper) and abuse (a red and yellow face that mimics the Nationalist flag) (Chacón 187 [125]). By focusing on the wound (the impact, the bodily harm, the trauma, the effect), Sole removes the weapon (the means of infliction, the architects, and builders of pain that translate into power). The narration removes the agent that objectified the individual and as a result begins a process of de-objectification and rehumanization by honoring the victim’s experience. Sole sees Tomasa. In other words, Tomasa is visible to Sole. It is this affirmation of her that authorizes Tomasa’s subsequent act of witness.

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Brutality and its effects cannot be divested of the perpetrators’ culpability. Those who feel solidarity with the victim can acknowledge, initially articulate, and denounce the effects of institutional draconian abuse. Characters such as Sole—in fulfillment of the author’s intent—hold a system accountable for its actions, but also become catalysts for bearing witness. Later, when Tomasa heals, a fellow inmate comments, “Ya no tiene en la cara la bandera nacional” (Her face isn’t like the Nationalist flag anymore), and another responds, “Entonces, está mejorando” (She’s getting better then) (189 [126]). The polyvalent assertions refer to physical health, political persecution, and psychological well-being. In other words, a repression victim’s recovery is possible and, given the use of the present progressive tense, is a process. Naming and denouncing precede and spur on healing. The fictionalized interdependence reflects factual female political prisoners’ solidarity and the focus on collective good (Feixa and Agustí 216). Tomasa only receives treatment at the insistence of the midwife, Sole, whose empathy, solidarity, and caring lead to a striking series of acts: clandestinely feeding Tomasa, isolated in her cell, by inserting a tube through the keyhole and passing purée. The following simile displays the relationship of caring and solidarity: “[Tomasa] succionó, como un ternero se alimenta de la ubre de su madre” (she began to suck, like a calf, at its mother’s udder) (Chacón 188 [126]). Not only is Sole a midwife, who cares for mothers and the children they bring into the world, her actions are now explicitly compared to that of a cow (sacred symbol of maternity and life). Tomasa undergoes a transformation. Until this scene, she had kept silent about her husband, children, and grandchildren’s massacre at the hands of Falange. As hooks observes, “love acts to transform domination” (103). Kindness toward Tomasa, coupled with her empathy for the victimization of another (i.e., knowledge of Hortensia’s execution), becomes the catalysts to break her silence: “Se acurruca en su dolor. Sobrevivir. Y contar la historia para que la locura no acompañe el silencio … Se levanta y grita. Sobrevivir. Grita con todas sus fuerzas para ahuyentar el dolor. Resistir es vencer. Grita para llenar el silencio con la historia, con su historia, la suya” (She cradles her grief. Survive. And to tell her story, so that silence does not lead to madness. … She gets up and shouts out loud. To survive. She shouts as loud as she can to drive away her grief. To resist is to defeat them. She shouts to fill the silence with history, with her story) (213 [144]). Her post-traumatic, near catatonic silence, shattered once

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she felt connected, seen, and empathetically understood, follows psychoanalytical theory: “Massive trauma precludes its registration; the observing and recording mechanisms of the human mind are temporarily knocked out, malfunction. …The emergence of the narrative [i.e. bearing witness, testimonializing] which is being listened to—and heard—is, therefore, the process and the place wherein the cognizance, the ‘knowing’ of the event is given birth to” (Laub 57). Chacón’s imagery—of suckling (which is maternal-filial, life sustaining, and bond forming), of cradling, of the small enclosed space of the cell, and of the forceful, eruptive shout—points to rebirth. Having suckled empathy in her womb-like cell, Tomasa was reborn with a voice that denounced injustice. Tomasa’s epiphany functions as a synecdoche. Her silence, suffering, and isolation in the cell are hers but also of all the prisoners in Ventas, of all victimized women in postwar Spain, of all victims of Francoist repression, including subsequent generations. The narrator explains: “Es hora de que Tomasa cuente su historia. Como un vómito saldrán las palabras que ha callado hasta el momento. Como un vómito de dolor y rabia. Tiempo silenciado y sórdido que escapa de sus labios desgarrando el aire y desgarrando por dentro” (The moment has arrived for Tomasa to tell her story. The words she has silenced until now coming rushing out like vomit. As if she were vomiting all her grief and anger. All that foul silence she had swallowed now escapes from her lips, tearing at the air and at her insides) (214 [145]). Tomasa is the part that stands for the whole. The silent cell where her story nearly falls into oblivion speaks for the muted history and individual stories of victims of reprisals and persecution that could have fallen into oblivion or dismemory. Dismemory connotes the state of non-­ remembrance, the absence of memory, or the consequence of forgetting— whether passive forgetting, assimilatory forgetting, or mandated erasure. Like a diagnosis of a medical deficiency (such as anemia), dismemory names the lack of the element essential to well-being and underscores the need to remedy the deficiency. Dismemory reflects the incongruous reality of non-expression in the face of traumatic experiences that beg to be represented, transmitted, and bequeathed into/unto the future. Chacón’s narrative femimemory exemplifies the ethical imperative to represent and articulate past trauma “como un vómito de dolor y rabia” (vomiting grief and anger) and to perform the triple function of denunciation, vindication, and moral adjudication. Unlike middle-aged Tomasa, adolescent Elvira represents the younger generation. Two incidents refer to greater gendered realities. The first

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alludes to the phenomenon of las rapadas (developed in another chapter); the second, to rape culture. This inmate in Ventas and future seminal player in the communist resistance indignantly declares, “Me han robado el pelo” (“They’ve stolen my hair”) (150 [99]), when her jailers strip her of her most prized physical attribute, her luscious red hair, for the twofold purpose of humiliating the young woman and selling her locks for their financial benefit. The next incident is a window into the sinister normalization of carnal predation. Two men in Falangist attire present themselves with an order to remove one prisoner from Ventas, Soledad Pimentel (Sole), yet also take Elvira. When approached by jailer La Zapatones (Big Boots), who inspects the order and protests the discrepancy, the Falangist unapologetically states, “Ésta me la llevo para mí, se la traigo mañana” (“I’m taking her for myself. I’ll bring her back tomorrow”), and the female jailer protests, “La última que se llevaron así me la devolvieron hecha una pena  …  La directora dijo que no se llevarían a ninguna más sin papeles” (“The last time that happened, she was a real mess when she was brought back. …The governor gave orders that no prisoners could be taken out without proper papers”) (250–51 [170–71]). When La Zapatones approaches her supervisor, the latter shows impatience and utter indifference at the fate of her wards. The two Falangists exit with two female inmates whom La Zapatones and the supervisor understand to be sexual quarry. This ironic scene, with the maquis disguised as fascists, was a planned escape. The scene acknowledges the rapes that had taken place in the past, lays bare the normalization of sexual predation within the penitentiary system, and reveals the complicity of the authorities in the perpetuation of rape culture. Ultimately, this episode exemplifies systemic traumatization divested of the guise of justice. The pretext of law or interrogation has vanished. In Pepita’s interrogation scene with its concomitant sexual debasement, ocular imagery proves most revealing. Voicing and viewing in the novel can connote articulation and gaze. In many instances, a gaze objectifies, while in others, it reveals perspective. The mention of Pepita’s “impossibly blue” eyes permeates the text. In the following intricately optical scene, the torturers reify her, initially by commenting on her beautiful eyes that become a synecdoche for her as an object of their scopophilic pleasure and prospective torture. The manner in which they regard her reduces her, yet her gaze reveals an awakening, an understanding that humanizes their previous victim. When Pepita is taken to interrogation headquarters, she is the one who was seen, but as we read the text, we readers see (understand, feel, experience) as she has seen, felt,

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and experienced. In this scene, Chacón underscores subjectivity and objectification. As four male interrogators are about to question Pepita, they dialogue about the prisoner they had just questioned, “Esta mujer está muerta” (“This woman is dead”) (176 [116]). They use the demonstrative adjective, verbally objectifying her, as they drag her out by her hands. A jailer outside the room queries with a further objectifying demonstrative pronoun, “¿Se os ha muerto ésa?” (“So she [that one] died on you?”) (176 [117]). The polyvalent dialogic dehumanization the cadaver suffered foreshadows what might happen to Pepita, as she is to occupy the exact room and chair as the dead woman and paradoxically provides the narrator the space to imbue the nameless, objectified decedent with humanity. The omniscient narrator recounts, “La mujer está muerta, y Pepita mira su rostro, y reconoce en él a Carmina … Dos hombres se la llevan ante los ojos espantados de Pepita, mientras otros dos la empujan a ella hacia la habitación que Carmina acaba de abandonar a rastras. Uno de los hombres que tira del cadáver no deja de mirar a Pepita” (She [the woman] is dead, and when Pepita sees her face, she recognizes Carmina …Two men drag her out before Pepita’s terrified gaze, while another two push her into the room Carmina has just been hauled out of. One of the men dragging the body along stares persistently at Pepita) (my emphasis, Chacón 176 [116–17]). Pepita recognizes the previously anonymous dead woman, identifies her, and silently expresses her name. By seeing, Pepita relates to Carmina28 and recalls her daily story of working at the Cebada market. Through her subjectivity of seeing, naming, and knowing, Pepita de-­ objectifies the corpse. Chacón, though, complexly ironizes the de-­objectification Pepita carries out, for it is juxtaposed with the jailer’s objectification of her: “Uno de los hombres que tira del cadáver no deja de mirar a Pepita …. ‘Bonitos ojos que me tienes, ricura’” (One of the men dragging the body along stares persistently at Pepita. “What pretty eyes you’ve got, my beauty”) (Chacón 176 [117]). While her gaze imbued her acquaintance with humanity, the guard strips Pepita of hers. The piropo,29 within this context, is not a compliment; it is verbal, sexualizing debasement, especially as the interrogator banters with his colleague whose shift is about to end: “Espérame, que acabo con esta y nos vamos juntos” (Wait for me. I’ll finish with this one and we can leave together), says one. “Buena prenda, ¿es para ti solito?” (Nice catch. Is she all for you?), says the other. “Y para éste” (For me and him), replies  Carmina was also Chaqueta Negra’s liaison in the resistance.  Heteronormative male to female flattery of her appearance.

28 29

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the former (177 [117]). Within their paradigm as male victors, they reduce Pepita to a thing: “esta” (this one), “prenda” (item), an object to be enjoyed alone or shared. Upon fainting, again she is referred to as a “prenda,” “a catch,” a piece, an item. While Chacón does not explicitly articulate the jailers’ intent to sexually assault her, the narrator reveals that she faints twice. The first time she comes round in the interrogation room, she is soaking wet, the buttons on her blouse are undone, and she “recupera … el espanto” (face[s] her terror anew) (177 [118]). One of the interrogators asks the other “si le gustaban tan blancas” (if he liked them as white as that) and jokes “que si le metían mecha, parecería un cirio” (if they stuck a wick in her she’d look just like a candle) (179 [119]). Inserting a wick mimics phallic penetration. The second time she gains consciousness, she is in a separate room on a stretcher. Rape in war signifies encoded domination of the feminized enemy (Goldstein 371). Given that Franco’s Spain was in a state of war for nearly a decade after the victory, and female Republicans were the enemy, sexual abuse was rampant. Feixa and Agustí assert that female incarceration was fraught with sexual abuses and rapes (Feixa and Agustí 216). González Duro points out that postwar rape differed from that during the official years of the war in that a violently pacified society refrained from open conflict. Rather, postwar rape could only be carried out in institutionally enclosed spaces such as police stations and detention centers. The “Estado viril” (Virile State) authorized its workers and functionaries to rape and torture (162). In spite of the prevalence of historical sexual predation, Chacón does not graphically depict sexual abuse, which would in effect protagonize male perpetrators and debase their victims. Rather, the author alludes without filling in the blanks. The narration does not confirm or deny whether or not the interrogators sexually assaulted Pepita to the full extent possible. Nonetheless, the following constellation of factors prompts the reader to infer the plausibility of guards’ sexual assault: the interrogators’ objectifying sexual banter, the verbal intimidation, Pepita’s state of undress without her recollection, the two instances of her fainting from fear or suppressed memory or fugue from trauma, and her coming to in a supine position. If the purpose of torture is to break down, to humiliate, to denigrate, to transform pain into the regime’s fiction of power, then Chacón liberates the survivors and subverts the fiction of power. Chácón’s narrative, with the debasement of women at the hands of their captors, refuses to articulate the unsaid. The narrative displays (in eloquent silences) that

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actual acts of torture with their concomitant pretext of eliciting information are not the point. Chacón communicates the pervasiveness, the universality of the objectification of women, the shame and reluctance to reveal it, perhaps especially the sexual nature of the debasement. The author confers dignity to her tortured characters in conjunction with the depiction of the abhorrent impact of the torture. The select examples of torture and trauma chosen from La voz dormida include depictions and references to maiming, mutilation, brutal beatings to the face, assaults to a gestating mother and fetus, sensory deprivation, human contact deprivation, starvation, neglect, lacerations, and of course the threat of sexual assault and the institutionally sanctioned systemic extra-interrogational sexual predation. These snapshots that cover a gamut of punitive and capricious actions are a medium that conveys a layered message: the omnipresence and inescapability of merciless abuse in Ventas,30 whose literary treatment—scarcity of minutia, omissions, silences, euphemisms, and analogies—honors the victims, dignifies their vulnerability while denouncing their abuse, reflects the unspeakability of torture, and authorizes testimony.

Torture in Zambrano’s Cinematic Adaptation of Chacón’s La voz dormida: The Male Gaze Chacón’s interrogation scene proves quite dissimilar from Benito Zambrano’s 2012 screen translation.31 While this chapter is not dedicated to the filmic adaptation, this section demonstrates that the director exemplifies the quip “Traduttore, traditore.”32 In the attempt to transfer and translate Chacón’s work to the screen, Zambrano’s transmutation has in fact betrayed the author’s feminist message within a feminist medium. This widely seen film received numerous awards,33 but also received mixed critical reviews, applauding the performances and drive to recover  And Madrilenian interrogation centers.  The scenes in question take place from 1:17:26-1:23:10 on the DVD. 32  Literally, “Translator, traitor.” 33  Winner of three Goya awards (María León for Best New Actress, Ana Wagener for Best Supporting Actress, Carmen Agredano’s “Nana de la hierbabuena” for Best Original Song), nominated for six other Goyas. María León also won the CEC (Cinema Writers Circle Award, Spain 2012) for Best New Actress and the Spanish Actors Union Award for Female Lead, and Ana Wagener won for Best Supporting Performance. Manuel Albert in “Otra conquista de ‘La voz dormida,’” El País 4 February 2012, notes that the Associación de Escritores Cinematográficos de Andalucía granted Zambrano’s film three awards: to the director and the two female leads, María León and Inma Cuesta. 30 31

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memory,34 on the one hand, while faulting the oversimplification of Manicheism that plagues much civil war cinema, on the other.35 34  In the “making of” extras on the DVD, Zambrano states, “Me interesaba la Historia con mayúscula” (I was interested in History with a capital H). Marc Clotet (Felipe, Chaqueta Negra) underscores the “gran responsabilidad histórica” (great historical responsibility). The producer Antonio Pérez qualifies the film as a melodrama from which “sales del cine como un ser humano, sintiendo” (you come out of the movie theater as a human being, feeling). Begoña Maestre (Amalia) reveals the empathy of aiming to “meterte en la piel de estas mujeres” (put yourself in skin [idiomatically: the shoes] of these women), which I posit was Chacón’s aim, even if Zambrano’s execution did not attain it, given the fetishization and objectification, rather than identification. 35  Miguel Ángel Palomo in “La Guerra Civil bajo los ojos del cineasta Benito Zambrano: ‘La voz dormida,’” El País 23 April 2012. Palomo writes: “Zambrano hace gala de una insólita habilidad para acercarse a sus personajes, para mirarlos de forma … tierna y transparente … [Su] relato adolece de cierto esquematismo, … pero su esfuerzo…resulta encomiable, y su dirección de intérpretes, soberana” (Zambrano shows off a unique skill of getting close to his characters, of looking at them tenderly and transparently…His story suffers from a certain schematism, … but his effort is commendable, and his direction of the actors, outstanding) (n.p.). Film critic Boyero underscores the importance of recovery of memory and telling stories of injustice and lack of freedom in the past, yet in terms of Zambrano’s La voz dormida, he states, “Yo preferiría que fuera una película excelente. Incluso buena a secas. No me lo parece. Tampoco lo era Las 13 rosas. La memoria histórica sigue sin encontrar su poeta en el cine español” (I would have preferred it to be an excellent film. Or simply good. I don’t believe that it is. Neither was the 13 Roses) (s.p.). Zambrano’s film, Boyero continues, “Es un universo de verdugos y víctimas retratado con aroma de teatro rancio” (It is a universo of executioners and victims portrayed with the aroma of rancid theater) (n.p.). At the screening of La voz dormida at the San Sebastián film Festival in 2011, Zambrano applauded his film as “serio y riguroso” (serious and rigorous) and underscored the importance of feelings in art. He stated, “Llorar leyendo un libro o viendo es bonito. Hace que sepas que dentro de ti hay una persona. Te reconcilias contigo mismo. Si esa emoción no ocurre, es que no has llegado como creador” (It is lovely to cry reading a book or watching. It makes you know that inside of you there is a person. You reconcile with yourself. If that emotion does not occur, it is that you have not arrived as a creator) (Belinchón n.p.). María Centeno, in “Jubilados de Sevilla reviven la posguerra con la película ‘La voz dormida,’” El País 19 Jan. 2012 (n.p), reports that in January 2012, the Consejería de Igualdad y Bienestar (Council of Equality and Wellbeing) carried out an initiative to promote the interest in retirees in moviegoing so that those carrying the Tarjeta Andalucía would have a 30% discount on movie admission and could attend free with their grandchildren under the age of 12. At the event, Zambrano underscored to the public of seniors, “Muchos de vosotros habéis vivido situaciones muy parecidas y os removerá muchos sentimientos” (Many of you have lived similar situations and this must stir up many emotions) (n.p.). Curiously, the director underscores emotion and attempts to establish a link between the filmgoers and the characters. Clearly, the film has value and speaks to those seniors who lived and lost the war, or lost family members and battled with silence and fear. While it might be meaningful on a personal and therapeutic level, it is unintentionally pernicious to the cause of recovery of memory. As the civil war and postwar cinematic corpus has largely been accused of Manicheism, Zambrano’s film text fits perfectly. When compounded with the antifeminist bent, it is fair to say that Zambrano’s text is caustic.

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Zambano’s rendering of Pepita’s torture scene is spectacle and exemplifies “the way the unconscious of patriarchal society has structured film form” (Mulvey 432). Paradoxically, Laura Mulvey affirms that “phallocentrism in all its manifestations” relies on “the image of the castrated woman to give order and meaning to its world” (432). The cinematic mise-en-­ scene of Pepita’s torture (which is not overly present in the novel) fetishizes the female object on screen and fosters identificatory spectatorial sadistic voyeurism that confirms the ideology of the status quo and “authenticates gender norms” (Friedberg qtd. in Silverman, Threshold 85).36 In spite of the fact that cinema’s “identificatory ‘lure’” bears the possibility to be “one of its greatest political assets since it represents the potential vehicle for spectatorial self-estrangement” (Silverman, Threshold 85), Zambrano upholds patriarchal ideology through the male gaze and female liquidity. The director could have utilized filmic strategies such as visual hapticity to establish intersubjectivity with the experience of trauma, or he could have aligned the point of view with Pepita to fuse spectatorial identification with the purported protagonist of the scene. Instead, Zambrano represents a tear- and mucus-secreting blubbing female object of torture, gazed upon as an object of desire by her love interest. Zambrano mediates his message of heteronormative dichotomization of gender roles (looked-at helpless, weak, whimpering female beloved vs. looking male lover enduring his trauma with dignity). Mediation takes place through the eyes: focusing on the male character, transmitting through the male gaze, and cultivating the male-identified gaze in the spectator. Zambrano made the film for an audience that (consciously or not) adopts a masculine gaze or at least that identifies with the heteronormative cisgender male gaze of patriarchal hegemonic ideology. Such spectatorial identification runs diametrically opposed to Chacón’s narrative. Two filmic interrogation scenes and one post-torture scene encapsulate the male-identified gaze of Zambrano’s film. The three scenes are Pepita’s interrogation, that of Paulino and Felipe, and her brief holding in a cell following the torture. In the first scene, seated with hands tied behind her back, Pepita is in a large office facing a desk, alone with her interrogators. The head interrogator leans against the desk. The takes alternate between 36  Anne Friedberg (qtd. in Silverman’s Threshold of the Visible World): “identification can only be made through recognition, and all recognition is itself an implicit confirmation of the ideology of the status quo. The institutional sanction of stars as ego ideals establishes normative figures, authenticates gender norms” (Silverman 85).

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high and low angles, communicating the official’s superior physical position as well as dominance, and Pepita’s powerlessness in the situation. The other interrogators obediently follow the lead’s commands and nonverbal gestures. They ask about her knowledge of resistants, their whereabouts, and their identities. Felipe and Paulino are dragged in for her to identify them and to witness the interrogation.37 The camera focuses several times on Paulino staring at her as the interrogators question her, rip open her blouse, threaten to apply nipple clamps, and, in effect, electrocute her. She shrieks, pleads, and sobs as abundant tears and mucus flow. During the torture, the light contrasted with shadows draws the viewer’s attention to the well-lit interrogator’s hands, then on the crest of one of Pepita’s breasts. The camera cuts to Paulino in close-up as he regards in anguish. Several frames include Pepita out of focus within the frame as he looks upon the scene. The viewer who sees Paulino watching identifies with him, not her. The following scene is juxtaposed with the previous. Within this almost nonverbal scene, composed of alternating cuts from Paulino’s interrogation to Felipe’s, the former’s gaze protagonizes. It is the central focus as indicated by the close-ups and extreme close-ups of his face and eyes as he looks upon his mate’s interrogation. These sequences establish Paulino as the ideological center and identificatory gaze for the spectator. The viewer sees him seeing, watching (eyes well-lit within this chiaroscuro), as his silhouetted comrade in penumbra, in exquisite nakedness, is beaten as he dangles from the ceiling. Paulino is tortured, in medium shots, baring his torso and arms in cruciform. The lighting accentuates his musculature. The two male characters are in penumbra, chiaroscuro, or simply in silhouette. In the close-ups of Paulino’s face, he holds a defiant look. He becomes not just the subject who feels pain, but also the seeing subject who, like in the Pepita sequence, views with opprobrium the objectification of the Other.38 Whereas Pepita’s nakedness can only be described as vulnerable exposure, Paulino and his comrade’s is cloaked nudity. Hers connotes shame, while theirs is dignified martyrdom. Similarly, in Paulino’s

37  First, Felipe is brought in. Once he identifies himself as her brother-in-law, Paulino and another battered detainee are brought in for her to identify which of the two is Chaqueta Negra. She does not identify either one. 38  In a barely audible voice, during a pause from his own interrogation, as he gazes upon his comrade’s torture, he states “Cordobés.”

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torture scene in which he is conferred dignity, there is barely any sound. Poignant music dominates over his lower volume screams. The next scene takes place after Pepita has been interrogated, after her employer has contacted his powerful father, and the latter don Gonzalo has used his influence to ensure her release. A long profile shot reveals Pepita in a cell entirely naked, seated in fetal position. She stands when don Gonzalo, dressed in military uniform, and the jailer approach to unlock the cell. As she draws near them, framed in a medium shot that reveals her nudity, she purportedly attempts to shield her breasts from view, but one is exposed. Next, medium shots and close-ups frame Pepita and don Gonzalo, together in profile, then individually frontally. He chastises her. She whimpers. He patronizingly wipes body fluids—what appears to be a mélange of tears, mucus, and blood—from under her nose, first with his handkerchief and then with his unmistakably phallic finger. In this gloomy yet partially well-lit cell, bright light illuminates her naked body or body parts in long, medium, and medium close shots. Of particular note are the shots that frame her head and bare bust in her dialogue with don Gonzalo. The chiaroscuro torture scenes of Paulino/Chaqueta Negra and Felipe/El Cordobés juxtaposed with Pepita’s torture scene, and cell scene are in stark contrast. The male characters are enshrouded in the dignity of darkness and the melancholy melody. Of the three interrogations, dignity is only conferred on the two male detainees, not on Pepita. She is a sight to behold and her screams to be heard. They, on the other hand, are sights to be revered and admired, enshrouded in mystery or ignorance on the part of the viewer regarding the exact details of their trauma, its impact on them, and their vociferations to it. Ultimately, the spectator is to identify with the male subjects and particularly with Paulino whose burning gaze, his seeing-looking male perspective, dominated the screen as he regarded both Pepita and Felipe during their respective torments. The viewer must ponder why the lighting is so different between the two torture scenes. Lighting is a directorial choice. Zambrano chose to fragment and fetishize Pepita, while he cloaked the male characters in silhouette and chiaroscuro. As Felipe/El Cordobés hung from the ceiling by his chained hands or wrists, his genitals were at his tormenter’s eye level while the latter punched him. Yet because of the enshrouding darkness, in spite of being in an undeniably vulnerable and exposed position during the beating, his genitals and likely pained expressions were kept from the viewer. In other words, in spite of being defenseless in the narrative of the

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scene, unlike Pepita, Felipe was not represented as emotionally bare or fragile on screen. Referencing the film Looking for Langston, Silverman states, “‘horror’ and ‘contempt’ … are by no means incompatible with sexual desire. On the contrary, this repudiation often provides the bedrock of male, heterosexual desire” (Threshold 113). The spectatorial horror and contempt of Pepita’s torture scene might foster repudiation-eroticization. This becomes perfectly evident when Zambrano’s staging of Pepita’s interrogation is contrasted with that of her male counterparts. Pepita on screen is the object of both scopophilia and voyeurism. Scopophilia is “the pleasure in looking” in which the human object of scopophilia is subjected to a “controlling and curious gaze” (Mulvey 434). Voyeurism is the desire and curiosity to see “the private and forbidden” (Mulvey 434). The darkness of the film-viewing environment coupled with the “brilliance of the shifting patterns of light and shade on the screen helps to promote the illusion of voyeuristic separation” (Mulvey 434). In other words, the viewer has the “illusion of looking in on a private world” (Mulvey 435). In a sexually imbalanced world, “pleasure in looking has been split between active/ male and passive/female,” or masculine/masculinized looking agent and feminine/feminized looked-at object, the latter of which is characterized by “to-be-looked-at-ness” (Mulvey 436). The being-tortured (present progressive) Pepita scene fuses spectacle and narrative. It tells the tale of female interrogation, but her “to-be-looked-at-ness” of the spectacle rises above the story. In other words, her objectification (transformation in or reduction to a looked-at human object) overrides the narrative function of the scene. In this sense, the spectator—who participates as an active spectatorial viewing subject—complicity aligns his/her gaze with the male-­ identified gaze, which includes that of the director/camera as well as that of the agential interrogators. The combined gaze of the males in the film and that of the spectator equals identification between the two. The well-­ lit close-up and close to medium shots of Pepita’s eroticized-repudiated face and fragmented body parts play to both fetishistic scopophilia and voyeurism.39 According to Mulvey:

39  “[C]lose-ups of legs … or a face … integrate into the narrative a different mode of eroticism. One part of a fragmented body destroys  …  the illusion of depth demanded by the narrative” (Mulvey 437).

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fetishistic scopophilia builds up the physical beauty of the [female] object, transforming it into something satisfying in itself  …  [V]oyeurism, on the contrary, has associations with sadism: pleasure lies in ascertaining guilt (immediately associated with castration), asserting control and subjugating the guilty person through punishment or forgiveness … Sadism demands a story,  …  forcing a change in another person, a battle of will and strength,  …  victory/defeat, all occurring in linear time with a beginning and an end. Fetishist scopophilia  …  can exist outside of linear time [and focus] … on the look alone. (Mulvey 438)

This can be ambiguous as seen in the films of Alfred Hitchcock. Zambrano similarly blends both. While the male gaze and male-identified gaze transform the female torture victim into a scopophilic fetish (via individual body parts) and a voyeuristic object of sadistic punishment, in mainstream cinema, the bearer of the male-identified gaze cannot objectify the heteronormative male on screen. Given the “active/passive heterosexual division of labour” in non-alternative or mainstream cinema that controls narrative structure, the “principles of the ruling ideology” (heteronormative phallocentrism) preclude the sexual objectification of heteronormative male characters: “Man is reluctant to gaze at his exhibitionist like … The man controls the film fantasy and also emerges as the representative of power in a further sense: as the bearer of the look of the spectator, transferring it behind the screen to neutralise the extradiegetic tendencies represented by woman as spectacle” (Mulvey 437). Although Zambrano sexualizes Pepita (purported enemy of the Nationalist interrogators), he does not afford his male characters (also enemies) similar treatment in spite of the fact that feminization of the enemy is common practice. Goldstein hypothesizes that male combatants feminize the enemy “enacting rape symbolically (and sometimes literally), thereby using gender to symbolize domination” (356). Likewise, the pervasive practice of castration either before or after killing the enemy is “[a]nother way to feminize conquered enemies” (357).40 Curiously in Paulino’s torture scene, he is not feminized precisely because the viewer is to align his/her perspective with him. In spite of being tortured and beaten, these are “manly,” non-feminizing, non-castrating, dignified representations of their beatings. The camera is slightly below Paulino, just below his eye level, thus conferring a position of respect, perhaps  A practice pervasive across cultures that has been practiced since antiquity.

40

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reverence, and at times at his eye level. His position, reminiscent of a crucifixion—further cemented by the cross in the background, that if not noted by the spectator would likely register at a subconscious level— inscribes this character into the tradition of the archetypal unjustly adjudicated revered victim (be it Christ, the subject of Goya’s Third of May, or others). Not unlike the feminization and (symbolic or literal) castration of the male enemy, “rape of women” is a “‘normal’ accompaniment to war” (Goldstein 362). The purpose of “rape in war seems to be to humiliate the enemy males by despoiling their valued property” and establishes the victor’s jurisdiction in the conquest in this act of torture (Goldstein 362).41 By focusing on Paulino gazing upon Pepita as her nipples are electrocuted (witnessing without being an empathetic co-owner of her pain), Paulino plays his phallocentric role to perfection, for he is humiliated by his powerlessness as Pepita, his “valued property,” is despoiled in an act of “conquest.” Zambrano’s uneven treatment of these torture victims reveals a grave gender disparity that reinforces patriarchal norms and subjugates women. Spanish cinema boasts a plethora of indelibly disturbingly violent scenes. Two quite disparate films that feature haunting torture scenes require mention to lay bare and contextualize the erotic nature of Zambrano’s torture of Pepita, an eroticized looked-at female object and victim. Pilar Miró’s El crimen de Cuenca and Agustí Villaronga’s Tras el cristal depict sadistic scenes of torment, the former for interrogation, the latter for revenge. Like Zambrano’s scene, both Miró and Villaronga’s scenes pervert the ideal of justice. Miro’s scenes include gendered, sexualized, yet not eroticized, violence (ripping the detainee’s moustache off with pliers—masculine weapon, masculine wound—hanging him from his genitals, depriving his lactating wife from the relief of her infant nursing her painfully turgid breast). Villaronga’s pedophilia victim-cum-torturer avenges his Nazi-now-paralyzed-perpetrator with demeaning masturbatory and fellatory acts, using the male organ and ejaculate as weapons. Both these films, with their haunting lighting insinuating the fear and macabre of gothic, and the close-ups and extreme close-ups of the terror in the victims’ tormented eyes and grimacing expressions, turn the sexual against the subject, but do not foster scopophilic, voyeuristic, or erotic pleasure in the viewer. Zambrano’s scene, on the other hand, eroticizes his  Goldstein draws upon McKinnon, Wilden, and Mostov.

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female subject with the scenes of Pepita seated, bare-breasted, openly exposed, or with close-ups and lighting that wash out blemishes and illuminate shadows, as she lightly trembles, her lip quivers, and tears threaten to spillover as she looks up. Zambrano’s soft porn depiction of eroticized female fear of an object to-be-looked-at and acted upon runs perfectly counter to Chacón’s denunciation of the horror of sexualized violence against her characters. Zambrano’s melodrama is a lachrymose visual and sound narrative that displays a river of tears and mucus to accompany feminine sniveling. Pepita secretes blood, tears, saliva, and mucus. Her male counterparts boast bloodstained faces, sweat, bloody wounds, and contusions. Feminist criticism on female corporeality has revealed the inferiorization of women through the representation of their bodies as feeble, incontrollable, unpredictable, disorderly, defective, oozing, secreting, viscous, drippy, and permeable.42 The misogynistic binary oppositionality of phallocentrism—rooted in Western philosophy—has coded the male gender as transcendent and rational, while coding the corporeal female gender not only incapable of rationality (Shildrick and Price 2) but also a threat to reason (Grosz 4–5). While feminist approaches to the irrational, uncontrollable feminine fluidity construct, appropriate, re-signify, and vindicate the misogynistic depiction of female corporeality, Zambrano’s film affirms the gender-coded split that inferiorizes women. Zambrano’s film (perhaps unintentionally) traitorously undermines the gender-sensitive and feminist intent of Chacón’s novel. He transmutes a gynocentric narrative transmitted through a feminist medium into a cliché Hollywoodesque film that objectifies and eroticizes the looked-at passive female object, cementing the male active-looking gaze as well as the agential role in the narrative. The two gendered torture scenes in the film are strikingly different. Paulino fights against his mistreatment, while Pepita— assuming a damsel in distress attitude—prettily pleads for mercy as her nudity and delicate vulnerability are laid bare. This film fully affirms the dominant fiction of male agency and thus nullifies some of the most significant subversive and vindicatory aspects of Chacón’s novel.

 This is a synthesis of Grosz, Yates, Shildrick, and Price.

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Maternal-Sororal Interdependency, Matrilineage, and Matrilineal Legacy Healthy bonds between and among women subvert patriarchal domination. This section of the chapter studies facets of Chacón’s feminist subversion via the maternal: intergenerational interdependency, literal matrilineage, and the written transmission and the political perpetuation of the matrilineal legacy. Sororal and maternal relationships are essential to the subversion of the regime’s mythic construct of “red women” as demonized domestic enemies (Matousek 70). Underlying these relationships that respond to the needs of others is the gendered moral reasoning Carol Gilligan terms an ethic of care. Inter-feminine solidary bonds reveal moral empathy (Matz 103) as well as the moral imperative of femimemory. Unlike male bonding that is “an accepted and affirmed aspect of patriarchal culture,” female bonding is “not possible within patriarchy” and, bell hooks proclaims, is “an act of treason” (hooks 14). Therefore, “political solidarity between females expressed in sisterhood goes beyond positive recognition of the experiences of women and even shared sympathy for common suffering. Feminist sisterhood is rooted in shared commitment to struggle against patriarchal injustice…Political solidarity between women always undermines sexism and sets the stage for the overthrow of patriarchy” (hooks 15). In a parallel fashion, maternity inherently poses a threat to phallocratic rule. Audre Lorde posits, “For women, the need and desire to nurture each other is not pathological but redemptive, and it is within that knowledge that our real power is rediscovered. It is this real connection which is so feared by a patriarchal world. Only within a patriarchal structure is maternity the only social power open to women” (111).

Maternity and Biological Matrilineage Chacón’s feminist and gynocentric birth scene establishes literal matrilineage and underscores matrilineal symbolic order. Hortensia’s childbirth perfectly validates female bonds, vindicates the feminine, and reveals the inefficacy of the medico-patriarchal presence in this most quintessential of female experiences. The soon to be executed birthing mother had been in labor throughout the night and the morning. In spite of the midwife’s considerable experience, the labor was challenging. The midwife Sole comments to the doctor the difficulty of the birth (the child had been crowning and retreating) and appeals for his assistance, to which he retorts,

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“¿Y qué quiere que haga yo? No soy tocólogo” (What do you want me to do, Sole? I am not an obstetrician) (206 [139]), acknowledging his lack of experience in obstetrics. The female presence and interdependence is ubiquitous and omnipresent: during the seven additional hours of labor (a uniquely female experience), fellow inmate, Mercedes (a woman), accompanies Hortensia (a woman) and receives her instructions for the child (female) to be raised by her sister (a woman). She ultimately delivers the daughter. The significant role of the doctor, post-partum, will be to ensure the child will go into the care of Pepita, rather than to a foundlings’ home. He does not play this vital role as a medical professional, rather as a man of privilege in patriarchal Nationalist Spain. Yet within the hyperfeminine space of the birthing room in this prison largely for female anti-fascist political prisoners, the male doctor is nearly superfluous. The intergenerational and interdependent feminine overrides the oppressive “virile State.” The midwife Sole, who partners with the doctor don Fernando during the delivery, is a mother figure to Hortensia, the latter of whom gives birth to a daughter she names, Tensi, short for Hortensia, after herself (207 [140]). The act of naming reveals authority as well as order. Contrasted with the patronymic practice indicative of patrilineal genealogy through which patriarchal power is not only recorded but also passed down from father to son ad  infinitum, Hortensia’s matronymic inaugurates a maternal ontology. The legacy of this origin story set in an exponentially feminine space will attest to and perpetuate the fight for (retroactive) women’s rights and human rights. Chacón’s feminist intent becomes more apparent when contrasted with Zambrano’s filmic translation. The film establishes the doctor as the authority in both power and knowledge. Zambrano’s disheveled, unclean doctor has a phallic cigarette dangling from his mouth throughout the medical procedure. Zambrano frames the naming of the child as the father’s wish, rather than the mother’s, thus eliminating the overt matrilineage evident in Chacón’s work. Naming is power; a name reflects ontology. At first blush, Zambrano’s scene is innocuous. However, a constellation of factors commandeers the power of maternity. The phallic presence of the cigarette-smoking purported authority on female matters, the erasure of the midwife’s decades of experience, and the insertion of the invisible paternal presence and patrilineage supplanting the maternal genealogy transform a pivotal feminist ontological point in Chacón’s novel into a scene in which systemic phallic presence invades female space. Zambrano’s patriarchy subsumes maternity.

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Chacón’s scene encapsulates the recovery of matrilineage. Just as Hortensia’s daughter recoups her mother through femimemory transcribed in the bequeathed notebooks and comes to understand her matrilineage with all that it connotes, so do the readers of Chacón’s novel. Ventas is a gynocentric space at war with phallocracy and virile phallocentrism that aims to subjugate it. The novel is about recovery of gynocentric memory, about empowerment and resistance, about transgenerational and transformational bonds between and among women.

Hortensia’s Notebooks: Transformational Literacy and Transgenerational Legacy Matrilineal heritage subverts the patriarchal rule of the regime, especially if we consider the inheritance Hortensia bequeathed to her namesake daughter Tensi: the written word. The subject of literacy and writing in various episodes in the novel becomes a vehicle through which chauvinistic beliefs are revealed, such as the belief that women need not be literate for they cannot reason like men or that it is pointless given they are meant for domestic tasks. Chacón highlights that the Republic made it possible for Hortensia to learn to read and write. The notebooks, then, are a further testament to the progress and social well-being of the Republic that Hortensia passes on to her daughter. Hortensia’s notebooks are her production, just as is Tensi. Both gestated in the exponentially female locus of Ventas. The overarching patriarchal, misogynistic, hierarchical, and oppressive structure of the prison is not only mitigated but also fully subverted by the feminine/feminist interdependence and mutuality that cultivate the betterment of all. Hortensia’s transformation from illiterate female product of male-dominated society43 to contemplative and reflective writer who ponders her role, that of her fellow female inmates, and that of her daughter is made possible within this gynocentric environment. In the face of the imposed erasure and oblivion/amnesia, her writing is a testament to her authenticity, her existence, her ontological matrilineage, and her literacy through which her legacy influences the future. Female literacy and women’s rights are inextricably linked. By 1920, only 40.5% of Spain’s female population was literate, that is, capable of basic reading and writing (Bieder 160; referencing Botrel 1987, 110).  With the concomitant misogynistic thinking that literacy is of no use to a woman.

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“Republicanism and feminism went hand in hand” (Johnson 215). Education was a “primary concern for feminists in the lead-up to the Second Spanish Republic” (Johnson 217). The Republic and the concomitant betterment of status and opportunities for women reflect the trajectory in part of the increasing literary and thought production of seminal female writers,44 as evident in the creation of the National Association of Women in 1918, and journals such as La Voz de la Mujer, Mundo Femenino and El Pensamiento Femenino (Johnson 215). Revolutionary second-wave feminist Hélène Cixous proclaims, “It is by writing, from and toward women, and by taking up the challenge of speech which has been governed by the phallus, that women will confirm women in a place other than that which is reserved in and by the symbolic, that is, in a place other than silence” (Cixous 324). “Woman must write herself: must write about women and bring women to writing from which they have been driven away as violently as from their bodies—for the same reasons, by the same law, with the same fatal goal. Woman must put herself into the text—as into the world and into history—by her own movement” (Cixous, “Laugh of the Medusa” 319). Woman “must write herself, because this is the invention of a new insurgent writing which, when the moment of her liberation has come, will allow her to carry out the indispensable ruptures and transformations in her history” (Cixous 322). Cixous encourages “woman’s seizing the occasion to speak, hence shattering entry into history, which has always been based on her suppression. To write […  is] to forge for herself the antilogos weapon” (Cixous 323, emphasis in the original). Similarly, Audre Lorde writes that “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house” (“Master’s” 334), and Luce Irigaray urges that woman must write with the white ink of mother’s milk and the red ink of menstrual blood. Within a context of both gender oppression and political repression, Hortensia’s notebooks incontrovertibly defy the hegemonic structure and prove the impossibility of silencing her voice and that of those like her. These notebooks bequeathed by a mother to her daughter are counter-histories that demythify the dictatorship’s official history (Matousek 80). If Francoist reprisals, repression, and genocide aimed to erase all traces of nonconformity (including retroactive nonconformity) to the tenets of New Spain, the efforts were in vain. The repurposing of the model prison of Ventas, whose objective during the Republic  Significant list on p. 215 of Johnson’s text.

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was rehabilitation and reintegration into society, as an instrument of punishment and purging, ultimately served to intensify and further cement the movement in thought and action for human rights. The inmates embraced their abjection as a vehicle of transformation. Ventas became a training ground, an educational center, and a support network for female political prisoners charged with crimes of rebellion and disaffect toward the illegitimate fascist regime. In spite of the fact that the living conditions in Ventas were subhuman, the inmates created a community based on the tenets of interdependence, mutuality, solidarity, and contribution (Feixa and Agustí 216) inherent to the defeated Republic. Survival, reciprocal care, self-acceptance, and development were acts of resistance. In the face of erasure and silence, living to tell the tale, transgenerationally transmit memory, and have others prostheticly suture those memories into their own with the concomitant empathy (Landsberg) that vanquishes the victors vindicates the rojas relegated to oblivion, and takes back their culture that had been plundered by the regime (Benjamin).45 Killing human beings does not render their ideas dead and lifeless. Rising to power through force might result in a won war, but it does not win over the opponents. As Miguel de Unamuno is known to have proclaimed in dissidence when the military rebels took over Salamanca, “Venceréis, pero no convenceréis” (You will conquer, but will not convince). Replete with her story and the stories of her conquered but not convinced incarcerated comrades, Hortensia’s writings retrospectively liberate them from the strictures and structure of oppression. Her collective counternarrative agentially redeems the human objects of erasure. Both Chacón and her characters break off from what Gilbert and Gubar in “Infection in the Sentence” term “literary paternity,” a type of female writer ventriloquism of internalized patriarchal canonical style. Chacón breaks away through her use of a polyphonic discourse that destabilizes and makes impossible a hegemonic single-voiced discourse. The space provided to the symphony of female voices (including those adapted and adopted from the author’s years of testimonial research), as Colmeiro has discerned, suggests Bakhtinian heteroglossia: “the weaving of different voices in the polyphonic novel  …  [celebrates] voices recovered from silence and oblivion” (198). This subversive literary tool, wielded by a feminist pen, becomes an anti-phallo-logos weapon. Taught to read and 45  Walter Benjamin theorizes that cultures and the hegemony are based on plundering the cultures they have dominated.

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write by her fellow female inmates, Hortensia has no literary father and hence is freshly birthed (to continue with the lineage metaphor) from a collective of literate (if not literary) mothers. The birthing of her text roughly coincides with Tensi’s birth and becomes the daughter’s inheritance (as a material object of cultural transmission) and her heritage (the matrilineal legacy of the past that continues into the future). The process of transmission or inheritance of the traumatic past entails an affiliative connection with the owner/s of the lived experiences. Postmemory can be understood not just as a bequeathing of the painful past or an inheritance of trauma, but more significantly an intentional awareness and acceptance of the endurance of the experiences’ relevance. It is the purposeful acknowledgment of the difficult past’s meaning and meaningfulness, as well as the assumption (taking into oneself) of the trauma as part of one’s own story. The shared memory is both intergenerational and transgenerational. It speaks to the link between the generations—the one who lived it and feels the reciprocal bond with the one who receives it—and across generations—based on the promise of transmission of the legacy into the future. In The Generation of Postmemory, Hirsch states, “Familial structures of mediation and representation facilitate the affiliative acts of past generations … The idiom of the family can become the lingua franca” (39, emphasis in the original, quoted in McGuire 11). In other words, transfer and transmission of memory across generations occurs within the affiliative intimacy of the familial, what Hirsch deems “transgenerational empathy” (136) or what Cecilia Sosa defines as “feelings of kinship … configured in the wake of loss” (2, quoted in McGuire 11). The children of silence—through the representations and expressions of post-dictatorial memory—become a “paradigmatic emblem” (McGuire 5).46 As a result, individual stories that aim to rectify go beyond the individual and become the story of a collective. Hortensia creates an ontological moment of literary/literate maternity for Tensi in which freedom of thought comes into being. This literal and metaphorical maternal-filial transgenerational bequeathing is echoed in the host of younger characters or (surrogate) daughters that enact familial ideals through activism and resistance. The notebooks become a relic of the meta-feminine environment, interdependence, and political thought. If considered a cultural product, it differs greatly from the culture of the victors for the hegemon has not plundered, subsumed, or cannibalized it.  McGuire refers to Argentina.

