As part of a Modern Languages degree, you study not only the language itself, but also it’s contextual setting, with modules on the history and the literature of that country. So during my four years of studying Spanish at Exeter, I learnt about the atrocities of the Spanish Civil War from 1936-9 and the fascist dictatorship under Franco that plagued the country for the next 36 years until 1975.
So when I heard about a historical walking tour through Madrid run by a native madrileña whose grandparents had first-hand experience of the Civil War, I jumped at the chance. Almudena Cros Gutierrez is a historian with a PhD in Art History to boot (her guided tour of the Prado Art Museum is apparently unmissable) and as well as lecturing at an American university in Madrid, she spends her spare time researching and hunting down artefacts from the Civil War to better understand it. The 36 years of dictatorship, censorship and propaganda that followed the Civil War made it harder to uncover the true story behind the war and the to-and-fro debate around the Historical Memory Law further hindered research for several years.
The crux of the Historical Memory Law debate lies in whether Spain should forgive, forget and move on for the sake of keeping the peace, or whether it should properly commemorate all those who died and acknowledge all the crimes and injustices committed during that 39 year period. At each end of the political spectrum there are supporters for either option and a law in favour of the latter was finally passed by the Socialist Workers’ Party in 2007.
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