Francoist Repression and Incarceration in Contemporary Spanish Culture

“Professor Tobin Stanley’s Francoist Repression and Incarceration in Contemporary Spanish Culture 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, McDaniel College, Maryland, USA

This book examines the cultural articulation of Spanish History (and histories (remembered, meaningful experiences). It analyzes how real people and fictional characters experience the rupture of post-war repression, as their vindicating collective memory counters the authoritarian narrative and laws that demonized and criminalized them. The book, that breaks the persistent cycle of denial of Francoist malfeasance, is a resource for scholars and students who research the representation of Spain’s dictatorship, its aftermath and the recovery of postdictatorial memory.

Maureen Tobin Stanley is Professor of Hispanic Studies at the University of Minnesota Duluth, USA. She has published two co-edited volumes with Palgrave Macmillan, Exile through a Gendered Lens: Women’s Displacement in Recent European History, Literature, and Cinema (2012) and Female Exiles in Twentieth and Twenty-first Century Europe (2007), and two co-edited anthologies, Hybridity in Spanish Culture (2011) and (Re)collecting the Past: Historical Memory in Spanish Literature and Culture (2016).