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The collective memories and mediated culture: how audiences interpret the Spanish

transition

B. C. Reis (Universidade Pontificia de São Paulo, Department of Social Sciences, São Paulo,
Brazil)
reysbr@yahoo.com.br
F. Ceglia (University of Illinois at Chicago, Department of Communication, Chicago, U.S.A.)
fabrizio.ceglia@gmail.com
N. Jeronimo (Universidade da Beira Interior, Department of Sociology, Covilhã, Portugal)
nunoaj@gmail.com

Abstract: This paper aims to analyze the connection between collective memory and mediated
culture in Spain and how the media presents a particular social and political debate about the past.
In particular, this analysis studies how different audiences, organized in a typology of eight ideal
discussion groups, interpret the discourse of the media on the dictatorship and the political
transition in Spain. Such groups, related to eight different audiences, are arranged by social
context, generation and political participation.

Keywords: Collective memory; Ideal types; Mediated Socialization; Spanish dictatorship.

It would seem rather obvious that either generation would make the collective memories
mediated or lived1. The younger subjects, lacking a living experience of the past, would recreate
that time in a mediated way. Regarding a traumatic past, transmitted only from one generation to
another, the younger groups would refer specially to the most widespread media stories.
Secondly, the publics would have different understandings of the past, accordingly to their
political participation, that is, if they take any part in political parties’ activities, labour unions and
civic organizations. Finally, the collective memories would be dependent of the established and
opposition roles of the publics, whether they would show themselves in favour or against the
“franquismo”2 as much as for the transition.

Looking to Halbwachs (2004a, 2004b) these factors can be called social frameworks of the
collective memory in a second degree. Soon we understand that the first degree of social
frameworks that the French author pointed out (family, class, religion) were part of a hardly
operational macro theory. Any empirical and systematic use of this author is actually rare. His
frameworks were implied in the analyzed discourses and as such were pointed out and discussed.
Finally, the second degree frameworks were better suited for the Spanish case.

This paper is structured as follow: Firstly, an approach to the role played by the mass media in the
process of socialization of the collective memory, faced with other socialization agents who have
been more valued and studied so far. Secondly, a detailed focus on the historical fiction on
television, as a hybrid format, halfway between historical information and entertainment. As a

1The concepts developed by V. Sampedro (2004b) are related to the media identities (strongly influenced
by the identity frames that appear in the media discourse) and the mediated identities (created by the
interpretation and negotiation of the public from the conventional media contents).
2
Franquismo is intended as the Political regime in Spain between 1939 and 1976, during the dictatorship of
General Francisco Franco.
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stimulus for the 32 natural discussion groups, the subjects were shown one episode of one of the
television series with bigger audiences in Spain, “Cuéntame como pasó”3. In the third step it is
revealed how the eight ideal types of collective memory were identified in the Spanish case, each
one with different public speeches. The social framework concepts that were empirically used are
to be re-evaluated in the final chapter, thus allowing identifying how the collective memories are
created in Spain.

Socialization and collective memory. A justification for the methodological choices.

The study of how the mass media exhibit the past has been paid very short academic attention.
The scarce attempts can be organized into two analytical traditions. The first one identifies and
re-enacts historical elitist practices and discourses. These authors tend to focus on official actors,
texts and institutions (even the heterodox) and somehow institutionalized (although frail). The
major focus observes especially how journalists and politicians produce and broadcast one certain
speech about certain historical facts that are considered as relevant. This approach is shared by
Sociology and Political Science when searching the formal processes of reconstruction of the past
in the public sphere. Historians have assumed this task, but they have been discussing it in very
cryptically, as an academic discourse is expected to be.

The second tradition is the media effects’ studies. Along with other authors, these studies are
believed to have an excess of psycologism. They take the subjects out of their media reception
environment (and before socialization), analyzing them in individual frames under a causal
relation: cognitive stimuli – cognitive answer. These studies can be understood as strongly biased
approaches applied to information and entertainment. The trend used in the more updated
versions of this tradition is the “motivation and general emotion theory” (Zillman and Bryant,
1996). These authors centre their theory on determining the effects caused by the exposure to the
media and register the media consumption as generator of satisfaction.