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As perhaps a relic or heirloom transmitted and transferred, it also carries with it the power of the word, of “constancia” (constancy) and “constatación” (proof) counter to the phallo-logos, referenced by Cixous. That is to say, the notebooks are the “anti-logos weapon.” As transgenerationally transmitted written works that were communicated orally/aurally as well as read, Hortensia’s writings are what I will term “gynologos,” feminist defenses that sever or perhaps overthrow the rule of the phallus. Chacón’s novel disinters female voices at multiple levels. Similar to nineteenth-century women writers, Tensi’s ownership and stewardship of her mother’s notebooks “debilitated patriarchal prescriptions, and recovered and remembered the lost foremothers who could help [her] find [her] distinctive female power” (Gilbert and Gubar 19). Just as Tensi will reinscribe her mother into her own life and history, Chacón reinscribes her characters (some of whom are fashioned from testimonials) into the imaginary of collective memory. Hortensia’s notebooks function not unlike family photos as interpreted by Marianne Hirsch: “in lives shaped by exile, emigration and relocation [I would add purging] … where relatives are dispersed and relationships shattered, photographs provide more than usual some illusion of continuity over time and space” (Family Frames xi). Building on Hirsch’s theory of postmemory, in his study of the transmission of memory/memories from one generation to the subsequent generation within the post-dictatorial Argentine context, Geoffrey McGuire begins his study with Gabriela Bettini’s familial photograph “Conversación con Antonio.” The still “strategically” stresses “the impossibility of intergenerational dialogue” (1) and places the viewers’ focus, not on the disappeared grandfather of the (meta)portrait but on the granddaughter-(meta) spectator who regards the grandfather’s portrait. The photographic composition triangulates the granddaughter’s gaze at the portrait of the grandfather who appears to gaze (outside of his frame) at the Nunca más (Never Again) report that the granddaughter holds open in her hand. This photograph of remembrance underscores essential elements in the transmission of memory from one generation to the next: the subjectivity of the contemporary heirs of trauma who wish to connect to the past; the traumatic first-hand experiences of protagonists’ who may not have been able to express their memory; and the impartial investigation, evidence, and summation of individual or collective repression (McGuire 2). Through a triangulated look, postmemory involves transgenerational identification

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with prior-generation victim-subjects represented in a cultural product (Hirsch, Generation 156, 162). Hirsch particularly referenced the portrait of Anne Frank and the perpetrator photo of the boy in the Warsaw ghetto. With the latter, the viewer regards him as his trepidatious gaze rests on someone or something beyond the frame. The spectatorial look becomes both affiliative and protective with the retrospective knowledge of the internment and genocide that followed (162). The viewer hurts with and for the young boy. This photo, read as an exemplar of the aesthetics of remembrance, evokes transgenerational empathy (Hirsch, Generation 136) and inspires repair and redress. With regard to the photos of his mother, French philosopher Rolland Barthes metaphorizes the umbilical cord, recognizing himself within the reading of the picture, enacting “identity as familiality,” in the effort to “heal the wound made of love and death” (Hirsch, Family Frames 2). Similarly, Tensi, born just before her mother’s execution, is forever linked to the progenitor she never knew through this material and literary bond. The notebooks are the physical present, a relic of a lived past. They attest to as well as deny/defy Hortensia’s death, for she persists in them and the remembrance they conjure. As a transgenerational testament, they affirm life in the face of death. As Hortensia instructs in her final letter, Pepita reads the notebooks to Tensi “en voz alta, para que su hija sepa que siempre estará con ella” (out loud  …  so that her daughter will know she is always with her) (229 [154]). Read aloud, they gain the quality of orally transmitted testimony. The transgenerational legacy implements the desire to perpetuate into the future the knowing of those loved and lost. This written orality and oral writing subvert the phallo-logocentrism. The hegemonic logos, as official discourse associated with the authority of the written word, is implicitly and explicitly gendered in the masculine and has consequently excluded and/or inferiorized the feminine. The narrative appropriates and transmutes the vehicle of hegemonic discourse (the written word as evident in the official decrees) while brandishing the anti[phallo]-logos weapon of gyn-orality. As these modalities overlap and intersect, Chacón subverts the official hegemonic discourse that had excluded both Republicans in general and Republican women in particular. This counternarrative is what Colmeiro terms a recollective memory. Recounted, voiced in the feminine, it becomes a polyphonic femimemory.

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Transgenerational Political Legacy The bequeathed notebooks translate into Tensi’s matrilineal political legacy. Hortensia made a “commitment to language,” understood “the power of language,” and reclaimed “that language which has been made to work against us [women]” (Lorde 43). Lorde asserts, “In the transformation of silence into language and action … each … [must] examine her function in that transformation and to recognize her role within that transformation” (Lorde 43). The maternally appropriated power of language—a testimonial to maternal love, political engagement, and the fight as a female warrior—planted the seed for the daughter to continue the work of the mother (Ruiz Serrano 176) as an active member of the Communist Party and anti-fascist resistant during the dictatorship. Likewise, Elvira, a mere sixteen years old when she escapes from jail, functions as the “daughter” of her fellow prisoners and inherits Hortensia’s role of resistance fighter when she joins the maquis (Matousek). Two percent of guerrilla fighters were women, in other words 500–600 of the 25,000–30,000 total fighters (Moreno Gómez, Abella 18, Díez 108; quoted in Ruiz Serrano 174). When Felipe/Mateo, Hortensia’s widower and Tensi’s absent father, breaks out of jail, he requests Elvira speak to him about Tensi. When she seeks clarification as to the mother or the daughter, he states his desire to know of both. The fusion and confusion of the matronymic in the elicited testimony invokes a ghostly presence, a felt absence that persists in the current moment. As hauntological medium47 and as an heir to Hortensia’s teachings and that of her other Ventas family members, Celia/Elvira can transmit the memory of Hortensia because it has become a part of her. She internalized and reciprocated their affection. As their protegee, “En la cárcel había aprendido todo lo que sabía de la política” (She had learnt all she knew about politics in Ventas gaol), and as a maquis following her jail break, “Era lista, a los dieciséis sabía más que muchos que mueren de viejos” (She was intelligent too, and at sixteen knew a lot more than many who die of old age) (261 [178]). After her group of maquis is exterminated, Elvira joins the 6000–7000 maquis that entered Spain from exile (called Operación Reconquista de España [Operation Reconquest of Spain]) in 1944 led by the communists. Following the

47  I use “medium” in the paranormal sense, one who channels a spirit, like Herbal in The Carpenter’s Pencil studied in Chap. 2.

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unsuccessful mission, she went into exile in Czechoslovakia to continue the anti-fascist fight. Furthermore, it is imperative to note the legacy of the tireless fight against pervasive misogyny. Chacón highlights that gender bias persists regardless of political ideology. Unsurprisingly, male jailers, Nationalist officials, female guards, and prison clergy subjected milicianas and guerrilleras to discrimination and mistreatment, but also, paradoxically, male milicianos and guerrilleros demeaned their female colleagues. Hortensia’s husband El Cordobés, who fights for social equality as a communist freedom fighter, chauvinistically looks down upon his wife’s desire to be part of the guerrilla and to become literate. Felipe disapproved of Hortensia’s role in the guerrilla based on her sex and did not understand or acknowledge that, once captured, the torture and humiliation she endured were more difficult than his life as a maquis in the hills (Ruiz Serrano 176). The sexism of this freedom fighter who opposed female literacy and militancy resurfaces after his spouse’s execution, when sixteen-year-old Elvira (now known as Celia) joins the guerrilla. In spite of her strength, intelligence, and excellent combat skills, he reduces her to her sex: “Pero era mujer, aunque pareciera muchacho, y las mujeres no deben andar como gatas salvajes por el monte” (Still, even though she looked like a boy, she was a woman, and women should not be prowling like wild cats up in the hills) (261 [178]), “era mujer, y las mujeres no deben vivir como alimañas en el monte” (But she was a woman, and women shouldn’t live like wild creatures in the hills) (262 [179]). When they disagree over killing a hostage and she objects to the senseless loss of life, he turns his back and dismisses her: “Mirando hacia atrás, a Elvira, levantará los hombros,  …  mientras resopla, hará un ademán de desaliento apartando el aire con la mano a la altura del oído como quien ahuyenta una mosca. Definitivamente, con las mujeres no se puede hablar de política” (He looks back at Elvira and shrugs his shoulders. He …  puffs with disgust and in despair waves his hand next to his ear, like someone trying to swat a fly. It’s impossible; there’s no talking of politics with women) (265 [181]). Not only does one of Elvira’s male comrades undermine her political savvy and reasoning because of her gender, but another also reduces her to an erotic thing. Each comrade reinforces the archaic gender dichotomy of man-mind and woman-body. Elvira/Celia’s purported equal in the anti-­ fascist fight, El Tordo, ogles her and sexually objectifies her to his male

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companions: “está buena moza” (She’s beautiful) (293 [200]).48 The same comrade also flippantly refers to her as “ésta” (this one), which is the same designator torturers utilize with their female victims. She unmistakably puts him in his place: “Lo dijo en un tono que no dejaba lugar a dudas. Se llamaba Celia, y no estaba dispuesta a que nadie la llamara ‘esta’, ni a que los hombres la dejaran fuera de la conversación” (She said this in a voice that left no room for doubt. She was called Celia, and she was not prepared for anyone to say “this one here” to her, or to be left out of a conversation by any man) (292 [200]). “Raised” by her putative political mothers in Ventas, she had cultivated not only political commitment but also self-worth that leads to a sense of gender equality. In spite of the efforts of republicana thought leaders such as Nelken, Campoamor, Kent, and Montseny, Chacón exposes the gender discrimination and sexualization that the milicianas and guerrilleras experienced as firmly rooted in Spanish mentality (Ruiz Serrano 176). Elvira’s presence “en el monte” lays bare the two-part matrilineal legacy: fighting for Republican ideals against the Nationalists, and fighting for her rights as a woman and that of other women against her male comrades. The vindication of the feminine takes place in conjunction with the denunciation of patriarchal inferiorization of the feminine and gender discrimination. The matrilineal legacy of the younger generation exposes and subverts the pervasive sexism of those who, ironically, fought for equality as well as the exponential misogyny of the regime. Regardless of political ideology, the patriarchal construct of woman is as a lesser being.

Conclusions and Hopeful Beginnings The Republican women, omitted from official historiography, are the “fantasmas de la desmemoria” (the ghosts of dismemory/cultural amnesia) whose presence provides an opportunity to draw them into memory and grant them justice (Corbalán 41). This haunting makes manifest the “moral imperative to tell a collective history that needs to be told; the imperative of a memory that must be voiced; a haunting ghost that needs to be put to rest” (Colmeiro 201). The relevance of historical memory goes beyond political restoration, as it aspires to moral vindication 48  I disagree with Caistor’s translation in this instance. Rather, the expression is more colloquial and less reverential than “She’s beautiful.” Perhaps, “She’s hot” or “She’s a looker.”

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(Loureiro 227), and is ethically committed to overcoming the “amnesia of the Spanish imagination” and the “indifference of narrative in previous decades” (Martín Galván iii). As a post-dictatorial narrative that “mourn[s] the political and moral defeat of the regimes’ [sic] opponents and vindicate[s] their utopian discourses” (DiGiovanni iv), Chacón’s femimemory novel recovers the feminist ideals of republicana thought leaders. The plurality of voices in the novel echoes the diverse voices of the 1920s and 30s that doggedly fought for women’s rights—rights unequivocally eradicated with the Nationalist victory, voices silenced with reprisals, incarcerations, and executions. The author weaves a tapestry from which emerges an image not only of the women that lost the war but also of women persecuted because of their grave transgression: to stray from the New State’s feminine ideal. Not only did they counter fascism, they did so as women. Whereas the persecutors weaponized the condition of femaleness against their prey, Chacón reconstructs the traumatic experiences of her gallery of characters with reverence. The author creates space for their experiences (not what was enacted upon them), de-objectifies and rehumanizes them. She cherishes their vulnerability as they, through the empathetic connection with others, can cognize their trauma and find the voice and sense of self the perpetrators aimed to strip. Ultimately, they bear witness. This regained agency translates into diegetic and extradiegetic transgenerational transmission. Just as Chacón recovered the past of her interviewees as well as that of their ilk and transmitted it in her novel to sympathetic and empathic readers who share in the fictionalized trauma of lived experiences,49 so do her characters perpetuate the vindicated past into the future for a more just world. Chacón’s femimemory novel fulfills the moral imperative to take back the culture of the rojas plundered by the illegitimate regime. While La voz dormida’s recovery of the gynocentric past by no means balances the scales of justice, it tips them in the right direction: acknowledgment and a modicum of moral reparation. The rojas are no longer reviled or erased, no longer silenced, censored, or silent.  Recounting history from the perspective of the defeated and touching on specific dates (1937, 1941, 1931, 1942, 1943, 1954, 1963, and 1974) creates a parallel between the protagonists and realities in Spain, connecting the lives of fictional characters with “las vidas de miles de españoles de carne y hueso” (the lives of thousands of flesh and blood Spaniards) (Matz 92) and fostering a desire “de no dejar que se repitan los hechos narrados” (to not allow the narrated facts to be repeated) (Matz 90). 49

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Chacón removes the gag, making these ordinary heroes audible. Awakened and woke, contemporary and future readers hear their no longer dormant voices. List of Characters • Out of Jail (Madrid) • Pepita, who is from Córdoba (Andalucía), is initially apolitical. Her father died in a Nationalist jail. She is the younger sister of the madre combatiente-cum political prisoner Hortensia, and lives in doña Celia’s pension in Madrid. Pepita is in love with Paulino/Jaime/ Chaqueta Negra (a guerrilla leader, later jailed), whom she marries when he is released after two decades in jail. • Doña Celia has a boarding house in Madrid, where Pepita boards. Her daughter is executed. Her husband was incarcerated. She is a surrogate grandmother to Tensi. • Amalia is the daughter of the inmate and midwife Sole. During an interrogation in which she refused to provide information, her torturers blinded her in one eye. She also spent time in jail. • Tensi, Hortensia daughter, was born in Ventas. Her aunt Pepita raises her. She is the heir to her mother’s notebooks of female experience in the militia and jail. She is also the daughter of the maquis El Cordobés/Felipe/Mateo and continues her parents’ legacy by becoming a communist resistant during the dictatorship. She represents the youngest generation and the future. In Jail: Ventas Women’s Prison in Madrid • Hortensia is a miliciana from Córdoba. She is Pepita’s older sister, and is married to El Cordobés/Felipe/Mateo. She gives birth in jail to Tensi and is executed soon after. She bequeaths her notebooks/ diaries to Tensi with her and others’ story/stories. Like her father, she also dies in a Nationalist prison. • Sole, Amalia’s mother, is a midwife. She plays an important role in the resistance, escapes from jail, and befriends Tomasa who lives with her after release. She later lives in exile with her daughter. • Tomasa is from Extremadura. She witnessed the massacre of her husband, children, and grandchildren who were thrown from a bridge and shot to death in the river. Left to live and tell the tale, she

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is consumed by the trauma. She is defiant in Ventas. While in solitary confinement, she nearly loses her mind. • Elvira/Celia is very young and is a “daughter” to other older prisoners. She is the sister of Paulino/Jaime/Chaqueta Negra, breaks out of jail, joins the maquis, and is sent by the party to Czechoslovakia. Her nom de guerre is Celia. She represents the legacy of the milicianas and her female “family” in Ventas. Out of Jail (“En el monte”) • Paulino/Jaime/Chaqueta Negra is a staunch communist, a guerrilla leader. He is in love with Pepita. He was captured, jailed, and released after nearly 20 years, when he marries Pepita. • El Cordobés/Felipe/Mateo is a maquis leader, the husband of Hortensia, the father of Tensi, and dies in an ambush in 1943.

Works Cited Agustí i Roca, Carme and Carles Feixa Pàmpols. “Los discursos autobiográficos de la prisión política.” Una inmensa prisión: los campos de concentración y las prisiones durante la Guerra Civil y el franquismo. Coordinated by Jaume Sobrequés i Callicó, Carme Molinero Ruiz, Margarida Sala, Crítica, 2003, pp. 199–230. Albert, Manuel. “Otra conquista de ‘La voz dormida’.” El País, 4 Feb. 2012, n.p., http://www.ccaa.elpais.com/ccaa/2012/02/04/andalucia. Accessed 14 May 2014. Bieder, Maryellen. “First-Wave Feminisms, 1880–1919.” A New History of Iberian Feminisms, edited by Silvia Bermúdez and Roberta Johnson, U of Toronto P, 2018, pp. 158–81. Belinchón, Gregorio. “Miedo y muerte durante las dictaduras: Benito Zambrano defiende con demasiado ardor ‘La voz dormida’,” El País: Cultura, 21 Sept. 2011, n.p., http://www.cultura.elpais.com/cultura/2011/09/21/actualidad. Accessed 14 May 2014. Bermúdez, Silvia and Roberta Johnson, editors. A New History of Iberian Feminisms, edited by Silvia Bermúdez and Roberta Johnson, U Toronto P, 2018. Boyero, Carlos. “‘La voz dormida’: cartón piedra sentimental de Benito Zambrano.” El País, 22 Sept. 2011, n.p. https://elpais.com/diario/2011/09/22/cultura/. Accessed 14 May 2014. Bucklew, Amelia. “La experiencia femenina durante y después de la guerra civil de España: una mirada contemporánea transatlántica.” LLJournal, vol. 8, no. 1, 2013, n.p. https://lljournal.commons.gc.cuny.edu/2013-­1-­blucklew-­texto/. Accessed 11 Dec. 2020.

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Centeno, María. “Jubilados de Sevilla reviven la posguerra con la película ‘La voz dormida’.” El País, 19 Jan. 2012, n.p. https://elpais.com/ccaa/2012/01/19/ andalucia/1326987338_810306.html. Accessed 11 Dec. 2020. Chacón, Dulce. La voz dormida. Alfaguara, (First edition Santillana 2002), 2004. ———. The Sleeping Voice, translated by Nick Caistor, Random House, 2006. Cixous, Hélène. “The Laugh of the Medusa.” The Essential Feminist Reader, edited by Estelle Freedman, Modern Library, 2007, pp. 318–22. Colmeiro, José. “Re-Collecting Women’s Voices from Prison: The Hybridization of Memories in Dulce Chacón’s La voz dormida.” Foro Hispánico, vol. 31, 2008, pp. 191–209. Corbalán, Ana. “Homenaje a la mujer republicana: Reescritura de la Guerra Civil en La voz dormida de Dulce Chacón y Libertarias de Vicente Aranda.” Crítica Hispánica, vol. 32, 2010, pp. 41–64. Córcoles, Ángeles. “Las heridas del silencio. El silencio des-trama.” Clínica de Investigación Relacional, vol. 4, no. 2, 2010, pp. 419–28. DiGiovanni, Lisa Renee. Longing for Resistance: Nostalgia and the Novel in Postdictatorial Spain and Chile. Dissertation. University of Oregon, 2008. Esteves, João and Roberta Johnson. “Historical Overview of Portugal and Spain.” A New History of Iberian Feminisms, edited by Silvia Bermúdez and Roberta Johnson, U Toronto P, 2018, pp. 243–55. Freedman, Estelle, editor. The Essential Feminist Reader. Modern Library, 2007. García, Luis. “Entrevista a Dulce Chacón.” Literaturas.com Revista Literaria Independiente de Nuevos Tiempos. 2003 http://www.literaturas.com/05Especi alMaxAubDulceChaconAbril2003.htm (qtd. in Matz) García, Rocío. “Unos Premios Goya reñidos y muy emocionantes” El País, 10 Jan. 2012, https://elpais.com/cultura/2012/01/10/actualidad/1326150006_ 850215.html. Accessed 11 Dec. 2020) Gilbert, Sandra and Susan Gubar. “Infection in the Sentence: The Woman Writer and the Anxiety of Authorship” [from Madwoman in the Attic]. Feminisms Redux: An Anthology of Literary and Theory Criticism, edited by Robin Warhol-­ Down and Diane Price Herndl, Rutgers UP, 2009, pp. 3–8. Gilligan, Carol. “Reply by Carol Gilligan.” Signs, vol. 11, no. 2, Winter 1986, pp. 324–33. ———. In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development. Harvard UP, 1993. Giménez Micó, María José. “Mujeres en la guerra civil y la posguerra.” Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos, vol. 36, no. 1, 2011, pp. 187–206. Goldstein, Joshua. War and Gender, Cambridge UP, 2001. Gómez Marín, Inmaculada and José Antonio Hernández Jiménez. “Revisión de la Guerra Civil Española y de la Posguerra como fuente de traumas psicológicos desde un punto de vista transgeneracional.” Clínica de Investigación Relacional, vol. 5, no. 3, October 2011, pp. 473–91.

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González Duro, Enrique. Las rapadas: El franquismo contra la mujer. Siglo XXI, 2012. Grosz, Elizabeth. “Psychoanalysis and the Body.” Feminist Theory and the Body: A Reader, edited by Margrit Shildrick and Janet Price, Routledge, 1999, pp. 267–72. ———. Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism. Indiana UP, 1994. Guerrero, María. Reconfiguring the Spanish Identity: Historic Memory, Documentary Films and Documentary Novels in Spain (2000–2002). Dissertation. University of Florida, 2010. Hirsch, Marianne. Family Frames. Photography, Narrative and Postmemory. Harvard UP, 2012a. ———. The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture after the Holocaust. Columbia UP, 2012b. hooks, bell. Feminism Is for Everybody: Passionate Politics. South End P, 2012. Johnson, Roberta and Olga Castro. “First-Wave Spanish Feminism Takes Flight in Castilian-, Catalan- and Galician-Speaking Spain.” A New History of Iberian Feminisms, edited by Silvia Bermúdez and Roberta Johnson, U Toronto P, 2018, pp. 221–35. Johnson, Roberta. “Historical Background in Spain.” A New History of Iberian Feminisms, edited by Silvia Bermúdez and Roberta Johnson, U Toronto P, 2018, pp. 213–20. Landsberg, Alison. Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture. Columbia UP, 2004. Leggott, Sarah. “Memory, Postmemory, Trauma: The Spanish Civil War in Recent Novels by Women.” Fulgor vol. 4, no.1, Nov. 2009, pp. 25–33. Lorde, Audre. “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action.” Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde. Crossing Press, 2007a, pp. 40–44. ———. “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House [1979].” The Essential Feminist Reader, edited by Estelle Freeman, Modern Library, 2007b, pp. 331–36. Loureiro, Ángel. “Pathetic Arguments.” Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies, vol. 9, no. 2, 2008, pp. 225–37. Martín Galván, Juan Carlos. Realismo documental en la narrativa española a principios del siglo XXI. Dissertation. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2006. Matousek, Amanda. “La desmitificación de ‘la mujer roja’: La contrahistoria de las dictaduras militares en España y la Argentina a través de los textos de Dulce Chacón y Alicia Partnoy.” Letras Hispanas, vol. 5, no. 2, Fall 2008, pp. 67–83. Matz, María. “Re-escribiendo la historia: La voz dormida de Dulce Chacón.” La Nueva Literatura Hispánica, 2010, pp. 83–105. McGuire, Geoffrey. The Politics of Postmemory: Violence and Victimhood in Contemporary Argentine Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.

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Milquet, Sophie. “Escribir el trauma en femenino: las obras de Agustin Gomez-­ Arcos y Dulce Chacón.” Bulletin of Spanish Studies, vol. LXXXIX, no. 7–8, 2012, pp. 109–22. Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Feminisms Redux: An Anthology of Literary and Theory Criticism, edited by Robin Warhol-Down and Diane Price Herndl, Rutgers UP, 2009, pp. 432–42. Oaknin, Mazal. “La reinscripción del rol de la mujer en la Guerra Civil española: La voz dormida.” Espéculo: Revista de Estudios Literarios, Nov. 2010, n.p. Palomo, Miguel Ángel. “‘La Guerra Civil bajo los ojos del cineasta Benito Zambrano: ‘La voz dormida’.” El País, 23 Apr. 2012, n.p. http://elpais.com/ cultura/2012/04/23/television. Accessed 14 May 2014. Ramblado-Minero, Cinta. “Novelas para la Recuperación de la Memoria Histórica: Josefina Aldecoa, Ángeles Caso y Dulce Chacón.” Letras Peninsulares, Fall/ Winter 2004–2005, pp. 361–79. Rich, Adrienne. “History Stops for No One.” What is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics, Norton, 2003, pp. 128–44. Ruiz Serrano, Cristina. “‘Traigo la camisa roja de sangre de un compañero’: La mujer en la guerrilla antifranquista.” Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos, vol. 36, no. 1, Fall 2011, pp. 169–85. Scarry, Elaine. The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World. Oxford UP, 1985. Shildrick, Margrit and Janet Price. “Openings on the Body: A Critical Introduction.” Feminist Theory and the Body: A Reader. Routledge, 1999, pp. 1–14. Silverman, Kaja. The Threshold of the Visible World. Routledge, 1996. Sosa, Cecilia. Queering Acts of Memory in the Aftermath of Argentina’s Dictatorship: The Performances of Blood. Tamesis, 2014. Velázquez Jordán, Santiago. Entrevista “La reconciliación real de la guerra civil aún no ha llegado.” Espéculo vol. 22, n.p. Vinyes, Ricard. “El universo penitenciario durante el franquismo.” Una inmensa prisión: los campos de concentración y las prisiones durante la Guerra Civil y el franquismo. Coordinated by Jaume Sobrequés i Callicó, Carme Molinero Ruiz, Margarida Sala, Crítica, 2003, pp. 155–76. Warhol-Down, Robin and Diane Price Herndl, editors. Feminisms Redux: An Anthology of Literary and Theory Criticism. Rutgers UP, 2009 Yates, Juliet. “Feminine Fluidity: Mind versus Body in Pilgrimage.” Pilgrimages: A Journal of Dorothy Richardson Studies, vol. 2, 2009, pp. 61–73. Zambrano, Benito, director. La voz dormida. Maestranza Films, 2011. Actors: María León, Inma Cuesta, Marc Clotet, Daniel Holguín.

CHAPTER 6

Miscarriage of Justice: The Perverted Fairy Tale of Maternity and State-Sanctioned Removal of Children from Political Prisoners in Ana Cañil’s 2011 Novel Si a los tres años no he vuelto (If I Have Not Returned in Three Years)

Introduction Ana Cañil’s 2011 novel Si a los tres años no he vuelto1 is a fictionalized representation of female jailers (including the infamous María Topete) and inmates in Ventas, Madrid’s prison for women, San Isidro’s prison for nursing mothers, and Oropesa’s (Toledo) prison for fallen women. Honoring the achievements of her precursors, Cañil references the 1978 testimonial-novel Desde la noche y la niebla: mujeres en las cárceles franquistas (From Night and Fog: Women in Francoist Jails) by Juana Doña,2 the testimonial tome La cárcel de Ventas (The Ventas Prison) by  Abreviated as Tres años.  Doña was incarcerated until 1965. Desde la noche y la niebla tells the fictionalized tale of a young communist woman, captured and incarcerated for 20 years after the war, who lives and witnesses the very female plight of Francoist gendered repression: rapes, tortures, shavings, and the “reeducation” of her children (Feixa and Agustí 215, Una inmensa prisión). 1 2

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Tobin Stanley, Francoist Repression and Incarceration in Contemporary Spanish Culture, Palgrave Studies in Cultural Heritage and Conflict, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13392-3_6

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Mercè Núñez Targa,3 and the testimonial collective compilations by Tomasa Cuevas and weaves the fictionalized tale of state-sanctioned child abduction. Cañil frames her novel within the oral popular culture genre of the ballad (romance), particularly “El Conde Sol” (The Sun Count) and “La loba parda” (The Brown She-Wolf) whose verse “Si a los tres años no he vuelto” (If I have not returned in three years) titles the novel.4 The motivation in “La loba parda” is unmitigated envy, which escalates to rights over custody of an innocent child. In her 400-page novel, Cañil spins a tale of envy, love, frustration, and malice as a personalized battle between Jimena Bartolomé, an unjustly imprisoned fictional political inmate who gave birth in Ventas, and the historical character María Topete, whose insurmountable maternal envy masqueraded as nationalized Catholic duty prompts her to indefatigably orchestrate the removal of children from their inmate mothers. Cañil gives protagonism to these two female characters: working-class, in love, civilly married, political prisoner, and young mother Jimena, who is counterpoised to privileged, jilted, unmarried “beata”5 María Topete. The novel is a window to the intramuros of female incarceration. The readers come to understand, at a human level, a character on the receiving end of Franco’s unjust justice system, as well as the specific distribution of so-called justice under the pretext of the Nationalist and nationalized region. Applying established scholarship on what has been termed “los niños perdidos del franquismo,” whose disappearance was based on legislation that implemented Antonio Vallejo Nágera’s eugenics, I argue that Cañil’s fairy-tale-like ending is a counter tale to the equally fictional—yet believed—nationalized Catholic rhetoric and propaganda that was disseminated in the publication Rendención. By fictionalizing testimonial works, Cañil carries out what historian Giuliana Di Febo terms the “reconstruction of female protagonism in the anti-Francoist fight” (“la recostrucción del protagonismo femenino en la lucha anti-franquista”) (153). As a gender-centered work, Tres años brings

3  Author who also penned a testimonial account of her experiences in the Nazi camp in Ravensbrück. 4  All translations, unless otherwise noted, are mine. 5  The colloquial pejorative meaning of this term references sanctimonious, judgmental, conservative women prone to hypocritical or exaggerated religiosity during the Franco era.

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visibility to the fact that the war of ideas was fought on the battlefield of women’s bodies—and extended to their progeny. Populated with a gallery of historical characters whose survival was an overt act of resistance, the novel’s transmission of their individual and interconnected experiences fulfills the moral imperative of memory. Jimena functions as a type of Virgil from Dante’s Inferno as she descends (with the reader) through various levels of the misogynistic hell of the female penitentiary system. In this tour, Jimena introduces real-life individuals that represent particular atrocities. The iconic Trece Rosas attest to the greatest execution of women in Spain’s history.6 In the novel, Petra Cuevas opens Jimena’s eyes to the world of detention and torture in Gobernación.7 Later, Petra loses her infant daughter to illness during incarceration. The midwife Trini Gallego8 is an expert witness to the abject obstetric, gynecological, and pediatric conditions. Paz Azzati bears witness to brutal, gendered torture in Gobernación. Julia Lázaro emblematizes individual horrors, but also the exponentially terrific constellation of gendered repression in Franco’s penitentiary system. Julia Lázaro’s infamous tale is that of the gang rape of interrogation and resulting pregnancy, the psychological torture and blackmail by clergy, her execution, and the forced disappearance of her infant. Cañil’s novel narrativizes the widespread persecution of “red” women in postwar Spain poetically9 encapsulated by Juana Doña: “Mujeres de dentro y de fuera, humilladas, maltratadas, relegadas a la condición de nada. “Mujeres de presos, madres de presos, hermanas y novias de presos, igualmente hambrientas, vejadas y ofendidas por todos los caminos de España. “España… [sic]” (Doña 213). (Women inside and out, humiliated, abused, relegated to the condition of nothing.

6  The Thirteen Roses are the thirteen Republican women executed on August 5, 1939. In Cañil’s work, they are referenced in Chap. 5, page 200 and on. 7  The governance office, likely the Dirección General de Seguridad (DGS) of the Ministry of Governance located in the Puerta del Sol. 8  Trinidad Gallego’s story is recounted in Chap. 5 of part one of the novel. 9  Through the poetic artifices of enumeration and climax.

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Wives of prisoners, mothers of prisoners, sisters and girlfriends of prisoners, equally hungry, persecuted and insulted throughout all the roads in Spain. Spain… [sic].) Without embellishments or hyperbole, Cañil’s fiction makes patent the unsaid facts Doña alludes to in the ellipsis that follow “España… [sic].”

“Els nens perduts”: Legislation and the Removal of Children Following their victory, the insurrectionists homologized Republicanism with crime (Eiroa and Barranquero 138).10 The leader of Spanish eugenics and comandante psiquiatra (Psychiatrist Commander), Dr. Antonio Vallejo Nágera, orchestrated family separations by pathologizing political dissidence and determining the biopsychological roots of Marxism.11 The Ministry of Justice order on March 30, 1940, removed children from their incarcerated Republican mothers. Just eight months later, the Protection of Orphans decree of November 23, 1940, placed wards in beneficence institutions, granted guardianship to the institutions, and terminated parental custody. The Child Registry Law of December 4, 1941, renamed children within the Civil Registry, hindered locating or returning renamed children to their families, and, thus, made way for irregular adoptions. By 1942, a total of 9050 children of incarcerated parents became wards of the state. By 1943, the figure rose to 12,042, of which 62.6% were girls, housed in religious institutions, some of whom professed religious orders (Vinyes et al. 59).12 Between 1944 and 1945, the branch of the Ministry of Justice, the Patronato de San Pablo, took in 30,960 children, placing them throughout 258 centers that professed their commitment to the regime’s ideology, to counteract the effect of the 10,000 children evacuated to Russia by the Republicans (Vinyes et al. 60).13  “homologación del republicanismo con la delicuencia.”  See Introduction of the present study. 12  With the exception of twenty-six girls placed in Madrid’s Institute for the Visually Impaired. 13  The civil war resulted in mass evacuations of children. According to the Informe del Servicio Exterior de la Falange on the Repatriation of Minors, on 26 November 1949, expatriated children from Republican zones during the war went to France (17K), Belgium (5K), England (4K), Russia, Mexico, Switzerland, francophone Africa, and Denmark, totaling 34,037 (in Vinyes). 10 11

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For Vinyes, Armengou, and Belis, children removed from their Republican parents are nens perduts, “lost children.” They are lost because they are children of the defeated, lost because of the lack of records that preclude reunification with family in most cases, lost to their parents who were deprived the right to raise them, and lost because of most of their unknown whereabouts. Considering the stolen, forcibly disappeared, or irregularly adopted children of the defeated as lost children is apt, yet haunting. Reminiscent of Peter Pan’s lost boys, the term nens perduts connotes orphanhood, uncertainty, lack of status, a type of limbo, a lack of direction, and the presence of a perilous castrating patriarchal figure. But Vinyes, Armengou, and Belis’ term lacks the sense of freedom and adventure of Barrie’s characters. It underscores the harsh and jarring line between fiction and reality, for these lost children of Francoism could not aspire to a mother-like Wendy.

The Importance of Testimony The new Spanish Civil War novel underscores human bonds as the moral impetus to understand the past and to identify in a solidary fashion with victims (Dorca 14–15).14 By drawing on testimonial works, Cañil’s novel fulfills the moral-affiliative imperative of memory in three overlapping approaches. First, testimony is rooted in intergenerational, solidary interconnectedness to relive and recount the past in the present moment with an eye to not repeating past malfeasance in the transgenerational future. Second, testimony shatters silence and makes room for omitted voices. Finally, testimony pays homage to those erased from history (the vulnerable and the traumatized; those stripped of power or marginalized by hegemonic forces). Vinyes refers to Franco’s female political prisoners who present testimony, such as Tomasa Cuevas, as “mujeres irredentas que quisieron ser historiadoras de sí mismas” (unredeemed women [female political prisoners under Franco] who wished to be historians of themselves) (Irredentas 16). With regard to las irredentas, Vinyes delineates between truth and history. Truth is those who have lived it and what they have seen. “La historia [es] otra cosa” (history is something else) (Irredentas 19). Referencing Tomasa Cuevas’ trailblazing testimonial tomes, Mary Giles 14  In his introduction, Dorca synthesizes theories by Sebastiaan Faber and Txetxu Aguado, elaborated in their respective chapters.

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underscores the import of disparate voices. Not only do “other women’s stories … [impart] further credibility to Tomasa’s story,” but they attest to how cruelty disfigures the human spirit and poses a barrier to the eloquent articulation of the trauma (Giles x). Maurice Halbwachs asserts, individual memory is … a part or an aspect of group memory, since each impression and each fact, even if it apparently concerns a particular person exclusively, leaves a lasting memory only to the extent that one has thought it over—to the extent that it is connected with the thoughts that come to us from the social milieu. … [To] discourse upon something means to connect within a single system of ideas our opinions as well as those of our circle. It means to perceive in what happens to us a particular application of facts concerning which social thought reminds us at every moment of the meaning and impact these facts have for it. (Halbwachs 53)

As a corpus, compiled and novelized testimonies attest to the paradoxical and inextricable link between uniqueness of individual memory and the universality of the collective reality. The hi/story of one functions not unlike a synecdoche, for it represents the whole. Individual testimony elaborates on what I consider archetypal patterns of testimony. Pablo Gil Casado discerns common elements in works on female political prisoner experiences15: differences between political and common law prisoners; police interrogation; the execution of the young women known as las Trece Rosas; overcrowding; communication with the outside; sharing provisions sent by family; pilfering by prison agents (nuns and functionaries); abuse and coercion by the clergy; mistreatment and punishment; unmitigated hunger; lack of medical care and supplies; wounds and sores from vitamin deficiency, beatings, parasites, and lack of hygiene; the “sacas,” the concomitant executions before the firing squad and the psychological and emotional impact of the auditory experience on the inmates still in custody; the solidary work of continuing to aid the political parties; the escape of a select few; and “La inhumana existencia de las madres encarceladas con niños lactantes o de corta edad” (The inhuman existence of mothers incarcerated with young or nursing children) (88). Both testimony and novels that draw upon life writing recover an unacknowledged, painful past. Recording the past and rewriting the past as 15  Juana Doña’s 1978 Desde la noche y la niebla, Consuelo García’s 1982 Las cárceles de Soledad Real, Tomasa Cuevas’ 1983 Mujeres de las cárceles franquistas and 1986 Mujeres de la resistencia, and Lidia Falcón’s 1992 Camino sin retorno.

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fiction aim to rectify silences, invisibility, or omissions. As Marianne Hirsch distills, “In traumatic histories, gender can be invisible or hypervisible; it can make trauma unbearable or it can seem as a fetish that helps to shield us from its effects  …  It can offer a lens through which to read the … scenes of memorial acts” (Generation 18). Historian Maud Joly identifies obstacles to seeing, hearing, and, ultimately, writing about gendered and sexual violence perpetrated against women: chronological and geographic fragmentation as well as parsimony and silences. Parsimony relates to the paucity of direct references to acts of violence and the perpetrators of violence, as well as the scarcity of correspondences, reports, transcriptions, or communications among authorities regarding the acts. Silences pertain to “esta historia compleja y marginada que … se hace invisible para el historiador. ¿Cómo escribir una historia que no deja (o deja pocas) huellas?” (this complex and marginal/marginalized history that … becomes invisible for the historian. How does one write a history that does not leave [or barely leaves] a trace?). Joly’s answer is to reposition her historian’s gaze to hunt down “las huellas evanescentes o furtivas” (the vanishing or furtive tracks) (94). For Joly, the act of “volver a otorgar la palabra a las víctimas y al volver a evaluar las experiencias femeninas de la guerra, consagran en general un espacio consecuente con las violencias y modos de represión sexuada” (re-granting a voice to the victims and reevaluating women’s experiences in war consecrate in general a space consequent with the acts of violence and the modes of gendered expression) (92). Key to Joly’s approach is the term “volver,” which signifies to do again the infinitive that follows: to reevaluate the female experience and to re-grant a say or voice to the victims. Additionally, she proposes consecration. This gender-­ sensitive research that explores sexual and gendered wartime violence is not unlike what are termed “pilgrimages” to sites of repression and erasure motivated by the moral imperative of memory. Testimony is a memorialistic pilgrimage of returning to one’s memory, sharing the past in the present, and revisiting the experience in the company of a sympathetic or empathetic listener or reader. The testimony that Cañil honors consecrates the traumatized bodies of female prisoners and their children’s bodies, which had been profaned and desecrated, and makes space to heal the silences16 and to minister to the wounds of the past.

16  Aguado has written “subsanar silencios” (to heal or make well silences). “Subsanar” is to rectify, to ameliorate. Etymologically, it signifies to heal from below.

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The Construct of Gender: Feminism, Fascism, and Anti-feminism As a reactionary stratagem against the Republic’s leap in thinking with regard to women, in its vast and diverse manifestations,17 the Falange and the Francoist regime did their best to obliterate the advances or to close what had been the opening of the 1930s Spanish mind. Preceding the Second Republic, feminist trailblazer and member of the Generation of 1898 Carmen de Burgos (1867–1932) penned La mujer moderna y sus derechos (1927) in which her egalitarian theories were anathema to what would later be Nationalist ideology. She theorizes that gender is a cultural and social construct and, thus, discredits the belief that women are inherently inferior to men.18 Rather, she identifies lack of proper education and the slavery (“esclavitud”) to which they were subjected as obstacles to the development of their abilities. Burgos’ rebuttal of female intellectual (and moral) inferiority prophetically refutes Vallejo Nágera’s spurious studies that provided the “evidence” to pathologize “red” women, justify their incarceration, and separate them from their children. Vallejo Nágera’s classist, anti-Semitic, and misogynistic eugenics postulates that contamination of the supposed Spanish race originates with Marxist, bourgeois, plebian,19 and Sephardic20 elements, as well as female elements that deviate from the prescribed model of femininity.21 Vallejo Nágera proposes an  See Chap. 4 of the present study: section on Spanish feminisms.  La mujer moderna y sus derechos, according to Mercedes Gómez Blesa, is “la Biblia del feminismo español y nos atrevemos a añadir del europeo y americano”(the Bible of Spanish feminism and we dare to add of European and American feminism) due to its theoretical foundation and interdisciplinarity (Gómez Blesa 24–25). Burgos’ text precedes Simone de Beauvoir’s 1949 Second Sex by more than two decades (Gómez Blesa 25). Both Burgos and Beauvoir comment on the systemic mechanisms and intellectual disciplines and institutions that inferiorize the female sex and limit her scope within society (Gómez Blesa 25). Not surprisingly, the “Bible of Spanish feminism” was censured during the dictatorship and made the list of top nine books banned by national Catholicism (Gómez Blesa 26). 19  In Eugenesia de la hispanidad y regeneración de la raza, Vallejo Nágera’s eugenics promoted an elitist morphology, knight-like, thus condemning the “social climbing,” soft, biggutted biological class as inferior, linking its origins in the fourteenth-century false conversions of Sephardic Jews and their supposed avarice and evil (Vinyes et al. 38). 20  Vallejo Nágera’s essay “Maran-atha” included in Vinyes et al. is an anti-Semitic diatribe. 21  “Psiquismo del fanatismo marxista: investigaciones psicológicas en marxistas femeninos delincuentes” by Drs. A.  Vallejo Nágera y Eduardo M.  Martínez. Revista Española de Medicina y Cirugía de Guerra, Valladolid, Año II, mayo de 1939, pp.  398–413, no. 9, BNE z/2271. 17 18

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inherently dangerous and infectious inferiority that must be remedied through measures such as ferreting out antipatriotism and segregating the unwanted elements in an effort to regenerate the race. In “Psiquismo del fanatismo marxista: investigaciones psicológicas en marxistas femeninos delincuentes” (Psychology of Marxist Fanaticism: Psychological Research on Marxist Female Criminals), A. Vallejo Nágera and Eduardo M. Martínez surmise that women’s sweet and kind disposition “débese a los frenos que obran sobre ella” and that “el psiquismo femenino tiene muchos puntos de contacto con el infantil y el animal” (is due to the restraints placed on them [and that] female psychology bears similarities with that of children and animals). Without social restrictions, women’s instincts are unimaginably cruel, “precisamente por faltarle las inhibiciones inteligentes y lógicas” (for they lack intelligent and logical inhibitions) (Vallejo Nágera qtd. in Vinyes et al.). Given that “las personas menos inteligentes y más incultas de la sociedad” (the least intelligent and most uncultured people of society) make up the ranks and files of Spanish Marxism, states Vallejo Nágera, women easily adhere to Marxist ideology (Vallejo 403, qtd. in Vinyes et al. 261). Nationalist anti-feminism is manifest, on the one hand, in anachronistic legislation to keep women in their place and, on the other, in repression as a political weapon to punish those who dared to transgress and to deter dissidence (Di Febo 155). While the 1931 Republican Constitution decreed equality under the law for male and female sexes, the regime’s stigmatization and nullification of the Republic adversely affected women by erasing, prohibiting, and excluding advances gained during the Republic. By reinstating the 1889 civil code, the Francoist regime turned back the clock. Civil marriage and divorce became impossible. Married women lost legal rights, including over the home and earnings, and were subordinate to their husbands. Furthermore, adultery (by the wife) was a criminal act for which, according to Article 428 of the 1889 penal code, husbands and fathers of adulteresses could rightfully “[lavar] con sangre su honra” (wash their honor with blood) (Molinero, 111). Given the influence of the church in the New Spanish State, abortion was a state crime, and the Law of January 24, 1941, forbade and penalized contraception sales (Molinero 110). Gender politics are inherent to the fascist social project of dismantling early twentieth-­ century advances for women (Molinero 98). Based on national-­ Catholicism, Spain’s anti-feminism barely differed from Nazi gender politics with regard to the relegation of women to the role of wife, mother, and tender of the hearth (Molinero 105).

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In the period between wars (época de entreguerras) that gave rise to European fascism, two matters particularly concerned women: democratization and low birth rate. On the one hand, in some instances, women’s suffrage was coetaneous with public speeches that underscored women’s role in the home and family (Molinero 99). The anti-feminism of fascist ideology cannot be separated from its anti-liberalism, anti-socialism, or militarism. The latter, according to Molinero, defines itself as a manly, virile movement inextricably linked to violent force as an identity marker (99). In 1937, thinker and supporter of the Primo de Rivera dictatorship,22 José Pemartín, deems “our” Spanish fascism—“our” Hegelian-judicial absolutism—a natural and absolute fit with historical Catholic traditional substantiality (“sustancialidad histórica católico tradicional”) (qtd. in Molinero 104). Catholic ideologues such as Eloy Montero in 1939, notes Molinero, defend the compatibility between fascism and Catholicism as reflective of Spanishness: venía a España un movimiento autoritario como protesta viril [my emphasis] contra la democracia absurda y un liberalismo hueco… [los] católicos no debíamos oponernos al […  fascismo] que era eminentemente nacional; debíamos recibirlo con amor y encauzarlo debidamente por derroteros tradicionales y cristianos: era preciso armonizar la moderna corriente autoritaria con nuestra gloriosa tradición y así surgiría un Estado nuevo. (Montero 249, qtd. in Biotti 102–03, qtd. in Molinero, 104–05) (An authoritarian movement came to Spain as a virile protest against absurd democracy and hollow liberalism … We Catholics should not oppose [… fascism] that was eminently national; we should receive it with love and channel it duly in traditional and Christian pathways: it is imperative to harmonize the modern authoritarian trend with our glorious tradition, and hence a New State will emerge.)

Virile, hypermasculinized Spanish fascism demanded complicity from the female sector. Icon of the Sección Femenina (Female Section) and sister of José Antonio Primo de Rivera (the so-called martyr for the Falange organization) at the yearly National Council (Consejo Nacional), Pilar Primo de Rivera would indoctrinate that women’s so-called colossal mission in life and “true duty” “para con la Patria consiste en formar familias”

22  Miguel Primo de Rivera was the dictator from 1923 to 1930, with the monarchical support of Alfonso XIII.

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(with regard to the fatherland was to make families) (qtd. in Molinero, 101). Women’s patriotic duty was to be human broodmares. The female vanquished, as enemies of national-Catholicism and the Francoist regime, were punished by the victors for having dared to step outside the literal and metaphorical “small world”23 of the home, for in so doing they put into question the foundational virility of fascist ideology. Joly’s study on the physical violence and degradation of the gendered identities that are Republican female bodies reveals the Spanish Civil War to be “un verdadero laboratorio” (veritable laboratory) in which to analyze the link between a culture at war and acts of gendered violence. The symbolic significance of territories (both geographic and bodily) cannot be severed from the semiology of the acts of violence and how they are portrayed and discoursed upon (Joly 90). In wartime, Joly writes, societies must face exacerbated gender coding (“codificación”) in which the semiotics of the body fuses the warrior phenomenon—and inherent violence24—with the process of constructing of the enemy. This enemy construct is a “fabricación” (fabrication, manufactured product) that fashions a “cultura de confrontación” (culture of confrontation) and its concomitant gendered dimension (Joly 90). This “fábrica del sentido” (manufacture of meaning) justifies violence (Joly 90). Given the gendering of the enemy and the manufacture or the construct of the gendered enemy, Joly proposes the location of the “frontline” (el frente) include the “territorio de los cuerpos sexuados en guerra” (the territory of gendered bodies in war) (Joly 90). The political penitentiary populace stands as a gendered corporealized collective upon which war is waged. If the construct of the enemy is based on violence, as it is also on feminization of the foe, then a female enemy population is hypergendered and is targeted with sexualized and sexual violence in which femaleness is weaponized against both the individual and the collective body.

23  Molinero refers to Adolf Hitler’s (September 8, 1934) speech before the Nazi Women’s Organization in Nuremberg in which he delineates the women’s world, unlike man’s world, is “un mundo más pequeño” limited to (her husband, her family, and home) “El gran mundo no puede sobrevivir si el pequeño mundo no es estable” (The great world cannot exist if the small world is not stable) (qtd. in Molinero, 100) (originally reproduced in J. Noakes and G. Pridham, editors, Nazism 1919–1945, p. 449). 24  “una antropología histórica del fenómeno guerrero y sus traducciones violentas” (Joly 90).

