From amnesia to fable: historical memory, pulp fiction and political consensus

Abstract

Popular culture and the film industry have changed our perception of the past. But perhaps more relevant is the way they show history to be an area of conflict where meaning is continually negotiated. Among the fictional narratives that deal with the Spanish Civil War, non-realist novels, films, comics and videogames comprise a special category. While some of these aim to recover the memory of the victims of fascist repression, others ignore or conceal the ideological implications of historical fact. The latter may be achieved through the conversion of history into a universal myth or human drama. In this article, I will examine Albert Sánchez-Piñol's science-fiction story “El bosc” (2001) and its film adaptation by Óscar Aibar (2012), Sebastià Alzamora's noir gothic novel Crim de sang (2012), and Rafael Jiménez and José A. Sollero's superhero comic 1936: la Batalla de Madrid (2014). These narratives implicitly transform the Civil War into a legendary origin for the new democratic nation, a fratricidal struggle that resulted in a productive period of peace and that is apparently disconnected from the present. In this respect, they conform to the principles of post-Francoist Spanish democracy's culture of consensus, which regards ideology-laden discussion of the past as a threat to national cohesion.