Morley (1986) has already alerted for the risk of reductionism in this theoretical path by the time
he criticized the communication studies (and also the cultural studies). In order to get over this
risk, Morley offered a holistic vision which looked for a semiology of the text and image
simultaneously with the sociological conditions within the media reception and its context. This
was the way to deal at the same time with the micro (unique for each analysis unit) and the macro
(regarding the whole social context where the media consumption is produced). “Each
entertainment form is built and works in a specific social and historical context” (Ang, 1985: 19).

Conscientious about these contributions, this paper tries a humble step with a theoretical
upholding and an empirical approach to the object-subjects of this study, crafting ourselves a
sustainable methodology. The social conversations occurred in natural contexts and discussed
popular culture – television as hegemonic media – and were then analyzed. The discussion groups
were self-recruited. The analytical text-object is a successful fictional television series which was
used to set the discussion under way, during which the media influence upon the creation of

3 The Cuéntame... TV series, produced by “Grupo Ganga”, airs since 2001 in TVE1 prime time. Its
successful formula offered a look over the last years of the Spanish dictatorship, as well as the first years of
the Spanish transition to democracy. With this TV series, the Spanish public broadcasting service regained
its calling to reconstruct its national history.

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collective memories was debated. The subject is collective (it could be nothing else): it is not the
individuals, but the publics which (re)create the media speeches, among others, overlapped with
other lived or mediated experiences.

In fact, the popular collective memories developed along with dependencies from the elite
discourse, in opposition to it or aside from it (researchers included) are the starting point of this
investigation. This study supports itself in previous approaches about the identity visibility and
representation in the media. Two processes are distinguishable, normalization and
marginalization, both of which give place to non-excluding identities.

Figure 1. Media identities.


Normalization Marginalization
Official identity: Popular identity:
institutional representations spreads as vox pop
Hegemonic identity: Minority identities:
Unquestioned and costless. Participates in accepted - Aside: excluded from the institutional
norms, values and social models. representation (official) and from the legitimated
habits and norms (hegemonic)
- Opposition: questions the dominant
representations and the standard identity labels

Source: Sampedro; 2004a y 2004b

The theoretical debate tends to disregard ideologies and give way to identities, which, at least,
points out to the need of shuffling the official and opposition identity labels as well as the final
purpose of debating the results through the lenses of the normalization or marginalization
processes of collective imaginaries.

The popular identities, unknown at the beginning for being settled in collective memories yet to
discover, seem to be the ones which represented the better the collective discourse and imaginary
– even if the statistic representativeness of those discussion groups was completely put aside.
Beyond the mere registration of social discourse, it was expected to find ideal types which
condensed elements as heterogeneous and confusing as obtained. Self and alien discourses; lived,
mediated and media discourses, the meaning of which gained sense in the negotiation process of
the past craved in its social-political environment and, of no lesser importance, in a specific
personal and collective moment. The field recollection of data was taken under way a couple of
years before the Historical Memory Act debate in 20074.

The media are understood to act within a very complex web of socialization agents and totally
inseparable from those other agents regarding the processes during which the public reconstruct
images from the past. The relevance of this can be found in the first 2009 volume of the Political

4 In October, 31st 2007, the Historical Memory Act passed in the Spanish parliament. The prologue of the
act was made public in September, 10th 2004, following a royal decree from the Government after the
creation of an Interministerial Commission for the Study of the Situation of the Civil War Victims.
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Communication journal, a special edition reviewing the classical socialization agents (family,
school, media and peer groups) and checking how they correlate with political socialization.

Some authors point out that the demographic, ideological and structural dimensions should be
taken credit for the socializing consequences of the media in political communication (McLeod
and Shah, 2009: 5). This comes along with the generation, political participation and socio-
political environment frameworks that guide this analysis.

Thus, the media centred focus observed in those media effects models is avoided. That presumes
that the media replace other socialization agents and produce themselves a generalized impact
upon the audiences. The concept of publics challenges this narrowing logic. In an age of media
fragmentation and actives public this question should be brought back to the discussion. Besides
the passive fatalism implied in the question “what can the media do and what do they actually do
with to us?”, it is also possible to understand what the publics are doing to the media and also
offer some new communicational readings and practices.

In this holistic perspective, the sum of the «socialization forms are the acting society» (Watier,
2003: 25). The discussion groups (re)organize socially pre-constructed discourses, expressing
revealing aspects of each group socialization. Mediated processes, as reconstruction processes of
collective memory, require previous conditions which depend on other socialization agents to
make sense.