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Franco’s Penitentiary Universe In spite of their varying locations and purported purposes, Franco’s prisons constituted a singular universe (Vinyes, Irredentas 13). Vinyes’ term “penitentiary universe” (universo carcelario) parallels that of the Nazi concentrationary universe and connotes the singular dynamic (parallel to that of a living organism dominated by its neurological center). This universe consists of more than just inmates and jailers; it involves families, the Catholic Church, and, as Vinyes notes, is an industry. The Catholic Church was not just involved in the penitentiary reality, it constructed the propaganda, ran the beneficence institutes that benefited financially from the State, staffed the jails, and worked to “convert” the inmates and purportedly provide guidance. Victoria Kent (Málaga), appointed as Director General of Prisons in May 1931 (just weeks after the proclamation of the Republic), aimed to rehabilitate. With Victoria Kent gone from the directorship of the penitentiary system during the Republic, the rebel victors imposed a model that was punitive rather than correctional (Hernández Holgado, “Prisión militante” 229). By the end of the war, there were 300,000 humans confined within existing correctional structures as well as in convents-, monasteries-, and schools-cum-prisons within the penitentiary universe. The overcrowding was such that Barcelona’s Model Prison was the most populated prison not only in Europe but also in the world. With a capacity for 500 prisoners, Madrid’s Ventas prison for women was the largest prison of its kind for the time period (Hernández Holgado, “Prisión militante” 232), yet in the postwar came to hold 5000, most of whom were the Republican defeated (Hernández Holgado, Mujeres 18–19). In Fernando Hernández Holgado’s comparison of inmate statistics, he elucidates exponential growth during the war and the postwar period. The annual female prisoner average between 1930 and 1940 was less than 500 (478). The annual average for male inmates was under 9000 (8925). By early 1940, less than one year after the official end of the war, the female and male prison population was, respectively, 23,332 and 247,487 (Hernández Holgado “Prisión” 231),25 exemplifying what Egido León terms the “avalancha de detenciones” (avalanche of arrests) of the immediate postwar period (17). Without the sacas and deaths resulting from 25  Hernández Holgado draws from the Presidencia del Gobierno. Dirección General de Estadística. Anuario Estadístico de España 1944–1945. Edición completa. Madrid, Cucs. De Rivadeneyra, 1945.

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other causes, it is uncertain what the prison population could have been. After World War II, jail massification declined due to the following factors: pardons (reduction in sentences), executions, deaths from neglect, and death from “maltratos generalizados persistentes” (generalized and persistent abuse) that continued into the 1950s (Vinyes et al. 27).

The Penitentiary Galaxy for Women: Ventas, Oropesa, and San Isidro Egido León discerns three phases of female incarceration in the early postwar: the overcrowding, chaos, and horror of the immediate postwar period in 1939; the presence and organization of the Communist Party beginning in 1940 and the regime’s propagandized application of purported clemency; and the review and commutation of death sentences starting in 1942 after repression had reached its height and continued until 1945 (14). Predating the reforms that took place during the Republic under the purview of Victoria Kent, the women’s penitentiary tradition in Spain melded imprisonment with moralization, in other words “Catholicizing” the correction of the wayward “delincuentes y pervertidas” (delinquent and perverted) young women (Hernández Holgado, “Prisión militante” 227). Certain religious orders such as the oblatas and the adoratrices had a hand in inmates’ penitentiary experience. Unlike their male counterparts, whose redemptive labor took place extramuros, female prisoners’ “labor corrector-moralizadora” (correctional-moralizing labor) was limited to intramuros, an enclosed, cloistered space in which they were reeducated in the “modelo femenino sociosexual dominante gracias a la oración y al trabajo” (dominant sociosexual model for women based on prayer and work) (Hernández Holgado, “Prisión militante” 228). As Rosa María Aragüés Estragüés has indicated, one of the greatest differences between the Francoist penitentiary system for male prisoners and that for women was the presence of children who “debieron sufrir junto a sus madres el más cruel de los cautiverios” (suffered the cruelest of captivities alongside their mothers) (185). Another gendered difference is that in Franco’s Spain, jailed political prisoners who were women were deemed “fallen,” the slut-shamed equivalent of common law prisoners, such as prostitutes and black market dealers (González Duro 171). Hence, the Nationalists transformed Ventas, the model prison during the Republic, into an apparatus of political repression (Egido León 17).

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One of the salient features of Ventas in the postwar period was that the overwhelming majority of female prisoners was not behind bars on the basis of their own actions, but rather because of their connection to (Republican) men in their lives. This signifies that Ventas was largely a prison for political prisoners in spite of the fact that many did not have overt political experience (Hernández Holgado, Mujeres 304). Ventas also boasted an exceptionally high minor population and young mother population in spite of the fact that, in a facility containing several thousands of inmates, only two doctors were on staff (González Duro 305). The March 30, 1940, law was in effect until 1948 (Aragüés Estragüés 201). By September 1940, many were transferred to the newly inaugurated maternal prison of San Isidro under the direction of the (infamous) María Topete. Children older than three years were removed from their mothers and transferred to church- and state-sponsored centers (Hernández Holgado 305). Aragüés Estragüés qualifies the family separation scenes that left postwar prisons childless26 as “dantescas” (Dante-esque [horrific]) (201–02). While some transfers were logged as “Destacamento Hospicio” (Group Home Detachment), exact data on the numbers of children released or transferred are unavailable given that many children did not appear on the jail registries, leading Aragüés Estragüés to state, “simplemente no existían. Oficialmente jamás habían estado en prisión” (they simply did not exist. Officially, they had never been in prison) (202). Special note must be made of the Oropesa jail for fallen women, the last penitentiary setting inhabited by Cañil’s Jimena as she was exiled from her child. This locale would have ensured that her child would never be reunited with her given that only morally upstanding, Catholic, and patriotic parents could regain custody. Sex work was pathologized as part of a moral illness, and convicted trafficked women belonged to the “mismo grupo que las marxistizadas, en las que las consideraban producto de desviaciones originadas por el liberalismo” (the same group as Marxist women, [and were] considered the product of liberal deviancy) (Barranquero 52, qtd. in Núñez 28). In 1940, there were 200,000 prostitutes (Rafael Torres 119, qtd. in Núñez, Mujeres 23). After property crimes, prostitution ranked second in the early postwar (Núñez 23 referring to Supreme Court Attorney Blas Pérez González 16 Sept. 1941). In 1940, throughout Spain, there were 1140 officially registered brothels, and in Madrid, whose population  “se quedaron sin niños.”

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barely surpassed one million inhabitants, “había fichadas cerca de 20,000 mujeres que ejercían la vieja profesión” (there were dockets for 20,000 women that practiced the oldest profession) (Núñez 205–06). Twenty thousand is 2% of one million, which would mean that one of out every fifty residents of Madrid had a criminal record for prostitution. If these were the official numbers, what would be the de facto numbers? Of the adult female population, what would this mean? The decree on November 6, 1941, called for the creation of special reformatories-prisons for women who worked in clandestine prostitution (not in the “casas de tolerancia” [houses of tolerance]) (Núñez,  Mujeres 25). La Calzada de Oropesa, a convent-cum-prison for so-called fallen women, reflected the growing reality of prostitution in the postwar era. Until 1956, two types of prostitution prevailed in Spain: “legal” and “clandestine.” The former, which took place in upscale settings, was ruled by well-connected madams and frequented by influential patrons. These “amos de todo” delighted in “su poder sobre los cuerpos y las almas de las infortunadas pupilas” (masters of everything delighted in their power over the bodies and souls of the unfortunate waifs) and sexually initiated their sons at these reputable houses of ill-repute. The illegal workers, the “fallen women,” made their living in clearings and on street corners, until they made their way into the correctional system, under the supervision of various religious orders (Torres 14–15). The Oropesa Prison attests to a substrate of Franco’s justice system, the war against the female defeated, and the vengeful paradigm that stripped away the rights and status women had gained during the Second Republic. Cañil pays homage to women incarcerated for exchanging access to their sexuality for the means to survive.

Repression: Interrogation, Gendered Torture, and Sexual Violence Misogynistic practices reduced female transgressors to their sex and castigated them for balking at fascist expectations of femininity. Gendered punishments paradoxically feminized and defeminized red women. A Republican woman within the context of Nationalist Catholic Spain had aborted her colossal mission and shirked her “true duty” of being a domesticated mother in the fatherland. In light of the cruel eye-for-an-eye mentality, if “good” women were mothers that conformed to the “small world” of patriarchal domesticity, Republican women’s children were

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taken from them. If wives were to be compliant sexual partners, female inmates were raped and tortured in sexual fashions. The uber-patriarchal regime dichotomized women: those who conformed or aspired to the feminine ideal and those who did not. To write about the traumatized body is to take back the body and to reclaim one’s identity through speech. As Hélène Cixous has postulated regarding the oppression of women, “By writing her self [sic], woman will return to the body which has been more than confiscated from her, which has been turned into the uncanny stranger on display … Censor the body and you censor breath and speech at the same time” (Cixous 322–23). By writing (about) mutilated bodies—objects of repression—testimonial authors  reclaim and de-objectify the body as a metonymic extension of their own subjectivity and authorial agency. In the chapter “A diligencias,”27 Núñez Targa transcribes a dialogue in response to the query of what is “diligencias”: “¿A diligencias? Pues que para hacerte cantar te sacan de la cárcel y te pegan una soberana paliza, o te dan corrientes eléctricas, o hacen contigo lo que les da la real gana. Y que vuelves al cabo de unos días o unas semanas, destrozadita… [sic] o que no vuelves más” (To [the] dispatch [office]? Well to make you sing they take you out of jail and give you a royal beating, or they give you electric currents or they do whatever they feel like with you. You come back after a few days or weeks, broken to pieces … or you never return) (43). In “Moderna inquisición,” Núñez Targa writes of myriad physical and psychological tortures. Torturers would make numerous incisions to an inmate’s (Nieves C.) vulva, rub in vinegar and salt, and mock her for running “like a frog.” Interrogators beat pregnant detainees to the point of provoking an abortion and would taunt, “Lo echarás por la boca” (You’ll dump it out your mouth). Carmen P. did, in fact, miscarry. Electric shock to the wrists, fingers, nipples, and genitals was so commonplace, “que sería imposible citar todos los casos” (it would be impossible to cite all the cases) (61–62). Chapter 13 of Cañil’s novel presents Jimena’s inauguration to the world of torture: “Aquella noche Jimena supo lo que eran los sótanos de Gobernación” (That night Jimena learned what the basement of Gobernación was) and that her cellmate’s name was Petra Cuevas. The narrator identifies the injuries on Petra’s fingers and wrists resulting from electric shock. Petra was “destrozada” (broken to pieces) and her “dedos  My translation for “diligencias” would be the “dispatch office.”

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abrasados y en carne viva” (fingers were charred and raw flesh) (83). Petra is tortured repeatedly during this time: “la devolvieron rota, esta vez de la espalda” (they brought her back broken, this time it was her back) (87). As they share the cell, Jimena hears female screams as well as laughter and obscenities of male interrogators beyond the wall and understands she is now an auditory witness to rape. Petra advises Jimena on how to withstand questioning and inevitable torture. Pregnant, Jimena not only fears the sexual torture of rape, but also blows to her gestating belly should her captors learn of her condition. In Gobernación, the protagonist becomes fully aware of gendered neglect (the absence of feminine hygiene products), humiliation (a fellow inmate suspended upside down without underwear), and targeted sexual abuse (electric shock to Paz Azzati’s nipples and electrocution to the vagina of two militiamen’s mother). Ultimately, “pensando en que la iban a violar” (thinking they would rape her), “fue un alivio” (it was a relief) for Jimena that her torturers limited themselves to electrocuting and beating her, resulting in only a dislocated shoulder and wrist (89). Sexual violence made patent the fact that the Nationalist victors lorded over the bodies of their defeated female enemies. Rapists raped with impunity, as rape was integral to the “discourse of rampant virility” (discurso de la virilidad rampante). The new regime wielded sexual violence for a retroactive effect, as González Duro underscores: “explicitaba una importante regresión en la situación social, política, cultural y jurídica de la mujer española, condenada al perpetuo enclaustramiento en el hogar familiar. Este era el mejor preventivo contra la violación: si la mujer española no quería ser violada, debía quedarse en casa y no salir sola a la calle. Lo que no había hecho la roja” (it made an important regression in the social, political, cultural, and judicial situation of Spanish women, [now] serving a life sentence cloistered in the family home. This was the best prevention against rape: if Spanish women did not want to get raped, they should stay home and not go out alone. That is what red women had not done) (162).28 Sexual violence is pervasive in war and the ensuing repression. Goldstein cites myriad twentieth-century wars and conflicts and quantifies many tens

28  He cites the testimony of Carmen Chicharro, raped and tortured for three to four days in postwar Madrid from Tomasa Cuevas’ compilation of testimonies. González Duro cites specific cases of rapes in Valladolid, León, Segovia, Béjar, Cantalpino, Peguerinos (46-47), Galicia (49).

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and hundreds of thousands of victims (363–64).29 Gang rape “promote[s] cohesion within groups of men soldiers” (Goldstein 365).30 While rape in wartime, and forced prostitution, is a consideration within international law (1949 Geneva Convention and 1977 Protocols), it has “been treated as a crime against honor, distinct from crimes of violence such as murder, mutilation and torture” (Goldstein 368). Wartime rape tends to be orchestrated by individuals or small groups rather than being mandated by superiors, yet it is largely met with attitudes that range from tolerance and acceptance to a light punishment (Goldstein 368). In general, war “contains an element of metaphorical rape, as part of a broader pattern of feminization of enemies, that goes well beyond the specific incidences of actual rape in wartime” (Goldstein 373). Sex and rape in times of conflict relocate, extend, and specify the bodily aggression. Colonel Dave Grossmen, quoted in Goldstein, states that “[t]hrusting the sexual appendage (the penis) deep into the body of the victim can be perversely linked to thrusting the killing appendage (a bayonet or knife) deep into the body of victim” (349–50). Rape during the Spanish Civil War differed from that of the postwar, for the latter society was “violentamente ‘pacificada’, vigilada y controlada, y sin conflictos sociales abiertos” (violently “pacified,” watched, and controlled … and without open social conflicts). Rape could only be carried out in institutionally enclosed spaces such as police stations and detention centers; the “Estado viril” (virile State) authorized its workers and functionaries to rape just as it did to torture (González Duro 162).31 In her hybrid testimony-novel, Juana Doña writes of the incontrovertible reality of rape. The character Josefina, upset, replies to Berta that there are new arrivals among whom are four raped women: 29  A total of 2000–50,000 raped in Bosnia; 200,000  in Pakistan-Bangladesh; 10,000  in Berlin at the end of WWII; 20,000  in Nanjing by the Japanese, plus Japanese “comfort women”; as well as in Rwanda, Haiti, Mozambique (every woman and girl in one particular town), Kosovo, Liberia, Sierra León, and Indonesia, among others (363–64). In the 1980s, military regimes in Latin America designed punishment strategies specifically for women who opposed the government. In Central America, sexual torture of women who sympathized with rebels was commonplace. Chilean, Argentine, and Uruguayan governments singled out, detained, and sexually tortured specific women; “misogynistic military states have used female sexual slavery and torture to control women” (Goldstein 364–65). 30  Referring to the Japanese onslaught of Nanjing, “Rape seems to be just one among several ways” to impose domination by cruel means in the “‘orgy’ of atrocities in Nanjing” (Goldstein 367). 31  González Duro cites myriad incidents of rapes of women in jail (169–71).

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Preguntaréis que por qué me pongo así, cuando es el pan nuestro de cada día, es que esto el alucinante, una de ellas es nada menos que una anciana de setenta años, viuda desde hace más de treinta. Sus violadores la dijeron: ‘abuela, la vamos a deshollinar, lo debe tener lleno de telarañas’, y la forzaron entre cuatro, junto a ella viene una niña de dieciséis años que la han traído en una silla, a ésta la han violado entre ¡nueve! (Doña 158) (You ask why I am so upset, when it’s our daily bread, it’s because this is unbelievable, one of them is a seventy-year-old woman, widowed thirty years ago. Her rapists told her: ‘grandma, we’re gonna clean out your chimney, it must be full of cobwebs,’ and they forced her among four of them, next to her was a sixteen-year-old girl they brought in on a chair, this one, they raped among nine of them.) (Doña 158)

The narrator then reiterates the quotidian frequency of rapes (“our daily bread”), denounces the “dramatic proportions” of male power over red women, and makes patent that the defeated republicanas were “menos que nada para los machos fascistas” (less than nothing for the fascist machos [male animals]). Dismissing sexual desire as their impetus, she indicts the captors’ gluttony for power as they sadistically humiliated and binged on the bodies of their victims (158). Doña’s narrator explains the plight of Marta who was incarcerated in Albacete before being transferred to Ventas: Tampoco en Albacete se libraron de los violadores; dos funcionarios del departamento de hombres ‘Luisito’ y Ricardo fueron una pesadilla para las mujeres a todo lo largo del verano del 39. En poco menos de tres meses violaron a treinta presas. Abrían la sala, miraban ‘al montón’, elegían a una o dos y se las llevaban no muy lejos de allí. Debajo de la escalera había un cuartucho donde se guardaban los enseres de la limpieza y con la puerta abierta, porque de puro pequeño no podían cerrarla, los ‘guardianes de la ley’ se quitaban el aburrimiento. A veces las mujeres ni siquiera protestaban, pero en la mayoría de los casos se oían sus gritos en toda la prisión. Marta estaba obsesionada por los años vividos en Albacete, hablaba de ello una y otra vez, pero nunca de sí misma. (Doña 217, my emphasis) (Even in Albacete, she could not escape the rapists; two functionaries in the men’s department ‘Luisito’ and Ricardo were a nightmare for the women throughout the summer of ’39. In less than three months, they raped thirty inmates. They would open the room, look at the ‘bunch,’ choose one or two and take them not far from there. Under the stairs there was a little storage room for cleaning supplies and with the open door, since it was so small they couldn’t close it, the ‘guardians of the law’ did away with

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their boredom. At times women didn’t even protest, but the majority of the times you could hear their screams throughout the prison. Marta was obsessed with the years lived in Albacete, she would speak of it again and again, but never about herself.)

Doña’s narrator recounts that which adolescent Pilar had witnessed following a round up, transport of prisoners (milicianos and female prisoners), gunning down of the men, and torching the mound of cadavers in a pyre. She qualifies, Pilar decía que nunca más se le había ido el olor a carne quemada. Las ocho chicas presenciaron ese espectáculo dantesco, esperando arder ellas después; estaban horrorizadas y no comprendían por qué no les habían fusilado como a Dolores o con los prisioneros, pero al llegar a la cárcel de Cáceres lo supieron en toda su monstruosidad. Los legionarios las metieron en una sala, de forma brutal les rasgaron la ropa y las obligaron a las más repugnantes prácticas sexuales, les abrían la boca y les introducían sus asquerosos penes, Pilar se libró de ello, sólo eran seis legionarios y ella era la más joven y según decían la más fea … Pilar era una de las dos que sobraban, que arrinconadas en la pared, vieron la violación de sus compañeras, el horror de sus caras ahogadas, su tremendo martirio. (Doña 210, my emphasis) (Pilar said that the smell of burnt flesh never went away. The eight girls witnessed that horrific scene, expecting they would burn later; they were horrified and did not understand why they had not been executed like Dolores or with the [male] prisoners, but when they arrived at the Cáceres jail, they learned why in all of its monstrosity. The legionnaires put them in a room, brutally ripped their clothing and forced them to perform the most repugnant sexual acts, they would open their mouths and insert their disgusting penises, Pilar escaped it, there were only six legionnaires and she was young and they said the ugliest … Pilar was one of the two that was left over, stuck in a corner, they saw the rape of their peers, the horror on their choked faces, their tremendous martyrdom.)

When the war ended, Pilar was transferred from Cáceres. When in the barracks in Carabanchel (a district of Madrid), the Falange boss tried to rape her. Recalling the events of Cáceres, she thwarted the sexual assault by defenestrating herself. As it was the floor above the ground floor, she was unscathed, “pero evitó la violación” (but she avoided rape). Doña represents the threat of rape in the simile as a curse (“como una maldición”) and, as in Marta’s anecdote, equates it with a nightmare (“la pesadilla de la violación”) that pursues Pilar. In her hometown jail, another boss, Benito Montáñez, also accosted her. Again, she escaped rape: “En

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Pilar se despertaban los instintos fieros cuando veía al macho que iba por ella como si le perteneciera … y cuando le vio venir …, se lanzó a su cara” (Animal instincts awakened in Pilar whenever she saw a male come at her as if she belonged to him … and when she saw him coming …, she threw herself at his face). Thwarted, her would be rapist whipped her with his belt such that “todo su cuerpo fue un hematoma, pero no consumó su propósito” (her entire body was a hematoma, but he never completed his purpose) (Doña 211–12). Pilar’s story, to a certain point, is a triumph for she refused to be a collaborator in her dehumanization. Pilar was incarcerated with more than 100 women, most of whom had been shaven, force-fed oil, and subjected to the psychological torture of mock execution. On the anniversary of the execution of José Antonio Primo de Rivera, the jailers rounded up and executed 108 prisoners. Again, Pilar escaped a horrific fate (Doña 212). Pilar was sentenced to the prison in Ocaña that the narrator describes as a “tumba de cientos de mujeres, de hombres y de niños, los que no morían ejecutados morían de hambre. Hambre y podredumbre” (tomb of hundreds of women, men, and children, those who were not executed died from hunger. Famine and rot) (Doña 212). When three nursing mothers were executed together, the other female inmates cared for the motherless infants until “al final se los quitaron y los sacaron a un hospicio” (finally they were taken from them and taken away to a group home) (Doña 212). Before looking at the infamous case of Julia Lázaro, it is imperative to note that while on the one hand Doña’s account reads like the prosecution’s witness testimony, including the facts of the case or elements of the crime, the timeline, the scene, and identification of the perpetrators and the victims, yet on the other hand, the testimonial author characterizes or qualifies the scene, the perpetrators’ actions, and the impact on the victims: “‘Luisito’ and Ricardo were a nightmare” (217), “horrific spectacle,” “monstrosity,” “brutally,” “disgusting penises,” and “tremendous martyrdom” (210); “like a curse,” the nightmare of rape (211), “tomb of hundreds,” “famine and rot” (212). Many interviewees and testimonial witnesses, including Juana Doña and Mercedes Núñez Targa, recall and recount the notorious case of Julia Lázaro. During her interrogation in Gobernación, several police raped Julia during nine to ten days, resulting in her pregnancy. Sentenced to death, she asked her sister to keep the child, who, in turn, refused. Following the delivery, Julia was executed, and her child was in María Topete’s care. When María Lázaro reconsidered her refusal to accept the

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child, the child’s whereabouts could not be determined. The infamous case of Julia Lázaro incapsulates the multipronged Francoist repression of women. As Doña writes, rape was pervasive and ubiquitous: “en las comisarías, en los centros de falange, en las cárceles de los pueblos, en la calle y hasta en sus mismas casas” (in police stations, Falange centers, town jails, on the street and even in their own homes) (158–59). When first detained, women’s first fear is rape, yet a second terror is that of “las consecuencias” (the consequences): carrying the child of the torturer-rapists. Julia was criminalized for being on the losing side of the war, she was raped to weaponize her female condition against her, and her child, a red seed, was removed from her family. Doña’s narrator recounts Julia’s exponentially disgraceful case: Hacía unos días habían fusilado a Julia Lázaro, tenía veinte años; a los dos meses de estar condenada a muerte se dio cuenta que había quedado embarazada de sus violadores, esperaron hasta que diese a luz y a los quince días la fusilaron. Julia tenía en la prisión a una hermana, que no quiso hacerse cargo de ‘aquello’, le daba horror. El niño fue llevado a una Inclusa, los hospicios se estaban nutriendo en estos últimos meses de criaturas que nunca sabrían que eran hijos de la tortura y el repudio. (Doña 159) (A few days ago they executed Julia Lázaro, she was twenty years old; two months after being sentenced to death she realized that she was pregnant from her rapists, they waited until she gave birth and two weeks later they executed her. Julia had a sister in prison, who did not want to take responsibility for ‘that thing,’ it horrified her. The child was taken to a group home for orphans, these last few months the shelters were brimming over with these little ones who would never know they were children of torture and repudiation.)

In her sardonically titled chapter “Caridad Cristiana” (Christian Charity), Núñez Targa tells Julia’s story, highlighting the clergy’s hypocrisy and their blackmail of inmates. Damas catequistas, monjas y el cura pasan la terrible noche atosigando a la condenada para que se confiese, añadiendo este nuevo y refinado suplicio a su cruel agonía, llegando a servirse de los peores chantajes para tratar de conseguir sus fines. Así obraron con Julia Lázaro. Julia, comunista, estaba embrazada cuando fue condenada a muerte. Los franquistas esperaron, pues, que diera luz. Tuvo una niña más maja que un

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sol. A los dos meses del parto, vino a buscarla una funcionaria por la tarde … Julia, que iba precisamente a amamantar a la nena, la dejó en brazo de una compañera… La metieron acto seguido en capilla e inmediatamente empezó el repugnante chantaje: —Confiésese y le haremos entrar la niña para que le dé el pecho. […] Julia no cedió. En represalias, las monjitas llevaron por la mañana la niña a la Inclusa. Cuando la familia vino a reclamarla, se encontró con que había desaparecido. ¿Cuál fue su destino? (Núñez Targa 85–86) (The religious instruction ladies, the nuns and the priest spent the terrible night harassing the convicted woman to confess, adding this new and refined torment to her cruel agony, ultimately doling out the worst of their blackmails to attain their ends. That is how they acted with Julia Lázaro. Julia, a communist, was pregnant when she was sentenced to death. The Francoists waited until she gave birth. She had a little girl that was as cute as a button. Two months after the delivery, a functionary came for her in the evening … Julia, who was just about to nurse the little one, left her in the arms of her friend … They put her in the chapel and immediately began the repugnant blackmail: ‘Confess and we’ll let the baby in for you to nurse her.’ […] Julia did not give in. As a reprisal, the little nuns took the baby girl to the orphans home. When her family came to claim her, they found that she had disappeared. What was her fate?)

Julia Lázaro’s story in Cañil reads: Una de sus compañeras, no se acordaba de si había sido Paz o Antonia o quién, le había contado la historia de una mujer llamada Julia Lázaro. La habían apresado y, mientras soportaba los interrogatorios, siete policías la violaron. Finalmente, había ingresado en Ventas con su hermana María y pronto se dio cuenta de que estaba embrazada. Estaba condenada a muerte y la dejaron en la sala de penadas hasta que parió. La ley prohibía fusilar a las embarazadas, aunque todas sabían que en ocasiones no se respetaba. Tras fusilar a Julia, su hermana había dudado sobre qué hacer con aquel sobrino. Era el hijo de su hermana, pero también el recuerdo de las atrocidades a las que había sido sometida la fusilada, y la manera en que se había engendrado el bebé la torturaba. La Topete aprovechó las dudas de la hermana durante los primeros días, tras el fusilamiento de Julia, y se quedó con

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el niño. Cuando la muchacha quiso recuperar al bebé ya era demasiado tarde. (Cañil 229) (One of her mates, she could not recall if it had been Paz or Antonia or who, had told her the story of a woman called Julia Lázaro. They had taken her into custody and, while she was enduring the interrogations, seven police raped her. Finally, she was placed in Ventas with her sister María and soon realized she was pregnant. She was sentenced to death and they let her stay in the room with the sentenced prisoners until she gave birth. The law forbade executing pregnant women, although everyone knew that was not abided at times. After executing Julia, her sister doubted what to do with that sobrino.32 It was the child of her sister, but also the reminder of the atrocities to which her executed sister had been subjected, and the way the baby was conceived tormented her. La Topete took advantage of Julia’s sister’s doubts the first few days, following Julia’s execution, and she kept the child. When the girl wanted to recover the baby, it was already too late.)

The juxtaposition of the three remediated accounts of Julia Lázaro’s plight proves revealing. In spite of the disparities in time (executed after two weeks or two months), highlighted elements (torture-rape, blackmail by clergy), and the gender of the child (feminine, neuter, or male), the accounts conclude with the forced disappearance of the child. It is imperative to note the connotative language in the testimonies and the denotative language in Cañil’s novel. Doña underscores the impact of the torture-rape: the emotional effect, repulsion, and conflicted feeling toward the child of rape. María Lázaro, who ultimately wanted to keep her sister’s child, according to Doña, was horrified by “that thing” (“‘aquello’ le daba horror”). Doña denounced the countless forced disappearances as well as the reality that many of these children were the spawn of “torture and repudiation.” Similarly, Núñez Targa condemns child separation and additionally accuses the clergy’s role. The sardonic title “Christian Charity” and the characterization of Julia’s maternal (emotional and physical) suffering as “refined torment,” added to her “cruel agony,” ironize the religious imagery of martyrdom. Núñez subverts the meaning of charity and the Marian cult. The physical torture meted out by the clergy weaponizes 32  “Sobrino” signifies “nephew,” but I have kept the original for the polysemy of the term. Just as “hermano” and “hijo” can be gendered or not and signify, respectively, brother/sibling and son/child, “sobrino” could mean the child (without gender) of one’s sibling, meaning a niece or a nephew.

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the engorged lactating breast, while the emotional torture deprives both mother and child of the sacrosanct intimacy immortalized by Catholic imagery and Madonna iconography. Unlike Doña and Núñez Targa, Cañil’s factual and objective narrative divests the account of incendiary or accusatory language. Rather, the novelist impartially lays bare the facts of malfeasance, which speak for themselves.

Incarcerated Children Just as the removal of their children was a repressive measure against female political prisoners, the abject conditions for children in the jails and their high mortality rate were also significant elements in their repression (Vinyes et al. 27). Undernourished and weak, the children in Ventas were incapable of enduring the abject living conditions and epidemics (Vinyes 102). Those who survived did so against all odds. Children jailed with their mothers died from abuse, perished from the conditions (neglect, lack of hygiene, nutrition, health care), and at the age of four they were removed from their mothers and transferred to state-sanctioned religious centers or state institutions, where in certain instances they could be reclaimed by family members (Vinyes et al. 80–81). In “Menos semilla de rojos,” Mercedes Núñez Targa describes the putrid and foul smelling “galería de madres” in Ventas populated by young women sitting on the floor or mats with “un enjambre de niños”: “pálidos, delgaditos, … llenos de pupas. Estos niños, menores de cinco años, viven día y noche encerrados, hambrientos, temblando ante las funcionarias, presenciando ‘sacas’, oyendo fusilamientos al amanecer y todo esto se refleja en su mirada. Tienen una expresión en los ojos que hace daño” (a swarm of children, pale, thin … covered in sores. These children, under the age of five, live confined day and night, trembling before the guards, witnessing the “sacas” [being carried off to be executed], hearing the executions at dawn and all this is reflected in their gaze. They have an expression in their eyes that hurts) (Núñez Targa 59). When a young woman expresses fear that her child will die, others comfort her, yet recall “con el corazón en un puño” (with their hearts in a fist) that when a child dies, the guard, known as la Veneno (Poison), utters, “¡Menos semilla de rojos!” (Less seeds of reds!) (Núñez Targa 60). Severely understaffed, many imprisoned children perished without having received, not just proper but any, medical attention. Significantly, Cañil includes the fictionalized real-life character Trinidad Gallego. This

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trained midwife not only presided over births albeit without instruments, pain treatment, hygiene, or sterilization, but could also attest to the abysmal pediatric, gynecological, and obstetric conditions as well as to the reality of the birthed children removed from their mothers either by deceit or by coercion (Vinyes et al. 102–04). In the fictionalized maternal ward in Ventas, “la vaharada de olores le produjo náuseas [a Jimena]. El espectáculo de los llantos de los niños, los sollozos de madres desesperadas intentando que sus hijos mamaran de tetas secas, las respiraciones entrecortadas de otras que, como posesas arrullaban a sus criaturas moribundas entre sus brazos” (the waft of odors nauseated her [Jimena]. The spectacle of the children’s cries, the mothers’ desperate sighs as they tried to make their children nurse from dry breasts, the irregular breathing of others that, like possessed women, rocked their dying little ones in their arms) (Cañil 178). The narrator describes scenes of child mortality: “espectáculo dantesco: niños moribundos en el suelo, atacados de meningitis, algunos con convulsiones. Uno o dos parecían estar ya muertos” (a horrific spectacle: dying children on the floor, in fits of meningitis, some were convulsing. One or two already appeared to be dead) (Cañil 180). The omniscient narrator presents a description of the fly-infested cadavers of children and the efforts to protect them from the scavenging parasites: “Aquellas moscas gordas, repulsivas, les atraían como un imán los oídos de las criaturas, los orificios de la nariz, exploradoras del mejor lugar para depositar su larva en aquella carne que comenazaba a pudrirse … Por eso ellas las espantaban con ira” (Those fat, repulsive flies were drawn to the little one’s ears like a magnet, to the orifices of their noses, exploring the best place to deposit their larvae in that flesh that was beginning to rot…That is why they [Jimena and her peers] would angrily shoo them away) (187). A mother wails as she witnesses her perished son’s eyes riddled with maggots. In San Isidro, Petra Cuevas gives birth to a four-kilogram little girl. When she contracts whooping cough, she is separated from her mother other than the few times allowed to breastfeed (Cañil 275–76). When the child finally dies, “No hubo palabras” (There were no words) (Cañil 284). The eloquent parsimony of the inexpressible loss speaks volumes when contrasted to detailed and objective recounting of the abysmal conditions. In 1940, the Francoist state began legislation to remove children older than three years old from its jails. Let us recall the three key pieces of legislation that respectively remove children (March 30, 1940), place wards of the state with beneficence institutions (November 23, 1940), and

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change children’s names in the Civil Registry (December 4, 1941). These forced releases, child removals, and coordinated mass transfers in trains that took place between 1940 and 1944 under the auspices of the Ministry of Justice are what Vinyes, Armengou, and Belis refer to as “deportaciones infantiles” (child deportations) (58), a term rightly analogous to deportations to work camps, concentration camps, and extermination camps. In spite of the fact that these incarcerated children were not logged in the prisons’ registries, there is an occasional appearance on the mothers’ transfer paperwork or accounting justification for food provisions (Vinyes et al. 57). Thus, testimonies of prisoners and the children themselves become invaluable proof that counteracts the historical parsimony and silences referenced by Joly. Tomasa Cuevas recounts her own experiences and eyewitness testimony. In the Durango prison, “there were many children … until the government issued a decree that children older than two couldn’t stay in prison with their mothers … In some cases friends and relatives came for the children, but we were up north and all the women were from central Spain, some even from Andalusia. The government set a date by which time the children had to leave prison. The mothers became desperate. What was to become of their children? Where would they be taken? Would they ever see their children again?” (52). The November 24, 1940, Ministry of Governance decree, titled “Huérfanos. Protección a los de la Revolución y la Guerra” (Protection for the Orphans of the Revolution and War), answers Cuevas’ question: “en defecto de familia propia, serán encomendados a personas dispuestas a encender en ellos el fuego del afecto familiar” (lacking a [proper or their own] family, they will be entrusted to persons willing to spark in them the fire of family affect), and if not, they will be placed in the custody whatever organizations the state or movement “prestigian como órgano militante de la idea de hermandad nacional. Sólo en último término pasarán a las Entidades de beneficiencia” (deem to be a militant organ of the idea of national brotherhood. Only as a last resort will they pass to beneficence entities). As orphans of war, “Como desprovisto de sentido hereditario, la culpa de cualquier proceder anti nacional cesa ante el huérfano precisado de la ayuda común” (lacking any sense of heritage, the fault of any anti-national origin ceases with the orphan in common assistance) (qtd. in Vinyes et al. 220). The hair-raising lists created by the Patronato de la Merced of children placed in religious or public centers specify parents’ whereabouts as Germany with its concomitant Nazi camps, as well as those of Mauthausen and Auschwitz, and

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the wide array of prisons in Franco’s New Spain (Vinyes et  al. 62). Ultimately, the children were at the mercy of their captors without a trace as to their genealogical origins (Egido 11). The church, which benefited financially, separated siblings, and placed children far from their hometowns. In other words, all ties to family origins were severed, and supplanted by the ideological, indoctrinating brain-washing machine of an institution that gained financially by accepting wards and by shaping malleable minds and building “recruits,” increasing its influence and power with the state (Vinyes et al. 61). Cañil’s omniscient narrator succinctly encapsulates motives for relinquishing parental rights, identifies María Topete as the intermediary, and enumerates children’s possible placements: “Muchas madres, desesperadas por estar muy enfermas o sin familia fuera de la cárcel, y algunas prostitutas le daban los niños a la Topete, que los enviaba al Patronato para la Redención de Penas o al Auxilio Social. O a conventos. O a seminarios” (Many mothers, desperate for being sick or not having family outside of jail, and some prostitutes gave their children to la Topete, who would send them to the Patronage for the Redemption of Errors or to Social Assistance. Or to convents. Or to seminaries) (239). Two conflicting and juxtaposed viewpoints come to light. With her friends, María Topete spoke of her work at the San Isidro prison for mothers and how “aquellas madres descarriadas, descuidadas, que, desde luego, no iban a contaminar a sus hijos sus pecados” (those wayward, sloppy mothers would, by no means, contaminate their children with their own sins) (242). Topete’s stance is one of certainty and judgment. The demonstrative adjective “aquellas” (those) proves condescending and is further intensified by the adjectives that modify (wayward and sloppy). The interjection “desde luego” (of course, certainly, by no means) communicates not only María’s position of authority, but also her intransigence and lack of compassion for the inmate mothers. She assigns agency (which she will impede) to the mothers, fusing their infectious illness with sinfulness. In other words, Topete scapegoats and monstrifies the incarcerated women, as she portrays as sinful and pathologizes their ideology. On the other hand, Jimena sees through the flawed paradigm that constructs an internal enemy: “Detrás de aquel castillo de naipes, María Topete puso en marcha lo más cruel y reaccionario de las ideas de Antonio Vallejo-Nágera: la eugenesia positiva” (Behind that house of cards, María Topete set in motion the cruelest and most reactionary of Antonio Vallejo-­ Nágera’s ideas: positive eugenics) (242). The disparity between image and

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reality is revealed and ironized. Adopting the same demonstrative adjective (aquellas [those]), the narrator makes patent the maternal desengaño, the maternal let down, the mourning of the hope of being in an acceptable environment with their children. “Aquellas mujeres”—prisoners who had been hopeful at the prospect of a special prison for mothers and babies— “pasaron en segundos de la felicidad y la expectación al espanto, cuando comprobaron que las funcionarias les arrebataban a sus hijos para llevarlos a otra habitación, una estancia con cunitas blancas y hermosas donde ellas no podían entrar” (in seconds went from happiness and expectation to horror, when they confirmed that the officials snatched away their children to take them to another room, an area with lovely little white cribs where they were not allowed to enter) (242–43). Trini Gallego in Cañil recounts how Topete “A las piculinas y a las mecheras les pide que entreguen a los niños al Auxilio Social. O les dice que ella, a través de sus amistades, les puede enviar a colegios de monjas o seminarios. E incluso cuando el niño es mono, les dice que pueden dárselo a alguna familia muy cristiana. Yo lo he oído … Quiere convertir en monjas y curas, o en soldados, a todos los niños del país” (asks the tarts and shoplifters to surrender their children to Social Assistance. Or she tells them that, through her friends, she can send them to religious schools or seminaries. And even when the child is cute, she tells them they can give it to some very Christian family. I have heard it … She wants to convert all of the country’s children into nuns and priests, or into soldiers) (277). The assertion “I have heard” not only gives credence to the claim, but also underscores the value of testimony, for those who bear it are historians of themselves.33 The indirect discourse structure “les dice” or volition clause “les pide,” as in courtroom eyewitness testimony, presents factual observations. The narrative—based on testimonial accounts—weaves the fictional tale of the fictitious protagonist’s separation from her son Luisito and the prospect of his irregular adoption. The varying perspectives with the concomitant language choices prove revealing. The prison director’s dialogues and monologues obfuscate the cruelty of child separation by relying on two institutions. The language of religion and that of law—along with the name-dropping of authority figures—both confer authority to her discourse and absolve her of responsibility. In speaking to Luisito’s paternal grandmother who refuses to recognize him, María Topete appears to offer  Trini Gallego has been amply interviewed.

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to enact the Protection of Orphans of the Revolution and War decree: “El niño no tiene la culpa de nada. Ya he hablado con el padre Martínez Colom. Podemos enviarle a un seminario, a través del Patronato para la Redención de Penas. Naturalmente, con el membrete de huérfano o padre desconocido. También podríamos pensar en una adopción. Bueno, lo llamamos entrega familiar” (The child is not to be blamed for anything. I have already spoken with Father Martínez Colom. We can send him to a seminary, through the Patronage for the Redemption of Sentences. Of course, noting he is an orphan or that his father is unknown. We could also consider an adoption. Well, we call it family submission) (304). Of note are the two terms María applies for the forced removal of Jimena’s son Luisito. “Adoption” is a neutral term referring to a legal action, while “entrega familiar” (family submission/turning in) is, without a doubt, a euphemism. Cañil’s turn of phrase “lo llamamos” (we call it) highlights the intentionality of the verbiage with the concomitant agency (a partisan “we”) that purposefully disguises the reality of forced disappearance of Republican children. Topete then wonders what to do with Jimena and considers that “estos mismos días se va a aprobar la Orden de Redención de Mujeres Caídas” (any day now the Order of Redemption for Fallen Women will be approved) (305). Again, wielding the rhetoric of nationalized Catholic eugenics, a punitive measure is presented within a narrative of magnanimous salvation. Having seen how Topete convinced mothers to give up their children, or how mothers begged her to place them so that they would not starve in prison, Jimena witnesses the human impact and import of the misogynistic postwar legislation: “Estaba harta de ver las despedidas de muchas compañeras, que se partían en dos el día que su hijo cumplía los cuatro años y se lo llevaban con las monjas o los curas si no tenían un familiar cercano que se hiciera cargo de ellos” (She could no longer stand the farewells of many of her peers, who fell to pieces when their children turned four and were taken away by nuns or priests if they didn’t have a nearby relative to take responsibility for them) (318). Whereas Topete’s dialogue callously justifies child separation through collaboration between the church and the law, Jimena’s focus is on the emotional response to losing a child. The protagonist soon learns she, too, would lose her child. María Topete’s transfer of her to Oropesa would stigmatize her as a fallen woman and, as a result, would irreversibly separate her from Luisito. She monologues, “Era una ladrona de niños, una ladrona de amor de criaturas ajenas, porque ella, aquella mujer  …  jamás tendría a ningún hombre ni a

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ningún niño que fueran auténticamente suyos” (She was a child robber, a thief [who stole] the love of others’ little ones, because she, that woman … would never have a man nor a child that was truly hers) (323). Furthermore, Jimena’s incarceration in Oropesa leads to a paradigm shift in which she destigmatizes the “fallen women” and vindicates the sex workers as collateral victims of war: “En muchos de los casos había sido la guerra o la posguerra, el hambre de sus hijos o de sus viejos, los fusilamientos del padre, del marido o el hermano lo que las había llevado a hacer la calle” (In many cases it was the war or the postwar, or the starvation of their children or their elderly, the execution of a father, or husband or brother that had made them take to working the streets) (325–326). The jailed, trafficked women, morally repudiated, judged, and dismissed as “fallen”—implicitly through their own agency and free will—were one more group within the “cientos de miles de hombres y mujeres que pagaban sus pecados republicanos en centenares de prisiones” (hundreds of thousands of men and women who paid for their Republican sins in hundreds of prisons) (Cañil 330). The prison for fallen women forms part of the same-gender construct dichotomy that includes María Topete. Topete is the antithesis of a postwar so-called fallen woman. While the latter adheres to reality, does what is necessary to survive, and supports others during the years of postwar famine, the former embraces unrealistic and fundamentally cruel ideology that not only blames the victims, but also actively victimizes them by weaving a narrative that transforms them into immoral, infirm criminals—in other words, pariahs who have no place in Franco’s Spain in spite of the redemption rhetoric. With these two extremes of the dichotomous national-Catholic construct of woman, Cañil fosters some understanding of the architects and builders of home wrecking without exculpating them of their wrongdoing.

María Topete Fernández This particular historical character, prison director María Topete Fernández (1900–2000)—a mean, childless woman in power who covets the children of others—and who emerges in the testimonies—becomes a co-­ protagonist-­cum-antagonist in Cañil. While Si a los tres años vindicates the criminalized defeated, it also opens a window into the lives of Nationalist women and presents the lens through which the constant gardeners of fascist ideals and nationalized Catholicism saw the world.

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From a family with ties to the military insurgents and the regime, María Topete is a key player in child separations. In spite of having no training, Topete’s meteoric ascent in the penitentiary system led to authority normally reserved for wardens or other high-ranking functionaries. By 1940, she was no longer a volunteer; rather, she earned a salary and held an appointment as an official of the Women’s Section of the Prison Corps (Vinyes 124–25). High-ranking officials praised her as a fervent Catholic, a very moral, Christian, and disciplined person, unconditionally adherent to the National Movement (Vinyes et  al. 124–25).34 By all accounts, Topete believed she benefited the children by separating them from politically errant mothers so they would not “suckle communist milk” (Vinyes et al. 130). Notwithstanding the humanization of Topete, Cañil reveals the jailer to be an active adherent to the banality of evil for actively depriving mothers access to their children, removing them—in effect, forcing their disappearance—and turning a blind eye to the inhumanity of its undeniable cruelty. Cañil’s portrayal of María Topete as a product, representative, and perpetuator of a system reveals the effectiveness of church and state collusion in the propaganda machine. Cañil humanizes Topete in two ways: by the depiction of her childhood and youth, and by the fondness that she feels for the children. The former serves to evoke empathy in the reader, understanding how she fell in love, was riddled with self-loathing following a guilty pleasure, and was ultimately jilted by her wealth-conscious longtime suitor. The reader hurts for María. Similarly, the portrayal of the jail director’s affection for the most vulnerable inhabitants of the penitentiary reminds the reader that, in spite of her disdain and heartlessness toward the incarcerated prisoners, María Topete was capable of loving—or at least of longing for a child. Through the nuanced representation of this jailer—infamous in the testimonies— Cañil avoids Manicheism. María falls in love with Juan Antonio, whose attentions and affections blur the clear lines María had drawn between chastity and perdition. Her would-be lover viewed her through what I will refer to as a Nordic fascist lover’s lens. He sees her as cold and alluring, embodying northern European mythology as she has a stranglehold on her repressed sexuality. Juan Antonio’s characterization of María as a Valkyrie and a mermaid 34  President of Supreme Council of Military Justice Emilio Fernández Pérez, as well as the Director General of Prisons.

