"Que mi nombre no se borre de la historia" : the stakes of including women's historical memory in Spanish politics of memory

Abstract

Spain has had and continues to have problems in dealing with its dictatorial past, especially in the political sphere. Thus, the current Draft Bill on Democratic Memory, which is expected to be approved this year, has been one of the great advances in the field of memory policies. It includes the democratic memory of women as an achievement to remember their struggle for democratic values as well as for the violence they suffered both for their ideology and that of their companions and for not fitting into the gender role that Francoism had assigned them. In the light of these considerations, this thesis seeks to analyze what are the main stakes of including the historical memory of women in the politics of memory in Spain. To achieve this, the official Francoist narrative and the alternative collective memories supported by social actors will be examined, with special attention to the moment when women’s memory is supported in the social agenda. Secondly, the circumstances surrounding the draft bill will be studied in order to review the arguments put forward by the government as well as the main opposition it encounters from relevant actors. The analysis has shown that the democratic memory of women is framed as a more advanced version of the current official narratives of historical memory, but the different social and political actors have different interests that may come into conflict due, on the one hand, to the desire to contextualize the figure of women as a fundamental and not just anecdotal part of Francoism, and on the other to the desire not to open wounds of the past.