Considering in advance some substantial conclusions, the media make sense according to the
family framework: the first one of the memory (in first degree) that Halbwachs referred.
Notwithstanding, the important was the level and ideological orientation of each family political
participation. The family environment served as a source for the younger groups in the
socialization processes regarding the dictatorship and transition memories. As additional factors
that contributed to family political environment, some others can be highlighted: a) family talks;
b) previous knowledge; and c) the media consumption.

In fact, families with higher levels of political participation and oppositional memories assumed
themselves a higher profile role and described their experiences that were actually lived in a
direct way. The central position of this biographical transmission among generations finally
showed itself when the younger subject from these families were the ones idealizing their parents
political struggle. With a higher level of knowledge this youngsters criticize the conventional
media (as they are also consumers) and defend the use of alternative media.

An open discussion about hard issues among family members is closely related to their debating
skills and the ability to participate in a deliberative discussion in class and in the interpersonal
political talks with their family and friends. These youngsters showed to understand the social
controversies in a more complex way, because they also show more interest in collecting more
relevant information (Shah, McLeod and Lee, 2009: 115). The questionnaires used in the
discussion groups revealed that they also had regular conversations about politics whether within
the family as within the peer groups.

On the other hand there are the youngster with no political participation (as well as their families)
re-enacting official memories from the dictatorship, in spite of applying them to the transition
without any apparent contradiction. Nevertheless, they do it in a more rhetorical way. They
limited themselves to repeat the discourse learned in a narrow household circle and with clearly
political conservative views. This rhetorical appropriation of the family discourse shows not only
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the inability to produce their own and critical interpretations regarding their parents but it also
comes from the lack of interest in politics (fed by very little knowledge) and a consumption of
political information that is seldom relevant. Even without mentioning their families, these
youngsters show themselves uninterested or unable to evoke memories from the dictatorship or
the transition, as these periods are “past times”. Later these conclusions will be discussed again.

According to the most recent literature, parental mediation on the news has a significant
implication on the level of political discussion among teenagers. The absence of political
discussion among teenagers is directly related to their previous shortness on factual and structural
political knowledge (Hively and Eveland Jr, 2009: 34, 42). It shouldn’t be surprising that a 40
year dictatorship based in demobilization and ignorance left such a legacy. If the official speech
from the “franquismo” was present in the households of the discussion groups with none or
scarce political participation, the same was assumed by the children as their own in a non-critical
manner. On the other hand, if their families haven’t even socialized their children in the
“franquista” ideology, the children would assume the transition to democracy as a process of
normalization, a natural evolution, the string of time, without acknowledging relevant social
actors or institutional processes. A history (or a story) for viewers unconscious of their own
limited role.

The results presented above shows what the literature about media socialization has been
(somewhat ambiguously) indicating. The major difficulty of the told memory (in journalism or in
the academia) is if that memory is enough by itself to reach the younger generations (Feld, 2002).
It is a warning to those who deny the historical “amnesia” showing the enormous bibliographic
production and the recent public debate about these recent historical processes that have been
treated here. Given special attention to the Spanish case, mark the words of Jelin and Sempol
(2006: 11): «Working with memory using the generation framework compels one to deal with the
analytical problem of entering silences and oblivions (traumatic sometimes) which operate in the
transmission, as well as stopping by the conditions that can help understand the reactivation of
some meanings put aside for several years».

The texts where it might seem proper to examine this possibility are not official documents or
institutional speeches, not even the conventional political information, which seldom enter the
analyzed collectives.

Historical fiction and television: institutional draft of the media as carriers of collective
memory

The study of media stories as enactors and carriers of values and information has dealt with
serious resistance to be analyzed by the academic community. The first studies by Philip Elliott
and others (1983) had already suggested that the television regulates the public discourse, defines
the debating agenda and its cognitive relevance. Such proposals haven’t gone through too much
advances insofar. The most significant contributor was Ien Ang with his seminal work Watching
Dallas (1985). The most interesting contribution might be the conceptualization of “soft news” by
John Tullloch (1990). Tulloch suggests the reinterpretation of news and fiction beyond their
constrained functions to information and entertainment. The expansion of fiction genres and
subgenres has created their own “informative” agenda and has intertwined with conventional
news (Tulloch, 1990: 31-57).