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reveals his Germanophile penchant for mythmaking and foreshadows the end of their affair where she is alone. Juan Antonio monologues that María “era como una edelweiss entre las rocas, que se abre con los rayos del sol más calientes” (she was like an edelweiss between two boulders that opens with the hottest rays of the sun) (134). The image reveals her rigid chastity (the boulders) that protects her feminine, fascist sexuality (edelweiss) vulnerable to her would-be lover’s ardor. Ultimately, “sucedió el episodio que María pensó que la había condenado toda la vida ante Dios, a no ser que redimiera el enorme pecado con una larguísima penitencia” (the episode took place that María thought had condemned her for life before God, unless she redeemed the enormous sin with a very long penitence) (Cañil 132). The sexual encounter in the summer home closet in which “Se había desatado la pasión reprimida durante años y años” (the passion repressed for years and years was unleashed) became, for María, “lo peor del mundo: el pecado de la carne” (the absolute worst: sin of the flesh) (136, 137). As a result, “Nunca más se sintió limpia. Nunca se perdonó aquella debilidad … Dios la estaba castigando por la debilidad de su carne” (She never felt clean again. She never forgave herself that weakness … God was punishing her for the weakness of the flesh) (137). This encounter, a turning point in fictional María’s life trajectory, reveals the antagonist’s human vulnerability. María’s self-loathing is rooted in Catholicism, an ideology that early feminist thinker Margarita Nelken considered an obstacle to progress (Bieder 159; Nelken 1922, 208–09). If, as contemporary US feminist bell hooks surmises, feminist thinking helps women “unlearn female self-­hatred” and “internalized sexism” is “the enemy within” (hooks 14), then María’s lack of self-acceptance and vilification of her libido, along with the adherence to a dichotomous social construct of woman as repudiated whore or chaste, saintly mother, perfectly informed her actions and attitudes in both Ventas and San Isidro. Furthermore, it led her to transfer Jimena to the prison for fallen women, in effect, branding her with the scarlet letter of moral turpitude that would ensure permanent loss of child custody. A third piece of the jailer’s biography proves paradoxical. Without fictional elaboration or creative conjecture, mention is made of María’s wartime incarceration (August 1936–March 1937). Cañil informs of the intervention by the Norwegian consul Felix Schlayer to release María and many other socioeconomic elite inmates as well as clergy, but does not narrativize speculation regarding the jailer’s emotional and psychological experience during her captivity. Instead, the experience defined her

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opposition and resentment toward her captors. Privileged María recoiled at the socioeconomically disadvantaged milicianas that ran the jail and ultimately cements her class-conscious condescension and pious religiosity while imprisoned (152). As analyzed in the respective chapters of this book, just as Pa negre aims to understand the difficult choice of a child of the defeated to side with the architects of his family’s misfortunes, and as O lapis do carpinteiro invites readers into the mind of a jailer-executioner, and as El lector de Julio Verne humanizes a guardia civil during the Triennium of Terror, Cañil’s novel avoids Manicheism as she lays bare the most human realities of pain, loss, and rejection as well as unfulfilled desire and the failure to meet societally inculcated gender expectations. Cañil’s Topete is a woman of privilege and traditional values (who worships the un/holy trinity of church, state, and motherhood), who failed in her role as a woman within the context of patriarchal nationalized Catholicism. Her emotionally and biologically barren existence is sympathetically portrayed, inspiring understanding and perhaps empathy in her youth and early adulthood. Cañil’s even hand in the representation of the jailer and the jailed protagonist in the first half of the novel establishes parallels between the two without communicating equivalency. Topete’s months in custody during the war are certainly not equal to Jimena’s years incarcerated after the war. In spite of the fact that María Topete’s classist indignation at the authority of usurping rabble during the Republic and Madrid during the war cannot easily compare to Jimena’s outrage at her unfounded imprisonment, torture, and separation from her child, Cañil humanizes Topete as a rigid, yet not two-dimensional, figure who feels both tenderness and loathing: lo que le interesaba era ocuparse de los niños de las republicanas. En cuanto a las madres, tenía que apelar cada día a su caridad cristiana y católica para mitigar el asco que le daban aquellas mujeres libertinas. ... Cuando por las noches volvía a su casa, María se sentía miserable y culpable por los sentimientos que las presas le producían. Pero se consolaba pensando que aquellas mujeres eran el resultado del veneno que les habían inculcado otras como la Pasionaria [... que] hacía que le hirviera la sangre. Todas aquellas mujeres que durante tres años de guerra habían sido marimachos, luchando a veces al lado de los hombres, golfas que disfrutaban del sexo sin pasar por la Iglesia siquiera, que tenían hijos a los que criarían directamente en los pecados del infierno, no merecían su consideración. (Cañil 170–71)

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(What interested her was taking care of the Republican women’s children. Regarding the mothers, she had to appeal daily to her Christian and Catholic charity to mitigate the disgust she felt toward those libertine women. When she returned home at night, María felt miserable and guilty for the feelings the inmates produced in her. But she consoled herself thinking that these women were the result of the poison instilled in them by ­others like la Pasionaria35 [... that] made her blood boil. During three years of war, those women had been butch, fighting sometimes alongside men, tramps that enjoyed sex without even going through Church, that had children that they would raise directly in the sins of hell, they did not deserve her consideration.)

Cañil’s Topete fully embraces Vallejo Nágera’s pseudo-scientific theories on eugenics that fuel and confirm her bias against las rojas. The psychiatrist who had pathologized leftist ideology is quoted in Cañil, as Topete reads his La locura y la guerra: psicopatología de la guerra española: “si militan en el marxismo de preferencia psicópatas antisociales, [entonces] la segregación de estos sujetos desde la infancia podría liberar a la sociedad de la plaga tan temible” (if they profess Marxism of psychopathic antisocial preference, [then] the segregation of these subjects from infancy could liberate society from a fearsome plague) (Cañil 171). Juxtaposed is Topete’s inner monologue: “Había, pues, que separar a los hijos de las rojas de sus madres, alejarlos de sus padres, para salvarlos. Para que aquellas desgraciadas que se habían dedicado a procrear sin pudor los hijos que ella no podría ya nunca tener no pudieran envenenarlos. María sentía que Dios la había llamado para esa tarea” (Then, the children of reds had to be separated from their mothers, distanced from their parents, in order to save them. So that those despicable women, who without a semblance of sexual propriety had procreated children that she could never have, would not be able to poison them). As a result, unqualified, but well-connected, María Topete availed herself of her social influence and hegemonic supremacy, not just to separate children from their inmate mothers but also to craft an image of the captive infants as a collective poster child for the Catholic magnanimity of the penitentiary system.

 Famed communist orator Dolores Ibárruri (1895–1989).

35

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Propaganda and Redención The periodical Redención was an instrument of propaganda aimed at one purpose: to create and disseminate a whitewashed, fairy tale, Catholic crusader image of the dictator, his cruel regime, and the penitentiary universe. The triumphant insurgents purposefully debuted the periodical on April 1, 1939, the Día de la Victoria, and intentionally published it in the Basque city of Vitoria to illustrate that they were not sore losers, but gloating winners who demoralized the defeated opponents from whom they had stolen the legitimate government. As a weapon in the “battle of ideas,” this publication spun stories that consecrated political prisoners’ conversion under the tutelage of the Caudillo (Gómez Bravo 118), was widely circulated, and was the only reading material authorized in Franco’s jails (Vinyes et al. 62). Núñez Díaz synthesizes that both the inward-facing and outward-­ facing negative optics of the Francoist reprisals were the impetus for the creation of the Patronato Central de Redención de Penas por el Trabajo (Central Patronage for the Redemption of Sentences through Work) whose aim, through media and propaganda, was to make known “la cara más amable de la estructura carcelaria” (the most pleasant face of the penitentiary structure) (“Propaganda” 135). During the civil war (before the Republican defeat and the fascists’ takeover of the entire nation), the decree of May 28, 1937, in insidious double-speak, “grants” inmates the right to work while incarcerated in order to “sustenerse por su propio esfuerzo” (support themselves through their own efforts), aid their families, and not be “un peso muerto” (a dead weight) on society (qtd. in Núñez Díaz 135). The order of October 7, 1938, mandates the formation of the Patronato (“Núñez Díaz, “Propaganda” 135, Boletín Oficial de día 11). Redención aspired simultaneously to demythify the Republican cultural and educational project and mythically exonerate the draconian penitentiary system in the court of public opinion. The latter not only rewrote or reframed the narrative; it actually invented a fictional tale through the lens of messianic salvation and redemption. The puppeteers of the gaslighting campaign were none other than seasoned Catholic propagandists who distorted the reality of punishment through the crusader lens of conquest and conversion. Many of the ideological architects that designed the Redención de Penas por el Trabajo had ample experience before the civil war and had belonged to the Catholic Association of Propagandists (Gómez Bravo 119). “Redemption” is simply a euphemism to replace

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“doblegar y transformar” (making bow and transforming) key to the manufactured image of Franco’s crusade (Vinyes, “Doblegar” 34). The propagandistic machine fashioned its discourse on incarceration on the premise that inmates’ wayward ideas led them to lives of sin, rather than of crime (García Funes n.p.). Given this insidious and sinister paradigm shift based on nationalized Catholicism, the new penal system “allowed” the prisoner to redeem him/herself, thus ascribing both agency and blame to the victims of political repression. Redención manufactured an imaginary for the prisoners intramuros and their families extramuros. By March 1940, the far reach of this weekly publication surpassed one million copies (García Funes n.p.). Infiltrating the homes of the estranged and imprisoned, it provided purportedly edifying stories and articles, in other words, detailing ideology to swallow and a code of conduct to perform. Those behind bars who had anachronistically strayed from the “Christian” and “patriotic” path of righteousness— retroactively mandated to predate the war—as well as the families who tended the homes to which the inmates were to return to, were expected to absorb and believe the propagandized imaginary. On the front page of the first issue of the weekly, the dictator proclaimed, “Yo aspiro a ser el Caudillo de todos” (I aspire to be the leader of all)—to paraphrase, a strict, yet supposedly well-intentioned, militarist father figure to all. The slippery and sinister term in this declarative sentence that posits the agency on “yo [el Caudillo]” is “aspiro,” a term that refutes actuality, shrugs off the de facto obligation to the constituency, and provides a facile escape clause to the leader’s responsibilities. Given the publication venue and penitentiary context, the verb “aspire” implies that the onus is on the incarcerated. It suggests that if the military father figure cannot take the prodigal sons (or daughters) under his protective arm, it is of their own doing, for their actions have not adequately proven their readiness to return to the patriarchal home—with all that it entailed. The weekly’s pages told the story that political inmates could only secure their release by internalizing the authoritarian doctrine that also would lead to their spiritual redemption (García Funes n.p). The propaganda machine sought collaboration-through-conversion from the inmates as they betrayed their Republican ideology. The whitewashed image crafted by the propaganda was projected onto both the national and international stage to construct the magnanimous façade crucial to the blanching of its vengeful image (“esa fachada magnánima que el régimen necesitaba,” “descolorar su imagen vengativa”)

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(Núñez Díaz, “Propaganda” 135). This feat required the mastery of fiction writing. With fiction or narrative, one needs to be aware of the narrator. Is the narrator reliable, is he/she trustworthy, is he/she omniscient, or is the narrator unreliable and makes use of irony to skew the tale that is told? Curiously, with the regime’s propaganda, if we applied the rules of narratological analysis, the narrator is unreliable yet assumes a trustworthy, omniscient point of view. While the select or staged images and the ecclesiastic, state-crafted narrative were unbelievable, the crafters counted on their believability. The images and narrative worked, I offer, for the following reasons: the assumption of objective, “informative,” omniscient “truth,”; the faith or belief in authority (the fusion of church and state in the rhetoric of nationalized Catholicism); and the desire—bereft of any critical thinking—to believe the pleasant fiction in order to ignore heinous reality. The propagandistic campaign reflected the picture-perfect symbiosis between the church and the Francoist state (Núñez Díaz “Propaganda” 137). In fact, the prime cardinal of Spain perched at the peak of what Núñez Díaz terms the religious propagandistic apparatus pyramid (“Propaganda” 140). In his 1939 article in the first volume of Redención, Father José Agustín Pérez del Pulgar “birthed” the Patronato that purportedly integrates the apostolic mission with “la pacificación espiritual y social de España y su reconstrucción material” (the spiritual and social pacification of Spain with its material reconstruction) (Pérez del Pulgar 49, qtd. in Núñez Díaz, “Propaganda” 140). Francoist propaganda constituted a “proyecto global de maquillaje de fachada de un régimen que continuaba su tarea de aniquilación, coacción y amedredrantamiento de todo opositor, potencial o real” (complete cosmetic overhaul of the facade of a regime that continued its task of annihilation, coercion, and intimidation of all, whether potential or real, that opposed it). The church, as the catalyst of the propaganda machine, “tranquilizaba la conciencia de los verdugos y de aquellas víctimas que estaban a su merced, facilitando su tránsito al otro mundo con la comunión y la indulgencia de los pecados” (assuaged the consciences of the victimizers and of those victims at their mercy, easing their transit to the other world with communion and the indulgence of their sins) (Núñez Díaz, “Propaganda” 137). As Txetxu Aguado asserts, the function of fascist and religious civil war rhetoric is to “enmascarar, ideologizar, adoctrinar para matar el pensamiento, las ideas, la vida. Es un lenguaje falso, hueco, vacío”

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(mask, ideologize, indoctrinate to kill thinking, ideas, life. It is a false, hollow, empty language) (Aguado 50).36 The fusion between the interests of the church and the state is reflected in the blending of religious material with the regime’s ideology in the publications the publisher Redención churned out (Núñez Díaz, “Propaganda” 140). The religious-political propaganda’s two-part purpose was to induce the reader to recant liberalism and return to the “seno del catolicismo” (bosom of Catholicism) given that ([… C]omulgar con el catolicismo implicaba asentir con los principios del Movimiento” ([… T]aking communion with Catholicism implied assenting to the principles of the Movement) (Núñez Díaz, “Propaganda” 140). The inherent cruelty of the propaganda machine is evident in its praise of the high rates of pre-execution repentance and conversion—90% dying in the Christian way (“de manera Cristiana”) (Rodríguez Vega 10, qtd. in Richards 46, qtd. in Núñez Díaz, “Propaganda” 141). In essence, the propaganda on these penitent and converted strayed sheep who returned to the fold painted a pretty picture of emotional blackmail. In exchange for confession with a priest and taking communion, these “converts” were granted a final visit with their loved ones (Rodríguez Vega 10, qtd. in Richards 46, qtd. in Núñez Díaz, “Propaganda” 141). These highly publicized conversions aimed to prove that survival was possible only through submission to the victors’ standards (Eiroa and Barranquero 133). The Francoist penitentiary system aimed at more than punishment—it aspired to socialize and indoctrinate the inmates, molding them to the same political, social, and ideological principles also “implanted” into postwar society. The so-called redemption of the prisoners nullified their wayward politics and molded them to the values of the new political and economic reality (Rodríguez Teijeiro 59). The means through which the penitentiary system redeemed (i.e., punished and indoctrinated) prisoners for society and the homeland was a restructuring of social memory via political propaganda, religious instruction and practice, the publication Redención, and the “Rendención de Penas por el Trabajo” system (Rodríguez Teijero 60). In women’s prisons, religious edification under the tutelage of a chaplain or a mother superior and instruction on homemaking (cooking, sewing, and motherhood) and clothing manufacture occupied inmates’ days. The Sección Femenina’s homemaking schools 36  Aguado refers to the rhetoric depicted and used by the character Salvador in Alberto Méndez’s 2004 Los girasoles ciegos.

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ministered to the inmates’ “bien material y espiritual” (material and spiritual good) (Redención 25 Jan. 1941 p.1, qtd. in Rodríguez Teijeiro 66). The propagandistic indoctrination of national-Catholicism within the jails immersed political inmates in the ruling values of New Spain and, as such, made clear the expectation of unwavering conformity if they were to return to society (Rodríguez Teijeiro 73). If, as Vinyes proposes, female political prisoners’ dynamic with the oppressive powers had two purposes—to survive and reaffirm their political identities—(Irredentas 14), then the national Catholic plan of “redemption” backfired for it further cemented precisely the ideology it aimed at eradicating. The testimonies that ensued were what Vinyes terms “active testimonies,” in other words testimonies that “no solo dieran fe de la ‘verdad’ de lo sucedido, sino también una interpretación propia de los hechos vividos” (bear witness not only to the “truth” of what took place, but also to one’s own interpretation of the lived events) (Irredentas 14–15). While some did not recover, the meaning others distilled was “un aprendizaje”— a polyvalent term signifying “learning,” “apprenticeship,” and, even in narrative studies, a “coming of age.” This last meaning supports Vinyes’ theory that the meaning conferred upon the “aprendizaje” was the consolidation of inmates’ convictions and the political identities that landed them in jail (Irredentas 15). Jimena initiates her coming-of-age as a type of pragmatic ingénue. Until her incarceration, she had been apolitical and had faith in justice—or perhaps disbelieved that injustice could prevail. The protagonist awakens to the fact that she will be punished in spite of her innocence and without any formal charges. She learns that her victimizers will not only boast impunity but will also be honored for their dehumanizing efforts in the name of Christian redemption. Jimena’s initial naïveté serves to position the reader in a vantage point of impartiality, to see with unbiased eyes. The denotative language informs and paints a realistic picture of the goings-on (as Longobardi has observed). Similar to the real-life inmates whose imprisonment cemented their ideological convictions that led to their incarceration, Jimena—albeit initially apolitical—ultimately adhered to the convictions attributed to her for which she was placed behind bars. Her political ideology is values-based. Meaning, she believes in the inherent dignity of human beings and, in fact, adheres to an ethic of care, a response to the needs of others resulting from the moral reasoning that prioritizes vulnerability. The protagonist’s sense of justice allows her to discern clearly the injustices and hypocrisy of the justice system. Immune

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to cognitive dissonance, she cannot reconcile the atrocities she witnesses with the magnanimous crafted image of Francoist rhetoric and propaganda. Whereas eugenicist Antonio Vallejo Nágera unapologetically and mercilessly proposed cleansing society of degenerative elements and removing children from their “red” mothers, the regime’s propaganda machine couched these abductions in a charitable and compassionate light. The Central Patronage of Our Lady of Mercy for the Redemption of Sentences through Labor’s 1944 Memoria que eleva al Caudillo de España y a su Gobierno (Memoire that Elevates the Caudillo of Spain and Its Government) justifies the “miles y miles de niños … arrancados de la miseria material y moral” (thousands and thousands of children …. pulled out of material and moral poverty) with the gratitude of their parents who had been “distanciados políticamente del Nuevo Estado Español” (politically distant from the New State) yet now “se van acercando a él agradecidos a esta transcendental obra de protección” (were drawing nearer to it grateful for this transcendental good deed of protection) ( [1944] 202, qtd. in Vinyes et al. 59). Redención referred to the prison for nursing mothers as a “magnífico hotelito” (magnificent little hotel) (Cañil 247). Much ado was made about the celebration of twenty-one recent baptisms, supposedly “overflowing with tenderness and emotion” (rebosantes de ternura y emoción) (248). In juxtaposition to the image-crafting Redención, Cañil disparages the phallocratic, classist, and sanctimonious role of key players, such as the Directors of Prisons and of the Superior Council on Minors, as “apadrinamiento por parte de todos aquellos señoritingos, empeñados en bautizar y cristianizar a los hijos de las rojas y de algunas prostitutas” (religious sponsorship by all those hoity-toity gentlemen bent on baptizing and Christianizing the children of reds and some prostitutes) (Cañil 248). Cañil also cites the spin doctoring that took place on visitors’ day. The prisoners and starving visiting families were amazed at the menus posted on the kitchen doors unlike anything they had ever seen before: “Para los nenes, ‘un plato de patatas condimentadas con arreglo a lo determinado por el médico y una papilla de cacao facilitada por la Junta de Protección de Menores’. Para las madres y sus familiares, ‘un cocido con garbanzos, tocino, patata’, y hasta el caldo con color rojo, gracias a la grasa del chorizo que se sirvió en la mesa presidencial” (For the kids, “a seasoned potato dish prepared as determined by the doctor and a cocoa puree as set by the Board of the Protection of Minors.” For the mothers and their family members, “a stew with chick peas, bacon, potato” and even a broth colored red by

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the chorizo that was served at the presidential table) (Cañil 265). The menu published in Redención was to convince families that their incarcerated family members were well taken care of. The publicity-­motivated rations resulted from Topete’s contacts. Based on the real-life midwife, fictionalized Trini Gallego sardonically comments that even the Nazi Minister of Propaganda Josef Goebbels could not have done a better job. Similarly, Doña’s third-person omniscient narrator describes the dangerously neglectful conditions where many mother inmates sent to the Nursing Mothers Prison with their children had returned to their “prisión de origen pero … [sic], sin hijos” (prison of origin but … [sic] without children) (178). In other words, their children had perished in the abysmal conditions. Under Topete’s rule, children were ordered to eat the food on their plates. Those who vomited from the quick ingestion were forced to ingest the vomit. Mothers feared repercussions if they complained about the children’s treatment (Doña 179). To obfuscate the harsh realities, the Prison for Nursing Mothers was touted as a penitentiary paragon: “era visitada por ‘autoridades y jerarquías’ y se presentaba como prisión piloto: limpia, con niños de menos de dos años en perfecta formación y con madres que tenían que hacer reverencias. Detrás de ellos se escondía lo más sórdido e inhumano de las prisiones españolas” (it was visited by “authorities and hierarchies” and was presented as a pilot prison: clean, with children under the age of two in perfect formation and with mothers who curtsied. Behind them was hiding the most sordid and inhuman of Spanish prisons) (Doña 179). Núñez Díaz denounces this magnanimous and unbelievable image of Franco’s propaganda as a “disfraz” (costume) donned to wear before the changing international stage (“Propaganda” 144). Noting the regime’s language use that legitimized irregular adoptions, linguist Sara Longobardi examines Cañil’s faithful incorporation of the regime’s lexicon of family law and criminal law as a means to denounce and subvert the insidious connotative language. According to Longobardi, the Nationalists in Tres años employ a connotative lexicon, particularly with regard to the Republicans. This usage assigns negative value to those ideologically differing from them. In other words, the connotative lexicon conceptualizes in the pejorative, linguistically casting a shadow on the enemy. The supporters of the Republic on the other hand employed a denotative lexicon,37 in other words, an objective and neutral use of 37  Denotation signifies that a term is unambiguous and understood by a language community to indicate a particular referent.

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language. This is particularly evident in the descriptions of illness and living conditions within the penitentiary system. Cañil’s third-person objective narrator’s descriptions of the children and mothers’ living conditions borders on triage, presenting an assessment of an abject situation—symptoms so to speak—so that the reader can logically and reasonably diagnose.38 To distill Longobardi’s linguistic analysis, Cañil subverts the regime’s demonizing rhetoric and pathologizing spin doctoring simply by adhering to objective descriptions. Similar to Juan Ramón Jiménez’s poesía pura—personified as naked before the reader to make visible the core of poetry—Cañil’s fictionalization of the harsh realities of the maternal prisons frankly reflects reality without trappings or artifice. Juxtaposed to the connotative lexicon circulated and propagandized by the regime—that pathologized and depicted as heretical the collective defeated Other—Cañil’s bare-bones denotative narration becomes the literary equivalent of ecco, voilà, or res ipso locutor, allowing the facts to speak for themselves. Longobardi specifies, Las unidades léxicas…que indican enfermedades, son todas denotativas, es decir, no hay información conceptual añadida: se refieren de manera objetiva y precisa a un referente sin otras implicaciones … No deja espacio a la polisemia de las palabras. De hecho, las unidades léxicas que indican tipos de enfermedades son monosémicas: ‘tifus’, ‘meningitis’, ‘bronquitis’ … [etc…] pueden indicar un solo referente, tienen un solo significado. (165) (The lexical units … that indicate illnesses, are all denotative, that is to say, there is no added conceptual information: they objectively and precisely refer to a referent without other implications. [This] does not leave room for polysemy of words. In fact, the lexical units that indicate types of illnesses are monosemic: typhoid, meningitis, bronchitis … [etc…] [and] can indicate only one referent, have only one meaning.)

With regard to family law in Tres años, Longobardi notes that only characters aligned with the regime utilize terminology that references adoption (“entregar en adopción” or “dar en adopción” [to surrender or to give up in adoption]); “como si esa práctica se realizara de manera legal y según procedimientos jurídico-administrativos, y es más, con el consentimiento de los padres” (as if that practice were carried out legally and in accordance with judicial-administrative process, and further, with the 38  See 163–64  in Longobardi for the lists of denotative lexical units referencing actual illnesses.

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consent of the parents) (168). On the other hand, the defeated Republican characters speak of “‘desaparición’ de niños” (disappearance of children) (168), using expressions of transit, movement, or transfer of possession: “que entreguen a los niños” (surrender/submit the children), “enviar a colegios de monjas o seminarios” (send to schools run by nuns or seminaries), “pueden dárselo a alguna familia cristiana” (they can give them to some Christian family) (Cañil 277, referenced in Longobardi 169). Of note is the use of the subjunctive with emotion (such as fear) or denial (not wanting) in relation to mothers and the removal of their children. Yet in reference to Topete, the subjunctive follows an expression of volition, “les pide que entreguen a los niños” (she asks them to surrender the children) (Cañil 277). These uses of the subjunctive grammatical mood reveal the clear power structure in the jails. The mothers fear and refuse the removal of their children, whereas the penitentiary authorities impose their will (volition) for the removal. Interestingly in Longobardi’s reference of family law terminology— wielded by the adherents to the regime—is the conjunction “para que”— “so that” or “in order to”—followed by expressions such as “give up for adoption,”39 often times with the mother as the agential subject. The jailers’ use of family law terminology, I would add, places the onus and power to decide on the mothers. Implicitly, then, this connotation would exculpate the jailers of blame, agency, and ill-doing. On the other hand, the sentences of fear or negation with the subjunctive reveal the mothers’ stance. For them, the removal of their children is an action of forced separation and movement revealed by the word choices “entregar” (to give, turn in, surrender), “quitar” (to take away), and “desaparecer” (to disappear in the transitive). Longobardi clearly underscores inmate mothers’ use of criminal law terminology rather than family law. Instead of “adoption,” they use “robo” (theft), which pertains to a crime rather than a civil action and holds the ill-doers accountable.40 Longobardi states, “el empleo léxico connotado fue el recurso lingüístico-argumentativo más utilizado en el discurso político, jurídico y periodístico o franquista sobre la adopción de niños para desacreditar el punto de vista del enemigo republicano y darle la culpa de la condición de orfandad o desamparo de los niños españoles” (connotated lexical use was the most used linguistic-­ argumentative resource in the political, judicial, media, or Francoist discourse regarding child adoption in order to discredit the Republican  See page 167 in Longobardi for several examples.  See pp. 169–70 for several examples identified by Longobardi.

39 40

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enemies’ point of view and blame them for the orphanhood and abandonment of Spanish children) (172–73). The regime’s manipulation of language became a decoy that distracted any opprobrium from the institutional malfeasance, gaslighted, and turned the tables, transforming the victims into the victimizers.

A Romance’s Restitution and a Fairy-Tale Ending Cañil presents a counternarrative to the Francoist fairytale penned in the propaganda rag Redención that demonized the defeated and presented the Caudillo along with his adherents as saviors. When Jimena is separated from her son Luisito, she recalls the ballad that she holds dear and whose recounting opened the novel. In the “Romance de la loba parda” (Ballad of the Brown She-Wolf), the characters include the shepherd, goats, sheep, a pack of shepherd hounds, and a small pack of wolves that includes the brown she-wolf (loba parda). In this draconian ballad, as the shepherd paints his staff in his hut, he notes the sheep sense something and do not stop at their shelter (“mal barruntan las ovejas/ no paran en la majada”): The following ensues: Vide venir siete lobos por una oscura cañada. Venían echando suertes cuál entrará a la majada; le tocó a una loba vieja, patituerta, cana y parda, que tenía los colmillos como punta de navaja… sacó la borrega blanca,… la que tenían mis amos para el domingo de Pascua. (I saw seven wolves come by a dark route. They drew lots to see who would enter the livestock shelter. It fell to the old, lame, grey and brown she-wolf, whose canines [teeth] were like the point of a knife… took the white lamb that my masters had reserved for Easter Sunday.)

The shepherd then sics his seven pups, the bitch (la perra trujillana), and her mate (perro de los hierros) on the loba parda and promises to reward them if successful and beat them if not. The dog pack chased the brown she-wolf for seven leagues, until, finally exhausted, she offered the lamb in restitution (“Tomad, perros, la borrega,/ sana y buena como

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estaba” [Dogs, take back the lamb as healthy as she had been]). They reply they will transform each of her body parts into useful items. In other words, restitution is insufficient and they demand reparation. Deprived of her son, Jimena awakens to her own anguished sighs and soaked pillow, and muses, “Con las tripas de la loba parda, ella, Jimena Bartolomé Morera, se haría una vihuela que tocaría su padre y ella bailaría con sus dos Luises [su marido e hijo] bajo el olmo centenario de Rascafría” (With the brown she-wolf’s guts, she, Jimena Bartolomé Morera, would make a vihuela [string instrument] that her father would play and she would dance with her two Luises [husband and son] under the hundred-­ year-­old oak in Rascafría) (Cañil 279). The objective correlative of the ballad bares striking parallels with the plot. The phallocentric ballad’s antagonist older, mean, female wolf preys upon the Paschal lamb. The innocent is found, and the thieving predator is adjudicated. This ending certainly does not reflect reality. This justice-seeking fantasy is as unrealistic as the novel’s fairy-tale-like ending. The obliteration of Jimena’s life is nearly complete when Topete transfers her to the prostitute prison in Oropesa (Toledo). The fairy-godmother-like real-life character Matilde Reig (secretary and likely lover of Spain’s most powerful and shady financier, Juan March) wields her influence flaunting her wand-like cigarette holder. She obtained British nationality for Jimena’s husband, allowing him to return to Spain. She secured Jimena’s release from prison. Matilde transforms Jimena’s appearance, from prison garb to would-be Coco Channelesque model, and orchestrates the following climatic scene. Jimena attired in her immaculately white suit crowned by a stylish hat and distinctive shoes stands eye to eye with her nemesis, María Topete, who is forced to return Luisito to his rightful mother. Upon not recognizing his mother, Jimena tells a line from the ballad “El Conde Sol” which the child completes, thus reuniting the family and restoring order in this happily-­ever-­after ending. While being a feel-good wish fulfillment fantasy that magically transforms trauma and injustice into redemption, Cañil’s ending reveals itself— intentionally, I believe—absurd and far-fetched. This absurdity boasts unmistakable and irrefutable parallels with the propagandized image of political prisoners grateful to their captors for showing them the error of their ways and depriving them of what they hold most dear: their children. In spite of the wish fulfillment conclusion of family reunification and happily-­ever-after exile that mitigate the heart-wrenching maternal suffering, Cañil’s intent parallels Juana Doña’s in Desde la noche y la niebla, who “solo testimonia el sufrimiento de miles de mujeres que fueron perseguidas, torturadas y ejecutadas por defender los derechos generales de nuestro

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pueblo oprimido  … Refleja ni más ni menos, que su martirio a secas” (only bears witness to the suffering of thousands of women who were persecuted, tortured and executed to defend the general rights of our oppressed people … It reflects neither more nor less than their martyrdom without embellishments) (Dueña 18). Tres años brings much needed attention in fictionalized form to the regime’s positive eugenics, the removal of children of “reds,” and their indoctrination as one more instrument of repression. In so doing, Ana Cañil vindicates, gives voice to, and fulfills the moral imperative to remember the red mothers whose babies became the lost children of Francoism.

Works Cited Aguado, Txetxu. “Modelos emocionales de memoria: el pasado y la Transición.” Contornos de la narrativa española actual: Un diálogo entre creadores y críticos. Coordinated by Palmar Álvarez-Blanco and Toni Dorca. Iberoamericana-­ Vervuert, 2011, pp. 45–54. Aragüés Estragüés, Rosa María. “Sobrevivir en el infierno: los niños de la cárcel de Predicadores (1939–1955)”. Cárceles de mujeres: La prisión femenina en la posguerra. Editor Ángeles Egido León. Sanz y Torres, 2017, pp. 185–221. Barranquero Texeira, Encarnación, Paloma Navarro Jiménez, and Matilde Eiroa San Francisco. Mujer, cárcel, franquismo. La Prisión Provincial de Málaga (1937–1945). Málaga: Junta de Andalucía, 1994. Bieder, Maryellen. “First-Wave Feminisms, 1880–1919.” A New History of Iberian Feminisms, edited by Silvia Bermúdez and Roberta Johnson, U of Toronto P, 2018, pp. 158–81. Biotti, Alfonso. Cielo y dinero. El nacionalcatolicismo en España (1881–1975). Alianza, 1992. Burgos, Carmen. La mujer moderna y sus derechos, edited by Mercedes Gómez Blesa, Ediciones Huso, 2018. Cañil, Ana. Si a los tres años no he vuelto. Espasa, 2011. Cixous, Hélène. “The Laugh of the Medusa.” The Essential Feminist Reader, edited by Estelle Freedman, Modern Library, 2007, pp. 318–22. Cuevas, Tomasa. Prison of Women: Testimonies of War and Resistance in Spain, 1939–1975. Translated and edited by Mary E.  Giles. State University of New York Press, 1998. Di Febo, Giuliana. “Resistencias femeninas al franquismo: Para un estado de la cuestión.” Cuadernos de Historia Contemporánea, 2006, vol. 28, pp. 153–68. Doña, Juana. Desde la noche y la niebla. Mujeres en las cárceles franquistas. Ediciones de la Torre, 1978. Dorca, Toni. “Presentación.” Contornos de la narrativa española actual: Un diálogo entre creadores y críticos. Coordinated by Palmar Álvarez-Blanco and Toni Dorca. Iberoamericana-Vervuert, 2011, pp. 13–18.

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Egido León, Ángeles, editor. Cárceles de mujeres: La prisión femenina en la posguerra. Sanz y Torres, 2017a. ———. “Introducción. Mujeres y rojas: La condición femenina como fundamento del sistema represor.” Cárceles de mujeres: La prisión femenina en la posguerra, edited by Ángeles Egido León, Sanz y Torres, 2017b, pp. 11–30. Eiroa San Francisco, Matilde and Encarnación Barranquero Texeira. “La cárcel de mujeres de Málaga en La paz de Franco [sic].” Cárceles de mujeres: La prisión femenina en la posguerra, edited by Ángeles Egido León, Sanz y Torres, 2017, pp. 127–47. Feixa, Carles and Carme Agustí. “Los discursos autobiográficos de la prisión política.” Una inmensa prisión: los campos de concentración y las prisiones durante la Guerra Civil y el franquismo. Coordinated by Jaume Sobrequés i Callicó, Carme Molinero Ruiz, Margarida Sala, Crítica, 2003, pp. 199–230. García Funes, Juan Carlos. “El seminario Redención: un estilo de coacción y propaganda”, Nuevos horizontes del pasado: culturas políticas, identidades y formas de representación, edited by Ángeles Barrio Alonso, Jorge de Hoyos Puente, Rebeca Saavedra Arias, Árbol Académico, 2011, n.p. https://www. academia.edu/11486257/El_semanario_Redenci%C3%B3n_un_estilo_de_ coacci%C3%B3n_y_propaganda accessed March 17, 2022. Gil Casado, Pablo. “Dulce Chacón y la continuación de la novela críticosocial.” Ojáncano, Oct. 2005, pp. 81–97. Giles, Mary E., translator and editor. “Introduction.” Prison of Women: Testimonies of War and Resistance in Spain, 1939–1975. Tomasa Cuevas. State University of New York Press, 1998, pp. vii–xxi. Goldstein, Joshua. War and Gender: How Gender Shapes the War System and Vice Versa. Cambridge, UP 2001. Gómez Blesa, Mercedes, editor. “Presentación.” La mujer moderna y sus derechos, by Carmen de Burgos, Ediciones Huso, 2018, pp. 9–31. Gómez Bravo, Gutmaro. “Franquismo, cárcel y propaganda: el periódico Redención.” Oficina Do Historiador, 8 (1), 2015, pp. 118–134. https://doi. org/10.15448/2178-­3748.2015.1.18612, accessed June 9, 2021. González Duro, Enrique. Las rapadas: El franquismo contra la mujer. Siglo XXI, 2012. Halbwachs, Maurice. On Collective Memory, edited and translated by Lewis Coser, U of Chicago P, 1992. Hernández Holgado, Fernando. “La prisión militante. Ventas (Madrid) y Les Corts (Barcelona).” Cárceles de mujeres: La prisión femenina en la posguerra, edited by Ángeles Egido León, Sanz y Torres, 2017, pp. 223–71. Hirsch, Marianne. The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture. Columbia UP, 2012. hooks, bell. Feminism Is for Everybody: Passionate Politics. South End P, 2012.

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Joly, Maud. “Las violencias sexuadas de la guerra civil española: paradigma para una lectura cultural del conflicto.” Historia Social, 2008, no. 61, pp. 89–107. Longobardi, Sara. “El léxico como herramienta de denuncia contra las adopciones ilegales en la novela Si a los tres años no he vuelto de Ana R.  Cañil (2011): ¿Redención o robo de niños?” Annali—sezione romanza, vol. LXII, November 2020, pp. 143–77. Molinero, Carme. “Mujer, franquismo, fascismo. La clausura forzada en un ‘mundo pequeño’.” Historia Social. Valencia no. 3, 1998 (I), pp. 97–117. Montero, Eloy. Los estados modernos y la nueva España. Librería Internacional de San Sebastián, 1939. Mujeres encarceladas: la prisión de Ventas, de la República al franquismo, 1931–1941. Marcial Pons, 2003. Noakes, Jeremy and G. Pridham, editors, Nazism 1919–1945, U of Exeter P, 1998. Núñez Díaz-Balart, Mirta. Mujeres caídas. Prostitución en la España franquista. Oberon, 2003. ———. “Propaganda oficial para adornar el mundo carcelario en la posguerra.” Historia y Comunicación Social 1999, no. 4, pp. 135–44. Núñez Targa, Mercedes. “Cárcel de Ventas,” El valor de la memoria, edited by Mirta Núñez Díaz-Balart, Renacimiento, 2016, pp. 33–121. Pérez del Pulgar, José Agustín. “La solución que España da al problema de sus presos políticos.” Redención (1939) vol. 1, pp. 49. Redención. Órgano del Patronato para la Redención de Penas por el Trabajo, 25 de enero de 1941 (25 January 1941). Richards, Michael. A Time of Silence. Civil War and the Culture of Repression in Franco’s Spain, 1936–1945. Cambridge UP, 1998. Rodríguez Teijeiro, Domingo. “La redención de penas a través del esfuerzo intelectual: educación, proselitismo y adoctrinamiento en las cárceles franquistas.” Revista de Investigación en Educación, no. 11 (1), 2013, pp. 58–76. Rodríguez Vega, José. Impressions of Franco’s Spain. London, United Editorial, 1943. Torres, Rafael. “Prólogo.” Mujeres caídas. Prostitución en la España franquista. Oberon, 2003, pp. 11–15. Vallejo Nágera, Antonio and Eduardo M.  Martínez. “Psiquismo del fanatismo marxista: investigaciones psicológicas en marxistas femeninos delincuentes.” Revista Española de Medicina y Cirugía de Guerra, Valladolid, Año II, mayo de 1939, pp. 398–413, no. 9, BNE z/2271 Vinyes, Ricard. “Doblegar y transformar: la industria penitenciaria y sus encarceladas políticas.” Cárceles de mujeres: La prisión femenina en la posguerra, edited by Ángeles Egido León, Sanz y Torres, 2017, pp. 31–54. ———. Irredentas. Las presas políticas y sus hijos en las cárceles franquistas. Planeta, 2010.

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———. “El universo penitenciario durante el franquismo.” Una inmensa prisión: los campos de concentración y las prisiones durante la Guerra Civil y el franquismo. Coordinated by Jaume Sobrequés i Callicó, Carme Molinero Ruiz, Margarida Sala, Crítica, 2003, pp. 155–76. Vinyes, Ricard, Montse Armengou and Ricard Belis. Los niños perdidos del franquismo. Plaza Janés, 2002.

CHAPTER 7

Lessons Learned in Almudena Grandes’ 2012 Bildungsroman El lector de Julio Verne (The Reader of Jules Verne): Gender, Repression, and Resistance

Introduction Nationalist violence against Republicans in wartime and postwar Andalusia was merciless. The reign of terror included criminalization, incarceration, persecution, disappearances, and executions. In spite of or because of the repression, clandestine resistance persisted. Set in Jaén province during the Triennium of Terror (1947–1949), Almudena Grandes’ El lector de Julio Verne is the coming-of-age story of the son of a guardia civil, Nino, who ultimately became a leader in the communist resistance, a political prisoner, and a party candidate in the transition’s elections.1 The protagonist’s efforts in democratic governance reveal his having come of age, his seeing the injustice of repressive legislation, and its discriminatory as well as discretionary implementation. The law of March 1, 1940, legalizes the repression and concomitant persecution of masonry and communism, in effect criminalizing Republican ideology. The Ley de Fugas, already in existence since the nineteenth century, gave the Nationalists free reign to execute the domestic enemy  Grandes took inspiration from her husband’s childhood friend Cristino Pérez Meléndez, a son of a guardia civil assigned to Jaén (Ryan 254). 1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Tobin Stanley, Francoist Repression and Incarceration in Contemporary Spanish Culture, Palgrave Studies in Cultural Heritage and Conflict, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13392-3_7

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during and after the war. These laws made possible the Triennium of Terror in Sierra Sur based on the charge of banditry (“bandolerismo”), particularly as related to the resistance in the mountains against the Francoist forces. Economically repressive laws curtailed women in the workforce under the guise of liberating them to tend to the home and, furthermore, criminalized and resemanticized impoverished women’s traditional entrepreneurship (the re/sale of esparto grass and eggs, for example) as purported black market dealings. Almudena Grandes reveals this doublespeak through the eyes and ears of her young protagonist who sings the juvenile ditty, “Ahora que vamos despacio  …  vamos a contar mentiras tralalá” (Now that we go slowly  …  we will tell lies, tralala), throughout the work. The criminalization of ideology and vicious reprisals condemned the defeated and sympathizers to fight or flee for their lives. Misogynistic legislation recast the underprivileged, and particularly the rural, female poor, as delinquent criminals deserving of cruel measures. Chief of the Southern Army,2 Military Commander General Gonzalo Queipo de Llano’s horrific, rapist, draconian, prescriptive radio broadcasts perfectly encapsulated the Nationalist construct of masculinity and resemanticized terror as justice. The mandate to kill or rape the enemy with impunity, as proof that “real men” who know “what it means to be a man” impart justice (Preston 149), provides a hair-raising historical backdrop for Grandes’ novel set in rural Jaén. Nino recalls and recounts what psychologists Pennebaker and Banasik term “flashbulb memories,” recollections that take place at a point in time when, in retrospect, both society and the recollecting individual discern the relevance of the past happenings (referencing Pennebaker and Banasik 4–5, Hines-Brooks 203). El lector presents three foci in the recovery of the past with its concomitant vindication of the victims of nationalism. The protagonist’s father Antonino is his son’s immediate male role model—a representative of hegemonic masculinity—who is torn between duty as a Civil Guard (which secures his family’s safety) and his irrepressible aversion to the orders to eliminate dissent, that is, the resistants he knows. Burdened with the moral dilemma of following orders and protecting his family or dissenting with dire consequences to himself and his loved ones, Antonino, a paradoxical victim and victimizer, models the moral struggle and difficult choice. The second focus is that of alternative models that include non-hegemonic masculinity—evident in the resistant Pepe el 2

 Ejército del Sur.

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Portugués3—and female subversion of hierarchical, toxic hypermasculinity modeled by “las rapadas” of El Cortijo. In light of these two models, the final, brief focus is Nino’s decision to engage in the underground Communist Party, accept incarceration for his resistance, and run for political office in 1977 in the transition to democracy. In other words, this son and brother of guardias civiles, whose positions emblematize masculinity during Francoism, resemanticizes Queipo de Llano’s concept of “real men” and “what it means to be a man.” While the memory of the civil war is characterized by generational and transgenerational transmission, Carmen de Urioste notes that it is inextricably linked to particular generations: the memory that was imposed onto those who lived and witnessed the war, that of the children born in the 1940s whose memory is characterized by dissidence, and that which the grandchildren assume and put into practice (945).4 Key elements include the three disparate generations, their respective relationships to events, their reconstruction, and their agency or lack of agency. The first generation is that of both the agents and witnesses onto whom the official construct was a hegemonic imposition, thereby nullifying personal, non-hegemonic agency. Nino’s father Antonino belongs to the generation of hegemonic imposition. The second generation dissents; in other words, it responds to the previous generation’s imposition. The third generation, with the greatest distance from the events, actively recovers memory. As a self-identified granddaughter of the war5 who is committed to historical memory with the concomitant vindication, recovery, and reconstruction, Grandes fashions a child of war protagonist who dissents. Nino’s childhood dissent commences by questioning the imposed official narrative, progresses to confidence in his own sentience and reasoning, and evolves to active resistance. This chapter investigates gender, particularly the performativity of toxic masculinity, gender modeling, criminalization of the feminine, and resulting resistance techniques in Grandes’ 2012 coming-of-age novel. The protagonist narrator must scrutinize the rules and models of the topsy-­ turvy world to determine what lessons to glean and which models to follow. Nino’s choice embraces a moral imperative—in other words, to 3  While Pepe is mentioned briefly in this chapter, the primary focus of alternative models is the inhabitants of El Cortijo. 4  Urioste extrapolates from Santos Juliá’s five stages of civil war memory. 5  Author’s note at the end of El corazón helado.

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acknowledge wrongdoing for what it is, to fight actively against it and for its victims, to accept the consequences to himself, and to hope for promise in the future.

Almudena Grandes’ Literary Corpus and Literature’s Memory Through her essays, novels, and columns, award-winning and widely read author Almudena Grandes (1960–2021) more than raises consciousness and awareness and aims to awaken her readership’s conscience so that they are morally engaged with the fascist past whose trauma has yet to be fully acknowledged or repaired. Individual memory and collective memory are reciprocally nurturing. As Astrid Erll avers, “much of what is done to reconstruct a shared past bears some resemblance to the processes of individual memory, such as the selectivity and perspectivity inherent in the creation of versions of the past according to present knowledge and needs” (“Cultural” 5, my emphasis). Twenty-first-century Spanish civil war novels are proof that “ese pasado está todavía vivo [… y] que todavía parte de la sociedad siente la necesidad de establecer otras relaciones con el mismo” (that past is still alive [and] part of society feels the need to establish other relationships to it) (Urioste 956). The contemporary novelistic corpus responds to the societal need to speak about the fratricidal conflict, overcome the barriers, and engage in a national conversation (Urioste 939–40). As a granddaughter of the civil war whose family exemplifies the two Spains,6 Grandes reprimands Spaniards who claim to be “cansados de una historia que no conocen” (tired of a past they do not know) and disabuses the collective nation that “no hurgar en el pasado terrible equivale a anular las consecuencias” (not digging into the terrible past is the equivalent of nullifying the consequences) (“La vida de nosotros” 14, qtd. in Gareth Wood 187–88). In the collection of essays La herida perpetua, Grandes distills the essence of the bipolarity that continues to plague Spain, underscoring the need to mend the breach. Her corpus—particularly the series Episodes of an Endless War—drives home the necessity to acknowledge 6  Members of her family favored each side of the war. In fact, her maternal grandfather was a prisoner of the Republicans and was later honored as a hero and served in a political/functionary position (interviewed by Silvina Friera in Página 12, referenced in Crespo Buiturón 222–23).

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the untold or distorted versions of the past. In response to “la desinformación minuciosa, sistemática, en la que habíamos sido educados” (minutious, systematic disinformation in which we were educated) (Herida 37), “Grandes aims to alter the community’s collective representations of the Civil War and its aftermath” through narratives “that challenge hegemonic Francoist discourse” (Barnes 7). While the author revisits Spain’s recent history in the totality of her works, she deems Episodes of an Endless War “una ampliación consciente y sistemática de esa necesidad” (a conscious and systematic broadening of that need” to confront the recent past (Campos and Rodríguez 3). She rejects obstacles that stand in the way of correcting “la fragilidad congénita de una democracia que nunca ha reconocido su propia tradición democrática y antifascista” (the inherent fragility of a democracy that has never acknowledged its own democratic and anti-fascist tradition) (Campos et al 4).

