| Abstract | In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: History & Memory 14.1/2 (2002) 165-188 In the last decade several monographs on the Francoist repression at the local and regional levels have been published. The consolidation of democracy has resulted in the appearance of books and articles about some of the most painful episodes of recent Spanish history. But there has been no clear relationship between the blossoming of democracy which crystallized in a new democratic state in 1977 and the recovery of some particular aspects of the last civil war. Indeed, the numerous research projects on the violence unleashed by the rebel rearguard during and after the Civil War have been carried out by young scholars in the early stages of their careers, in the context of flourishing universities and some local institutions well disposed to backing such research projects. Therefore, the recovery of the darkest episodes of the Spanish recent past has not been sponsored by the state. The task has been demanded by civil society, and historians have been the leaders in this process. The case of Aragon is a good example of this phenomenon that has taken place throughout Spain. The book, El pasado oculto: Fascismo y violencia en Aragón, 1936–1939, by a research team coordinated by Julián Casanova, was a pioneer in the process of recovering the names of all the men and women who were assassinated by the rebel army from July 1936 onward and of their dates and places of death. The compilation of a huge appendix listing the victims in the three Aragonese provinces (Zaragoza, Huesca and Teruel) was accompanied by several analytical as well as descriptive articles on the military coup d’état of July 1936, the mechanisms, phases and social consequences of violence, the return of conservative and right-wing politicians to the local institutions, and the indoctrination process carried out by the Catholic Church. Although the primary sources were located mainly in local archives, registries of deaths and the local press, the authors conducted several oral interviews with some of the victims’ relatives. The testimonies provided a wealth of information on the rituals of repression, but they were also crucial for understanding the experiences of the defeated during and after the Civil War. Some of these will be analyzed in the following pages. It is remarkable that the book was unexpectedly well received by Aragonese society, to the extent that the first edition, issued by a national publisher (Siglo XXI, 1992), went out of print within a few years. Since the book was in great demand in bookshops and local libraries, a local publisher decided to launch a second edition, whose 1,500 copies were sold out in one year. The third edition was issued last year (2001). This success was a symptom—as well as a consequence—of Aragonese society’s need to know more about the most dramatic episodes of the Civil War. More specifically, the great demand for this book indicates the interest in remembering the tragic end of thousands of Aragonese people who were killed by the rebels. Since these episodes had been silenced throughout four decades of dictatorship and during the transition to democracy, the memory of the victims and their families had been lost. The book thus satisfied a demand that emerged “from below” and was also the main instrument for recovering the memory of the victims and their families. As I demonstrate in this article, although this demand was never articulated or channeled through a collective social movement, the appearance of the book created the conditions for stimulating the complex process of affirmation (and, in some cases, creation) of the victims’ identity in relation to their experiences in the war. Suppressed Memories and Traumatic Memories in Franco’s Spain The erosion of the memory of those who suffered in the Civil War and the postwar period is not peculiar to Spain. This phenomenon is quite common when the construction of the state and national identity calls for highlighting patriotism, victory and cohesion, on the one hand, and for concealing uncomfortable episodes, especially those related to violence, on the other. Nevertheless, the Spanish case has several unique features. First, it was the only state in which...
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