Accordingly to Stuart Cunningham, the historical representation on television as an


epiphenomenon (singular representation) has the particular aim to awake the nostalgia and baffles
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even more the relation between past and present (cit. in Tulloch, 1990: 91). The updated empirical
work illustrate how the preferential consumption of entertainment shows creates over the
audiences a more optimistic socio-political vision than that produced by information itself
(Romer, Jamieson y Pasek, 2009: 77). These same authors refer the younger audiences lean to
entertainment on television, as the most politicized groups show higher exposure to news content.
Their analysis of reality will therefore be more pessimistic and judgemental, whether it regards
opposition or official discourses.

Historical fiction and historiography as a scholar discipline highlight and try to create a coherent
narrative (Collingwood, 2004). But as Pierre Sorlin (1985) explains referring to “historical
movies”, what the public find there are mere “footprints”, images that connect the past with the
present, making the past “readable” for the new public.

In this theoretical path, the television series Cuéntame… is understood as generator of an


“illusion of reality”, seen by the publics as something constructed but also recognizable in their
daily lives (Ang, 1985: 38). Using Raymond Williams’ classical expression, the “structure of
feeling” that the public would generate by taking for themselves the cultural texts should fit into
reality itself. Any other way would carry a serious empirical problem to reception (Ang, 1985:
37). The most usual solution in cases like this is that fiction turns into a simple emotional
stimulus, losing the informative contributions (Feld, 2002).

The show used as stimulus for the discussion groups, successful as it is, offers necessarily a
consensual narrative in order not to fend off any section of the public. It covers emotional stresses
(not all of them, just the stronger ones) and largely uses an official discourse (although not
monolithic and with notches), as it is aired by RTVE, the state television network, a key political
and cultural institution during the authoritarian regime, the transition years and nowadays. These
criticisms were highlighted by the more politicized subjects with opposition speeches.

Batson canonical research (1997) has concluded that if a stigmatized group is portrayed by a
fiction character with a positive image, this improves the social image of such group.
Cuéntame… could work as Holocaust, other historical television fictional programme that
confronted the German people with their traumatic past. Todd Gitlin (1986: 3) established its
exceptional character in German television and considered the show a reinforcement to the
German national identity, serving as an important circulation conduit of mainstream narratives of
the past. This thesis is confirmed here: the republican identity, narrowly present in the Spanish
show, was seldom referred to during the analysis made by the discussion subjects. The exception
is to be found within the groups with greater political awareness and more disapproving opinions:
they point out absences, find out stigmas… and claim themselves as carriers of a republican
identity which is understood as set aside or discredited.

Among several tries to systematize the media discursive characteristics in narratives about the
past, there is a unique place for Jean-Franklin Narodetzki (2008). Referring to May, 1968,
Narodetzki says the official discourse has attenuated the potential effects of that historical
happening using four devices:

1. Condensation, through institutional processes that reduced the past to very short references.
2. Disembed and depoliticize the occurred, explaining the events just within the realm of
mentalities change.
3. Stereotyping, turning the multiplicity of collective events into plain topics.

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4. Linear narrative, which tears the complexity of the past down to a simplified discourse and
presented as definitive, in a way that prevents social debate.

After this study, some of these contributions were retrieved and augmented. One can conclude
that the media – television fiction included – function regarding collective memories appears to
have the following characteristics: The media ritualize the negotiation and appropriation
processes from the public, spreading versions of the past charged with minimalism and
presentism. Occasionally, this versions turn into social memories, an actual issue for debate in
the public sphere. This happens as the media employ narratives that focus on the proximity and
on an analogy between past and present, offering an incomplete vision, made up with fait-divers,
preferentially non-political and emotional.

The conventional media establish a ritualizing function and a celebratory disposition of the past.
As the discourso follows the institutional calendars, it turns to the normalization around the dates
during which institutional speakers praise (or exorcize) the past in official rites. Thus, both
journalism and televised fiction turn the remembrance into norm: they normalize it and prevent a
wider interpretation of the past closing it in a frame of values and narratives, only detected by
subjects with opposition identities. This detection is made possible by their high degree of
political participation and the consequent ability to distance themselves from the canonical
versions of the dictatorship and the transition. Other ice-cold historical moments were also
brought into discussion, as they have meaning beyond the media calendar that celebrates history.