Constructing a Shared Past: The Legacy of Galdós in Grandes’ Episodios de una Guerra Interminable Astrid Erll provides a provisional and encompassing definition of the “transdisciplinary phenomenon” that is “cultural memory”: “the interplay of past and present in socio-cultural contexts” (2, 3).7 By perpetuating the literary legacy of the nineteenth-century maximum exponent of Spanish realism, Benito Pérez Galdós’ Episodios Nacionales with her sixpart Episodios de una Guerra Interminable, Grandes emulates Galdós’ novelistic moral-didacticism (Crespo Buiturón 225) and participates in the metaphorical aspect of cultural or collective memory, known as intertextuality or “literature’s memory” (Erll 4).8 According to Erll, “no memory is every purely individual, but always inherently shaped by collective contexts. From the people we live with and from the media we use, we acquire schemata which help us recall the past and encode new experience … [C]ultural memory also refers to the symbolic order, the media, institutions, and practices by which social groups construct a shared past”

7  Astrid Erll uses synonymously the terms cultural memory, social memory, and collective memory whose content originated with Maurice Halbwach as collective memory (1). 8  Erll is referencing Renate Lachman’s chapter in the anthology.

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(5). Grandes’ six-part project9 proves monumental not only for continuing a tradition begun with Galdós but also for bidirectionally transforming how the past will be conceived of in the future. Grandes fictionalizes episodes erased from official history and that were supplanted by fascist “alternative facts.” Beginning with El corazón helado (2007), which contributes to the growing corpus of contemporary civil war or historical memory novels, Grandes revisits and rewrites hi/stories of Spain’s past that had been relegated to oblivion/olvido and became the haunting ghosts of dismemory (Corbalán 32). This corpus destabilizes the historical-fictional binary resulting in narratives more verisimilar than reality itself (Corbalán 23), presents a vindicatory rereading of the dictatorial historiographic discourse that combats dismemory, and reclaims the vindicated’s rightful place in Spain’s political, cultural, and social history (Urioste 943). Grandes qualifies her series: “Al novelar en seis episodios los 25 [sic] primeros años del franquismo desde la perspectiva de la resistencia, pretendo oponer la memoria de los luchadores por la libertad, una libertad que no ha querido reconocer, ni reconocerse en, la lucha de nadie” (By novelizing in six episodes the first twenty-five years of Francoism from the perspective of the resistance, I aim to face the memory of the those who fought for freedom, a freedom that has not wanted to acknowledge, nor see itself [reflected] in, anyone’s fight) (Campos et al. 4). The author deems her characters’ stories to be as “igual de heroicas” (equally as heroic) as battles such as Trafalgar or Bailén, “pero mucho más pequeñas, momentos significativos de la resistencia antifranquista, que integran una epopeya modesta en apariencia, gigantesca si se relaciona con su duración, y con las condiciones en las que se desarrolló” (but much smaller, meaningful moments of anti-Francoist resistance, that integrate an epic that is modest in appearance, [but] colossal with respect to its duration, and the conditions under which it was carried out) (Inés 720). Each episode concludes in 1977 (Campos et al. 5), the year in which the Amnesty Law10 relegated “memoria de la guerra en la esfera privada” (memory of the war to the private sphere) (Urioste 952). The law made patent that the democratic state, like the preceding dictatorship, had “cuentas pendientes con la 9  Episodes of an Endless War consists of Inés y la alegría (2010), El lector de Julio Verne (2012), Las tres bodas de Manolita (2014), Los pacientes del doctor García (2017), and La madre de Frankenstein (2020), and was planned to conclude with Mariano en el Bidasoa. Grandes’ death in 2021 has impacted the completion of the series. Publication of the final novel would be posthumous. 10  Also referred to as the pact of silence or forgetting or amnesia.

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justicia” (unsettled accounts with justice); for, as Pereira asserts, democracy “debería contrarrestar los efectos de las mentiras y traumas generados o perpetuados durante la dictadura” (was supposed to have counteracted the effects of the lies and traumas generated or perpetuated during the dictatorship) (149). More than historical novels, Grandes’ works are novels of historical memory. They do not bare the exclusively educational intent of imparting knowledge on history, omitted from the annals of monumental history or hegemonic historiography. Rather, they are driven by an ethical didacticism, revealing and exploring the human import of the omissions, and invite the readers’ ethical scrutiny of the Nationalist narrative.

The Reality of Terror in Andalusia and the Nationalist Narrative of Manly Justice Andalusia’s population was predominantly Republican, yet much of it fell to the rebel forces in the early stages of the war. Seville, Cádiz, Granada, and Algeciras were under rebel rule from the onset of the coup. Córdoba and Huelva had fallen in the first few months of the war, by October 1936. Málaga fell in August 1937. Almería and Jaén were still Republican in March 1939. The Nationalist forces were merciless in Andalusia. Gonzalo Queipo de Llano proclaimed the martial law edict, the Bando de Guerra, on July 18, 1936, that in effect encouraged the elimination of anyone who opposed the uprising (Preston 137–38). As the rebels advanced northward, “the repression was to be intensified. Prisoners were to be killed” (Preston 138). In the province of Córdoba, between 1936 and 1945, the Nationalists killed more than 11,500 people (Preston 167). Preston considers the repression of the province of Huelva “not a vengeful response to prior left-wing violence but the implementation of a plan for extermination” resulting in 6017 executions (153). Between 1936 and 1950, Santiago de Córdoba calculates there to be 3103 victims of Francoist repression in Jaén (Andadura 136), most of whose osseous remains are in mass graves. In the province of Jaén in 1940, there were more than 2000 Republican political prisoners sentenced to death, resulting in a “sombría atmósfera de tragedia” (somber atmosphere of tragedy) (Valdivia Morente 80). The mass graves in Jaén’s cemetery contain 2000 Republican dead (Valdivia Morente 102–03), most of whom were brought in trucks from

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the Jaén jail to meet their demise in April 1939. At the time, the population of Jaén capital did not reach 30,000, leading Valdivia to claim that Jaén province was among the “más castigadas por el franquismo en toda España” (most punished by Francoism in all of Spain) (103).

The Repression of Women Among the punished were women, whose femaleness was weaponized against them. Preston notes, “systematic persecution of women” by the Nationalists: Murder, torture, and rape were generalized punishments for the gender liberation embraced by many, but not all, liberal and left-wing women during the Republican period. Those who came out of prison alive suffered deep lifelong physical and psychological problems. Thousands of others were subjected to rape and other sexual abuses, the humiliation of head shaving, and public soiling after the forced ingestion of castor oil. For most Republican women, there were also the terrible economic and psychological problems of having their husbands, fathers, brothers, and sons murdered or forced to flee, which often saw the wives themselves arrested in efforts to get them to reveal the whereabouts of the menfolk. (Preston xix)

In his chapter, “Queipo’s Terror: The Purging of the South,” Preston states that Queipo regarded the atrocities committed by his troops “with relish”: In a broadcast on 23 July, he declared, ‘We are determined to apply the law without flinching. Morón, Utera, Puente Genil, Castro del Río, start digging graves. I authorize you to kill like a dog anyone who dares oppose you and I say that, if you act in this way you will be free of blame.’ In part of the speech that the censorship felt was too explicit to be printed, Queipo de Llano said, ‘Our brave Legionarios and Regulares have shown the red cowards what it means to be a man. And incidentally the wives of the reds too. These Communist and anarchist women, after all, have made themselves fair game by their doctrine of free love. And now they have at least made the acquaintance of real men, not wimpish militiamen. Kicking their legs about and squealing won’t save them.’ (149)

A possible motive behind the censorship was “to limit the awareness of Queipo’s incitement to the sexual abuse of left-wing women” (Preston

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158). He “made his most explicit incitement to rape,” and the young women of the town of Arabal “considered to be of the left were repeatedly raped” (Preston 159). In Algeciras, rape was rampant and pervasive (González Duro 69). According to González Duro, women were the spoils of war (“botín de guerra”), meaning that the frequent and commonplace rapes in Andalusia in the first months of the war pertained to war culture and were carried out indiscriminately by North African mercenaries, Civil Guards, falangistas, and requetés (68). The rape Queipo encouraged gave no quarter to its victims, yet conferred impunity upon its perpetrators. While insignificantly few Nationalist rapists were adjudicated, González Duro surmises that Francoism aided and abetted “todo tipo de militares rebeldes y paramilitares asesinos, saqueadores y violadores” (all types of military rebels and paramilitary killers, looters, and rapists) as long as they did not bring scandal or embarrassment to the military or breach the chain of command (75). Rapes in Lucena (Córdoba province) were committed by a civilian group on horseback, known as the Escuadrón de Caballeros Aracelitanos (Squadron of Knights of Our Lady of Araceli), infamous for its cruelty, sexual assaults, pillaging, and massive roundups of political prisoners detained in the bullring, not unlike animals to slaughter (González Duro 91). González Duro notes the existence of prosecuted sexual assault cases of Nationalists against rojas, yet the vast majority ended in impunity (with commuted or extinguished sentences) upon the “forgiveness” the victim conferred upon her rapist, as took place in Cuevas Altas, near Lucena, in September 1936 (91). In August 1937, a Civil Guard brigade was charged with “haber forzado la voluntad de las mujeres de fusilados y haber tenido un trato varonil con ellas” (having forced the will of the wives of the executed and having had manly relations with them), yet the case was reviewed by the wartime hearing officer of Seville who commonly dismissed sexual assault cases (González Duro 195). Broadcasting on August 30, Queipo de Llano claimed that he would “search for Republican criminals,” resemanticizing that killings under the auspices of his edict were protected under the law and therefore could not be deemed atrocities (Preston 158). Journalists were forbidden from printing gory minutiae or “specific details of slaughter” and were required to emphasize that “justice was carried out,” “a deserved punishment was inflicted,” and “the law was applied” (Preston 158). The mandated extermination and repression in postwar Andalusia left the defeated no choice. The genocidal victors’ manly approach and actions toward the enemy

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were intransigent and merciless. All options could lead to death and torture of the defeated and their loved ones. Grandes’ child protagonist Nino inhabits this hostile environment and must discern the place he will ultimately occupy in it.

Hegemonic Masculinity: Antonino as a Paradoxical Role Model The point of view in each of the other novels of Episodios alternates, switching between first-person intradiegetic and third-person extradiegetic historical narrator. Nevertheless, the point of view in El lector is Nino’s first-person narration, recounting from adulthood formative and transformative childhood events as he lost his innocence, came to terms with his family origins, and determined how and where he would fit into a senseless world.11 His observations of adult characters as potential role models scrutinize gender relations and power structure. Through his observations, he sees prescriptive and performative models of masculinity as exemplified by his guardia civil father and Sergeant Sanchís. The latter perfectly performs hegemonic masculinity, whereas Antonino struggles with the role as his body rebels against and betrays the paramilitary imperative. Following a hunt for maquis, his and his partner Curro’s vomiting and incontinence reveal their internal conflict and the battle against cognitive dissonance. Lorraine Ryan analyzes the manner in which Nino’s reading materials reflect his “discernment of masculinity” with the concomitant “socially 11  As Dorca and others have observed, Grandes separates the historical narration from the fictional narration (143). He observes three alternating narrators: a current homodiegetic narrator that relates the present, a heterodiegetic narrator that recounts the past, and a heterodiegetic narrator that relays and clarifies the present (“Continuidad,” 143). Unlike El corazón helado or the other novels in Grandes’ Episodios published to date, El lector does not have an alternating polyphonic narrator: first person and the voice of History (with the author’s insertions) (Calderón Puerta 504). In her doctoral dissertation, Ana Luengo delineates the characteristics for the “new historical novel,” of which Lindström Leo notes “una individualización deliberada del narrador y de sus perspectivas” (deliberate individualization of the narrator and [his/her] perspectives) and the acceptance of “su subjetividad y hasta el desconocimiento de parte de la materia histórica” (the narrator’s subjectivity and even the ignorance of part of the historical matter) (Luengo 44, Lindström Leo 90). Nino is an intradiegetic narrator who, in line with Luengo’s characteristics of the new historical novel, recounts the past story, from and with temporal distance, decades after the events and experiences in question (46).

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determined nature of men’s performance of masculinity” (253). Masculinity transmutes, for it is “performative and malleable, conditioned by the prevailing gender ideology” (referencing Connell and Messeerschidt 836, Ryan 256). According to Ryan, Nino turns to literary masculine prototypes (“hero, adventurer, and outlaw”) because Antonino “ceases to be a credible paternal figure” (256). The vengeful and retributive Francoist hegemonic masculinity is “incompatible with a morally acceptable performance of masculinity” (Ryan 257). I would posit that Nino’s discernment of the immorality of the regime, especially during the Triennium of Terror, is not based on its hypermasculinization, but rather on its dehumanizing cruelty represented as masculinity. It is not that Antonino fails as a masculine role model or “ceases to be a credible paternal figure,” but rather that Nino ultimately chooses not to be complicit in perpetuating Francoist toxic, in effect murderous masculinity, which in reality is masculinized killing. In fact, the protagonist learns a great deal from his father, particularly his unarticulated, but visible, moral struggle. Once Nino realizes that “los enemigos de su padre no son los suyos” (his father’s enemies are not his), he begins “a ver con otros ojos a los guerrilleros republicanos” (the republican resistants with new eyes) (Crespo Buiturón 225). The Civil Guards—as emblematic of the Francoist hypermasculinized construct that aims to obfuscate the inherent immorality of indiscriminate repression—stand in opposition and as counter models to the resistants, the legendary Robin Hood-esque Tomás Villén Roldán, known as Cencerro, Pepe el Portugués, and the adventurous heroes of Nino’s novels. For Nino, these “unconventional role models … fulfill the prerequisites of a moral hegemonic masculinity” (Ryan 259). In his Bildungsroman, Nino sees the toxicity of the regime’s cruelty rationalized as hypermasculinity and is unable to emulate his father figure. Instead, he turns to alternative role models and, more precisely, an alternative collective of models. Nino fulfills the transgenerational moral imperative of memory, perhaps as a way of making transgenerational amends. Nino understands the guardias’ conflictedness in carrying out atrocities: “Yo, que siempre había vivido entre ellos, llevaba la cuenta de sus debilidades, las contradicciones de quienes se dedicaban a cultivar el miedo de la gente” (I, who had always lived among them, kept tally of their weaknesses, the contradictions of those who made a living cultivating fear in folks) (104). The nights of the roundups, Curro vomited; Antonino hung his head; and Carmona shat himself when he saw his lieutenant shoot

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Laureano in application of the Ley de Fugas (104). The psychosomatic reactions “[recast the guardias …] as victims of the prevalent masculine ideology, coerced by the quest for mere survival to participate in morally unconscionable acts of torture” (Ryan 258). However, Nino also acknowledges their rationalizations: “no tengas remordimientos, … nosotros no tenemos la culpa, … son ellos los que están fuera de la ley, … qué le vamos a hacer, ¿quiénes son los que dan las órdenes?” (don’t have regrets, … we are not to blame, … they are the ones outside of the law, … what can we do, who are the ones giving orders?) (104–05). While Ryan considers that Antonino “ceases to be a credible paternal figure,” I would argue that Nino’s life choices reflect his understanding of his father’s moral struggle. It is the identification with his father’s inner conflict—riddled with his unrelenting duty to his family and his aversion to killing—that Nino gleans. Nino does not emulate or condone his father’s choices, but does in fact learn from his insurmountable aversion to unconscionable acts. According to Paul Ricoeur, “one can indict only those acts that are imputable to an agent who holds himself to be their genuine author … [I]mputability is that capacity, that aptitude, by virtue of which actions can be held to someone’s account.” Imputability “is the region of articulation between the act and the agent, between the ‘what’ of the actions and the ‘who’ of the power to act—of agency” (460). Furthermore, “the radical nature of the experience of fault requires us to confine ourselves within the limits of the self-ascription of fault, to sketch out at this level the conditions for a common recognition of a fundamental guilt. The specific form taken by attribution of fault to the self is avowal, admission, that speech act by which a subject takes up, assumes the accusation” (Ricoeur 461). While Antonino does not articulate his agency, nor does he “[hold] himself to be” the “genuine author” of the torture and genocide that the job of being a guardia civil during the Triennium of Terror entails, his somatic responses speak as acknowledgment of the heinousness of the acts. Memory is collective (Halbwachs) for it intertwines individual, familial, and societal memories and constructs of the past. The transgenerationality of postmemory (Hirsch) is evident in El lector, for the legacy of trauma couples with the engagement with and to the future. The moral imperative of memory is a bidirectional ethical gaze (looking back and looking forward) from the position of the present. While Nino’s retrospective does not exculpate or exonerate his father, nor does it demonize him, it is feasible to consider that Nino is making amends for his father’s dutiful murderous actions. By narrating for the reader his father’s repugnance to the

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bloodshed he performed, Nino humanizes the killer. The protagonist’s subsequent life of resistance, against the same regime to which his father was dutifully bound, is a direct response to his father’s living killing. Interviewed in 2011, Grandes asserts, Sostener que todos fueron malos es tan ingenuo como pretender que todos fueron buenos … [E]n España, entre 1931 y 1939, existieron dos bandos, uno malo—el de los fascistas—y otro bueno—el de los demócratas … Lo que importa es comprender por qué se llegó a un radicalismo tan feroz … La historia reciente de España ofrece a cualquier narrador una posición privilegiada para indagar en lo mejor y en lo peor de la naturaleza humana. Y eso nunca se puede lograr sin matices. (To maintain that everyone was evil is as naive as pretending that all were good … In Spain, between 1931 and 1939, there were two sides, one bad— that of the fascists—and the other good—that of the democrats … What matters is understanding why we arrived at such a ferocious radicalism … Spain’s recent history offers any narrator a privileged position to delve into the best and the worst of human nature. That can never be achieved without nuances.) (Campos et al. 6)

Gareth Wood critiques El corazón helado, Grandes’ monumental precursor to Episodios that inaugurates the authors’ participation in the historical memory debate (186). Wood questions Urioste’s assertion that Grandes’ El corazón is “un eslabón clave en el camino hacia la reconciliación nacional” (a key link on the path to national reconciliation). For it to be a reconciliation novel, Wood insists the author must demonstrate that “una persona puede ser varias personas a la vez, que una situación puede encerrar su contrario, que la razón puede fallar al intentar abarcar la realidad” (a person can be several people at once, a situation can entail its opposite, reason can fail when one tries to grasp reality) (Wood 195). I offer that Grandes’ portrayal of Antonino in El lector ameliorates or redeems the unilaterality and “versión tan herméticamente definitiva de la historia española” (hermetically definitive version of Spanish history) (195) Wood critiques so fervently in what I will term the author’s preludium magnum (El corazón) to what will likely be her opus magnum (the entirety of Episodios). Grandes’ Episodios fulfills the physics axiom12 referenced in El corazón: that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Taken as a whole,  The character is a physics professor.

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Grandes’ corpus aims at telling stories and piecing together slices of life of her characters in order to provide a rich counternarrative of Spain’s civil war, dictatorship, and ensuing (problematic) democracy. The author’s ideology has always been not just visible but also frankly underscored. In spite of the fact that certain works might be too heavy-handed or one-sided, flirting with Manicheism, in El lector, the author makes a concerted effort to understand—if not empathize with—ill-doers without condoning the behaviors or exculpating them of their transgressions. Antonino’s job as a Civil Guard is to follow orders. The adult narrator, donning his childhood self, acknowledges his father’s dual victimization: Antonino victimizes in the name of the law, and he is also a victim of the same regime. Were he to have resisted or transgressed against the authoritarian rule, it is likely that he would have orphaned his children and widowed his wife. Their reprisals would likely have included poverty, the concomitant forced criminalized behavior of the recova, pleita, and black market dealings in order to survive. Given the weaponization of femaleness against women who opposed the regime or were linked to men who opposed the regime, one must ponder the fate that would have awaited Mercedes and her daughters. Grandes represents Antonino’s actions as a Civil Guard to be morally wrong because the system of which he is a part is unethical. At the same time, the author hints at sound moral reasoning that is more akin to Carol Gilligan’s ethic of care (as he responds to the needs of his family) than to Kohlberg’s justice-centered morality based on universalizability. Nino’s father wrestles with occupational duty, yet is not conflicted about doing what he believes best serves his family. To use criminal law terminology, Grandes does not pardon or exonerate this character, but she does provide mitigating circumstances and, ultimately, has the reader ponder the severity or leniency Antonino’s moral sentence would merit. Just as Nino, in this Bildung, learns from his tutor doña Elena that it is not the answers that matter but rather the questions that are asked, I would add that it is the reasoning as one ponders that is of utmost importance when faced with a moral dilemma. In any coming-of-age story, the underlying question is, “What does the protagonist learn?” Ultimately, Nino learns “to be a man”—the sort of man he chose to be, rather than by following prescriptive codes of hegemonic, performative masculinity—by observing power dynamics and the construct of gender within the microcosm of authoritarianism that was Fuensanta de Martos. The most revealing or curious educational scenes are the ones in which the players are unaware of the fact that they are

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being observed, are not conscious of the fact that they are performing their gender, or conflictedly struggle with the implicit mandate to act with intentionality. It is precisely Antonino’s ambivalence or conflictedness with hegemonic authoritarian masculinity that, ironically, provides a moral model for his son. While Antonino has orders to genocidally clear el monte of all resistance and to participate actively in the economic repression of rojas impoverished by vengeful legislation and the guardias’ enforcement, his words, actions, and reflexes rebel in the unacknowledged presence of his son. Within the context and from the perspective of the regime’s hegemonic masculinity, Antonino would be deemed weak. Yet, given that morality13 is justice-centered, Antonino reveals his struggle between performing his duty (obeying orders without thought or question) and doing what is right (as dictated by conscience or reason). As such, he becomes a paradoxical role model. Nino observes that his father’s body rages against the injustice he is under orders to carry out. The valuable lesson that Nino learns is that when discerning moral from immoral, circumstances require, at times, one to choose the lesser immoral choices. In spite of direct orders, Antonino does not wish to murder townsfolk who flee to the mountains and, hence, reports that the search and pursuit were unsuccessful. When he cannot avoid following orders, his bodily functions override his mind. When expected to persecute recoveras and to participate in the embargo on their goods, Antonino capitulates to his wife’s rule and his sense of taste. Again, his somatic response reveals not just a discriminating palate but what would be sound judgment had it resulted from reason. By teasing out the complexities, contradictions, and nuances of Antonino’s conscious and unconscious responses, one can conclude that his immediate—not performative or trained—response strays from the malfeasance and cruelty of authoritarian mandates. In other words, his inner struggle uncovers a reluctant champion for justice who sees no escape from the topsy-turvy world and conforms in order to protect his loved ones.

Repressed and Resistant Alternative Role Models Beginning with the collection Modelos de mujer, female characters’ protagonism and agency became an established norm in the Grandes’ writing. With regard to said collection, Francisco Javier Sánchez discerns that her characters adhere to clear behavioral patterns: “tomar las riendas de sus  The Kohlbergian morality scale.

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vidas, … enfrentándose a duras críticas; rebelarse contra una cultura falocéntrica y represiva” (taking the reins of their lives, … facing harsh critics; rebelling against a repressive phallocentric culture” (35). Among the character stereotypes in Grandes’ literary works, Dorca notes, “mujeres independientes que piensan y actúan por su cuenta, mientras disfrutan de una sexualidad sin restricciones” (141). Ingrid Lindström Leo underscores that two female characters of Inés y la alegría exemplify the two Spains, but also “a quest for personal liberty in the years following the Civil War” (86). Sherman notes that in Grandes’ Inés y la alegría, the protagonist is a matriarchal figure diametrically opposed to the paternalistic figure of Franco, but whose function is similar, “assurance and security,” and whose homemaking symbolizes “the foundations of society” (258). Similarly, in El lector, the female characters, Catalina, Filomena, and doña Elena, among others, are formidable, and their home, El Cortijo—a feminine space of coexistence and concord—is a society in miniature. This symbiotic and gynocentric environ of mutuality and interdependence is populated by role models that become for Nino an alternative to Francoist toxic hypermasculinity. El Cortijo emblematizes the inhabitants’ just worldview as the casa cuartel embodies and signifies the unjust hierarchized violence of the guardia civil, a dynamic that not only feminizes the other but also weaponizes the condition of woman against female detainees and defeated. Nino and his family live in the casa cuartel (Civil Guard headquarters and barracks) where the paper-thin walls between the living quarters and interrogation spaces fail to drown out the sounds of questioning and torture, whose goal is to break the human spirit and capitulate to authoritarian rule. Among the interrogation techniques is sexual violence to female prisoners. In the masculine space of the barracks house, the threat of violence and hierarchized male orders reign supreme. Yet, Nino, through the eyes of innocence, comes to know and love another gendered space, the home of his tutor, doña Elena. This secluded, woodsy space is inhabited by single and widowed rapadas of various ages and backgrounds. This modernized postwar hortus amoenus is not a sexualized feminine space, as normally attributed to the archetype, but rather a feminine space to be and to grow—in essence, to exist outside of the confines, restrictions, and overt repression at the hands of the guardia civil.

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The Repression of Women and Their Resistance The first instance of female criminality or criminalization takes place in the first chapter, when Nino, traveling with his mother and sister to Almería for his aunt’s wedding, sits in the same train car as two guardias and a male prisoner with whom Nino empathizes as he notes his torn shirt, injuries, shaking, and “expresión de tristeza muda.” “Era un preso, o quizás no todavía, quizás acababan de detenerle y no había entrado aún en ninguna cárcel. Yo lo sabía porque una vez, yendo con padre a Jaén, había visto una escena parecida, aunque el preso era entonces una mujer que iba sentada, llorando sin hacer ruido, la cabeza escondida enre los brazos” (expression of silent sadness. He was a prisoner, or perhaps not yet, they had just arrested him and he hadn’t entered any jail. I knew this because once, going with father to Jaén, I had seen a similar scene, although the prisoner was a seated woman, crying without making any noise, hiding her head in her arms) (23). What propels Nino into this new world of knowledge outside of (or hidden within) the realm of the militarized patriarchalism of the barracks house stems from the distinct possibility that he may not be suited to be a guardia civil. Short for his age, Antonino expects his son to conform to the patrilineality of the guardia civil and follow in his footsteps, yet reasonably fears that his namesake son may not “dar la talla,” literally meet the minimum height requirement or metaphorically “measure up.” Antonino insists Nino learn to typewrite (a traditionally gender-­ specific labor), so he may someday work in an office, and proceeds to find him a tutor, who will be doña Elena. This Bildungsroman posits the feminine, feminine space, and feminized resistance against the phallic violent repression. Even the introduction to Nino’s soon-to-be idol Pepe el Portugués reveals feminine elements, linking clandestine activity to feminine imagery. Pepe, whom we learn is a key player in the Sierra Sur resistance, advises the child protagonist narrator, “Si tienes pocas cosas y … en orden, todo parece limpio” (If you have few things and … in order, everything appears clean [51]) or when he pulls out trout “como tres cuentas en el collar de una giganta” (like three beads in the necklace of a [female] giant) from a deep barrel of water stored in a deep, dark pantry.14 The simile prefaces the feminine allusions: the pantry and the barrel are vaginal and uterine and hold something hidden. They reinforce that things are 14  Interestingly, this deconstructed image (the trout and the barrel of water) illustrates the relato inédito, “El lector de Julio Verne.”

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not what they appear, just like female clandestine activity. As Pepe hangs different colored sheets to dry (traditionally “women’s work”), the reader later learns this is part of a system of communication with the resistants del monte. This proves similar to the communication, resistance, and subterfuge through laundry—a female manifestation of mourning, of remembering their defeated deceased, and of striking out against the exultation of the so-called Glorious Uprising. Catalina, mother of Filomena, and several other children, suffered the reality of “mujeres de negro” (women in black, i.e., in mourning).15 Her husband was executed in the postwar. One son died on the front line. Another son died in her arms from more of neglect than of fever, as no one came to the aid of a mother and wife of reds. No había cuartel. Eso fue lo que Catalina aprendió día, que no había cuartel. En Fuensanta de Martos, en la Sierra Sur, en la provincia de Jaén, en toda Andalucía, en España entera, no había piedad, no había esperanza ni futuro para una mujer como ella. Sin embargo, conservaba a sus tres hijas y vivían cuatro varones más, desperdigados por el mundo, eso sí uno en México, otro en Argelia, y otros dos, los más jóvenes, en Francia adonde llegaron después de haber vivido en el monte una buena temporada. (There was no quarter. That is what Catalina learned that day, that there was no quarter. In Fuensanta de Martos, in Sierra Sur, in the province of Jaén, in all of Andalusia, there was no mercy, no hope nor future for a woman like her. Nonetheless, she still had her three daughters and four sons were still living, spread throughout the world, one in Mexico, another in Algiers, and another two, the younger ones, in France where they ended up after having lived on el monte [ hiding as resistants] a good while.) (171)

The tragedies cemented and deepened Catalina’s political convictions. Nino narrates, “no era que Catalina siguiera siendo roja, sino que ahora era más roja que antes, más roja que nunca, roja de verdad” (it’s not that Catalina continued being red, it’s that now she was redder than before, redder than ever, truly red), and enumerates a long list of others who are red and why, to continue, “roja era Manoli, la otra viuda, que al salir de la cárcel de Sevilla se fue a vivir al cortijo de su suegra con dos niños de mi edad que ya eran rojos, como los hijos de su tío Bernardo, rojos en México, como la hija de su tío Lucas, roja en Orán, como los hijos que tendrían sus 15  Women condemned to a lifetime of mourning so aptly referenced in Josefina Aldecoa’s 1994 novel.

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tíos de Toulouse, rojos también, todos rojos perdidos” (Manoli, the other widow, was red, who when she left the Seville jail went to live at her mother-in-law’s farmhouse with two children who were my age and were already red, just like the children of their uncle Bernardo, reds in Mexico, like the daughter of their uncle Lucas, red in Orán, like the children that their aunts and uncles would have in Toulouse, also red, all [of them were] dyed in the wool reds) (171). Mourning was more than an act of acknowledgment of death or tragedy. In postwar Andalusian towns, given Queipo’s prohibition of public displays of mourning, “Falangist patrols ensured that no houses carried emblems of mourning and that laments of grief could not be heard” (Preston 142). Hence, overt expressions of grieving by mujeres de negro were overt acts of resistance. Nino describes the counter-activities that subvert the celebration of the anniversary of the Nationalist victory, a national holiday with festivities, Catholic mass, and streamers that mimicked the regime’s red and yellow flag. The families in mourning “habían decidido hacer la colada precisamente esa mañana, y las ropas negras puestas a secar en los balcones combatían la alegría de los papeles de colores con el duelo, público y clandestino al mismo tiempo, por los héroes de Valdepeñas de Jaén” (had decided to do laundry precisely that morning, and the black clothing hung out to dry on the balconies combatted the joy of the colorful papers with grief, public and clandestine at the same time, for the heroes of Valdepeñas de Jaén) (Grandes 83). The purposeful hanging of vestments of mourning (as widows and orphans, mothers, and sisters) is an arguably subtle use of gendered objects (laundry) from a gendered (domestic) space to protest injustice and wrongdoing and to hold perpetrators accountable for their murderous malfeasance.

Filomena Explicit resistance and gendered repression relate to Filomena Rubio, also known as Filo la Rubia, who, at the age of twelve, with the defeat of the Republic, took kitchen shears to her own hair in solidarity with the rapadas—the publicly shamed women—in her family: cuando acabó la guerra no le afeitaron la cabeza, como hicieron con su madre, con sus hermanas, con su cuñada, con sus tías, con sus primas. Entonces, al cortijo donde vivía le llamaban aún el de los Rubio, aunque ya no vivía allí ningún hombre, todos muertos o huidos  …  Pero donde no

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había hombres, estaba Filo, que al día siguiente se paseó por el pueblo con la cabeza pelada y llena de trasquilones que se había hecho ella misma con las tijeras de la cocina, para que nadie se confundiera, o para no tener que agradecerle nada a ningún falangista metido a peluquero, aunque lo único que consiguió fue que la sentaran en una silla, en medio de la plaza, y la raparan del todo, de verdad. Las Rubias, viudas y huérfanas que a fuerza de estar solas le habían cambiado el nombre a su cortijo, eran así, fuertes, valientes y orgullosas de su desdicha. (56–57) (when the war ended, they didn’t shave her head as they did with her mother, her sisters, her sister-in-law, her aunts, her [female] cousins. At that time, the farmhouse where they lived was called the Rubios’ [in the masculine], even though no man lived there, all were dead or had fled, some say, even to Latin America. But, where there were no men, there was Filo, who the next day strolled through the town with a bald head full of uneven cuts that she had done herself with kitchen shears, so that no one would be confused, or not to have to thank any fascist-turned-hairdresser, although the only thing she got out of it was that they seated her in a chair in the middle of the plaza and they completely shaved her, for real. The Rubias [in the feminine], widows and orphans, who had been forced to be alone changed the name of their farmhouse, that’s how they were, strong, brave and proud of their misfortune.)

As Judith Butler has indicated, “acts, the various ways in which a body shows or produces its cultural signification, are performative” (908, qtd. in Sánchez 59). Tending of the laundry in protest, the self-rapeo, and the miraculous pregnancies are performative acts. The kitchen scissors constitute an instrument of female resistance that brandishes its polyvalent power. This act of defiance begins in the feminine space of the kitchen. The feminization of the family name Rubio to Rubias transforms the patrilineage to matrilineage, and furthermore, the pluralization connotes solidarity and interdependence. The intentional and in-plain-sight sale of eggs overtly dissents against the criminalization of the recova. Filo and the Rubias of El Cortijo are recoveras. The recova is the purchase and resale of eggs, which was outlawed in postwar Jaén as a measure of economic repression against the already impoverished female defeated. Andalusia, with a historically high unemployment and illiteracy rate, has been plagued by poverty. Two and a half years before the fascist uprising, in December 1933, 12% of Spain’s population (619,000) was unemployed. In April 1934, provinces with the greatest number of unemployed were Badajoz, Córdoba, and Jaén, “50

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percent above the national average” (Preston 52). One-third (35%) of Jaén’s population was illiterate (Ryan 261). The insidious 1938 Fuero de Trabajo (Labor Law), reinforced by the December 27, 1938, “Trabajo de la mujer y el niño” (Child and Female Labor) decree, restricted women in the workforce by forbidding night work or factory work, and mandated that a woman’s place was in the home, in an effort to “liberate” married women (Molinero, “Mujer” 113; Espuny Tomás n.p.). Eiroa and Barranquero underscore Francoism’s persecution and prosecution of women’s socioeconomic survival activities.16 Between 1941 and 1944, the Málaga jail was bursting at the seams with individuals incarcerated for theft, price-gouging, black market dealings, prostitution, and fraud, in other words, “actos de pillaje y picaresca propios de una sociedad que vivía con un alto índice de miseria y pobreza” (acts of looting and roguery characteristic of a society with a high scarcity and indigence index) (Eiroa and Barranquero 145). Eiroa and Barranquero deem the typology of the prisoners between 1937 and 1945 in the Málaga prison for women to reflect the regime’s criminalization of ideology: 54.8% crimes against the security of the state, 3.87% against morality, 6.7% against property, 6.15% against socioeconomic order, and 39% other, while one-third of the female inmates’ charges were labeled as unknown (Eiroa and Barranquero 137). As Núnez points out, the only economic means of survival for those whose family was incarcerated or who had not gone into exile was either to receive public assistance or church charity or, as a last resort, “irrumpir en la peligrosa ilegalidad del estraperlo” (break into the perilous illegality of the black market) (Núñez 155). Nino describes the recova as “el modesto negocio de los más pobres, … había existido siempre. Sin embargo, con la resaca de la victoria, y la excusa de que era difícil distinguir a las recoveras de los extraperlistas [sic], alguien que trabajaba en algún despacho de la capital y pretendía hacer todavía más imposible la vida de las mujeres rapadas, decidió prohibirla cuando todavía andaban afeitándole la cabeza a las rezagadas” (the modest business of the most poor, … had always existed. And yet, with the hangover of victory, and the excuse that it was difficult to distinguish the recova women from the black market runners, someone that worked in some office in the capital and aspired to make life more difficult for the publicly shamed women, decided to forbid it when they were still shaving the heads of the women who had been released) (57–58). This is a practice  “actividades socioeconómicas perseguidas por el franquismo.”

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that targets (and persecutes) a multiply marginalized group in patriarchal-­ heteronormative Nationalist Spain: women, leftist, poor, and without a man in the house. In spite of the possibility of arrest for the criminalized resale of eggs, “el hambre y la desesperación pudieron más que el medio” (hunger and desperation were greater than fear) (Grandes 58). Curiously, Catalina la Rubia (mother of Filomena) did not openly or loudly hawk her wares as before: “no voceó su mercancía por las calles, no alardeó de su calidad, … Entonces ya había corrido la voz” (she did not cry out her merchandise on the streets, she did not boast its quality … The word had already spread) for the recoveras had learned to circumvent attention and avoid being turned in (Grandes 58). The recova is paradoxically clandestine and in plain sight. Grandes utilizes voice allusions, both literally and idiomatically. The negation of voice (“no voceó,” “no alardeó”) does not connote silence, nor its concomitant powerlessness. Rather, such negation is followed by the idiomatic “ya había corrido la voz,” in other words, the unstated was heard and the inarticulate message was received through an alternative means of communication for those in the know. The Rubias had eggs. This colloquial meaning of having bravery and grit is not lost on the reader, especially as the recoveras in El Cortijo have been described as “las Rubias tienen un par de cojones” (the Rubias had a pair of balls.). At first blush, Nino’s guardia civil father is a synecdoche for masculine power and the concomitant Nationalist climate and reign of order. Yet, he knowingly ingested and enjoyed the contraband eggs. The way in which he “moistened his bread in the yolk,” “an orange crater” (“mojaba el pan en la yema” “un crater anaranjado”), is reminiscent of the respective genders of the phallic consumer and the uterine purveyor, and reveals the paradoxical hypocrisy of condemning and condoning the female resistance and autonomy: “meneaba la cabeza con un gesto de satisfacción que desmentía sus protestas” (he shook his head with a gesture of satisfaction that undercut his protests) (57). He scolds his wife: “Has vuelto a comprarle huevos a Filo, Mercedes, decía solamente, y mi madre lo confirmaba sin inmutarse, pues sí, … de alguna manera tendrá que ganarse la vida la muchacha, ¿o no? Para que mi padre insistiera con la boca llena, lo que tú digas, pero yo soy guardia civil y un día de estos vamos a tener un disgusto … [sic]” (Mercedes, you’ve bought eggs from Filo again, was all he would say, and my mother would confirm nonplussed, I have … the girl has to earn a living somehow, right? So that my father would insist with his mouth full, whatever you say, but I am a guardia civil and one of these days there’ll be hell to pay …) (57). Antonino’s

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silence and incomplete sentences obfuscate his inclusion of himself as part of the problem. Josefa Contreras Fernández studies the linguistic strategy of impersonalization in El lector. Characters avail themselves of impersonalization—a removal of agency—in order to distance themselves from the transmitted message (1244). Contreras looks at attenuation—the tactic of expressing in a vague fashion—that includes what George Lakoff denotes “hedges,” that is, “mecanismos para reducir la fuerza ilocutiva de un acto de habla” (mechanisms to reduce the illocutionary force of a speech act) (1244). As a pragmatic phenomenon, attenuation mitigates, negotiates, and maintains social relationships and safeguards one’s self-image (Contreras 1245). Contreras discerns three functions or uses of attenuation. The first is self-­ protection that would lessen one’s responsibility in the articulation and, subsequently, the consequences. Additionally, what is said is presented as factual evidence. The second avoids harm to another when his/her image is at stake and, thus, skirts conflict. The third, known as “curación,” repairs “una amenaza a la imagen del otro y tiene lugar cuando ya se ha producido el daño, por lo que la función específica sería repararlo o resolver el problema” (the threat to the other’s image and takes place when the harm has already taken place, so the specific function would be to repair or resolve the problem) (1245). Impersonality relates to depersonalization or “ocultación del agente” (hiding of the agent) (Contreras 1245). When addressing acts of aggression, the threatening or aggressive speaker avoids referencing him/herself as the agent (“I”) of the threatening action and evades pinpointing the object (“you”) of the aggression (1246).17 Of the three functions of attenuation (self-protection, protection, and reparation), regarding El lector’s “textos oralizados” (i.e., dialogue), Contreras discerns that Grandes’ characters adhere to self-protection in an effort to avoid accountability or repercussions (Contreras 1247–48). Unlike works that focus solely on the recovery of the history of the defeated, El lector humanizes the genocidal everyday man that follows orders yet suffers somatically and castrates himself linguistically. Through attenuation, he erases any reference to his agency against the recoveras. He also removes his co-workers’ potential sanctioning of him and his family for not following orders and for purchasing contraband. Antonino’s articulation, “un día de estos vamos a tener problemas,” neutralizes his role as a guardia

 Contreras synthesizes Brown and Levinson’s theory.

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civil and places him on the same plane as his transgressive wife and recoveras. Thus, he capitulates to the resistance. Of note are the oral and hence verbal images. Although in the fictional home (a microcosm of Andalusia as well of Spain) the father tends to have the final say, in this instance, we see a multilayered female subversion: the female sale of recova eggs, the purchase of said eggs (by the wife of a guardia civil), the difficulty in articulation (by the figure that embodies power), and the male ingestion of the symbol of female subversion. With the overt expression “lo que tú digas” (whatever you say), the father, patriarch, and guardia civil yields his authority. The passage that follows with two conjunctions and one ellipsis proves most revealing. By articulating “pero … [ellipsis] y” (but … [ellipsis] and), the coexistence of two antagonistic possibilities is acknowledged, instead of the absolutism of only recognizing one singular reality. The ellipsis, in this home at this moment, articulates that which cannot be articulated: the silence and muteness in response to the witnessed repression, persecution, violence, terror, and torture of transgressing against the regime, as well as fear of potential future trauma. Next, a description of the excellent quality (color, texture, and taste) of Filo’s eggs ensues, as does Antonio’s resignation to his complicity in the recova: “Y por eso a mi padre no le quedaba más remedio que tolerar que su mujer tuviera tratos con una roja” (And that is why my father had no choice but to tolerate that his wife had dealings with a red woman) (57). Instead of fascist monolithic supremacy dictating what is or should be, the conjunctions “pero” and “y” reveal and affirm the coexistence of two distinct—albeit antagonistic—realities.

Miraculous Pregnancies The following example of gendered resistance is at the core of female biology. Pregnancy becomes a transgressive act. Given the reality of state-­ sanctioned baby-snatching, the miraculous pregnancies are an overt act of resistance and a proclamation of autonomy in the face of authoritarian repression. Nino elaborates on the “milagrosos embarazos”: how the resistants would descend from the mountain to visit their wives, the wives would dress as men to travel up the mountain, and pregnancies resulted. When interrogated, the women would blush and stammer as they confessed of flings with transients rather than incriminate their partners (91). Only Carmen la Rosa, wife of the legendary Robin Hood-esque resistant Tomás Villén known as Cencerro, told the truth. For her transgression,

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Carmen served six years in jail and, in an act of defiance and authenticity, named her son Tomás. In the territory occupied by the Ejército del Sur, Queipo de Llano had mandated that in the stead of every man not apprehended, their mothers or sisters were to be arrested as their proxies, and if that failed, their sisters-­ in-­law or stepmothers were to be taken into custody (Eiroa and Barranquero 133). The population of the Málaga prison for women according to Eiroa and Barranquero not only reflects charges but also the reality of imprisoned, executed, or wanted men’s relationship to female inmates (142). In the Málaga women’s prison, 38.5% of the internees were married, 18.01%, widowed, 25.33% of unknown marital status, and 17.81% unmarried. Eiroa and Barranquero consider that the missing marital status data of the one quarter of the prison population could reflect the desire to protect their partners (142). Grandes’ characters’ miraculous pregnancies prove to be overt anti-fascist resistance for fraternizing with maquis under pursuit, for obstructing their apprehension by withholding information (i.e., naming their partners), and by transgressing against nationalized Catholicism’s expectation of chastity or celibacy. Ownership over one’s own sexuality is a subversive act of autonomy and consent, which stands in opposition to the threat of sexual violence as a coercive measure.

Female Interrogation In this Bildungsroman, not surprisingly, Nino also voyeuristically observes erotic interaction. This peeping takes place in several consensual scenes between Sanchís and Pastora, as well as between Filo and Pepe. But Nino’s voyeurism is not only linked to that from which he derives paradoxically innocent and guilty pleasure from the secret, private act of seeing while he is unseen; his accidental voyeurism—including auditory voyeurism—turns sour as it extends to scenes of sexual violence and predation. Nino’s living situation in the casa cuartel and his presence in the main office (as he was practicing typing) led to his witnessing two interrogations of female detainees. The most recent is Sergeant Sanchís’ questioning of Filo: “Sanchís cada vez más cerca, más furioso, resoplando por la nariz con la mano derecha apoyada en la hebilla del cinturón” (Sanchís drew closer, angrier, blowing air out his nose with his right hand on his belt buckle). When Filo refuses to enter the cell, Sanchís threatens, “Pues a lo mejor es que quieres otra cosa—Sanchís se desabrochó la hebilla del cinturón” (“Maybe you want something else” [,] Sanchís unbuckled his belt)

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(150–151). Sanchís reprises the hypermasculine guardia civil role as he interrogates Filo. The performativity of gender manifest in the performance of the interrogator cannot be dissevered from not just the construct of woman but also, more significantly, “woman” as the object that magnifies the masculine agential subject. The threat of sexual assault feminizes the interrogee and weaponizes her sexuality against her. Touching his buckle is the phallic equivalent of unlocking a holster to take the safety off a gun. The fear evoked in this foreplay of sexual torture turns the victim’s gender identification into self-loathing—an action whose auditory visual components create the suspense that heightens the distress and primes the victim for the culminating violent act. Filomena had been taken to be interrogated supposedly for selling pleita (woven fibrous leaves used to make alpargatas), but in reality for potential involvement in or knowledge of the printing of contraband subversive material. Nino’s presence in the office, as Filomena is about to be interrogated, resuscitates the memory of another experience: the interrogation of Fernanda, pregnant with the child of el Pesetilla, her husband, a resistant hiding in mountains. The paper-thin walls of the barracks house abut the barracks. Nino recalls in vivid flashback the nightmarish scene that awakened him in the middle of the night: “oía la voz de Sanchís, … los lamentos de Fernanda, no me peguéis en la tripa, en la tripa no, por favor … ahora que sabemos que te gusta tanto que lo haces con el primero que llega, ¿quieres follar, Fernanda? Igual que lo estaba oyendo todo yo, si no nos dices dónde está tu marido, será que te apetece, el llanto de Fernanda, el ruido metálico de la hebilla del cinturón de Sanchís” (I heard the Sanchís’ voice, … Fernanda’s cries, don’t beat me in the belly, not my belly, please … now that we know how much you like it with the first one that comes along, do you want to screw, Fernanda? Just as I was hearing it all, if you don’t tell us where your husband is, it must mean that you want it, Fernanda’s cry, the metallic noise of Sanchís’ belt) (152–53). Nino calmed his sister, also terrified by the scene, banged on the wall and awakened his father to stop the interrogation. Just as in the Fernanda flashback, Nino also intervenes and Sergeant Sanchís desists from threatening to rape his prisoner. While Sanchís rapes neither Fernanda nor Filomena, these scenes are hauntingly reminiscent of Queipo de Llano’s call to rape and as such reflect the historical reality of sexual violence as a pervasive,

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retaliatory, and repressive measure against women.18 In 2017, the Law of Historical and Democratic Memory of Andalusia acknowledges that women were targeted, punished, shamed, and dishonored, “a veces, únicamente por ser mujeres” (at times, solely for being women) (Junta n.p.)

