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Review
Reviewed Work(s): Disremembering the Dictatorship: The Politics of Memory in the

Spanish Transition to Democracy by Joan Ramon Resina
Review by: Kay Pritchett
Source: Hispania , May, 2002, Vol. 85, No. 2 (May, 2002), pp. 258-259
Published by: American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/4141059
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258 Hispania 85 May 2002
(33).
Four additional ambitious studies round out this collection. Andrew M. Beresford's "'Cortol
la cabega e atola del petral ca la quiere dar en donas a Galiana': On the Relationship Between
Death and Sexuality in Four Epic Legends" shows how the forceful, even bloody, exercise of
sexuality is a hallmark of the participation of many women in their literary epic environment.
Simon Barton, "Reinventing the Hero: The Poetic Portrayal of Rodrigo Diaz, the Cid, in its
Political Context," argues that the Cid's "reinvention" began soon after his death and was
intimately linked to the political identity early Castilian historians tried to forge in the face of
continual struggles with the Muslim Other.
David Hook's "The Epic Epithet and Real Life" offers fresh evidence of the use of formally
analogous epithets as personal monikers in modem Wales and in the vast registers of legal
instruments from medieval Spain, throwing fresh light on how tag names coexist with or displace
other names in social usage. Milija Pavlovi makes a useful distinction in "The Three Aspects of
Honour in the Poema de mio Cid" between "honor(es)" as material possessions, "honra" as
internalized, personal honor and "honor" as social prestige and status. While perhaps not the most
admirable theme, acquisition of wealth is arguably the most sustained and intimately linked with
the other two indexes of epic triumph.
This collection of studies and lively follow-up conversations comprises a noble tribute to a
cherished colleague, Colin Smith.
George D. Greenia
College of William & Mary
Resina, Joan Ramon, ed. Disremembering the Dictatorship: The Politics of Memory in the
Spanish Transition to Democracy. Amsterdam/Atlanta. Editions Rodopi. 2000. ISBN: 90-420-
1352-4. 246 pp.
Disremembering the Dictatorship. The Politics of Memory in the Spanish Transition to

Democracy addresses the question: "Was not the Transition, as well as the thing in transit, the
result of tinkering, not only with the state's political and economic structures but also with the
official memories of that very process?" (8). In Joan Ramon Resina's view, memory, the
instrument used to analyze and reconstruct the past, is little more than a "phantasmatic trace" of
a lost reality (7). Moreover, memories are subject to an internal as well as external censor that
hides the more disruptive ones, like so much "dirt under the... manicured fingernails" of a
postmodern Spain (8). This premise, established in the editor's introduction, echoes throughout
the ten essays of the volume. With little of a positive nature to say about Spain's transition to
democracy, the contributors focus, rather, on the failure of Spain's leaders and citizens to take the
Francoists, living or dead, to task for past offenses.
Salvador Cardfis i Ros's essay discusses some of the methodological and epistemological
problems associated with the study of a period like the Transition, based less on fact and more on
"complex strategies of 'invisibilization"' (18). Noting the media's collusion in the erasure of
Spain's despotic past, he finds it no coincidence, for example, that Adolfo Suarez, transitional
Spain's first elected prime minister, was both General Secretary of the Movement and Director
General of Radio and Television. In "History and Hauntology; or, What Does One Do with the
Ghosts of the Past? Reflections on Spanish Film and Fiction of the Post-Franco Period," Jo
Labanyi concludes that "[t]he monster is [...] a perfect illustration of the ontological
(hauntological) status of history in the present" (78). This view is further developed in Resina's
"Short of Memory: the Reclamation of the Past Since the Spanish Transition to Democracy," in
which the author places time above space as a determinant of the country's identity. The
continuity of Spain as a nation, he claims, relies upon its citizens' willingness to integrate past
experiences.
While many of the book's contributors look at Spain's denial of history from a theoretical
perspective, they additionally concern themselves with filling in the lapses created by such denial.

81.182.251.79 on Mon, 20 Jun 2022 14:52:13 UTC
Reviews 259
Christina Duplhia examines the testimonies of women who were
or deported to Nazi concentration camps. Philip W. Silver analy
resistance, despite the arrival of democracy, and argues that th
discrimination against the pueblo vasco and the region's immig
cause of that resistance. Resina, in his above-mentioned essay,
impact of "disremembrance" on the status of regional politics. He
manipulation of terms like "centralist" and "nationalist," the cen
portray itself as democratic, while casting the heteronationaliti
newly-emancipated Spain.
David K. Herzberger's and Maarten Steenmeijer's essays
disremembrance to fiction during the Transition. Herzberger lo
El jinete polaco, and Steenmeijer explores works by Eduardo
Mufioz Molina. While the first views memory as a positive expe
knowledge and transformation, the latter concludes that Transition
to write about their lives under Franco. Dieter Ingenschay's essa
a literary context, but looks specifically at its relationship to gay
destape has allowed homosexuality to emerge as a theme, gay f
international milieu rather than a particularly Spanish one. Ga
concentrate on the present rather than on Francoist homophobia.
only mentions Luis Antonio de Villena's Divino, which examine
Fascist model of virile manhood.
Ofelia Ferrain's essay challenges facile definitions of the Transition and maintains that
neither the changes the term implies nor its time frame can be readily specified. Though for some
scholars it represents the period that begins with Franco's death and ends in the 1990s, for others
it begins before 1975 and ends in 1978 with the official declaration of the Constitution.
Cautioning against the dangers inherent in forgetting the transgressions of the dictatorship, Ferrtin
turns to two novels that decry disremembrance. She discusses Jorge Sempruin's Autobiografia de
Federico S6cnchez, which brings to light the authoritarian practices of the Spanish Communist
party in the 1960s, as well as its refusal during the Transition to confront past sins, and Manuel
Vizquez Montalbin's Autobiografia del general Franco, which reconstructs Franco's life by
means of a dialogue between the protagonist Franco and his fictional pseudo-autobiographer
Marcial Pombo. Both works thematize the need for multivocal representation in the design of
Spain's present and in the critique of its history. Vaizquez Montalbin has the final word in
Resina's volume. In his recapitulation of Franco's life, he focuses on factors that contributed to
the dictator's political stance, including a diminutive stature and rebellion against a philandering,
free-thinking father.
Some readers may find Resina's book overly critical of a period, which, despite its
shortcomings, brought Spain out of obsolescence and into a period of political and social
potentiality. Nonetheless, the probing of these scholars lends balance to an area of inquiry that has
been lax in recognizing history's omissions. In this reader's opinion, Disremembering the
Dictatorship earns high marks and deserves a place on the bookshelves of Hispanists.
Kay Pritchett
University of Arkansas
Rich, Lawrence. The Narrative of Antonio MuIoz Molina: Self-Conscious Realism and "El
Desencanto." New York: Peter Lang, 1999. ISBN: 0-8204-4080-9. 135 pp.
Lawrence Rich's first book, The Narrative of Antonio Munioz Molina, has received favorable
review from literary critics, as well as from Mufioz Molina himself, who admits that Rich has
indeed understood his works. An assistant professor of Spanish at St. Mary's College of
Maryland, Rich has published several scholarly articles, and through a grant, researched Mufioz
Molina's works between 1982 and 1995.

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