When media convey a certain vision of the past, they offer the public material capable of being
negotiated and appropriated, turning historical memory into collective memory. Thus, it is hereby
sustained that the concept of historical memory is so abstract and ambiguous that by the end
researchers are unable to identify the actual discourses that would make it objective. In fact, the
discussion groups showed several collective memories: plural, distinct, even opposed. Social
memory would emerge when these different visions of the past entangled as social dialogue in the
public sphere.

According to the results here shown, historical memory in Spain shows the traits of an official
memory that does not recognize memories from the past and the present recited by the outcasts,
thus being unable to reach the status of an actual social memory. Historical memory should not
supply a public debate that is significant to all groups bound to its legitimate dispute. It satisfies
none of the politicized groups. The opposition collectives consider the historical memory to be
extremely soft (condescending with the “franquismo” and its heritage) and the groups carrying
official versions of the past disapprove of the authoritarian and repressive traits of the regime as
shown in Cuéntame…, which they consider to be “exaggerated”.

Conscious about these contradictions and using the procedures for a audiovisual production,
historical fiction adopts a minimalist logic: iconic and anecdotal. It reproduces frail formulations
regarding the actors and unavoidable events. The publics with no exact historical knowledge (it
could be minimal, but it is actually absent in most groups here analyzed) show a considerable
incapacity to understand the past and make it significant for the present.

Thus, television assumes a presentist perspective. Past events are told in such a way as to
legitimate the present, which explains the inability to assertively distinguish the dictatorial and
democratic regimes within those groups with lesser political participation. The ones with official
discourses consider democracy as a natural evolution from the dictatorship and the ones with
opposition views seldom point out substantial differences between both regimes. This reveals that
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conventional media accelerate time perception (the blanks in their historical narratives plant
themselves as silences and voids in the social discourse) and block the revision of the past,
depriving most of the public of their retrospective skills.

Besides presentist, historical fiction also enunciates itself through the proximity recounting. It
tries to reach the audiences stressing the daily dimension, past or present. This presentation of the
daily realm sustains the continuum more than the institutional one and establishes easier bridges
to cross towards the audience: it just needs an experiential knowledge (lived or mediated) to be
understood. Closeness to the audiences can be reached establishing or forcing analogies between
past and present, therefore underlining the similar traits between dictatorship and democracy and
suggesting the natural continuum from the first to the second. The conventional media discourse
about recent events, as the ones analyzed, erases more and more the remembrance of historical
reality.

Only the discussion groups with personal experience under those historical events (lived
memories) or the ones carrying critical mediated memories were able to identify and point out the
incompletion and anecdotal nature of the version of the past portrayed in Cuéntame… They could
observe the discontinuities and the blank spaces from the show, reporting to their experiential
knowledge, whether lived or mediated by other socialization agents. Some would search in their
memories for alternative and small niche stories, pointing out the anecdotal focus (trivializing the
story) about the scripted daily life aired on national television, complaining about how the
emotional tension overshadows the political narrative.

One of the most interesting findings was the identification of the social change related to women
and gender relations from the dictatorship to the current days, which was the most recognized
social change. It was very common among the groups with lesser historical knowledge and
slighter political participation. The focus on daily life and emotional storylines made by television
awoke, at least, this political consciousness, although restrained to politics of identities, not
politics of ideologies.

Actually, women from any age or condition were the first ones to point out their status and role
change. This was the only starting point that allowed some light criticism to the dictatorship.
Such considerations were uttered along with references to the status women obtained recently or
during the Spanish 2nd Republic, as well as critically compared with more developed countries.
This observation gains relevance put together with the series scriptwriter’s words. Eduardo
Ladrón de Guevara is a greatly politicized subject in anti-“franquist” groups. In a series of
interviews with Guevara, he sustained that he had to fight so that the show could have a political
outline. He also said that the he created the family storyline – and a lot of the drawn female
characters – to assure high audience ratings. What was a financial obligation, apparently clashing
with public network goals (Caffarel, 2006), also had a tremendous political impact. Even though,
one can hardly categorize Cuéntame… as a feminist show. It does not review the key historical
events in the Spanish feminist movement nor provides an evaluation chart for a critical
assessment of the modern womanly condition.

The results presented so far might be integrated into one theoretical perspective. From a neo-
institutional idea (Sampedro, 2000a, ch. 6), there are three fundamental variables that would
condition the televised historical fiction: a) the relation between the broadcasting networks with
the market and the political system; b) the political culture of the audience, which influences and

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is influenced by; c) the traditions and conventions about the shows layout and the role of the
media professionals regarding the public5.