Pastora The final sexually objectified, repressed, and criminalized character of note is the wife of Sergeant Sanchís, Pastora. When a horse trader from Pastora’s home town near Ciudad Real learned she was married to a guardia civil, he expressed astonishment that someone who had spent her life in and out of police stations and jails could live in a guardia civil installation. His interlocutor, the wife of the guardia civil Carmona, “ató cabos” (pieced together) that “Pastora había sido puta y por eso le daba vergüenza mezclarse con las mujeres decentes” (Pastora had been a whore and that’s why she was ashamed to socialize with decent women) (110). The reason for Pastora’s incarceration is uncertain. Prostitution is a possibility. It is also likely, given the fact that her husband was an embedded resistant, that she was also. Perhaps her “life in and out of police stations” reflected the criminalization of her leftist ideology or simply her socioeconomic survival activities—whether pleita, recova, black market, or prostitution. While many of the female characters in El lector emigrate to France or find solace in other ways, Pastora’s fate is troubling. Pastora’s plight is a counter reality to the exiles in Toulouse. She is a reminder of perpetual repression. While some characters successfully flee to Toulouse (including Inés and her entourage in the precursor novel Inés y la alegría), Pastora represents the other face of female Republicanism 18  The following Andalusian sites of memory commemorate female victims of reprisals. The common grave in Grazalema (Cádiz) contained the remains of fifteen executed women, three of whom were pregnant (Diputación n.p.). The Marrufo farm (Jerez de la Frontera) denotes the murder of hundreds of victims, among them raped women (“Mapa andaluz” n.p.). The March 28, 2017, Law of Historical and Democratic Memory of Andalusia (Ley 2/2017) in conjunction with the September 21, 2010, Decree (372/2010) acknowledges “las características de la represión ejercida exclusivamente sobre las mujeres durante la Guerra Civil y la Posguerra tuvo un claro componente de género … Muchas mujeres fueron asesinadas, otras violadas, encarceladas, vejadas, «paseadas», rapadas, etc.” (the characteristics of repression exerted exclusively upon women during the civil war and postwar had a clear component of gender  …  Many women were murdered, others raped, jailed, humiliated, “strolled” [executed extra-officially], [publicly] shaved [and shamed], etc.) (Junta de Andalucía, Boletín n.p.).

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with regard to Francoist Spain. She did not flee or expatriate, rather she was condemned to remain in Spain, confined to a domestic space—archetypically linked to women and denoted as a locus to exercise autonomy like Inés’ kitchen. However, this domestic space—a metonymy of Pastora’s most intimate space, her sex—is invaded and occupied repeatedly and perpetually with impunity and immunity by her oppressor. Pastora’s husband, Sanchís, the most feared guardia civil, turned out to be a key player in the resistance. All his acts that invoked fear—including the threat of rape to Filo and Fernanda—were in fact subterfuge and misdirection. Therefore, in a climatic showdown when he was found out and was soon to be eliminated, he hailed the Republic and committed suicide. Following a grand display of “alternative facts” and the weaving of the official story that Sanchís was killed by resistants, he was given a hero’s funeral of pomp and circumstance. This celebratory cover-up exemplifies what Urioste considers the dictatorial state’s need to “acuñar un tipo de memoria que justificara plenamente su legitimidad como su permanencia en el poder” (forge a type of memory that copiously justifies its legitimacy and permanence in power) based on the rhetoric of dichotomized concepts: war-peace, atheism-Catholicism, communism-order (Urioste 950). The image that the New State created for itself and imposed hegemonically was, as Urioste observes, an absurdly celebratory and orchestrated triumph of law and order (950). Nothing could have been further from the truth in Grandes’ Fuensanta de Martos where a pillar of the guardia civil assigned to ferret out dissidence was in actuality the center of the resistance. In the wake of Sanchís’ climactic post-shootout suicide, Pastora became the object of gendered reprisals. Briefly given a pension worthy of the widow of a hero, this theater of glorification and doublespeak not only proved short-lived, but the tables of her fate also turned as she was forced to pay back the pension and received notice that due to her conduct prior to the Glorious Uprising she was “Condenada sin juicio a una inhabilitación civil que la impedía trabajar, poseer bienes o abrir una cuenta en cualquier banco, sujeta a la obligación de presentarse todos los días en la comisaría de policía de Lavapiés, obligada a vivir siempre en la misma casa sin el derecho a moverse de Madrid” (Sentenced without trial to a civil sanction that prohibited her from working, owning property, or opening a bank account, and was obligated to appear every day in the Lavapiés police station and to live forever in the same house without moving from Madrid). The role of the police chief in her existence is ironically described as “el comisario, de cuya buena

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voluntad dependía hasta para dormir por las noches” (the police chief, upon whose good will she depended, including to sleep at night) (Grandes 330). In other words, part of her punishment—as a woman, as a defeated— was to be her repressor’s sex slave. Not only did the regime cripple women by reinstating the Civil Code of 1889 in which women could not have a passport, open a bank account, manage property, enter into contract, or be witnesses in trial (“La igualdad”), the dictatorship boasted a significant increase in prostitution, which was tolerated. The Patronato de Protección a la Mujer administered the supervision of prostitutes and the concomitant workplaces, thus normalizing the abjection of women (Ortiz 4). The postwar period condoned and in fact supported prostitution for the fascists’ hypocritical, misogynistic use of female flesh. Forty-year political prisoner Carlota O’Neill refers to Falangists who would hire sex workers for their parties, but instead of paying for services rendered would report them for stealing from them, thus resulting in the workers’ arrest and imprisonment (Núñez 22). This double morality proves quite revealing. It does not forbid the act of prostitution; rather, it places the power and control on the johns and the system that upholds them. The sex workers are divided into two categories in this flagrantly misogynistic system: on the one hand, the upscale establishments frequented by those either holding the reins of power or upholding the system of power and, on the other hand, the arroyo, the street, the unseemly visible locales. Pastora would likely pertain to the former category as a personal sex slave of an influential and powerful member of the regime’s Madrilenian law enforcement. Pastora’s oxymoronic plight as the honored, grieving widow of a highly decorated hero of the regime, who was transformed into the police chief’s personal prostitute, exemplifies Nino’s repetition throughout the novel of “las cosas no son lo que parecen,” the indirect discourse “dicen que,” or the children’s tune “vamos a contar menitras.” The latter serves as a Greek chorus, as Ketz has observed, and invites circumspection on the part of the reader (29). Nino’s infantile lens, recounted from an adult perspective, reveals what the young protagonist had witnessed and heard. The tension and disparity between, on the one hand, what he saw or heard and understood to signify one reality and, on the other hand, what was in fact reality reveals to the reader the schizoid image-making and inherent dysfunction during the authoritarian regime. The ultimate question Nino had to answer was the following: would he ultimately believe that which he witnessed with his own senses or that which he was told he had seen and heard? His

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education (or deformación, as Deveny so poignantly articulated with regard to Andreu in respective chapter of the present study) is rife with conflict and fosters cognitive dissonance. Yet the protagonist, ultimately, opts to rely on his senses and autonomous cognition, rather than on heteronomous imposition. His experience parallels that of transitional and current Spain. The amnesty decreed and known as the Pact of Silence or Pact of Forgetting/Amnesia is the real-life equivalent of “Vamos a contar mentiras,” the ditty that lays out illogical causes and effects that Nino uses to distract his sister’s attention from the torture they hear. Nino, like late 1970s Spanish society, was expected to keep silent, to turn away, and to disbelieve that which he knew was true.

Doña Elena and the Artifacts of Memory Doña Elena’s library is a place of memory containing biblio-artifacts of memory. The books Nino borrows and the meaning he gives them attest to the legacy of artifacts of memory whose malleability contributes to his coming-of-age and ultimately forges his ideology, role in the resistance, and political candidacy during the transition.19 Through doña Elena, the matriarch of El Cortijo, Grandes highlights the essential role of the teacher (in general, and particularly the maestras de la República) in the transmission of the past or of artifacts of memory and the forging of the future. Artifacts of memory are synecdoche or relics. The library at El Cortijo and all of its holdings within the feminine space attest to world literature and Spanish literary tradition, but also boast resistance to prohibition and remind of the interminable nature of war. Galdos’ Episodios Nacionales includes a tome on the War of Independence that proves reminiscent of the Spanish Civil War. These texts, as artifacts of memory, actualize or recognize “memories as legitimate contributions to a community’s collective memory repertoire” and play a key role “in the creation of collective memories” for, without it, artifacts are “dead material” that fails to impact society (Barnes 13, referencing Erll 5). The fact that doña Elena’s library holdings included texts banned by the regime attests to their memorialistic value and Francoism’s project of dismemory.

19  Barnes with reference to El corazón uses “lieux de mémoire” and “artefacts of memory” nearly interchangeably (10).

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Doña Elena, a former teacher during the Republic who became Nino’s tutor, is arguably the protagonist’s most influential role model. The Republic had instituted reform and revolutionized education in Spain: building schools, laicizing curriculum, universalizing education. Between 1931 and 1935, the number of teachers increased 34.7%, from 37,500 to 50,500. Following the civil war, the Francoists eliminated education as the emblem and defense of the Republic (Iglesias 14–15). In nine provinces, there are data showing that 250 teachers were executed (most between July and October of 1936), and 54 high schools created during the Republic were closed. Twenty-five percent of teachers suffered a type of repression, and 10% were banned from working for life (“fueron inhabilitados de por vida”) (Iglesias 14–15). Valdivia Morente notes that the victors brutally punished many individuals who represented targeted groups, “ensañándose en especial con los maestros de la República” (especially raging against teachers of the Republic) (81) as evident in the case of Negrillo in Mancha Real who was stoned to death. Such a death tends to be gendered in the feminine, a type of Atwood-esque particicution,20 where the community dissociates from the scapegoat and unleashes mortal venom. Stoning has commonly been the fate of transgressive women, those who stray from prescribed gender norms, since biblical times. Negrillo’s stoning feminizes him, thus adding another layer of castigation. Similarly, feminist leader and female icon of the Jaén left, Milagros Montañés Martos, was executed on the road when Francoist troops entered Alcalá la Real in October 1936 (Valdivia 80). Montañés had been apprehended, tortured, force-fed oil, and murdered for her union leadership. Grandes’ inhabitants of El Cortijo could have met a fate similar to those described. Simply by teaching Nino a broad curriculum rather than just typing, doña Elena is transgressing. As a Bildungsroman, El lector de Julio Verne urges the reader to ponder, “What did Nino learn?” Grandes overtly claims to value Respeto. Igualitarismo. Dignidad. Sentido de equidad. Solidaridad. Compañerismo. … Habilidades sociales. …  Conciencia de cuerpo. Conciencia del cuerpo del otro. Educación cívica. Educación sexual. … Comprensión. Tolerancia. Capacidad para apreciar las diferencias y para valorar las similitudes. Un conocimiento más profundo de la estructura de la 20  This neologism from Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale refers to the participatory execution at the hands of a disgruntled collective.

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sociedad. Una profundización de los valores democráticos. Una democratización de la vida escolar. Libertad para elegir, para decidir. (Herida perpetua 59) (Respect. Egalitarianism. Dignity. A sense of equity. Solidarity. Companionship. … Social skills  …  Body awareness. Awareness of others’ bodies. Civic education. Sex education. … Understanding. Tolerance. The ability to appreciate differences and to value similarities. A deeper knowledge of societal structure. A deepening of democratic values. Democratization of schooling. The freedom to choose, to decide.)

Is this what Nino begins to learn about and sees first with innocence, and then with budding maturity? Cándido Méndez, Secretary General of the Unión General de Trabajadores (UGT), in 2007 praises the role that Casas de Pueblo (workers’ union centers)21 played in Jaén’s history with their “impresionante actividad cultural, con sus escuelas, con sus bibliotecas, con sus mutualidades, con la solidaridad y los ideales que impregnaba toda su labor” (impressive cultural activity with their schools, libraries, cooperatives, with solidarity and the ideals that impregnated the entirety of their efforts) (Méndez 8). Doña Elena’s house, El Cortijo, and the role she played in Nino’s life, is not unlike that of Jaén’s Casas de Pueblo with regard to union workers. With doña Elena he studied subjects such as French, literature, history, geography, and physics and learned typewriting and music. Nino narrates, “pero sobre todo me enseñó un camino, un destino, una forma de mirar el mundo y que las preguntas verdaderamente importantes son siempre más importantes que cualquiera de sus respuestas” (but above all, she showed me a path, a destiny, a way of looking at the world and that the most important questions are always more important than any of their answers). In reading Galdós’ Guerra de la Independencia (a banned text during the dictatorship), he surmises, “La verdad es toda la verdad y no sólo la parte que nos conviene” (The truth is the whole truth and not only the part that suits us) (199). In Almudena Grandes’ prologue to the testimonio regarding the executed Andalusian teacher Carmen Lafuente in María Antonia Iglesia’s Maestros de la república, Grandes underscores that one of the interviewees, Rosario Zayas Solís, places a disclaimer, saying that Carmen Lafuente was leftist but good. (Iglesias 455). The conjunction “pero” (but) does more than serve a linguistic function—it reveals a binary oppositional paradigm  Preston considers them socialist headquarters.

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or worldview. The conjunction, while not shattering the paradigm, does destabilize it, revealing that the speaker is aware of the faulty premise that reduces human beings to labeled category. The conjunction hence proves vindicatory in that it “redeems” the third-person subject from the pejorative category. This is precisely the project that Grandes carries out in exponential fashion throughout the novel. Historical memory is not hegemonic but rather grassroots, driven by the distinct groups who aim at remembering, recovering, and reconstructing their past (Urioste 944). Just as the “rojas” of El Cortijo were ostracized but had redeeming qualities, Nino sees that his father was a murderer, but could still love him and be loved by him. The underlying purpose, then, seems to be a cautionary tale to understand that “las cosas no son lo que parecen” (things are not what they seem).

Conclusions and New Beginnings: Memory and Morality By 1973, Nino had been working in the resistance for thirteen years, was already a university professor, and had an important position in Granada’s Communist Party. By narrating “Yo había abandonado el monte, pero el monte nunca me había abandonado a mí” (I had left the mountain, but el monte had never abandoned me) (397), the protagonist underscores the polysemy of el monte, connoting the locus of repression, of resistance, and, of course, of his origins. As a child of war, he embodies trauma and is the legacy of his dutifully violent father and resistant, persecuted collective hero, “los del monte.” Additionally, as Calderón Puerta has observed, each locus of communist resistance in each of Grandes’ Episodios interrelates with the others, whose sum reflects a community of collaboration (505). When arrested in December 1973, Nino was not tortured; instead, with a father and brothers in the guardia civil, he benefited from his hegemonic family connections. In spite of his twenty-year sentence, he served two and a half and received partial amnesty in July 1976 for political crimes. In April 1977, the media televised political releases. Among the newly freed political prisoners were Paula la Rubia, her daughter, and Pepe el Portugués. When adult Nino spoke with Pepe, his idol told him that he was proud of the man he had become. In the first democratic elections in Jaén, both Pepe (alias José Moya Aguilera) and Nino threw their names in

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the hat and were approved candidates by the Spanish Communist Party, yet neither won. Their political candidacy attests to both the legacy of el monte and a vindication of los del monte. Their candidacy honored “la presencia de los vivos y la memoria de los muertos” (the presence of the living and the memory of the dead) and constituted a vindication “que merecían los que se fueron, y aún más los que se quedaron” (that those who left deserved, and even more [deserving were] those who stayed) (401). By referencing the hauntological collective (the living and the dead, those present and the memory of those passed), Nino fulfills the moral imperative of memory. Memory is transgenerational. It is driven by and aims at an ethical reckoning with the past. Rooted in the present, it is a bidirectional look that acknowledges three key elements of wrongdoing (the act, the agent, and the object/victim) in the past and aspires to a future—based on lessons learned from the past—free from the repetition of transgressions. Nino’s recounting acknowledges the act of bloodshed during the Triennium of Terror. He admits his father’s agency. With his retrospective, memorialistic gaze (look back), he cherishes and handles with reverence the human objects/victims of wrongdoing. In so doing, memory confers dignity upon their vulnerability, transforming the human objects of malfeasance into the subjects and protagonists of their stories. Deobjectified and protagonized, memory vindicates the previously scapegoated victims, who had been blamed for their fate and whose suffering was rationalized by the agents of their trauma. Nino’s memory activism has transformed the persecuted and repressed inhabitants of el monte and El Cortijo not only into the agential protagonists of their own stories, but also into members of a community of which he, too, is a part. Through his coming-of-age, he has spun the tale of those he admired, and in so doing has woven himself into the fabric of narrative.

Works Cited Barnes, Julia. “How Does a Memory Become Collective? The Creation and Actualization of Collective Memories in Almudena Grandes’ El corazón helado.” Letras Hispanas, vol. 10.1, Spring 2014, pp. 5–16. Calderón Puerta, Aránzazu. “‘Por mí y por los demás”: Resistencia, comunidades y comunismo en Episodios de una Guerra Interminable de Almudena Grandes.” Pasavento: Revista de Estudios Hispánicos, vol. VIII, no. 2, verano/summer 2020, pp. 499–514.

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Campos Fernández-Figares, Mar and Juan Carlos Rodríguez. “Entrevista con Almudena Grandes.” Álabe: Revista de Investigación sobre la Lectura y la Escritura, no. 2 (3), junio 2011, pp.  1–10. https://www.researchgate.net/ publication/276229482_Entrevista_con_Almudena_Grandes/ link/568a1b6608ae1e63f1fae17c/download Accessed Oct. 8, 2021. Contreras Fernández, Josefa. “La impersonalidad como estrategia de atenuación en la novela El lector de Julio Verne de Almudena Grandes: un análisis contrastivo alemán/español.” RILCE: Revista de Filología Hispánica, vol. 34, no. 3, 2018, pp. 1243–58. Corbalán, Ana. “Metaficción historiográfica en la novela española del siglo XXI: hacia una reconstrucción del pasado nacional.” Cuaderno Internacional de Estudios Humanísticos, vol. 16, Fall 2011, pp. 22–34. Córdoba Ortega, Santiago de. Andadura hacia la libertad: Documentos para la Historia de la UGT de Jaén. UGT.  Unión Provincial de Jaén, 2007 (1st ed. 1989). Crespo Buiturón, Marcela. “El corazón helado de Almudena Grandes: el miedo y la memoria frente al pasado reciente.” Romance Quarterly, vol. 60, no. 4, 2013, pp. 221–35. Diputación de Cádiz. “Fosa de las mujeres. Grazalema.” https://www.dipucadiz. es/memoria_historica/catalogo-­d e-­l ugares-­y -­s enderos/FOSA-­D E-­L AS-­ MUJERES.-­GRAZALEMA Accessed Oct. 8, 2021. Dorca, Toni. “La continuidad de un sueño: de la España liberal de Galdós a la España republicana de Grandes.” El siglo que no cesa. El pensamiento y la literatura del siglo XIX desde los siglos XX y XXI, edited by José Manuel González Hernán et al., University of Barcelona, 2020, pp. 140–51. Eiroa San Francisco, Matilde and Encarnación Barranquero Texeira. “La cárcel de mujeres de Málaga en La paz de Franco [sic].” Cárceles de mujeres: La prisión femenina en la posguerra, edited by Ángeles Egido León, Sanz y Torres, 2017, pp. 127–47. Erll, Astrid. “Cultural Memory Studies: An Introduction.” A Companion to Cultural Memory Studies, edited by Astril Erll and Ansgar Nünning, De Gruyter, 2010, pp. 1–15. Espuny Tomás, María Jesús. “Aproximación histórica al principio de igualdad de género: el empleo femenino después de la guerra (II).” IUSLabor, no. 1, 2007. n.p. https://raco.cat/index.php/IUSLabor/article/view/57945/68008 accessed Oct. 8, 2021. Friera, Silvina. “España tiene deudas con el exilio.” Página 12, 8 May 2008, referenced in Crespo Buiturón. González Duro, Enrique. Las rapadas: El franquismo contra la mujer. Siglo XXI, 2012. Grandes, Almudena. El corazón helado. Tusquets, 2007a. ———. La herida perpétua. Tusquets, 2019.

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———. Inés y la alegría. Tusquets, 2010. ———. El lector de Julio Verne. Tusquets, 2012. ———. “Prólogo de Almudena Grandes. Una eminencia de buenísima.” Maestros de la república. Los otros santos, los otros mártires, by María Antonia Iglesias, La Esfera de los Libros, 2016, pp. 455–58. ———. “La vida de nosotros.” Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos, vol. 682, April 2007b, pp. 9–14. Hines-Brooks, Shelly. “Una mirada a la transmisión familiar de la posmemoria en El corazón helado.” Hispanófila, vol. 173, enero/January, 2015, pp. 201–15. Iglesias, María Antonia. Maestros de la república. Los otros santos, los otros mártires. La Esfera de los Libros, 2016. Junta de Andalucía. “1. Disposiciones generales.” Boletín Oficial de la Junta de Andalucía—Histórico del BOJA. No. 63, 3 March, 2017, n.p. https://www. juntadeandalucia.es/boja/2017/63/1 Accessed Oct. 8, 2021. ———. “Lugares de memoria histórica y democrática de Andalucía.” http:// www.juntadeandalucia.es/organismos/presidenciaadministracionlocalymemoriademocratica/areas/memoria-­democratica/lugares-­memoria-­democratica. html. Accessed March 28, 2022. Ketz, Victoria. “Breaking the Silence: Narrative Strategies to Recuperate Historical Memory in El lector de Julio Verne.” (Re)collecting the Past, edited by Jacky Collins, Melissa Stewart, Maureen Tobin Stanley and Nancy Vosburg, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp. 17–37. Lindstrom Leo, Ingrid. “Un mosaico de narraciones situadas en la posguerra española: Inés y la alegría de Almudena Grandes.” Tejuelo, vol. 15, no. 2, 2012, pp. 82–100. “La igualdad, asignatura pendiente.” El Mundo, http://www.elmundo.es/especiales/2007/06/espana/30aniversario_democracia/sociedad77/11_mujer. html accessed Oct. 8, 2021. Luengo, Ana. La encrucijada de la memoria. La memoria colectiva de la Guerra Civil. Tranvía. 2004 (1st ed.), 2012 (2nd ed.). “El mapa andaluz del recuerdo: 50 lugares de Memoria Histórica.” El Diario. https://www.eldiario.es/andalucia/lugares-­m emoria-­h istorica-­b arbarie-­ fascista_1_4417789.html Accessed Oct. 8, 2021. Méndez Rodríguez, Cándido. “Introducción.” Andadura hacia la libertad: Documentos para la Historia de la UGT de Jaén, by Santiago de Córdoba Ortega, UGT. Unión Provincial de Jaén, 2007 (1st ed. 1989), pp. 7–8. Molinero, Carme. “Mujer, franquismo, fascismo. La clausura forzada en un ‘mundo pequeño’.” Historia Social, no. 3, 1998 (I), pp. 97–117. Núñez Díaz-Balart, Mirta. Mujeres caídas. Prostitución en la España franquista. Oberon, 2003. Ortiz Heras, Manuel. “Mujer y dictadura franquista.” Aposta. Revista de Ciencias Sociales, núm. 28, mayo 2006, pp. 1–26.

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Pennebaker, James W. and Becky J. Banasik. “On the Creation and Maintenance of Collective Memories: History as Social Psychology.” Collective Memory of Political Events: Social and Psychological Perspectives, edited by James Pennebaker et al., Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1997, pp. 3–19. Pereira, Flavio. “El perdón como desafío hacia la reconciliación con las memorias históricas traumáticas en El corazón helado de Almudena Grandes y Soldados de Salamina de Javier Cercas.” La memoria novelada: hibridación de géneros y metaficción en la novela española sobre la guerra civil y el franquismo (2000–2010), edited by Hans Lauge Hansen and Juan Carlos Cruz Suárez, Peter Lang, 2012, pp. 145–54. Preston, Paul. The Spanish Holocaust: Inquisition and Extermination in Twentieth-­ Century Spain. Norton, 2013. Ricoeur, Paul. Memory, History, Forgetting. U of Chicago P, 2004. Ryan, Lorraine. “The Gendered Reading Trope in Almudena Grandes’ El lector de Julio Verne.” Neophilologus, vol. 99, no. 2, April 2015, pp. 253–69. Sánchez, Francisco Javier. “Ajustando cuentas con el mundo: Modelos de mujer de Almudena Grandes.” Ojáncano, vol. 39, April 2011, pp. 35–62. Sherman, Alvin F. “Food, War and National Identity in Almudena Grandes’ Inés y la alegría.” Bulletin of Spanish Studies, vol. 93, no. 2, 2016, pp. 255–74. Urioste, Carmen de. “Memoria de la Guerra Civil y modernidad: el caso de El corazón helado de Almudena Grandes.” BHS, vol. 87, no. 8, 2010, pp. 948–59. Valdivia Morente, Miguel Ángel. “La necesidad de la memoria histórica.” Estudios y actividades, Asociacion para la Recuperacion de la Memoria Histórica de Jaén, edited by the Asociación para la Recuperación de la Memoria Histórica Jaén, Diputación Provincial de Jaén and Junta de Andalucía, 2007, pp. 9–10. Wood, Gareth. “El corazón helado de Almudena Grandes y los hipertextos.” Almudena Grandes: Grand Séminaire de Neuchátel, Coloquio Internacional Almudena Grandes, edited by Irene Andrés-Suárez and Antonio Rivas, University of Neuchátel, Centro de Investigación de Narrativa Española, 2012, pp. 185–96.

CHAPTER 8

Opening Graves and Seeking Closure: Remembering the Dismembered Beloved on the Quest for Justice in Almudena Carracedo and Robert Bahar’s 2018 Documentary El silencio de otros (The Silence of Others)

Introduction This chapter explores the ways in which the plaintiffs in the Argentine lawsuit and humanized subject-protagonists of El silencio de otros, María Martín and Ascensión Mendieta, along with the film itself, reappropriate the necropower wielded by Francoism. That is, they take back the regime’s self-appointed authority over death. In dignifying (or re-dignifying) the slaughtered victims, the transgenerational heirs to trauma aim to reclaim their dead and reinscribe them into the society of the living. The latter is not a resurrection. But if, as Achille Mbembé has exacted, necropower is “the ultimate expression of sovereignty [that] resides … in the power and the capacity to dictate who may live and who must die” (11), then the aggrieved relatives-cum-memory-activists regain for the dead their sovereignty in who will be remembered and reinscribed into the cultural imaginary.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Tobin Stanley, Francoist Repression and Incarceration in Contemporary Spanish Culture, Palgrave Studies in Cultural Heritage and Conflict, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13392-3_8

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Democratic memory does not stand for purging of culpability. Memory constantly reminds of the acts of violence and focuses on the evidence of violence. While memory bares a moral imperative and is driven by the intergenerational link to the suffering of the victims, it is rational, logical, and evidence-based. In other words, memory begins with the acknowledgment that there is a victim and then proceeds to ascertain what happened and who perpetrated the harmful acts upon the victim. The moral imperative of memory demands that wrongful acts be seen dispassionately for what they are. By the time this manuscript is submitted and goes to press, Franco’s remains would have been exhumed from a locus of apotheosis, the Basilica of the Valley of the Fallen, and deposited in another place of honor while tens of thousands of victims’ corpses continue to fill mass graves, awaiting exhumation and hopefully genetic identification to be posthumously reunited with family. Additionally, at present, the Law of Democratic Memory approved by the Prime Minister’s Cabinet in September 2020, which complements the 2007 Law of Historical Memory, has not received parliamentary approval. And, the Querella Argentina continues. In this climate of uncertainty, El silencio de otros as an objet de memoir—a type of place of memory—provides certainty for it is both a repository and a vehicle of communicative and cultural memory. According to Astrid Erll, memory is the array of “processes of a biological, medial, or social nature which relate past and present (and future) in sociocultural contexts” (Memory 7). As such, memory is “a fundamentally political phenomenon with strong ethical implications” (Erll, Memory 4). The death of the generation of eyewitnesses endangers “the oral passing on of lived experience [communicative memory]” (Memory 4).1 Without eye witnesses, remembrance is mediated, such as in El silencio. Mediated forms of remembrance become what Jan and Aleida Assmann term “cultural memory” (Erll, Memory 4). The media of El silencio de otros are diegetic and extradiegetic. The poeticized exhumation climax within the film is the medium—the means—through which remembrance of the violation is honored. Extradiegetically, the film itself is the medium that becomes a studied, scholarly investigated, and institutionally canonized cultural product. Carracedo and Bahar’s intimist, poetic, award-winning documentary vindicates and pays homage to the victims of Francoist repression as it 1

 She refers to the Shoah.

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empathetically gives visibility to their traumatic memories and denounces the lasting impunity as integral to the necessary transitional justice of post-­ dictatorial democracy (Rams n.p. gynocine). As a member of the “generación del olvido” (generation of forgetting), Carracedo was never expected by society to reflect on the lasting trauma of Spain’s Francoist past, yet was moved to create the film “cuando se empezó a gestar el dolor dentro de mí” (when the pain began to grow within me) (García, “Entrevista”). By 2017, the Ministry of Justice had counted 2400 mass graves (Groult 206). By 2020, the Argentine lawsuit “launched by a group of victims and survivors determined to seek justice” had nearly 9000 complainants (Groult 205–06). As the documentary follows the pursuit for justice of its protagonists and constructs memory (cultural memory), it exemplifies “how art could pave the way to exiting violence” (Groult 205). This film is a collage of myriad stories and lives of families whose loved ones were disappeared and dumped in mass graves, of individuals tortured who lived to tell the tale, of countless young mothers whose children were taken without their knowledge or consent following delivery and adopted out. The collective of interviewees and plaintiffs in the documentary is an array of memory activists: now sexagenarian former protesters, late middle-­ aged mothers whose out-of-wedlock children were abducted by Francoist authorities under the pretext of nationalized Catholic morality, elderly whose parents were executed extra-officially and whose resting place remains a mystery. Chato Galante represents the victims of torture during the dictatorship, particularly those interrogated by José Antonio González Pacheco, also known as “Billy el Niño.” María Bueno represents mothers of stolen children. María Martín López (1930–2014) and Ascensión Mendieta Ibarra (1925–2019) are elderly orphans who seek the remains of their parents, murdered by the Francoists and dumped in mass graves. These stories and myriad others are interconnected in their solidary appeal to international law. This chapter focuses only on the transgenerationality of the trauma of the extra-officially executed loved ones unresting in unmarked communal pits.

La Querella Argentina (the Argentine Lawsuit) The Argentine Lawsuit is the only open case regarding Francoist human rights violations. Darío Rivas, claiming justice for his murdered father, set it in motion on the symbolic date of April 14, 2010, the 82nd anniversary of the Republic. More than a decade later, the suit is active and includes a

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growing number of plaintiffs (Baquero n.p.). On November 26, 2013, a group of victims of Francoism traveled to Argentina to appear before Judge María Servini de Cubría (Silva 105–06). Among them were Ascensión Mendieta and Chato Galante. Carracedo represents this visit in El silencio. She describes the challenge of filming in Argentina: “to try to capture and convey a crucial turning point…[Having] been denied the right to testify for so long in Spain,” in Buenos Aires, the plaintiffs were finally able to provide testimony in a judicial proceeding (Membrez 310). The judicial and the personal coalesced as the plaintiffs fulfilled a “lifelong goal” of claiming justice, and the lawsuit advanced “a crucial step” (Membrez 310). Since opening the Argentine Lawsuit, several key players have died, including the original claimant Darío Rivas, and individuals featured in El silencio, attorney Carlos Slepoy, both the torture victim Chato (Carlos) Galante and his torturer Antonio González Pacheco, as well as protagonists of this chapter María Martín and Ascensión Mendieta (Varela n.p.). Argentine Judge Servini presides over the investigation into Francoist genocide and forced disappearances. Hundreds of plaintiffs have added their names to the case and have given testimony before Judge Servini in person in both Argentina and Spain, as well as by teleconference. Regarding the crimes of Francoism, this case has broken ground in naming and attempting to hold alleged criminals juridically accountable: the torturer Antonio González Pacheco, known as Billy the Kid, and two former ministers José Urtera Molina and Rodolfo Martín Villa (Barquero n.p.). The latter was prosecuted by Judge Servini on October 16, 2021. In October 2021, she ruled that eighty-seven-year-old Rodolfo Martín Villa, former minister of union relations and governance and highest official in state security during the transition after Franco’s death, was guilty of four counts of aggravated homicide.2 Judge Servini deems Martín Villa’s role in the deaths as “autoría mediate”—command responsibility (Junquera n.p.) Yet in December 2021, the Argentine Court of Appeals overturned the ruling on the grounds of “desacierto en la clasificacion jurídica” (a judicial misclassification) (Pérez n.p.). While the recent overturning of the former minister’s conviction poses a setback in the successful application of universal jurisdiction that would deem Francoist repressive acts to be crimes against humanity, Carracedo and Bahar’s film, an aesthetic and 2  The first three victims were shot to death by police at a public protest; the final victim was killed by two public officers during the 1978 San Fermín festivities.

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pedagogical work of remembrance, functions as a surrogate for jurisprudential justice. The visual and verbal narratives of openings represent this work of remembrance. The film opens with María Martín and brings closure with Ascensión Mendieta. María points to the approximate area of her mother’s unmarked (un)resting place, and the film climaxes cathartically with the (believed) exhumation of Timoteo Mendieta’s remains. As an artistic and poetic phenomenon, a product of cultural memory, a constructed supplemental historiographical counternarrative that underscores empathy and vindicates the defeated, El silencio de otros reverts Francoist necropower. The film compels the viewer to engage with the work and with the subject matter. Through the aesthetic and sensorial experience, the viewer engages with the humanity of those who had been dehumanized and with their loved ones who continue to embrace their longing for the departed. This aestheticization couples with the legal pursuit of holding those guilty of crimes against humanity—who continue to boast impunity—accountable to a higher international law. The legal battle for justice is unresolved. But the constructed narrative of the lost loved one, now exhumed, unleashes catharsis and provides the closure of restorative justice that Spain’s judiciary has not. This climax, as a cinematic homage to the dead, cradling the remains, bespeaks the baroque trope of womb and tomb. It posits a circularity, a lost loved one—symbolic of many victims—is found, the mystery is solved. The open grave, while not closing the wound, has brought some closure. Through both remediation and premediation, the film underscores the uniqueness and universality of genocidal trauma. Erll denotes a double movement in the dynamics of cultural memory: remediation and premediation. Remediation refers to the fact that memorable events are …  represented again and again, over decades and centuries, in different media: in newspaper articles, photography, diaries, historiography, novels, films, etc. What is known about a war  …  or any other event which has been turned into a site of memory, seems to refer not so much to what one might cautiously call the ‘actual events,’ but instead to a canon of existent medial constructions, to the narratives and images circulating in a media culture. Remembered events are transmedial phenomena […creating] a powerful site of memory. (“Literature” 392)

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The known and recognizable trope of the exhumations of Republicans is visible in more than twenty years of headlines, Armengou and Belis’ TV documentaries,3 and, strikingly, in Pedro Almodóvar’s recent feature film Parallel Mothers, the latter of which has reached world audiences in mainstream cinemas. The grand corpus of “narratives and images circulating in media culture” is precisely the remediation phenomenon Erll discerns. Premediation refers to “the fact that existent media which circulate in a given society provide schemata for future experience and representations” (Erll, “Literature” 392). El silencio de otros is not only part of the “canon of existent medial constructions” (i.e., remediation), but significantly steers the course for future experience and production. The film’s high profile includes its viewing at countless international film festivals and awards (including the Goya), but also packing mainstream theaters. Viewers and critics will now see subsequent representations within the context of El silencio de otros, for it has become a point of reference just as Armengou and Belis’ documentaries have. El silencio de otros is a memory-­ making medium. According to Erll, media of cultural memory are memory-­making if their potential for memory-making is “realized in the process of reception: Novels and movies must be read and viewed by a community as media of cultural memory” (“Literature” 395). Carracedo and Bahar collaborated with Amnesty International and have launched the Classroom with Memory campaign. Students in thousands of schools, high schools, and universities have free access to the film as well as a guide prepared in conjunction with Amnesty International. Carracedo explains, “Young people can actually access this part of the story, at least through the film, but often also through Q&As, and meet people who have lived these experiences. Hopefully, this can help trigger a societal change in attitudes” (Groult 217).4 Erll underscores that that which determines if a work is a “memory-making film” is “what has been established around” it, a network of all “the collective contexts which channel a movie’s reception and potentially turn it into a medium of cultural memory” (“Literature” 396). El silencio de otros, situated within the context of the remediative documentary canon, not only constructs the narrative of the past but also transforms how the legacy of the past in the present will be remembered.  Los niños perdidos del franquismo, Las fosas del silencio, and El convoy de los 927.  Additionally, the Dossier Pédagogique prepared by Julie Herbreteau for the Nantes Spanish Cinema Festival consists of thirty-one pages of materials for both instructors and students, pre-viewing and post-viewing activities. 3 4

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Distrust Versus Documentaries Documentaries play a vital role in a climate devoid of trust. Spaniards distrust the media, politicians, and government given the fact that those in power—regardless of the political direction in which they lean—the elites (in the plural)—are the heirs to the power structure established and maintained during the dictatorship (Faber, Exhuming 177). So where does this leave the search for justice and the recovery of memory as it pertains to the Francoist past and its persistent legacy? It would seem then that justice and trust need to go hand in hand, trust and a belief in what is right (the moral imperative), untainted by hegemonic self-preservation or self-interest. If “democracy has not established the corrective … measures that memory, justice and redress demand” (Armengou, “Investigative” 160), then documentary filmmakers have an “ethical, activist commitment” and “obligation to give voice to those who have never had a chance to speak out, whether in dictatorships or in democracies” (Armengou, “Investigative” 158). In Memory Battles, Faber explores the three different narratives or “morality tales” constructed regarding the civil war. The re-moralization of Spain’s history springs from readings of three key twentieth-century events: World War II, the Cold War, and the Southern Cone Dirty Wars (84). Framed by the Cold War, the Right’s narrative is a messianic morality tale: saving Spain from communism and from the “revolutionary Left [that] caused the Civil War” (84–85). The Left’s morality stories take two forms. One is “reconciliatory in nature [affirming] … the national unity of all Spaniards, …  emphasizing empathy  …  over moral or judicial judgment, … privileging a shared national identity over political differences. The second is combative. It prefers critique and moral denunciation over forgiveness and reconciliation”; both reveal uncertainty over unity and conjure the “moral-historical trope” of the Holocaust; the second morality tale also alludes to the Dirty Wars (85). The documentarian duo Montse Armengou and Ricard Belis blazed a trail in the first decade of the twenty-first century with their investigative journalism trilogy that revealed to massive TV audience the dictatorship’s genocide, state-sanctioned baby stealing, and the deportation of Spaniards to Nazi camps. Their investigative journalism employs discursive and cinematic techniques of archival footage, discovered documentation, eyewitness testimony, and what is known as voice of God voice-over narration to reveal and inform (Hardcastle 150). These purportedly objective

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cinematic practices construct the combative morality narrative, inextricably linking the medium and the message. Armengou and Belis’ films tell the story of the impact of Francoist transgressions, but more importantly they denounce the transgressors, hold them accountable, demand justice, and, through a spectatorial-“spectral oath” with the aggrieved subjects, engage the viewers in the denunciatory demand for justice (Derrida 123–24; Herrmann, “Mass” 169). Carracedo and Bahar’s aestheticized documentary differs from those by Armengou and Belis, for the latter’s works posit their reportages at truth-­ revealing, at bringing to light that which had been in the shadows, in a journalistic fashion. The representation of the subjective lived experiences and collective trauma is under the guise of objectivity in order to even the score. By contrast, in spite of invoking, through archival footage, alliances between Franco and Hitler, as well as the dissimilarity between Spain’s treatment of its genocidal past and other nations’ reckonings,5 El silencio otros does not seek conflict, but rather acknowledgment and resolution. It fosters understanding and empathy of the victims while morally denouncing lasting impunity. Carracedo and Bahar’s work is purposefully inclusive and noncombative. Carracedo explains the reasoning behind the title “El silencio de otros” rather than “El silencio de los otros” (my emphasis): “‘los’ is not in the title for ‘los’” “seemed accusatory and risked ‘othering’ a part of Spanish population that we actually believed the film had the potential to reach.” The silence of the film is not the “silence of certain people against others,” rather, Carracedo states, “a much broader and more complex silence, with many layers of meaning we wanted to explore” (Membrez 313). Bahar elaborates, “the idea of the film was not to point a finger and say this particular group has to be blamed for creating this silence. The idea was to try to communicate that it is a more generalized silence—a collective silence …[E]veryone bears some responsibility for this silence” (Groult 217). It is a human rights issue, not “an issue of the left or the right” (Groult 208). El silencio de otros showcases testimonial subjects’ trauma through the aesthetic medium. Carracedo and Bahar’s documentary is more akin to Stephane Fernandez’s Ángel or Francis Lapeyre’s Au temps des roses rouges rather than to Armengou and Belis’ documentary trilogy first created for Catalan television’s 30 minuts. Carracedo and Bahar’s 2018 poignant memorialistic film thematically reflects Armengou and Belis’ first two 5

 Argentina, Chile, Peru, Uruguay, Guatemala, Rwanda, and Cambodia.

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installments of their trilogy, but mediates the subject matter through the aesthetic lens. While both pairs of filmmakers are driven by the moral imperative of memory, Carracedo and Bahar fuse lo ético con lo estético (what is ethical with what is esthetic) and embody the aesthetics of remembrance and unwanted beauty analyzed in Chap. 2 on Ángel Fernández. In so doing, they fulfill Aharon Appelfeld’s claim that only art can redeem suffering from the abyss. Through the aesthetic medium, this film tells the tale of the lasting legacy in the present of the Nationalists’ aim to erase republicanismo and the concomitant human rights violations: extirpating human beings, undoing antinationalist sentiment through torture resulting in the undoing of the subject, and removing children from women who did not fit into the feminine ideal under nationalized Catholicism. Yet the post-­ dictatorial present in El silencio de otros is also rife with memory activism. Maribel Rams discerns that late twentieth-century feminist female-directed documentaries6 vindicate the memory and underscore the agency of “mujeres militantes y activistas que fueron víctimas de la represión franquista” (militant and activist women who were victims of Francoist repression) (“Un silencio” 12). Just as these gynocentric documentaries highlight the agency of freedom activists, El silencio de otros displays the agency of transgenerational victim memory activists, María Martín and Ascensión Mendieta, the former of whom embarks on a particularly gender-­sensitive quest. According to French philosopher Michel Foucault, punishment is a “complex social function,” “a political tactic,” an “epistemological-­juridical” phenomenon, and a means through which the “body … is invested by power relations” (Foucault 24)—meaning that the history of law and punishment is inextricably linked to how humanity conceives of or understands itself to be. Spain, since 1978, is democratic and explicitly states support for human rights, but has yet to hold itself accountable for the dictatorship’s human rights violations. Legislation during the dictatorship criminalized Republicanism and conferred impunity upon those who perpetrated against Republicans and their sympathizers. 6  Aguaviva. Una historia en femenino (1997, dir. Ana Aguilera et al.); De monstruos y faldas and El gran vuelo (2008, 2014, dir. Carolina Astudillo); En reraguarda (2006, Marta Vergonyós Cabratosta); Esperanza Martínez: Una luchadora por la libertad (2006, dir. Amparo Bella et al.); La isla de Chelo (2008, dir. Odette Martínez Maler et al.); Mujeres en pie de guerra and Vindicación (2003, 2010, dir. Susana Koska); Que mi nombre no se borre de la historia (2006, dir. Verónica Vigil and José María Almela); Ravensbrück, l’infern de les dones (2002, Montse Armengou and Ricard Belis).

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Post-dictatorial legislation, the Amnesty Law, perpetuated that impunity. El silencio de otros’ memory activist protagonists and plaintiffs in the Argentine Lawsuit set out to combat the amnesia and impunity decreed by the post-dictatorial transition.

Amnesty, Amnesia, and the “Democratic Impunity” of the Transition Montse Armengou denounces Spain’s post-dictatorial “successive democratic governments[’]” approach to the past: that “the past was best buried and forgotten. They have also done their best to create the impression that both sides in the conflict were equally to blame” (“Investigative” 163). She continues: “Amnesty is one thing, but amnesia is quite another. …  [M]any in Spain remain unaware of the distinction” (“Investigative” 164). The foundations for the Spanish transition to democracy, according to Moreiras, are a cover-up of unsavory aspects of the dictatorship (29). So then, memory with its concomitant moral imperative, historical memory, and democratic memory are at odds with Spain’s transition to democracy. Those in power, the hegemonic heirs, asserted their power with an agreement not to look back, knowingly denying the malfeasance of the regime under the insidiously sinister Amnesty Law. The tenets of democracy are equality, freedom, and the interdependence of the rights and responsibilities of the individual with the good of society. The whitewash of the Amnesty Law forsook the right to an equitable and just judiciary and legislative system. The law in essence privileged perpetrators over victims, ruled out the possibility of prosecution, and conferred upon perpetrators what the founder of the Asociación para la Recuperación de la Memoria Histórica (ARMH), Emilio Silva, terms “democrática impunidad” (democratic impunity) (51). Not only was there no retroactive equality before the law, but it also ruled out any future chance of equity. If democratic societies stand on the rule of law—and the universalizability of it—Spanish so-called democracy was inaugurated as a de facto non-­ democratic state. The Amnesty Law, which set the tone for the transition, clearly had a benefit to the left in that “thousands of the regime’s political prisoners went free,” but it also meant “that every representative of the government, regardless of rank or rap sheet got to start over with a clean state” (Faber 30). Moreiras refers to the culture of the transition (and its cultural production) as a wounded culture (cultura herida) characterized

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by a type of experiential and intellectual conflict and uncertainty that stand in the way of either a clean break with pre-democratic Spain’s past or “la libertad de mirar hacia un future esperanzador” (the freedom to look toward a hopeful future) (Moreiras 16–17). Emilio Silva deems that particular occurrences will “radiografiar nuestra democracia” (x-ray our democracy) (61); the trial of Judge Baltasar Garzón was one. Just as the Spanish magistrate had applied international jurisdiction to the human rights violations of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, Garzón similarly did so in response to families who demanded justice for the forced disappearances of their loved ones under Francoism. Garzon’s attempt to apply international law to the human rights violations during the dictatorship, according to Faber, “questioned the foundational principles and master narrative of Spain’s young democracy” (Exhuming 28). As a result, the judge was accused of prevarication and put on trial. The mudslinging accusation hurled at Garzón was that he “knowingly pursued a case that ignored established law,” to wit, the 1977 Amnesty Law (Faber, Exhuming 92). In 2010, he was removed from the bench. While the final verdict “cleared Garzón of the charge of perversion of justice,” Faber underscores two ancillary findings: On the one hand, the Court affirmed that the citizens who had brought the case to Garzón had a right to truth: they were entitled to find out what happened to their missing family members. On the other, though, the Court argued that the criminal justice system was not the proper channel to satisfy that right. They wielded four reasons for this position: the time that had passed since the alleged crimes; the fact that the perpetrators were dead; the fact that no law can be applied retroactively; and the nature of the Spanish transition. (Exhuming 93)

Amnesty was invoked without an investigation. Spain’s high court had turned a blind eye and a deaf ear, as Audre Lorde encapsulates in her eponymous essay, “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House.” In other words, repurposing the vehicles of oppression or injustice cannot bring about structural change. However, international law is victim-centered and its jurisdiction is universal. Victims of human rights violations are not constrained by the laws of the countries that permitted or made possible their victimization. Professor of Legal Philosophy Rafael Escudero stipulates, “Under international law, the judiciary has the obligation to satisfy the right to truth that

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belongs to victims of alleged or established human rights violations” (125). For professor of legal history, Sebastián Martín, the civil war “was above all a kind of great massacre that served to found a new state, a massacre made up of war crimes and crimes against humanity”; Francoism closely parallels “other European forms of totalitarianism [as evident in Spain’s] concentration camps and policies of extermination” (Faber, Exhuming 106). Victims of Francoist repression are the disappeared. This is a powerful paradigm shift, for the disappeared had been viewed as being others, across an ocean, on the other side of the planet, in another hemisphere. Yet the carnivalesque paradox of justice of charging a judge with prevarication for shining a light on human rights violations reveals precisely the persistent legacy of Francoist backwards justice—so aptly articulated by Ramón Serrano Suñer in his memoirs. If justice were viewed as sacred, the regime’s topsy-turvy jurisprudence and legacy desecrated it. Escudero summarizes Spain’s legislated impunity and its discrepancy with international law. The 1977 Amnesty Act “has had the effects of forgiving human rights violations committed during the dictatorship” (125), including more than 130,000 disappeared.7 Article 7 of the International Criminal Courts Rome Statute defines crimes against humanity as multiple widespread and systemic acts committed pursuant to an organized policy. Among the listed acts are: murder, imprisonment in violation of fundamental rules of international law, torture, persecution of specific political groups, and enforced disappearances. All of these acts occurred under the Francoist regime [and …] were committed against a civilian population as part of a widespread and systematic policy created and carried out by Francoist military authorities. The military authorities knowingly ordered and implemented systematic attacks against the civilian population as a key element of the Francoist political agenda. Thus, these acts are consistent with the definition of crimes against humanity found in Article 7. (128–29)

7  “Academics and historians have reached a relative consensus on the scale and type of human rights violations that occurred during the dictatorship: more than 130,000 people disappeared and died in extrajudicial executions; 700,000 people were held in concentration camps from 1936 to 1942; 400,000 people were imprisoned for political reasons, many of whom were subjected to torture or other cruel, inhuman, degrading treatment; 500,000 people were exiled for their political beliefs” (Escudero 126–27).

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Various international judicial entities have pressed for the investigation of Francoist crimes. Both the United Nations Human Rights Committee (UNHRC) and the United Nations Committee Against Torture (UNCAT) in 2009 “recommended that Spain exhume and identify the corpses that remain hidden in mass graves and establish an independent truth commission to create a report on human rights violations committed in the past. They also recommended that Spain repeal the 1977 Amnesty Act” (Escudero 130). In 2006, “the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe issued an official and public condemnation of the Franco regime and its crimes. That same year, the European Parliament discussed and condemned the Spanish dictatorship” (Escudero 141). The current impetus for a “Second Transition” acknowledges that the late 1970s and the burgeoning transition to democracy were, in effect, not democratic. It might have been a different show, but with the same ensemble and stage crew. In spite of the fact that the transition appeared peaceful and relatively smooth, and those incarcerated were released in the 1970s, the relief or release (certainly not freedom or liberation) had yet to rightfully turn sour. The reality set in that, unlike other post-dictatorial nations that reckoned with their violent past, subsequent generations—the grandchildren of war—called out the injustice and took matters into their own hands to set right the wrong. The forced disappearances that filled unmarked mass graves throughout far and wide began to be openly called out. The movement to disinter and identify the remains was underway.

Laws: Steps Toward Human Rights Within the context and jurisdictional debates between Spanish courts (from the Supreme Court to lower jurisdictions) and international law (whose jurisdiction supersedes others in cases of human rights violations), Eulàlia Millaret Lorés posits that, based on the 1977 Amnesty Law, Spanish judiciary is reluctant to prosecute. The judiciary’s refusal to prosecute human rights violations during Francoism on the legal basis of “prescriptibilidad,” that is, the inability to apply standards  retroactively, flagrantly nullifies the application of international statutes. Spain’s “transitional justice” is singular, “un caso sui generis,” because it is the victims and their families who search for justice in the transition from dictatorship to democracy, rather than the state. The latter, rather than adopt “una postura proactiva en defensa de sus derechos” (a proactive position in defense of rights), prioritizes “por encima de todo el ‘espíritu

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reconciliador’ de la Transición Española” (the “reconciliatory spirit” of the Spanish transition above all else) (Millaret Lorés 31). The Spanish state is still making amends and does not explicitly condemn the Francoist regime until the 2007 Law of Historical Memory (Escudero 142). It was passed by President Rodríguez Zapatero’s Socialist Party (PSOE) in 2004, by Congress in 2006, and finally implemented in 2007 (Ley 52/2007) (Keller 68). The 2007 Law of Historical Memory “stopped short of annulling Francoist jurisprudence,” while the 2020 Law of Democratic Memory “does not contemplate annulling the amnesty law” (Faber, Exhuming 95–96). Will the Law of Democratic Memory have a similar fate of retarded approval and implementation as it sluggishly moves through levels of legislative approval? Complementing the 2007 Law of Historical Memory, in September 2020, the Prime Minister’s Cabinet approved the Law of Democratic Memory. As a nonorganic law, it only requires a simple parliamentary majority, yet by late 2021, it had yet to be approved in Parliament.8 This “new law … would provide material and symbolic reparations for victims of state violence and theft; open the door to an annulment of judicial sentences from sham courts designed to eliminate Franco’s political dissidents; reform public history education; limit freedom of speech for antidemocratic ideologies; and remove or prohibit public tributes to the dictatorship” (Faber, Exhuming 23). The state would also be responsible for locating mass graves from the war and dictatorship and exhuming the remains of the victims, as well as provide reparations to the defeated sentenced to labor through the Redención de Penas por el Trabajo (Faber, Exhuming 23–24). It is still to be seen how the Democratic Memory Law will unfold in the lives of those seeking justice. It is still to be seen how the Argentine Suit evolves. At what point will Spain reacknowledge the application of international jurisdiction? Spain’s post-dictatorial legal progress begs the question: do laws, legislation, and judicial rulings matter? The answer is a resounding affirmative. Whether they have the result that follows through with the intent is a different matter. When looking at the Francoist laws and legislation that systematically stripped away rights with the purpose of dehumanizing and eliminating the opponent, it is clear that laws matter. 8  As headlines such as the following reveal: “El PSOE ‘congela’ la Ley de Memoria Democrática en el Congreso hasta atar los votos para poder aprobarla.,” EuropaPress Nov 26, 2021.

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They create a narrative, and they have the power to do more than resemanticize; they have the power to create a paradigm shift that filters into the cultural imaginary. Francoist legislation was sinister, the Amnesty Law of the transition was insidious, and the Law of Historical Memory, in spite of promise, has proven to be insipid. Nonetheless, in spite of agreeing with Silva that the Law of Historical Memory has not fulfilled the promise of reparation, the law has acknowledged—even if only in name—the dictatorship’s malfeasance and the victimization of the victims. If, as I have asserted elsewhere, the moral imperative of memory is tripartite—acknowledging of malfeasance, acknowledging of the victims, and holding the transgressors accountable—then, the Law of Historical Memory has failed to take the victimizers to task. It appears that the Democratic Memory Law will likely follow suit. Contemporary transgenerational victims—the heirs to trauma—work toward justice, to hold their ancestors in constant remembrance on a personal level as they doggedly carve out their place in cultural memory. Ascensión Mendieta and Emilio Silva are perfect examples—poster children—for the justice sought by memory activism. Both Ascensión’s father and Emilio’s grandfather are greater than they are as individuals. As ghostly absent-presences that haunt several generations, they are a synecdoche for all the victims whose families pine away for, anxiously awaiting, the discovery of their common grave, their remains exhumed and genetically identified. DNA confirmation is key to returning the victims home in a polyvalent sense. Not only are the osseous remains rightfully installed with the families and set to rest—and set to rights—with the due dignity and honor, but the nostalgic longing for belonging, the thirst for connection with one’s own, is slaked, if not quenched. Identifying the remains and orchestrating a proper burial does not transform the past, nor does it resuscitate the dead to relive the lost moments of their children and grandchildren’s lives. However, the reconnection provides a missing piece that fills the silence, unleashes the ability to articulate the pain and the sense of loss, and creates a community with others who are co-victims of the attempted erasure. What is clear is that too-little-too-late legislation is both untimely and insufficient to provide the surviving aggrieved with a sense of justice before they die of old age. This is precisely why memory is invaluable.

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Defining Memory and the Role of El silencio de otros in Both Communicative and Cultural Memory Forms of memory are distinct “modi memoranda” or “ways of remembering” (J. Assmann 110). Jan Assmann defines memory as “the faculty that enables us to form an awareness of selfhood (identity), both on the personal and on the collective level. Identity  …  is related to time  …  The synthesis of time and identity is effectuated by memory” (109). There are three levels of time, identity, and memory: inner (neuro-mental), social, and cultural (J. Assmann 109). Jan Assmann synthesizes the evolution of collective memory theory. Unlike psychoanalysts Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud, who explored the concept of collective memory in the “unconscious depths of the human psyche,” sociologist Maurice Halbwachs theorizes that memory relies “on socialization and communication … Memory enables us to live in groups and communities, and living in groups and communities enables us to build a memory” (J. Assmann 109). Aleida Assmann introduces “communicative memory” to distinguish Halbwachs “collective memory” from the more recently developed theory of “cultural memory” (J. Assmann 110): “cultural memory is a form of collective memory, in the sense that it is shared by a number of people and that it conveys to these people a collective, that is, cultural identity” (J. Assmann 110). J. Assmann divides Halbwachs’ collective memory in two: “communicative memory” and “cultural memory” (110). Cultural memory and communicative memory differ accordingly. Cultural memory is a kind of institution. It is exteriorized, objectified, and stored away in symbolic forms that … are stable and situation-transcendent: They may be transferred from one situation to another and transmitted from one generation to another. External objects as carriers of memory play a role already on the level of personal memory. Our memory, which we possess as beings equipped with a human mind, exists only in constant interaction not only with other human memories but also with ‘things,’ outward symbols. (J. Assmann 111, my emphasis)

Groups, at the social level, are greatly influenced by external, mnemonic symbols of cultural memory. Collectives that “do not ‘have’ a memory tend to ‘make’ themselves one by means of things meant as reminders such as monuments, museums, libraries, archives, and other

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mnemonic institutions” (J. Assmann, noting A. Assmann 111). Institutions preserve and reembody disembodied cultural memory (J. Assmann 111). Communicative memory, in contrast to cultural memory, “is non-­ institutional, it is not supported by any institutions of learning, transmission, and interpretation; … it is not formalized and stabilized by any forms of material symbolization; it lives in everyday interaction and communication … [It] has only a limited time depth … no farther back than eighty years, the time span of three interacting generations” (J. Assmann 111). This is precisely why oral transmission or witness testimony (i.e., communicative memory) valuably “reveals details never recorded by official history” (Hardcastle 153). Memory connotes “knowledge with an identity index,” “knowledge about … one’s own diachronic identity” as an individual, a family member, a community, a generation, a culture, a religion, a land, or a people (J. Assmann 114). It is imperative to note, “Remembering is a realization of belonging, even a social obligation. One has to remember in order to belong” (J.  Assmann 114). Inversely, as Jan Assmann underscores, “Assimilation, the transition of one group into another one, is usually accompanied by an imperative to forget the memories connected with the original identity” (J. Assmann 114, my emphasis). “Assimilatory forgetting” is exactly what Francoist terror executed: elimination of “undesirables” and fear-induced silence on the part of the survivors that truncated the possibility of transmission. The institutionalized cultural memory of Francoism—the imposed anniversaries, feast days, monuments to apotheosize the “martyrs,” and heroes—is at odds with the communicative memory of those who aim to rescue the suppressed past. Hence, the clock is ticking. If communicative memory has an expiration date—approximately eighty years or three interrelated generations—then the time is now for the generation of the children of war to transmit their individual memories (inner [neuro-mental] memory) so that they become part of social memory, that is to say, part of the community of sympathetic or empathetic others. Nevertheless, oral transmission can be ephemeral. Carracedo and Bahar’s film captures the testimonies (communicative memory), collecting them so that, in the aggregate, individual memories become the bricks for the architectural structure of social memory. Authors who study Carracedo and Bahar’s film participate in the creation of a canon of memory documentaries: scholars institutionalize the recounted, remembered, and revered trauma (cultural memory).

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Remembering and forgetting are essential to cultural memory. According to Aleida Assmann, both are characterized by active and passive acts or approaches.9 On the one hand, El silencio de otros makes visible the active forgetting the regime imposed with its erasure of not just Republican ideology, but also of Republicans and the cultivation of paralyzing fear in the children of war. On the other hand, El silencio de otros gives space to the active remembering of memory activism to which the exhumations and neoritualizations attest. Notably, “institutions of active memory preserve the past as present while institutions of passive memory preserve the past as past. The tension between the pastness of the past and its presence is an important key to understanding the dynamics of cultural memory” (A. Assmann 98). El silencio de otros, as an objet de memoir, an instrument and site of cultural memory, preserves and perpetuates, including through education, the past as present.10 Eight decades after the respective forced disappearances, Ascensión Mendieta and María Martín preserve their parents’ killings in their daily existence. By relating their experiences to subsequent generations, mediated through the documentary, by participating in the Argentine Lawsuit, they confer meaning upon their parents’ death. By doing so, they exemplify what A.  Assmann refers to as a contract “between the living, the dead, and the not yet living”: “Through culture, humans create a temporal framework that transcends the individual life span relating past, present, and future. Cultures create a contract between the living, the dead, and the not yet living. In recalling, iterating, reading, commenting, criticizing, discussing what was deposited in the remote or recent past, humans participate in extended horizons of meaning-production” (97, my emphasis). In their remembrance of their loved one’s abductions, the relived memories of broken childhood, and stigmatized adulthood, Ascensión and María’s stories—recounted in their testimonies, mediated in the 9  Active remembering is counterpoised with passive remembering organized into the following pairs: “select, collect” versus “accumulate,” “working memory” versus “reference memory,” “canon” versus “archive,” and “museum monument” versus “store house.” Similarly, passive forgetting is positioned against active forgetting: “neglect, disregard” versus “negate, destroy,” “material relics” versus “material destruction,” “dispersed in forgotten depots” versus “taboo, censorship trash” (A. Assmann 99). 10  See El silencio de otros educational guide prepared in conjunction with Amnesty International. By contacting www.ElSilenciodeOtros.com., purchasing the film, and filling out the educational use agreement form, Spanish institutions of learning can organize free viewings for educational purposes.

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character-driven documentary with poetic elements—are transformed into a transcendent artifact of cultural memory. Through the mediated acts of remembering, the elderly protagonists and the film itself attest to identity, belonging, and the social obligation to combat assimilatory forgetting intended by erasure.

Exhuming the Dearly Dispatched: María Martín and Ascensión Mendieta’s Quests The two victim-protagonists, María Martín López (1930–2014) and Ascensión Mendieta Ibarra (1925–2019), bear witness to the legacy of the terror caliente of the early dictatorship in the present. Bahar notes the directorial intentionality of “the testimonial approach [as…] the most powerful form of discourse to reach people and create change” (Groult 208).11 These two octogenarian protagonists are the daughters of their ghostly parents, whose murders have been a constant, haunting presence, and absence for nearly eighty years. I will discuss first María Martín’s unsuccessful quest to open her mother’s mass grave, and subsequently the fruitful exhumation of Ascensión Mendieta Ibarra’s father and extradiegetic positive DNA identification. As memory activists, documentary testimonial subjects, and plaintiffs, Ascensión and María reclaim, subvert, and transform that which Achille Mbembé has termed necropower: [The] notion of biopower is insufficient to account for contemporary forms of subjugation of life to the power of death … [The] notion of necropolitcs and necropower … account for the various ways in which, in our contemporary world, weapons are deployed in the interest of maximum destruction of persons and the creation of deathworlds, new and unique forms of social existence in which vast populations are subjected to conditions of life conferring upon them the status of living dead. (emphasis in original, 39–40)

Even before the parents of Ascensión and María were murdered, it is possible that they were already “the living dead,” to borrow Mbembé’s term. Could it be that their existence in the deathworld, as determined by the necropowerful, placed them not in the category of those who could live, 11  Moreno-Nuño views memory as a discursive configuration (16) and observes the inextricable link between memory, human rights, and democratization (18).

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but rather in that of those who must die? In line with Mbembé’s summation of Elias Cannetti’s view of survival, Ascensión and María are survivors: “the survivor is the one who having stood in the path of death, knowing of many deaths and standing in the midst of the fallen, is still alive” (36). Nevertheless, neither of these two elderly children of the necropolitical fallen enacted the “logic of survival” to “escape alive” by having “taken on [and killed] a whole pack of enemies” (36). Rather, decades after their parents’ murder, they “took on” the pack of enemies—dictatorial actors and agents as well as post-dictatorial accomplices that comprise Francoism and its legacy—in the pursuit of justice via the ongoing Argentine Lawsuit. They have since perished; however, the hope that they have provided lives on. Their restorative justice-centered approach, driven by the moral imperative of memory, resituates the perpetrators’ necropower within the necropolitics of the slain humans’ obstinance and demand for meaning. Thus, meaning returns to those from whom it had been taken. The film is a “character-driven story” (Groult 207) that, according to Carracedo, “represents–yet simultaneously cannot begin to represent—a gigantic collective of stories that are yet to be told and a truly multi-­ faceted quest for justice” (quoted in Membrez 309). Just as Anne Frank’s “individual fate” and the actualization of the “ever-present possibility” of the “death she [feared]” became “in cultural memory, a synecdoche for the collective victims of the Holocaust” (Saunders 328), so have El silencio de otros’ bearers of witness become a synecdoche for the transgenerational victims of Francoist repression. María and Ascensión’s agential protagonism in their own stories, similar to life-writing, “redress[es] a kind of cultural amnesia—to write the cultural memory of the women […and their] contribution to history” (Saunders 321). While not life-writing or autobiography, but rather life-telling or aural-biography or  aural-­ biolocution, the testimonializing female subjects recount, through the spoken (oral) and listened to (aural) accounts, their defining memories, memories witnessed and experienced, memories of loss and suffering, memories of the dissolution of their families, and of the persistence of marginalization and stigmatization of their families. Cultural memory relies upon “narrative processes … [E]very conscious remembering of past events and experience—individual and collective—is accompanied by strategies which are also fundamental for literary narrative” (Erll, Memory 146). While El silencio de otros is neither fictional nor literary, it relies on narrative and literary strategies in the creation of the story. According to Rigney, “whoever narrates events is in fact involved in

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actively shaping experience into an intelligible pattern with a beginning, middle, and an end with an economy of antipathy and sympathy centered on particular human figures.”12 Therefore, narrativization is more than “an interpretive tool”; it is “a specifically mnemonic one. Stories ‘stick.’ They help make particular events memorable by figuring the past in a structured way that engages the sympathies of the reader or viewer (Rigney, ‘Portable’)” (Rigney 347). The narrating protagonists are characters in their own polyphonic tale. Erll explains that “we-narration creates a collective identity” (“Literature” 391).13 Similar to “we-narration,” the juxtaposed “I-narrations” in El silencio de otros construct a collective identity of plural-singular voices of multiple generations: children of war, grandchildren of war, and great-­ grandchildren of war and beyond. Their stories dialogue with each other, exemplifying Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of heteroglossia: the varied ways “for conceptualizing the world in words  … juxtaposed to one another, and … interrelated dialogically” (Bakhtin 115, qtd. in Erll, Memory 150). Such “Literary works,” according to Erll, “can display and juxtapose divergent and contested memories and create mnemonic multiperspectivity”; this type of work “re-connects, in a single space the manifold discrete parlances about the past” (Memory 150–51). In other words, the diverse life stories in El silencio de otros become part of a greater story that, like literature, becomes part of “semantic memory.” Erll encapsulates that we “remember the characters and plots of novels … and movies,” for they are “a medium which shapes episodic memory: the way we recall life experience” (Memory 168). Because of its narrative, the aesthetic elements of this film are a mnemonic tool that shapes how the legacy of extrajudicial executions will be remembered. Ascensión and María’s stories—borrowing Rigney’s expression—“stick.” Remembering takes place on the individual and collective levels, in other words, “collected” and “collective” (Erll, Memory 12). Bahar and Carracedo collect the individual testimonial narratives of their protagonists—the communicative memory—to construct the collective memory and foster a collective identity. Through mediation (that is to say, the film), collective memory becomes cultural memory. The film’s opening encapsulates its intent. The film opens as María recounts her mother’s apprehension and murder. The beginning scenes  Rigney distills Hayden White’s theories on narrative.  She references the generation of soldiers in All Is Quiet on the Western Front.

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intercalate myriad testimonies of co-protagonists, with lyric imagery, archival footage, and filmed quotidian and monumental moments in order to reach its cinematic point of maximum tension. The exhumations of the osseous remains, which bring the film to its narrative and affective climax, poetically pay homage to the extra-officially executed victims. María is a synecdoche for all transgenerational victims still pining for exhumation, while Ascensión represents the bittersweet triumph of reuniting with and subsequently neoritualizing a lost loved one. The September 23, 1939, decriminalization can be viewed as an ontological legislative moment in Francoist genocide. It confers amnesty on perpetrators of violence or actions against the Republican constitution or public order during the official dates of the Republic (14 April 1931–18 July 1936), thus rewarding all the traitors against the legitimate government, not just with amnesty but most significantly impunity. Curiously, amnesty is fitting when an individual or a group transgresses an unjust law. Amnesty is granted under the auspices of justice, not law. In other words, what is right, not what is legal. For example, civil disobedience is the purposeful violation of unjust rules, norms, ordinances, and so forth. Impunity, on the other hand, is the non-punishment or non-punishability of wrongful acts. Hence, The 23 September 193914 decriminalization of anti-Republican activity legislates retroactive backwards justice. Treason became unpunishable. Yet upholding or sympathizing with the legitimate government was criminalized (with the 1939 Law of Civil Sanctions and Responsibilities). The 1939 decriminalization legitimated and retroactively legalized genocide and conferred impunity upon the genocidal hierarchy, from the generals to their pawns who carried out the carnage and amassed their victims in the common graves that hauntingly populate Spain’s necropolitan landscape. In other words, below the dusty surfaces, perhaps covered with gravel or pavement or overgrown with brush or grass, lies a mega city of the dead with tens of thousands of inhabitants, only some of whom have begun to cross over phantasmally as their DNA identification brings them home to their still mourning children and grandchildren.

14  “The 23 September 1939 law considers ‘no delictivos determinados hechos de actuación político-social cometidos desde el 14 de abril de 1931 hasta el 18 de julio de 1936” (noncriminal social-political acts committed between 14 April, 1931, until 18 July, 1936) (Boletín Oficial del Estado. 30 Sept., 1939, issue 273, p. 1).

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If a necropolis is the city of the dead, or a cemetery, what might we call the landscape of mass graves scattered throughout Spain? The city of the dead reflects the tenets of that society (religion, customs), socioeconomic stratification, social ideals, and ideology. However, the unmarked mass graves, with their improper non-burial, reflect the human, social, and individual ir/relevance of the human beings whose cadavers were artlessly deposited in the gaping orifice. The genocidal erasure and non-necropolis placement declare their exclusionary status from the hegemony and the nascent new order. According to Robben, the “hidden location [of a mass grave] heightened the dead person’s fall from society’s grace. Evil could only be buried in unhallowed soil … The executed had become outcasts whose place outside the new social order was emphasized by their unacknowledged presence in mass graves” (Robben 272). Execution or mass murder of the enemy imbues the violent perpetrators with omnipotence (Robben 270, distilling Canetti’s theory). The unceremonial dumping-­ burial of the defeated’s executed cadavers not only “symbolized their inhumanity” but also constituted the genocidal victors’ “final act of victory” (Robben 270). Mass graves, according to Robben, are “invisible monuments,” which “served as faceless monuments to the glorious victory” (271). Mbembé’s concept of necropower encapsulates how life, death, and the slain or wounded human body are “inscribed in the order of power” (12). With regard to massacres, Mbembé poetically discerns: lifeless bodies are quickly reduced to the status of simple skeletons. Their morphology henceforth inscribes them in the register of undifferentiated generality: simple relics of an unburied pain, empty, meaningless corporealities, strange deposits plunged into cruel stupor … [W]hat is striking15 is the tension between … the strange coolness [of the bones] on the one hand, and on the other, their stubborn will to … signify something. (Mbembé 35)

The stubborn will of bones triumphs in El silencio de otros. The filmmakers highlight what Ferrándiz and Robben term “corpocentric importance of the wounded bones in human rights practices and discourse” as they accompany their protagonists in their quest for justice (7). As memory activists, María and Ascensión are on a quest to reappropriate more than the osseous remains of their departed; they aim to take back and transform the necropower to reinscribe the victims into the realm of the meaningful.  Regarding the preserved remains of the Rwandan genocide.

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María Martín’s Buried—But Not Forgotten— Mother: Faustina López The viewer embarks upon the journey to re-signify Faustina López’s bones through the empathetic identification with her daughter, María Martín López. The initial sequence with elderly, María, in her daily routine, draws the viewer into the intimacy of her life. The materiality of Carracedo and Bahar’s cinematic work is palpable. Hapticity, or haptic visuality, the texture of an image, according to Laura Marks, not only draws the spectator in, but it awakens a way of seeing (more than looking) that cultivates respect for the other, resulting in the “concomitant loss of self in the presence of the other” (Touch 20). María stands before the mirror, grooming her hair. The close-up point of view is eye level. The directorial and spectatorial gazes are aligned, positioned over María’s shoulder so that the three gazes fuse. Not only does the viewer join María in the mundanity of daily grooming, but the simplicity also evokes a connection, a sort of intergenerational intimacy of preparing for the day together, of sharing in the sacred space of quotidian, domestic belonging. There is no voice-over during the first sixty seconds. The only sounds are those of María putting her hair in a bun, her breathing, and the rhythmic drip of the faucet. The soothing sounds and images invite the viewer to “graze”—rather than gaze—as Marks theorizes.16 With the hapticity of this scene, the spectator feels sensorially and feels emotionally. Akin to the senses awakened and relived when nostalgically remembering one’s grandmother, the viewer absorbs and becomes part of this scene and bonds with the grandmotherly subject on screen. Respectively, the traveling shot of the walk to the roadside ditch, the site of María’s mother’s extrajudicial execution, transforms the viewer into a pilgrimage companion. The first line of the film, articulated by this now elderly orphaned child of war, invites the viewer to join María in her transgenerational journey on the quest for justice and to share in her trauma: “Yo tenía 6 años cuando fueron a por mi madre” (I was six years old when they came for my mother). María’s mother was one of what is known as “las rapadas,” “red” women who were taken from their homes, shaved, force-fed peppered oil to soil themselves with vomit and feces, and paraded 16  Marks’ observation of the “graze” (the sensorial tactile experience) rather than the “gaze” of hapticity is a strategy that fosters the identification with otherness.

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through the streets in a spectacle of public humiliation. Yet Faustina López’s dehumanization did not stop there as her assailants stripped, murdered, and discarded her in a ditch. Family members feel a “sense of ownership over” the loved ones’ bodies and the traumatic event (Torres, “Photo” 149).17 The lack of “visual traces of the victims … becomes a black hole that has swallowed […the] dead and denies…relatives closure in the process of grief, whose starting point is the sight of the victim’s lifeless body” (Torres, “Photo” 151). The symbolic weight of reinterment compels victims “to close the cultural circle of personhood … by reintroducing [their deceased loved ones …] in the social sphere of community” (Fernández Mata 291). María’s quest to disinter her mother’s wounded bones fails. In María’s constructed cinematic narrative, I explore the countryside, the road motif and its relation to flowers, the representation of the town of Pedro Bernardo (Ávila, Castilla y León), and María’s own funeral. The images of the countryside throughout the film constitute a polyvalent both poetic and conceptual motif that dialogues with other motifs. This interdiscursivity (dialogue between elements) and heteroglossia (diverse voices or articulate elements) create layers of meaning through the aesthetic experience. For example, the countryside depicted is literally the countryside. It is also a Spanish landscape, a Castilian countryside. The latter literal reality evokes the literary and philosophical early twentieth-­ century pessimism of the Generation of 1898, whose maximum poetic exponent Antonio Machado penned Campos de Castilla. In Machado’s poetic depiction, the barren Castilian countryside in decline, struggling not to thrive but simply to survive, populated with plaintiff livestock and desiccated vegetation, spoke to the climate of dissatisfaction and lack of confidence. The scenery in El silencio de otros reflects parallel mistrust. Additionally, the visible countryside implicitly denounces the hidden landscape of mass graves. Charlotte Groult discerns fragility as the film’s “main theme”: “fragility of the victims who grow old and older, fragility of the sepulchers—for instance the bouquet of flowers tied on a roadside—fragility of the interest in the victims’ fight” (210). Carracedo elaborates on the challenge of “how to convey silence,  …fragility,  …  the sense of invisibility  …  how could  Torres refers to relatives of victims of 9/11.

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people feel the struggle [and] … enter the struggle? ... [One way] is through those poetic elements, for example the statues, the moments of silence, the moments where you can experience the countryside, but also the contrast between  …  the information and the aesthetic level. For example, going from Franco’s Valley of the Fallen to the flowers by the side of the road … to create that contrast and therefore that meaning” (Groult 210). Franco’s monumental entombment and consecration in the floor of the nave of the basilica stand in stark contrast to the makeshift graves holding the remains of Franco’s victims, such as María Martín’s mother. The viewer intellectualizes the injustice of the genocidal dictator’s apotheosized, hypermasculinized sepulcher in juxtaposition with his victim’s desecrated remains in her roadside ditch adorned with the ephemeral beauty of the bouquet (Fig. 8.1). The paved road in María Martín’s story is literal and symbolic. The modern motorway attests to transit and leads to another location, yet lies above the likely stagnant location of Faustina’s grave. The road motif, thus, proves paradoxically poignant. Roads connote direction and

Fig. 8.1  Description: María Martín sits by the road which covers the mass grave containing her mother’s remains. © Semilla Verde Productions. (Photo Credit: Almudena Carracedo)

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purpose, progress, and advancement. Yet this road taunts. The grave is static. Currently untouched, unexplored. María’s mother’s remains are unexhumed. The homeostasis of the remains, like persistent, chronic pain, prolongs the longing. Various scenes of María at the roadside with yet another bouquet poignantly, rhetorically communicate that while life goes on for others, she remains rooted at the physical site of her mother’s undoing in constant, indebted remembrance. Hence, the road ironizes purported modernity and progress. The series of frames of María by the guardrail—both standing and seated—denounce. María, standing at the roadside ditch pointing in the likely exact site of Faustina’s place of unrest, conjures the image of El Greco’s mannerist El entierro del conde de Orgaz, in which the artist included his son pointing to the intratextual subject matter as if to visually articulate, “Look here. Regard my father’s masterpiece of the Count’s soul rightfully ascending to heaven, joining the celestial community.” María’s extended arm, pointing index finger, and boring searing gaze fixed on the viewer denounce the masterpiece of fascist massacre as she longs to revert her mother’s bones to the community of the meaningful. The frames of María, sitting on the side of the road, stand in harsh conceptual juxtaposition to Faustina’s hidden body. María is elderly, alive, seated of her own volition on the shoulder of the road, in the company of her daughter, while her young mother, stripped of agency, was forcibly removed from her home, shamed, murdered, and unceremoniously cast aside. The sequence regarding the town of Pedro Bernardo ontologically situates Faustina López. Elderly María Martín López’s family members stroll through her mother’s home town of Pedro Bernardo (Ávila, Castilla y León).18 The cinematic construction is powerful in many respects. First, María’s daughter, her son-in-law, and grandson, Luis Martín, return to the scene of the crime—the location where Faustina López was forcibly apprehended and murdered. As a polyvalent element, walking proves poetic, rhetorical, and literal. The walk down memory lane resuscitates past transgenerational trauma for María’s daughter María Ángeles. The scene can be divided into several sequences. Walking through the town, María Ángeles narrates in voice-over: “This is the town where my grandmother’s whole story took place.” The scene cuts to María Ángeles’ testimony in black where she states, “I am M[arí]a Ángeles Martín,  1:35:53: Town of Pedro Bernardo, María Martín’s mother’s town.

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daughter of María Martín, granddaughter of Faustina López, my grandmother, murdered in Pedro Bernardo.” The shot cuts to María Ángeles walking in Pedro Bernardo that is now intercalated with archival footage of the town. Carracedo explains archival material in the film as a key “cinematographic element not only explain[s] an era, but [also helps…] the viewer to be present in that historical moment, to be in the moment as the participants are reliving it on screen” (Membrez 311). Carracedo underscores that the archival material is not initially coupled with voice-over in order to “let it breathe and come alive” (Membrez 311). A title card reads “Pedro Bernardo, 1960,” where María Martín’s voice-over narration reveals, “Kids threw stones at us on the street. Walking down the street you’d be looking out for an escape route. Because when I’d run into someone…[sic],” and the thought is completed as the scene cuts to María presenting her testimony with a stark black background: “they’d do this with the finger, ‘We shouldn’t have left even the offspring’” (“y me hacían así con el dedo: ‘no teníamos que haber dejado ni simiente’”). María’s experiences exemplify the fact that: Spanish children with traumatic Civil War experiences learned that they could not rely unquestionably on their parents for safety and that the outside world was a dangerous environment in which hostile forces deprived them forever of the affection of their executed parent. This distrust was repeatedly fed by the official silencing of the executions, the commemorations of Franco’s victory, and the memorials erected in memory of fallen Nationalists. (Robben 266)

The scene cuts to archive footage of the Civil Guard watching a bullfight while María Ángeles’ voice-over narration reveals, “Whenever she saw the Civil Guard approaching my mother would pee on herself. For her, it’s not like they had changed with the democracy. Because it was the same institution. The same people. The same mayor.” Archival footage shows the carcass of the slaughtered bull dragged across the ground as the Civil Guards observe. This ritualized slaughter sequence, with its public display as spectacle, parallels the degradation Faustina suffered as her body, like the bull’s, served to tout her matadors’ perverse, ritualistic, systemic necropower over her existence. It is also a tacit reminder of the wide array of Nationalist execution methods, ranging from “massacres, such as the one that took place in Badajoz’s bullring in 1936, where between 1000 and 1500 prisoners were allegedly shot,” the paseos and sacas of prisoners from

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detention centers or prisons or apprehension of citizens, to be transported “in trucks at dawn and shot in isolated places and abandoned on the spot or dumped into ditches” (Ferrándiz, “Intimacy” 306–07), like Faustina López. As María Ángeles, her husband, and son reflect by their car after this pilgrimage to the site of María Ángeles’ grandmother’s shaming and slaughter, and her mother’s traumatic fear-riddled childhood, they debate memory work. Luis, María Ángeles’ son, is not certain he is in favor of it. His father, in a few words, encapsulates its import: “Pero para que no pase” (But so that it doesn’t happen again) (34). In other words, memory bears the moral imperative of preventing future transgressions. The final sequence that relates to María Martín I wish to comment on is that of her funeral.19 Poignant music sets the tone. A shot of the flowers María regularly deposits at the roadside shows they are dry. A frame reveals a hearse at María’s home. It travels on the road to the cemetery. A sequence shows her loved ones lowering her casket into her grave. The documentary transcript (2:15:00:18) describes the images: “The flowers by the side of the road are dry,” “Coffin descends to the grave,” “The flowers stand by the road dried,” “Sunset falls over María’s town” (73–74). The proper burial, the ritualized honoring of a loved one, confers dignity on the meaning that the individual’s life had to others and within society. The reprise of the desiccated sunflowers fused with the sunset over María’s town exponentialize the archetype of the end of life, of fleeting existence, and imbue it with beauty. María Martín’s burial and funeral are an implicit reminder that her mother, victim of the extrajudicial execution who was tossed in a roadside ditch, was not afforded the same dignity, nor were any of the victims of the Nationalist and Falangist genocide. María’s daughter, María Ángeles, pronounces the final utterances of the sequence: “She left without achieving … everything she fought for” and “She wanted to be there [buried] with her mother’s remains by her side” (73–74). Unlike María’s family who grieve her, María was deprived of the same right and ritual with respect to her mother. Therefore, bones matter. Graves matter. María Ángeles continues her mother’s quest to bring home her grandmother’s bones.

 Sixty-five minutes into the film.

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Ascensión Mendieta’s Fruitful Quest: The Homecoming of Timoteo Mendieta’s Remains Ascensión Mendieta’s constructed narrative, juxtaposed with that of María Martín, completes the film’s “homecoming of remains” quest narrative.20 While María’s attempts to excavate and exhume her mother’s remains were frustrated, Ascensión’s efforts bore fruit and she attained her lifelong goal. As a child, Ascensión opened the door to her father’s killers. As an octogenarian, she sealed the columbarium with his now honored remains. At Ascensión Mendieta’s own memorial service in Madrid’s secular cemetery in September 2019, her son eulogized: “Mi madre tuvo la desgracia de abrir la puerta a los falangistas que fueron a buscar a mi abuelo Timoteo, una tarde en la que estaba durmiendo la siesta. Ella escuchó que alguien golpeaba con los nudillos, se acercó a abrirla y cuando le preguntaron por su padre señaló la habitación en la que estaba descansando. El recuerdo y la culpa de ese momento fueron como un cáncer en su memoria, que la persiguió durante toda su vida” (My mother had the misfortune of opening the door to the falangistas that came for my grandfather Timoteo, one afternoon that he was sleeping the siesta. She heard someone knocking, went to open the door and when they asked for her father she pointed to the room where he was resting. The memory and the guilt of that moment were like a cancer in her memory that haunted her throughout her whole life) (Silva 203). In Ghostly Matters, Avery Gordon explains, “To be haunted is to be tied to historical and social effects” (190). Haunting, the author elaborates, “is one way in which abusive systems of power make themselves known and their impacts felt in everyday life, especially when they are over and done with (slavery, for instance) or when their oppressive nature is denied (as in free labor …) … [H]aunting … is an animated state in which a repressed or unresolved social violence is making itself known”; haunting “describe[s] those singular yet repetitive instances when home becomes unfamiliar, when your bearings on the world lose direction, when the over-and-done with comes alive, when what’s been in your blind spot comes into view … The whole essence … of a ghost is that it has a real presence and demands its due, your attention”; haunting “[produces] a something-to-­ be-done” (Gordon xvi). Haunted by her role in her father’s killing and the “something-to-be-done,” Ascensión’s personal quest became a fight for  Ascensión’s story begins at about the halfway point of the film, 48 minutes in.

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human rights. As the founder of the ARHM asserts, Ascensión was a dogged defender of human rights, who connected with other victims and was transformed into “un símbolo para muchas víctimas de la dictadura” (a symbol for many victims of the dictatorship) (Silva 204). She stood as an aspirational symbol of a bastion of human rights, but also as a synecdoche for those victimized. Ascensión was motivated by hope and stands as a symbol of hope for the heirs of trauma as well as for the spectators of her cinematically remediated quest. In “Remembering Hope: Transnational Activism Beyond the Traumatic,” Ann Rigney makes a case for the “transmission of positivity” in memory work (370). Hope is rooted in “‘civic virtue’ as a minimum condition for democracy” (“Remembering” 370). Hope differs from optimism. Optimism is a “cognitive smokescreen” for individuals who can only envision or anticipate positive results. However, “hope has an anticipatory logic, one that is not based on inevitability, but on mere possibility. It is life-affirming and future-oriented in a minimalist way: it indicates an enduring attachment to something of value in face of its present and absent denial” (“Remembering” 370). Her proposal of hope signifies a “crucial shift” that “reframe[s] historical violence as a struggle for a cause rather than as a matter of victimization; as a matter of civic engagement rather than as paranoia” (“Remembering” 371). This perfectly describes Ascensión Mendieta’s quest. Her father’s murder was a catalyst that prompted her lifelong commitment to justice for him, but also for all, for a life-affirming, more just future. Ascensión’s story is a vital chapter in the human rights quest narrative of post-conflict exhumations in contemporary Spain. Her story is linked to so many others, including that of ARMH founder and cameo in El silencio de otros, Emilio Silva Barrera. The ontological moment of justice-centered disinterments took place in October 2000 when the exhumation of thirteen civilian men at the Priaranza de Bierzo site became the catalyst for the creation of the ARMH. Silva proclaims, “Lo que parecía ser inevitable, que los muertos republicanos permanecieran en las cunetas como si su desaparición hubiera sido fruto de una casualidad, ya no lo es” (What had appeared inevitable, that the Republicans remain in ditches as if [their deaths] had resulted from happenstance, is no longer the case) (Silva 70). Emilio Silva Barrera, a journalist and grandchild of the war, has dedicated the last two decades to memory activism. In fact, his grandfather and namesake was the first DNA-identified victim in the recovery of historical memory movement. It is fair to say that Emilio Silva Faba, grandfather, is

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victim zero. That first excavation in 2000 was more than the disinterment of osseous remains of Emilio Silva Faba and the concomitant personal stories of those victims inhabiting the mass grave. It symbolized, according to Silva, the vocal denunciation of the perfect crime: the Francoist “paseos” that Spanish democratic governments had been retroactively aiding and abetting since 1977 (Silva 8, “Prólogo”).21 The silence surrounding the repression of Franco’s victims is both a shroud and a gag, binding and covering, transmitted and passed on from generation to generation as a bequeathed shameful inheritance. By speaking, as did Emilio Silva, for the first time standing over the scene of the crime, the excavation site of his grandfather’s mass grave, with his father and uncles present, he broke the cycle of silence. He proclaimed, “Aquí nació mi silencio y aquí murió mi silencio” (My silence was born here and my silence died here) (25). The title of his compilation of writings, originally published in diverse venues, references the cloak of silence through which memory activism such as his is perforating, punching holes, creating orifices that mimic mouths, tombs, and eyes now open. Silva poignantly summarizes his journey through twenty years of writing: “un proceso en el que un nieto deja de renunciar a su pasado, aprende a enunciarlo y construye la posibilidad y la capacidad de denunciarlo” (a process through which a grandson ceases to leave behind his past, learns to enunciate it, and constructs the possibility and capacity to denounce it) (26). Fittingly, Silva Barrera appears in El silencio de otros, visiting Ascensión Mendieta in the safety of her home to herald the good news: that authorization had been granted to break ground on Timoteo’s gravesite.22 Post-conflict exhumations operate as polyvalent archetypes whose meaning is both poetic and conceptual. For Francisco Ferrándiz in “Fugitive Voices,” “the excavation of a common grave powerfully provokes images, memories, silences, rumors and half-words for the people who are somehow connected to those who disappeared underneath the bureaucracy of death, of earth, of bullets,” “voices that were repressed for decades now struggle to be heard” (50). To break ground is to reopen a wound. The earthen opening becomes a trope that conjures notions and images of a cavity, an orifice, a mouth, a bottomless pit, an eye. It becomes an aperture to speak about the silence, and the silenced. To lacerate an

 Euphemism for forced disappearances.  Fifty-seven minutes into the film.

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ugly yet hidden scar. To disinter the pain. To open eyes to what is, what was, and what could be. Since 2000, memory associations’ excavations “open exposure of remains” and “meaningful reburial” “revert Francoist necropolitics” and give life to the osseous remains as they embark upon their “post mortem journey,” or what Katherine Verdery has termed in her eponymous study The Political Lives of Dead Bodies (Ferrándiz, “Mass” 111). Ascensión Mendieta reverted Francoist necropower and necropolitics through her commitment, her involvement in the Argentine Lawsuit that made possible the disinterment, re-inhumation of her father’s remains, and neoritualization with funerary honors. Timoteo Mendieta’s necropolitical journey began on April 9, 1939, when he was taken from his home, tried in a sham trial, and sentenced to death. On November 15, 1939, the sentence was carried out and his cadaver dumped with others (Silva 203). María Ibarra, Timoteo’s widow, knowing the location of the gravesite, would honor his memory by tossing flowers over the solid, rocky wall that kept her out. Ascensión visited the site of the public secret the entirety of her life and swore to recover her father’s remains (Silva 204). As a plaintiff in the lawsuit, Ascensión traveled to Buenos Aires to demand justice. In 2017, with the support of ARMH, at the age of eighty-eight, she was able to exhume the remains of her father Timoteo Mendieta, identify them, have them placed in her custody, and, at last, dignify them (159). The poignant eighty-one-second montage sequence opens at the Guadalajara cemetery where Timoteo and 200 slaughtered others are thought to repose. A harsh juxtaposition manifests irreconcilable ideologies. One tombstone reads, “Muerto por defender la democracia y la libertad” (Dead for defending democracy and freedom), while close-ups of bullet holes in the wall and barbed wire on top of the wall attest to victims’ relatives being barred from entering (57).23 A succession of poetic images ensues: the entrance to the Guadalajara Cemetery contrasts with the Valley of the Fallen, María’s flowers on the guardrail, archival footage of exhumations, María Martín seated, looking at the camera, connecting with the viewers, and so forth. Her gaze is both inviting and accusatory. The following sequence is rife with hope: Ascensión gives a DNA sample.24 The immediate juxtaposition with the scene in which Ascensión  Fifty-eight minutes into the film.  Sixty minutes into the film.

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provides a DNA sample conveys the links between the two elderly protagonists who simply want to bring their parents’ bones home. Seventy-­nine minutes into the film,25 the title card situates the sequence to follow: “January 2016, 5 ½ years after filing the lawsuit, 311 plaintiffs” (76). The transcript reads, “Ascensión arrives to the cemetery,” while Ascensión’s daughter Chon exclaims, “My goodness, you’re famous!” Journalists speak with Ascensión; the excavation team prepares the site for the dig, as Ascensión, seated, emotionally observes from the bench. Once the excavation chief declares, “the first body shows evidence of having been murdered,” the scene concludes. A post-conflict excavation is both affective and forensic. The legal forensic lens necessary to gather evidence reveals that a mass grave is a “crime scene and the body … criminal evidence” (Ferrándiz and Robben 11).26 DNA matching, made possible by the “Commission on Missing Persons’ state-of-the-art biotechnical procedures,” has transformed the anonymous, forcibly disappeared from scattered “remains to individualized identities,” to be restored “to their community and family” (Ferrándiz and Robben 11). DNA testing allows for bodies to be reassembled and names reattached, as Ashby Wilson asserts, as “part of a wider collective process of memorializing the dead, reordering the social world, and reclaiming territory from military occupation” (viii). According to Francesc Torres, “Any open grave is a book with pages of earth where the words are written with the letters of bodies, bones, fractures, bullet holes, … hand gun shells, buttons, buckles, … glasses, watches and rings. The medical examiner’s job is to decipher this chilling book and translate it so that the rest of us can understand yet another [… chapter] of a history that is not so remote, and that continues to be stolen from all of us, … as though this history were not truly our history” (Dark 22).27 The next dig scene resumes one week later. A deep grave indicates premeditation (80). This second cemetery scene, with its exhumation, brings the tension growing throughout the work to a peak. While not in slow motion, the viewer has the sense that all movement and in fact life have stood still. The exhumers’ painstakingly careful dusting of a skull and the tender extraction of now humanized bones mimic the cradling of an  2:19:10:10.  For an excellent summary of forensic science within the context of post-conflict exhumations and the pursuit of human rights since the mid-1980s, see Ferrándiz and Robben’s “Introduction” to Necropolitics. 27  Regarding the 2004 exhumation in Villamayor de los Montes. 25 26

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Fig. 8.2  Description: Ascensión Mendieta enters the cemetery where her father’s remains are buried in a mass grave. © Semilla Verde Productions. (Photo Credit: Modesto Aranda)

infant. Carracedo and Bahar made the artistic decision to exclude ambient sound during this aesthetically climactic scene, and to allow it back in very gradually. To go from audio deprivation to a gradually amplifying awareness of ambient sound creates a power impact in the viewer. The deprivation of ambient sound with moments of silence sliced by poignant musical chords obligates the viewers’ senses to concentrate on the visual and to experience the texture of the scene. Carracedo posits, “A different way to perceive what politics is about is to bring the audience into the experience, to be part—experientially—of this journey toward justice” (Groult 208). The cinematic strategies fold the viewer into a moment of temporal retroactivation, that frozen moment, the birth from the grave that reverts the wounded bones to the community of the meaningful (Fig. 8.2). Yet Asención’s quest continues. Eighty-eight minutes into the ninety-­ six-­minute film, (2:28:46:17), the transcript reads, “The sun rises over statues in the valley” and conveys the promise of a new beginning (84). The third scene in which Ascensión is at the cemetery ensues. Photographers

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capture her arrival at the site where she is greeted by the excavation chief. Her daughter Chon indicates marker number 19. A skull dominates the screen. It connotes the climax and fulfillment of Ascensión’s quest within the filmic narrative. She cries, “Poor thing, dear father! A whole life underground, dear father!” Photographer Francesc Torres, who documented the exhumation of the Villamayor de los Montes (Burgos) mass graves, describes the effect on relatives, The body of the victim of an act of violence has the same power of temporal retroactivation [as a photograph] … The grave, once open, seemed like a splinter of frozen time, a ‘decisive moment’ if ever there was one, which could be read like a book. That was what the victims’ relatives saw. Their reunion with loved ones through their remains and both the sight of them and of the setting and circumstances of their death is what gave closure to a traumatic event in families’ lives, seventy years after it happened. (“Photo” 154–55)

In the denouement of the film, a sequence of commemoration ensues as Luis Pastor sings at the site. The audience joins the relatives and the dead on a postmortem journey of solidary reintegration. The image of the “Mirador de la memoria”28 statues at Jerte had been intercalated throughout the film. They were introduced with the jarring fact these sculpted resurrected dead, caked in the reddish earth of bloodied graves, had been vandalized by a shooting. In the denouement, these sculpted simulacra of extra-officially executed offer their final reprise. The frames of visiting families engaging with the sculptural site attest to the “corpocentric importance of the wounded bones”29 and the triumph of their stubborn will to mean something.30 The transcript reads, “Sun sets behind the statues,” bringing the film and the exhumation quest narrative to a close (Figs. 8.3 and 8.4). However, Ascensión’s story ends after the film concludes. Ground was broken in January 2016. The exhumation lasted twenty-six days, with dozens of volunteers. Torres indicates, “The healing function of bereavement and memory” is expected to take “place at the end of [an exhumation’s] process of unveiling and revelation” (“Photo” 157). Yet the cinematically narrativized initial healing was subsequently stymied in  By Francisco Cedenilla Carrasco, 2009.  Ferrándiz and Robben. 30  Mbembé. 28 29

Fig. 8.3  Description: The statues featured in The Silence of Others, on a mountaintop in the Valley of Jerte, by sculptor Francisco Cedenilla. © Semilla Verde Productions. (Photo Credit: Álvaro Minguito)

Fig. 8.4  Description: The statues featured in The Silence of Others, on a mountaintop in the Valley of Jerte, by sculptor Francisco Cedenilla. © Semilla Verde Productions. (Photo Credit: Álvaro Minguito)

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Ascensión’s case. The hopeful anticipation of the exhumation was soon followed by crestfallen disappointment because once DNA samples were analyzed, none of the victims’ genetic makeup matched Ascensión’s (Silva 205). Following subsequent tracing and bureaucratic hurdles, a new exhumation took place in May 2017 (a year and a half after the first exhumation documented in the film), matching Ascensión’s DNA with her father’s remains. Finally, on July 2, 2017, more than six decades after his state-­ sanctioned killing, Timoteo Mendieta received a proper burial in Madrid’s civil cemetery (Silva 206). Silva describes, “Cuando los restos de Timoteo entraban en el nicho donde ahora descansan los de Ascensión, ella emitió un grito desgarrador … para decirle al mundo que había reparado en parte lo que comenzó en abril de 1939 cuando su mano abrió la puerta de casa para dejar entrar la violencia fascista” (When Timoteo’s remains entered the columbarium where Ascensión’s remains now lie, she emitted a heart-­ wrenching scream … to tell the world she had partially repaired what had begun in April 1939 when her hand opened the door to her home that allowed fascist violence to enter) (Silva 206). Pierre Nora refers to locations where memory becomes crystallized, where “a sense of rupture with the past is inextricably bound up with a sense that a rift has occurred in memory” (1, qtd. in Keller 67). Is this, in part, one of the impetuses for the exhumations, for they represent a “sense of rupture, … a sense that a rift has occurred in memory”? With the extrajudicial murders of their loved ones, the transgenerational victims’ lives were divided into a before and an after, broken in that point of rupture, whose persistence into the present has defined them. Opening the door to her father’s killers became an omnipresent crystallized moment whose specter haunted Ascensión. It was not the ghost of her father she needed to exorcize, but rather her unintentional complicity in his trauma and her own. Ascensión Mendieta, who opened the door to the fascists who forcibly removed her father from their home and took his life, sealed the niche where his remains were laid to rest. The closure of this circularity is universalized in the film, not with the particular details but rather with the poetics of the sunrise and sunset preceding and following the cradled bones scene. To what extent does El silencio de otros bring closure—or create a sense of closure—with its narrative climax of disinterment, the cradling of the cranium scene, and solemn neoritualization? I posit that Carracedo and Bahar present a multilayered Baroque poetic paradox: cuna y sepultura, tomb and womb that conceptually attests to “solidarity with the dead” and

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their “worth among the living” (Ashby Wilson ix). As a result, the cinematic tomb-womb paradox reverts agency, reappropriates remains, restores selfhood, and deconstructs the genocidal ideology to reconstruct collective identity—charged with the import of memory and belonging. The birthdeath orifice underscores that memory is rooted in belonging, in compliance with the contract between the living, the dead, and the not yet living. As a moviegoer, the spectator views in the dark cinema; his or her own theater-going experience is a private, unique, subjective experience in spite of being in the presence of others. This duality or paradox of aloneness yet presence within a collective mimics and reflects the plight of a single victim in a mass grave, as well as that of the transgenerational family member victim of his/her own family’s trauma who is uniquely alone, yet in good company. A paradox is defined as an overcome contradiction; it is the fusing or inextricable linkage between two antithetical concepts. In the climactic scene, Carracedo and Bahar fuse cuna y sepultura (tomb and womb, resting place and birthplace or place of infancy), aloneness and belonging, silence and sound, burial and disinterment, past and present, tragedy and triumph. Each of these antitheses is bittersweet. To repair and redress past trauma can bring only an unsatisfactory sense of satisfaction. Measures taken to right a wrong do not erase the wrong but rather palliate the hurt. To balance the scales of justice does not make the pain disappear, but rather imbues it with the cathartic relief akin to tensely holding one’s breath and, finally, exhaling a deep, cleansing sigh as one’s muscles, as if with a mind of their own, consent to dissipate the tension. Therefore, this is certainly not the adrenaline-fueled euphoria of triumph; it is the purposeful and intentional gratitude associated with acknowledgment and alleviation of further grief. What, then, does it means to reconstruct the past from the perspective of victims of Francoist human rights violations? Exhumations enable those silenced by fear or shame to write themselves into the narrative of cultural memory. Just as murderous victors during the terror caliente of the early postwar period of “peace” covered up the victims of their extra-official executions, legislation during the late dictatorship and early democracy buried the past. Parallel to the archeological disinterments that rearticulate the disjointed osseous remains, Carracedo and Bahar bring together the voices of the silenced and transgenerational co-owners of trauma and make audible the hauntingly eloquent bones in a we-narration of collective identity. Their stories denounce the human rights violations as well as the complicit communal silence.

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For Ascensión Mendieta, both in her life and in the poignant constructed cinematic narrative of her quest, there is undoubtedly closure. She testified to Judge María Servini in Buenos Aires the justice she sought: “We want to see if … justice could be served, so we can get him out of a mass grave” (45).31 As she stated in the immediate prelude to revelation scene, “The time has come” (85).32 Unlike the “proper burial” Herrmann criticizes in documentaries that construct a false sense of closure, the climax in El silencio de otros, instead, is a proper “unburial,” a filmed disinterment whose cinematic techniques construct a visual narrative that pays homage to the now revered departed. As a result, the film reverts the necropolitics of Francoist genocide.

Conclusion: El silencio de otros as an Instrument of Justice The film functions as an instrument of justice on both the diegetic and extradiegetic levels. On the one hand, the film tells the multivoiced story of the collective protagonists’ quest for justice. Carracedo explains: “Some want to prosecute still-living perpetrators; others just want a love one’s remains to be exhumed or to learn the truth about what happened—yet they all deposit hope in this lawsuit as a tool in their journey toward justice” (Faber, Memory 88).33 On the other hand, it functions as a cathartic simulacrum of victim-centered restorative procedures and as a vehicle for human rights education and reflection. In her study of the television documentary “trial-like genre,” Herrmann discerns that law and documentary have particular methods and procedures in common (“Documentary’s” 195).34 In “‘law-genre’ documentaries,” filmmakers are cast in the role of “detective and the prosecutor, and spectators as would-be jurors” (195).35 Herrmann ponders if these documentaries function as a simulacrum of truth commissions seeking restorative justice or, rather, of retributive accountability procedures aimed at verdicts and fitting sentences (195).  1:48:49:16 sequence of transcript.  2:28:46:17 sequence of transcript. 33  An email on June 18, 2016, to the scholar Sebastiaan Faber. 34  “Eyewitness and expert testimonies, corroborating forensic evidence, presentation of official forms of documentation,…plausible chains of events,…audiovisual language of persuasion.” 35  Referencing Armengou and Belis’ trilogy. 31 32

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Similarly, El silencio de otros is a surrogate for judicial procedure. However, unlike Armengou and Belis’ prosecutorial works, Carracedo and Bahar, through an empathetic lens, look at the effect of (lack) of legislation and judicial accountability on their protagonists. Armengou and Belis indict perpetrators in the “trial format” of their “law-genre” documentaries and seek a sort of conviction from their juror-viewers. Carracedo and Bahar, on the other hand, in their poetic cultural-memory-­ documentary aestheticize remembrance so that the viewer awakens to the poignancy of the experience of enduring loss, joins the protagonists on the emotional journey to cope with the trauma, to be with the loss. Ascensión’s trauma is assuaged by dignifying her aggrieved loved one. Carracedo and Bahar do not seek to point a finger at a perpetrator; rather, they underscore the structural injustice. If their film could be interpreted as a “lawgenre” documentary, it is not retributive but rather demands the repair and redress of restorative justice. If, as Herrmann indicates, survivorhood is inherently irreparable, and as Shoshana Felman purports, the law is incapable of addressing “the blow’s traumatic nonjusticiability” (Felman 85, Herrmann 206), then El silencio de otros provides a simulacrum of justice that the law cannot. Then what is justice within the context of contemporary cultural production or works such as El silencio de otros? The answer is polyphonic, heteroglossic, constructed narratives. It is a mosaic comprising the individual, particular tiles of fractured, fragmented, and mutilated lives—both the lives of the direct victims of the transgression/s and the transgenerational heir-­victims. Justice varies not only on the exact, particular, and unique circumstances of the act, but also more significantly on the effect of the act on the individual and the response to it. For María Martín and Ascensión Mendieta, justice is knowledge, confirmation, and validation that answer the persistent queries, “What happened?” and “Where is my loved one?” Knowledge allows them to write the ending in the constructed narrative of their lives. El silencio de otros carries out justice through cultural memory. In the face of Francoist, mandated, and genocidal assimilatory forgetting, to remember and dignify victims of human rights violations, to reconstruct and transmit their stories and the concomitant relevance in the present, is to bring justice to bear. To remember is to belong. By mediating the opening of the grave and bringing Ascensión’s quest to an end, El silencio de otros symbolically reverts Francoist necropower and reintegrates the victims to community of the meaningful.

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Works Cited Armengou, Montse and Ricard Belis. Las fosas del silencio. ¿Hay un Holocausto español? Plaza & Janés, 2004. Ashby Wilson, Richard. “Forward.” Necropolitics: Mass Graves and Exhumations in the Age of Human Rights, edited by Ferrándiz, Francisco and Antonius C.G.M. Robben, U Pennsylvania P, 2015, pp. vii–ix. Assmann, Aleida. “Canon and Archive.” A Cultural Companion to Cultural Memory Studies, edited by Astrid Erll and Ansgar Nünning De Gruyter, 2010a, pp. 97–108. Assmann, Jan. “Communicative and Cultural Memory.” A Cultural Companion to Cultural Memory Studies, edited by Astrid Erll and Ansgar Nünning De Gruyter, 2010b, pp. 109–18. Bakhtin, Mikhail. “The Heteroglot Novel. The Dialogic Imagination. Four Essays.” The Bakhtin Reader: Selected Writings of Bakhtin, Medvedev and Voloshinov, edited by Pam Morris, translated by M. Holdquist and C. Emmerson, Arnold, 1994, pp. 115–22. Baquero, Juan Miguel. “Diez años de Querella Argentina: el único juicio en el mundo contra el franquismo.” El Diario, 13 April 2020, https://www.eldiario. es/sociedad/querella-­argentina-­unico-­juicio-­franquismo_1_2258964.html Accessed 20 December 2021. Boletín Oficial del Estado. 30 Sept., 1939, issue 273, p. 1. Carracedo, Almudena and Robert Bahar. The Silence of Others Scene Transcript. Courtesy of the director. Derrida, Jacques and Bernard Stiegler. Echographies of Television. Polity, 2002. Encarnación, Omar. “Pinochet’s Revenge: Spain Revisits Its Civil War.” World Policy Journal, vol. 24, no. 4, Winter 2007/2008, pp. 39–50. Erll, Astrid and Ansgar Nünning, eds. A Cultural Companion to Cultural Memory Studies. De Gruyter, 2010. Erll, Astrid. “Literature, Film, and the Mediality of Cultural Memory.” A Cultural Companion to Cultural Memory Studies, edited by Astrid Erll and Ansgar Nünning De Gruyter, 2010, pp. 389–98. ———. Memory in Culture. Translated by Sara B. Young, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. Escudero, Rafael. “Road to Impunity: The Absence of Transitional Justice Programs in Spain.” Human Rights Quarterly, vol. 36, 2014, pp. 123–46. Faber, Sebastiaan. Exhuming Franco: Spain’s Second Transition. Vanderbilt UP, 2021. ———. Memory Battles of the Spanish Civil War: History, Fiction, Photography. Vanderbilt UP, 2018. Felman, Shoshana. The Juridical Unconscious: Trials and Traumas in the Twentieth Century. Harvard UP, 2002. Fernández de Mata, Ignacio. “The Rupture of the World and the Conflicts of Memory.” Unearthing Franco’s Legacy: Mass Graves and the Recovery of

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Historical Memory in Spain, edited by Carlos Jerez-Farrán and Samuel Amago, U of Notre Dame P, 2010, pp. 279–303. Ferrándiz, Francisco. “Fugitive Voices/ Voces fugitivas.” Dark Is the Room Where We Sleep/ Oscura es la habitación donde dormimos, edited by Francesc Torres, translated by Gloria Bohigas and Wesley Trobaugh, ACTAR, 2007, pp. 50–133. ———. “The Intimacy of Defeat: Exhumations in Contemporary Spain.” Unearthing Franco’s Legacy: Mass Graves and the Recovery of Historical Memory in Spain, edited by Carlos Jerez-Farrán and Samuel Amago, U of Notre Dame P, 2010, pp. 304–26. ———. “Mass Graves, Landscapes of Terror: A Spanish Tale.” Necropolitics: Mass Graves and Exhumations in the Age of Human Rights, edited by Ferrándiz, Francisco and Antonius C.G.M. Robben, U Pennsylvania P, 2015, pp. 92–118. Ferrándiz, Francisco and Antonius C.G.M.  Robben, editors. Necropolitics: Mass Graves and Exhumations in the Age of Human Rights. U Pennsylvania P, 2015. Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Translated by Alan Sheridan, Vintage, 1995, 1st edition Gallimard, 1975. ———. Il faut défendre la société: Cours au Collège de France, 1975–1976. Seuil, 1997. García, Ter. “Entrevista a Almudena Carracedo codirectora de la película” diario El Salto 11/04/2018 in Dossier Pedagogique http://www.castellarvalles.cat/ arxius/document/7178/arxiu/dpelsilenciodeotros_2.pdf Accessed 7 January 2022 Gordon, Avery. Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination. U Minnesota P, 1997. Groult, Charlotte. “The Silence of Others: A Conversation with the Filmmakers.” Violence: An International Journal, vol. 1, no. 1, 2020, pp. 205–18. Halbwachs, Maurice. On Collective Memory. Edited and translated by Lewis A. Coser. U of Chicago P, 1992. First published 1941. Hardcastle, Anne. “‘El documental es un arma cargada de pasado’: Representation in Documentary and Testimony.” Unearthing Franco’s Legacy: Mass Graves and the Recovery of Historical Memory in Spain, edited by Carlos Jerez-Farrán and Samuel Amago, U of Notre Dame P, 2010, pp. 148–55. Herrmann, Gina. “Documentary’s Labours of Law: The Television Journalism of Montse Armengou and Ricard Belis.” Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies, vol. 9, no. 2, July 2008, pp. 193–212. ———. “Mass Graves on Spanish TV: A Tale of Two Documentaries.” Unearthing Franco’s Legacy: Mass Graves and the Recovery of Historical Memory in Spain, edited by Carlos Jerez-Farrán and Samuel Amago, U of Notre Dame P, 2010, pp. 169–91. Jerez-Farrán, Carlos and Samuel Amago, eds. Unearthing Franco’s Legacy: Mass Graves and the Recovery of Historical Memory in Spain. U of Notre Dame P, 2010.

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Junquera, Natalia. “Una jueza argentina procesa a Martín Villa por cuatro homicidios policiales en los años setenta.” El País.16 October 2021. n.p. accessed 21 January 2022. https://elpais.com/espana/2021-­10-­16/una-­jueza-­argentina-­ procesa-­al-­exministro-­martin-­villa-­por-­al-­menos-­cuatro-­homicidios-­en-­los-­ anos-­setenta.html Keller, Patricia. “The Valley, the Monument, and the Tomb: Notes on the Place of Historical Memory.” Hispanic Issues On Line, Fall 2012, pp. 64–86. Lorde, Audre. “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House.” 1984. Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. Crossing Press, 2007, pp. 110–14. Marks, Laura. Touch: Sensuous Theory and Multisensory Media. Minnesota UP, 2002. Mbembé, Achille. “Necropolitics,” translated by Libby Meintjes, Public Culture, vol. 15, no. 1, Winter 2003, pp. 11–40. Membrez, Nancy. “The Importance of Historical Memory: An Interview with Spanish Film Director and Cinematographer Almudena Carracedo.” War, Revolution and Remembrance in World Cinema. Critical Essays, edited by Nancy Membrez, McFarland and Company, 2021, pp. 307–20. Millaret Lorés, Eulàlia. La calificación del secuestro de menores durante el Franquismo como crimen contra la humanidad y la lucha contra su impunidad en el Estado español. Memoria final del Máster en estudios internacionales, directed by Rosa Ana Alija Fernández, Universitat de Barcelona, 2013. Moreiras, Cristina. Cultura Herida. Literatura y cine en la España democrática. Ediciones Libertarias, 2002. Moreno Nuño, Carmen. Haciendo memoria: Confluencias entre la historia, la cultura y la memoria de la Guerra Civil en la España del siglo XXI. Iberoamericana Vervuert, 2019. Pérez, Fernando. “La justicia argentina revoca la decisión de la jueza Servini de procesar a Martín Villa por delitos de lesa humanidad.” El País, 23 December 2021, n.p. accessed 21 January 2022 http://elpais.com/espana/2021-­12-­23/ la-­j usticia-­a rgentina-­r evoca-­l a-­d ecision-­d e-­l a-­j ueza-­s ervini-­d e-­p rocesar-­a -­ martin-­villa-­por-­delitos-­de-­lesa-­humanidad.html Rams, Maribel (2019): “Reseña de El silencio de otros.” Gynocine Project, Barbara Zecchi, ed. www.gynocine.com ———. “Un silencio con nombre de mujer: la posmemoria y la hapticidad en el documental La mare que els va parir (2008) de Inma Jiménez Neira.” Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies, Vol. 24, 2020, pp. 9–26. Rigney, Ann. “The Dynamics of Remembrance: Texts Between Monumentality and Morphing.” A Cultural Companion to Cultural Memory Studies, edited by Astrid Erll and Ansgar Nünning De Gruyter, 2010, pp. 345–53. ———. “Remembering Hope: Transnational activism beyond the traumatic.” Memory Studies, vol. II, no. 3, 2018, pp. 368–80. Robben, Antonius C.G.M. “Memory Politics among Perpetrators and Bereaved Relatives…” Unearthing Franco’s Legacy: Mass Graves and the Recovery of

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Historical Memory in Spain, edited by Carlos Jerez-Farrán and Samuel Amago, U of Notre Dame P, 2010, pp. 264–78. Saunders, Max. “Life-Writing, Cultural Memory, and Literary Studies.” A Cultural Companion to Cultural Memory Studies, edited by Astrid Erll and Ansgar Nünning De Gruyter, 2010, pp. 321–31. El silencio de otros/The Silence of Others, directed by Almudena Carracedo and Robert Bahar, El Deseo, 2018. Silva Barrera, Emilio. Agujeros en el silencio: Renglones de memoria contra la impunidad del franquismo (2000–2020), Postmetropolis, 2020. Torres, Frances. Dark Is the Room Where We Sleep/ Oscura es la habitación donde dormimos, translated by Gloria Bohigas and Wesley Trobaugh, ACTAR, 2007. ———. “Photo Essay. 9/11: Absence, Sediment, and Memory.” Necropolitics: Mass Graves and Exhumations in the Age of Human Rights, edited by Francisco Ferrándiz and Antonius Robben, U of Pennsylvania P, pp. 141–60. Varela, Fernando. “Casado critica en Buenos Aires la acción de la justicia Argentina contra los crímenes del franquismo.” Info Libre, 7 December 2021, https:// www.infolibre.es/politica/casado-­c ritica-­b uenos-­a ires-­a ccion-­j usticia-­ argentina-­crimenes-­franquismo_1_1214799.html Accessed January 21, 2022. Verdery, Katherine. Political Lives of Dead Bodies: Reburial and Postsocialist Change. Columbia UP, 1999.

Epilogue

Active Memory Versus Assimilatory Forgetting: Taking a Stance in the Face of Repression When accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986, Elie Wiesel declared, “We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant.” As has been shown throughout this volume, not only is memory inextricably linked to forgetting, but also that the justice carried out within the films, novels, and testimonies studied constitutes active remembrance. The mediated active remembrance combats the assimilatory forgetting imposed by Francoist genocide, incarceration, and fear-induced silence. It also professes multiple identities of belonging. To tell one’s story, to tell the story of others, to remember the past in the present, is both to denounce the architectural structure of erasure and to belong to the community of solidarity with those who had been targeted for erasure. Neither complex nor nuanced, the evil of the architects and builders of genocide is prosaically banal. When interviewing the military leader who nearly killed him the day of the Haitian elections, journalist Mark Donner deliberates on the relationship or lack thereof between violence and © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Tobin Stanley, Francoist Repression and Incarceration in Contemporary Spanish Culture, Palgrave Studies in Cultural Heritage and Conflict, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13392-3

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politics. His would-be killer, who had killed hundreds of individuals and who would kill hundreds more during his lifetime, was puzzled by the journalist’s interest in him. Donner writes that both authors of “fact pieces” like him and writers of fiction tell stories with a climax and denouement populated by characters. Interviewing his potential murderer over breakfast at a modern hotel with a view overlooking the capital of Haiti, a revelation dawned on Donner: I saw he would fail me as a character. However great his crimes appeared to me—the piles of bodies on election day, the hundreds tortured and murdered during the bloodiest days of the dictatorship—to him they were politics, that’s all, the way the system worked … There was no grandeur there: killing and torture were his day job, the dull mechanics of his profession. His art, on the other hand, was his Ideas—his Vision for the Nation … He had killed me, or nearly so, and now we were both disappointed. His art did not interest me. (547–48)

After another brush with death, now in Sarajevo, Donner interviewed the leader of the Serbs over lunch just after a bloody mortar bombing. The leader appeared dismissive of his own role in the deaths. Like his Haitian counterpart, he also “preferred to speak of his Vision for the Nation” (Donner 548). Donner states, “the level of his crimes dwarfed the content of his character. His motivations were paltry, in no way commensurate with the pain he had caused. It is often a problem with evil. Chat with a Salvadoran general about the massacre of a thousand people that he ordered and he will tell you that it was a military necessity … Speak to the young conscript who did the killing and he will tell you that he … was following orders” (Donner 548). It is imperative, then, to draw upon the concept of irony—as if studying a work of literature—to understand atrocity, noting the striking “discrepancy between the magnitude of the acts and the banality of the actor” (Donner 548). In spite of the grave impact, the agents of extermination proved to be mundane. Francoist perpetrators are no different. The regime committed atrocities. It refused to acknowledge its malfeasance (that is to say, the actions and the impact) and did all it could to deny, displace blame, or justify the actions in the name of its vision. Helen Graham underscores the continued relevance of the mis/use of the Spanish Civil War. Not only did the regime refuse to deem the war a civil war, it constructed a “monolithic” narrative, resemanticizing the war as a crusade or a war of liberation (171). The

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enduring impunity stands in the way of rectifying the exculpatory pomposity. The current reluctance or opposition to accountability for the Francoist genocide is not based on the opponents favoring mass murder. The drive to hold genocidal actors accountable in Spain was clear when efforts were made to bring Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet to justice or to bring cases on Guatemala, Argentina, or Rwanda before the Audiencia Nacional (Silva 107). It seems that when it comes to Francoist human rights violations, it is not the acts that evoke defensiveness, but rather the actors that the opponents to accountability wish to protect. Justice related to malfeasance has a grammatical structure. Justice begins with acknowledgment, recognition, and non-denial that an action has taken place. The grammar of such is an active voice clause consisting of an agential subject, a transitive verb, and an object. In this grammatical configuration bereft of impersonalization or attenuation, nothing lightens the gravity of the transgressive agential-subject’s role. Retired economic history professor Ricardo Robledo identified two morality-based elements necessary to be justly moving forward in twenty-first-century Spain: acknowledgment of the Second Republic “as a moral reference point” and an “explicit rejection of Francoism” (Faber, Exhuming 113). The current defenders and gatekeepers of impunity do not seem to have an issue with the acts as much as they do with the identification of the agents. To defend or rationalize a malfeasant agent or representative of a group regardless of the malfeasance is an overt stance against universalizability and, hence, is immoral. The current study attests to the fact that, in spite of no cohesive or unified voice or view regarding Spain’s more than checkered past, and in spite of the painfully slow legislative advances and judicial progress, the voices of the victims and their families, silent and silenced for decades, cry out for justice. With an underlying—and rightful—mistrust of hegemonic measures, the gains attained are the fruits of the labors of survivor victims and their transgenerational allies who dig up osseous remains, resurrect the specter of trauma, and aim to exorcise the (malevolent) ghost of Franco. Only then can they, perhaps, not lay to rest, but soothe the persistent phantom pain narrativized by Rivas. What this project, the works studied, and particularly The Silence of Others make clear is that cultural memory, collective memory, and communicative memory embrace the past as part of the present, honor and memorialize those harmed and, furthermore, de-apotheosize both the monuments and the monumentalization of glorified fascism. This memory is not a resemanticization, but rather a paradigm shift. To resemanticize would be to replace and substitute with

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carnivalesque inversion or Orwellian doublespeak. However, the memory studied throughout is a conceptual equivalent of a pictorial or literary palimpsest. What had been—stricken through or painted over—phantasmally persists in its discernible absence-presence. The works studied forge justice through remembrance. Just memory does not construct a revisionist account of the past, but rather creates a multilayered counternarrative that does not replace, but rather dialogues with or against unjust History. Sites of memory, including those that do not embody a location, “[encapsulate] multifarious experiences” while “provid[ing] a place holder for the exchange and transfer of memories among contemporaries and across generations” (Rigney 345). In the transformational dynamic between communicative memory and cultural memory, works of cultural remembrance canonize sites as “points of reference” for intergenerational and institutional transmission (Rigney 346). By engaging with the moral imperative to remember, these objets de memoir, these works—along with their readers and viewers—acknowledge the irony identified by Arendt between the banality of the perpetrators and the magnitude of the acts. Atrocity and fear resemanticized and justified as a Vision for the Nation— be it a crusade, a war of liberation, or Years of Peace—fashion a cartoonish account riddled with caricatures rather than characters. The works that I have studied speak to the experience of the victims’ repression and position those who suffered—be they real-life or fictional— as subjects in their own stories. They imbue the(ir) subjectivity with agency, the agency to speak, to recount, to act in response, and not to be reduced to being acted upon. Several of the works I have studied both call out the malfeasance of perpetrators and accomplices, and allow space for their subjectivity—Teixidor and Villaronga’s Andreu, Cañil’s María Topete, Rivas’ Herbal, and Grandes’ Antonino. In so doing, the works showcase their humanness—if not humanity—replete with the heinousness of their actions, instinct for self-preservation, uncharitable and cruel religiosity, insecurity, and stifled psychological development. Each of said characters is riddled with self-loathing and resentment. The authors help us understand, yet not identify with, the characters. The moral imperative drives these works of remembrance, and the twenty-twenty vision prevents them from myopically focusing on isolated elements of reality. Andreu, María, Antonino, and Herbal are not cartoonish villains, but rather are nuanced antagonists who might be beyond redemption, yet are not unworthy of readers’ understanding. Carracedo and Bahar indicated that they do not point a finger. The antagonist of their film is the collective,

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complicit silence, as well as the structural impunity and its lasting legacy.1 The narratives constructed by Teixidor, Cañil, Grandes, and Rivas, as well as the stories reconstructed by Carracedo and Bahar, remind us that to harden our hearts to humanness would be to surrender to the banality of evil. The mediated memory—with the concomitant remediation and pre-­ mediation—transforms the power over death and life wielded by Francoism. These works confer meaning upon the victims, restore their humanity, reinscribe them into cultural memory, and cathartically release the guilt and shame of silence. As Ángel Fernández encapsulated, “Accepter l’oubli c’est nier notre existence” (Fragments 54) (To accept oblivion/ amnesia is to deny our existence).

Works Cited Donner, Mark. Stripping the Body Bare. Politics Violence War. Nation Books, 2009. Faber, Sebastiaan. Exhuming Franco: Spain’s Second Transition. Vanderbilt UP, 2021. Fernández, Ángel. Fragments d’Histoire d’une enfance brisée. Messages Imprimerie, 2016. Graham, Helen. Breve historia de la guerra civil, translated by Carmen MartínezGimeno, Espasa Calpe, 2006. Rigney, Ann. “The Dynamics of Remembrance: Texts Between Monumentality and Morphing.”A Companion to Cultural Memory Studies, edited by Astrid Erll and Ansgar Nünning, De Gruyter, 2010, pp. 345–56. Silva, Emilio. Agujeros en el silencio: Renglones de memoria contra la impunidad del franquismo (2000–2020), Postmetropolis, 2020. Wiesel, Elie. “Ellie Wiesel—Acceptance Speech.” https://www.nobelprize.org/ prizes/peace/1986/wiesel/26054-­e lie-­w iesel-­a cceptance-­s peech-­1 986/ Accessed March 29, 2022.

1  Just as Joaquim Amat Piniella’s K.L.  Reich, the antagoinist in the Mauthausen Nazi camp, is not a collective of perpetrators, but rather the Spirit of the Camp.

Index1

A Amnesty, 6, 268, 271, 286–289, 298 Amnesty Law (1977), 3, 6, 9, 20, 148, 244, 287, 289 Andalucía, Andalusia Almería, 245, 255 Cádiz, 245, 265n18 Córdoba, 184, 245, 247, 258 Fuensanta de Martos, 252, 256, 266 Granada, 245 Huelva, 245 Jaén, 20, 22, 76, 239, 239n1, 240, 245, 246, 255–259, 269–271 Jerez de la Frontera, 265n18 Málaga, 5, 200, 245, 259, 263 Seville, 245, 247, 257 Ángel (dir. Stéphane Fernandez), 13, 16, 25, 26, 31, 32, 37, 43, 48, 49, 56, 59–61, 284 Arendt, Hannah, 11, 12, 33, 326

Argentine Lawsuit (Querella Argentina), 277, 279–282, 286, 294, 296, 309 Armengou, Montse, 5, 193, 215, 282–284, 286, 317 Asociación para la Recuperación de la Memoria Histórica (Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory) (ARHM), 21, 27, 286 Au temps des roses rouges (dir. Francis Lapeyre), 16, 26, 31, 41, 48 Azaña, Manuel, 101 Azzati, Paz, 191, 205 B Badajoz, 258, 304 Bahar, Robert, 10, 16, 20–22, 277–317 Belis, Ricard, 5, 193, 215, 282–284, 317

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 M. Tobin Stanley, Francoist Repression and Incarceration in Contemporary Spanish Culture, Palgrave Studies in Cultural Heritage and Conflict, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13392-3

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Bellón Commission (and Bellón Commission report), 4 Benjamin, Walter, 10, 176, 176n45 Bildung, Bildungsroman, coming of age, 17, 19, 94, 95, 97, 239–272 Burgos, Carmen de, 145, 196, 196n18 C Cáceres, 208 Cádiz, 245, 265n18 Campoamor, Clara, 144, 182 Cañil, Ana, 10, 13, 16, 18, 19, 103n15, 137n4, 138, 189–235 The Carpenter’s Pencil (El lápiz del carpintero), 12, 13, 16, 17, 65–90 Carracedo, Almudena, 10, 15, 16, 20–22, 277–317 Catalonia, 22, 49, 97n10, 100 Catholicism/nacionalcatolicismo/ nationalized Catholicism, 15, 17, 81, 96, 101–102, 109, 110, 114, 198, 219, 221, 222, 225–227, 263, 285 Chacón, Dulce, 10, 13, 16, 18, 19, 31, 41, 113n21, 135–164 Children of war, 2, 34, 52, 293, 294, 297 Civil Registry, 5, 192, 215 Civil War Archive (Document Center of Historical Memory), 2 Collective memory, 2, 9, 12, 13, 67n2, 70, 71, 178, 242, 243, 243n7, 268, 292, 297, 325 Communicative memory, 137, 278, 292, 293, 297, 325, 326 Communist, 15, 72, 141, 160, 180, 181, 184, 185, 189n2, 211, 220, 239, 271 Comunista, 15, 210 “El Conde Sol,” 19, 190, 234

El corazón helado, 244, 248n11, 251 Cuevas, Petra, 191, 204, 214 Cuevas, Tomasa, 19, 190, 193, 194n15, 205n28, 215 Cultural memory, 14, 135, 137, 243, 243n7, 278, 279, 281, 282, 291–297, 315, 317, 325–327 D Democratic Memory Law (2020), 290, 291 Dismemory, 131, 159, 244, 268 Documentary, 13, 15, 16, 21, 22, 25–27, 30–32, 30n6, 37, 41, 48, 49, 54, 56, 59, 60, 142, 277–317 Doña, Juana, 19, 31, 41, 138, 189, 189n2, 191, 192, 194n15, 206–210, 212, 213, 230, 234 E Episodios de una Guerra Interminable, 20, 243–245 Erll, Astrid, 1, 13, 242–244, 243n7, 268, 278, 281, 282, 296, 297 Eugenics, 5, 18, 97, 101, 102, 104, 105, 190, 192, 196, 196n19, 216, 218, 223, 235 Execution paseos, 70n6, 304 sacas, 194, 200, 213, 304 Exhumation, 9, 21, 143, 278, 281, 282, 294, 295, 298, 307–310, 310n26, 312, 314, 315 Extremadura, 156, 157, 184 F Faber, Sebastiaan, 9, 12, 21, 85, 88, 88n22, 193n14, 283, 286–288, 290, 316, 325

 INDEX 

Femimemory/feminist memory, 2, 18, 135–164, 136n2, 172, 174, 179, 183 Fernández, Ángel (Ángel Fernández Vicente), 10, 13, 16, 22, 25–62, 327 Forgetting/amnesia/olvido, 26, 70 Franco/Francisco, 1, 3, 4, 8, 10, 11, 13–16, 18, 19, 26, 28, 41, 54, 65–90, 101, 113, 137, 146, 150, 162, 190, 190n5, 191, 193, 200–201, 203, 216, 219, 224, 225, 230, 254, 278, 280, 284, 289, 290, 302, 304, 308, 325 Frente Popular (the Popular Front), 4 Fuensanta de Martos, 252, 256, 266 G Galicia, 16, 22, 65, 67–70, 75n10, 79, 205n28 Gallego, Trinidad, 191, 213, 217, 230 Garzón, Baltasar, 7, 8, 103, 287 Grandchildren of war, 289, 297 Grandes, Almudena, 10, 12, 16, 18–20, 22, 239–272, 327 Guardia civil, Civil Guard, 12, 20, 45, 222, 239, 239n1, 240, 247–250, 252, 254, 255, 260, 262, 264–266, 271, 304 H Halbwachs, Maurice, 12, 71, 194, 250, 292 Hirsch, Marianne, 16, 18, 25, 31–33, 37, 135, 136, 142, 144, 177–179, 195, 250 Historical Memory Law (2007), 6–9, 20, 27, 70, 86, 135, 278, 290, 291

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Homosexuality/homoerotic, 17, 96, 98n12, 115, 116, 124–126, 125n37, 126n39, 129 Human rights, 3, 6, 7, 41, 61, 87, 89, 94, 103, 145, 173, 176, 279, 284, 285, 287–291, 288n7, 295n11, 299, 307, 310n26, 315–317, 325 I Ibárruri, Dolores, aka Pasionaria, 144, 222, 223 Impunity, 3, 6–10, 12–15, 20, 38, 43, 44, 59, 104, 129, 139, 205, 228, 240, 247, 266, 279, 281, 284–286, 288, 298, 325, 327 Inés y la alegría, 244n9, 254, 265 International law, universal jurisdiction, 287 Interrogation, 30, 55, 138, 150–163, 165–168, 166n38, 170, 184, 191, 194, 203–213, 254, 263–265 J Jaén, 20, 22, 76, 239, 239n1, 240, 245, 246, 255, 256, 258, 259, 269–271 Jérez de la Frontera, 265n18 K Kent, Victoria, 69n5, 144, 146, 182, 200, 201 Kristeva, Julia, 11, 12, 128 L El lápiz del carpintero (The Carpenter’s Pencil), 113n21 Las rapadas, 241

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INDEX

Laws 1889 Código Civil, Civil Code, 197, 267 1936 Bando de Guerra (Martial Law Edict), 245 1936 Ley de Amnistía (Amnesty Law), 298 1938 Fuero de Trabajo (Labor Law), 259 1939 Ley (de Burgos) de Sanciones y Responsabilidades Civiles (Law of Sanctions and Civil Responsibilities), 4, 149 1940 Ley sobre la Represión de la Masonería y del Comunismo (Repression of Masonry and Communisim), 4 1940 Protección de Huérfanos (Protection of Orphans), 5, 103, 192, 215 1941 Inscripción de Niños (Registry of Children), 5 1969 decree of prescripción, 6 1977 Ley de Amnistía, Amnesty Law (commonly termed Pacto del Olvido, Pacto de Silencio), 3, 6, 9, 70, 85, 87, 88, 244, 244n10, 268, 286, 287, 289–291 1978 Constitution, 70, 86, 86n21 2007 Ley de Memoria Histórica (Law of Historical Memory), 7–9, 20, 27, 70, 86, 135, 278, 290, 291 2017 Law of Historical and Democratic Memory of Andalusia, 265, 265n18 2020 Ley de Memoria Democrática (Law of Democrátic Memory), 8, 9, 15, 21, 278, 290, 290n8 Ley de Fugas (Flight Law), 4, 239, 250

Lázaro, Julia, 211 El lector de Julio Verne, 12, 20, 239–272 “Loba parda” (“El romance de la loba parda”), 19, 190, 233 M Madrid, 18, 19, 22, 41, 49, 138, 141, 144, 149, 150, 184–185, 189, 192n12, 200, 200n25, 202, 203, 205n28, 208, 222, 266, 306, 314 Maestra/s, teacher/s, 2, 104, 268–270 Málaga, 5, 200, 245, 259, 263 Maqui/maquis, 54, 141, 160, 180, 181, 184, 185, 248, 263 Martín, María, 21, 277, 279–281, 285, 294–306, 309, 317 Marxism, 4, 5, 101, 102, 104, 192, 197, 223 Masculinity hegemonic masculinity, 20, 240, 248–253 toxic masculinity, 20, 241 Masonry and communism, 239 Mass graves, 8, 9, 20, 21, 42, 72, 143, 245, 278, 279, 289, 290, 295, 299, 301, 302, 308, 310–312, 315, 316 Memory types of memory; collective, 2, 9, 12–14, 67n2, 70, 71, 178, 242, 243, 243n7, 250, 268, 292, 297, 325; communicative, 137, 278, 292–295, 297, 325, 326; cultural, 14, 135, 137, 243, 243n7, 278, 279, 281, 282, 291–297, 315, 317, 325–327; femimemory, 2, 18, 136, 136n2, 137, 140–144, 159, 172, 174, 179, 183;

 INDEX 

postmemory, 18, 33, 135, 177, 178, 250; prosthetic, 18, 33, 135, 136 Mendieta, Ascensión, 21, 277, 279–281, 285, 291, 294–299, 306–309, 311, 314, 316, 317 Mola, Emilio, 65, 68, 68n4, 69 Monte, los del, 271, 272 Montseny, Federica, 144, 145, 182 N Nacionalcatolicismo, 190 Nelken, Margarita, 144–146, 182, 221 Els nens perduts, 192–193 Nora, Pierre, 8, 17, 31, 66, 70, 71, 89, 314 Núñez Targa, Mercè, 19, 138, 189, 204, 209–213 O O’Neill, Carlota, 267 Oropesa prison for fallen women (Toledo), 19, 189 P Pacto de Silencio, 85 Pa negre (Black Bread, novel and film), 17, 18, 22, 93–131, 222 Paseo, paseadores, 12, 14, 70, 70n6, 304, 308 Patronato de Redención de Penas por el Trabajo, 80 Pius XII, Pope, 77, 101 Pleita, 252, 264, 265 Pórtico de la Gloria, 17, 65–90 Postmemory, 18, 33, 135, 177, 178, 250 Premediation, 13, 137, 281, 282

333

Prescripción (i.e. retroactive decriminalization), 6 Prisons for men Ocaña, 29, 209 San Miguel de los Reyes, 29 Santiago de Compostela, 16, 65 Torrero (Zaragoza), 29, 32 Prisons for women Oropesa prison for fallen women (Toledo), 201–203 San Isidro prison for nursing mothers (Madrid), 19, 189, 201–203, 216, 221 Ventas prison for women (Madrid), 18, 19, 22, 41, 138, 139, 149, 159, 160, 163, 174–176, 180, 182, 184, 189, 190, 200–203, 207, 211–214, 221 Prosthetic memory, 18, 33, 135, 136 Q Queipo de Llano, Gonzalo, 240, 241, 245–247, 263, 264 Querella Argentina (Argentine Lawsuit), 15, 277–282, 286, 294, 296, 309 R Rapadas, rapeo, 254, 257, 258, 265n18 Rape, 15, 138, 160, 162, 169, 170, 189n2, 191, 205–210, 205n28, 206n30, 212, 240, 246, 247, 264, 266 Reconciliation, 77, 85–88, 251, 283 Recova, 252, 258–260, 262, 265 Redención, 19, 224–233

334 

INDEX

Redención de Penas por el Trabajo (Redemption of Sentences through Work), 80, 224, 290 Reig, Matilde, 234 Remediation, 13, 137, 281, 282, 327 Reparation, 7, 9, 15, 20, 89, 128, 183, 234, 261, 290, 291 Resemanticize, 291, 325 Resistance, 3, 20, 28–30, 32, 54, 68, 73, 108, 110, 140, 141, 143, 147, 151, 152, 154, 156, 160, 161n28, 174, 176, 177, 180, 184, 191, 239–272 Resistants (maqui, maquis, el monte, los del monte), 16, 20, 25–62, 166, 180, 184, 240, 249, 253–254, 256, 262, 264–266, 271 Restorative justice, 70, 85, 90, 281, 296, 316, 317 Retribution/retributive justice, 70, 81, 85 Ricoeur, Paul, 250 Rivas, Manuel, 2, 3, 8, 10, 12, 13, 16, 17, 22, 33, 65–90, 113n21 Rojas, red women, 18, 20, 139, 147–148, 172, 176, 183, 191, 196, 203, 205, 207, 223, 247, 253, 271, 300 S Saca, 80, 194, 200, 213, 304 Saints, martyrs, 17, 80, 95–97, 95n7, 112–119, 127, 130, 130n45, 293 San Isidro prison for nursing mothers (Madrid), 19, 216 Santiago de Compostela, 16–17, 65 Sección Femenina, 144, 198, 227 Serrano Suñer, Ramón, 1, 3, 4, 288

Shaming/public shaming, 69, 114, 305 Shaved, 258, 265n18, 300 Si a los tres años no he vuelto (If I Have Not Returned in Three Years), 13, 19, 103n15, 138, 189–235 Sierra Sur, 20, 240, 255, 256 El silencio de otros (The Silence of Others), 16, 20, 21, 137n5, 277–317, 294n10, 325 Silva, Emilio, 21, 280, 286, 287, 291, 306–309, 314, 325 T Te doy mi palabra (dir. Joaquín (Quino) González), 16, 26, 30, 32, 43 Teixidor, Emili, 10, 12, 13, 16, 17, 93–131, 326, 327 Thirteen Republican women, 191n6 Topete, María, 13, 19, 189, 190, 202, 209, 211, 216–223, 230, 232, 234, 326 Torture, 13, 17, 18, 20, 40, 47, 55, 95, 112, 113n22, 116, 118, 138, 139, 150–171, 189n2, 191, 203–213, 206n29, 222, 246, 248, 250, 254, 262, 264, 268, 279, 280, 285, 288, 288n7, 324 Toulouse, 20, 28, 32, 49, 257, 265 Transition (to Democracy), aka la Transición, 3, 8, 20, 70, 72, 87, 89, 148, 239, 241, 268, 280, 286–291 Las Trece Rosas, the Thirteen Roses, 41, 43, 136n2, 141, 194 Triennium of Terror (Trienio de Terror), 12, 20, 22, 222, 239, 240, 249, 250, 272 23 september 1939 decriminalization of anti-Republican activity, 298

 INDEX 

U United Nations, 143 Universal jurisdiction, international law, 7, 15, 16, 21, 22, 206, 279–281, 287–289 V Valle de los Caído, Valley of the Fallen, 278, 302, 309 Vallejo Nájera, Antonio, 4, 5, 102–105, 107, 147, 190, 192, 196, 196n19, 196n21, 197, 216, 223, 229

335

Ventas, prison for women (Madrid), 18, 19, 22, 41, 138, 139, 149, 159, 160, 163, 174–176, 180, 182, 184, 189, 190, 200–203, 207, 211–214, 221 Villaronga, Agustí, 10, 16, 17, 93–131, 170, 326 La voz dormida, The Sleeping Voice, 18, 31, 41, 113n21, 135–164 Z Zambrano, Benito, 136n2, 137, 163–171, 173 Zaragoza, 32, 56