The traits of televised fiction that we have been observing answer to the market needs and
institutional arrangements. The ritualizing adjusts itself to the ceremonial calendar. The
decontextualization is the prior step to introduce the presentism, which is shown in an iconic
manner and as an epiphenomenon, telling singular and incomplete occurrences that allow a
reconstruction accordingly with the audiences’ sense. The conventional television illustrates
social fractures and conflicts only to the point the publics accept them (audience ratings and
shares) and the institutional web integrates them (shows layout and networks schedule).

Since the political-economic dimension and the television format are already summed up, the
next step will regard the public comprehension. Beyond the ambitions of social semiotics, two
hypotheses were tested. They refer to the media role in the institutional netting that manages the
collective imaginary with which the Spanish people made the transition from dictatorship to
democracy.

The more widespread, official and consensual narratives of the transition tell the story about the
compatibility in a democracy created by elite’s agreement. But recently, some authors has
questioned those narratives, assuming a more critical judgement and also referring explicitly the
role played by RTVE in the process.

Ideal Types of collective memory and public discourse

For this paper it was intended to produce an explaining model that could operate with the notion
of the weberian “ideal type” and to work with to study collective memories in Spain. Starting
from Halbwachs’ contributions to disentangle the formation processes of what has already been
designated as collective memories, not historical and a plural noun. Halbwachs’ theory on the
social frameworks of memory was already discussed and, not disregarding the epistemological
strength of what his theory offers, an operational expansion for the Spanish case was designed
regarding this research.

Revising the specific literature of historical memory in Spain, three elements are proposed (social
frameworks of second degree) that were supposed to be key factors for this research: socio-
political context, political participation and generational belonging. These analytical tools
allowed the construction of eight ideal types of memory. The chart below concentrates this
methodologic proposal.

5 Cf. the special number of Political Communication, 23 (2), April-May, 2006, coordination by David
Michael Ryfe, “New institutionalism and the news”. As said in the title, the usage of neo-institutionalism in
the Anglo-Saxon world is still limited to “serious” informative contents. In this paper it was explicitly taken
to the realm of popular televised fiction.
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Chart 1. Explaining model: the weberian ideal type operated with eight ideal types of
memory.

Formation Social frameworks of Starting Obtained ideal types of collective


processes memory ideal types memories
of of collective (result of posterior scrutiny)
collective memories
memory

First Family Latent/


degree Religion Manifested
memories Social class Socialization IT1: Official/ Lived/Politicized
Processes IT2: Opposition/Lived/Politicized
IT3: Official/Meditated/Politicized
IT4: Opposition/Meditated/Politicized
Second Geography/ Official/ IT5: Official/Lived/Non Politicized
degree Context Opposition IT6: Opposition/Lived/Non Politicized
memories IT7: Official/Meditated/Non Politicized
Generations Lived/ IT8:Opposition/Meditated/Non
Mediated Politicized
Political participation Politicized /
Non
politicized

Starting from the ideal tipification, eight collective memories can be traced down, all of them
distinctive accordingly with the proposed second degree framework. The profiles of the
corresponding collective discourses on memory – ideal types – found in the analysis are shown
below:

Chart 2. Ideal types of collective memories


Discussion
Groups (DG) Ideal types of collective memories (IT)

DG 1 – Melilla IT 1 – Official / Lived / Politicized


Military men - Memories influenced by the Church, the family or a social-political
organization.
- Counter the order from the past (dictatorship) to the parties’ political
dispute in the present (democracy), assuming the transition as a hiatus.
- Memories that, confronted with the dictatorial past, appeal to oblivion. A
dictatorship far beyond and disconnected with the actual regime.
- The fear of losing economic prosperity and the excessive tax weight as the
central feature of democracy.
- The “franquist” development plan prevails over the disapproval of the
dictatorship.
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DG 8a – IT 2 – Opposition / Lived / Politicized
Pamplona Two different kinds of opposition that generates a similar ideal type of
Grown ups memory, with considerable differences
Far-left - Members of radical organizations harshly criticize the media narrative of
consensus. They consider the transition a total failure that served only
DG 8b – economic interests and demobilized them from the formal politics but not
Tenerife from their civic participation.
Grown ups - Their memories of opposition to dictatorship and its radicalization during
the transition are defeatist. Disillusionment. Lack of alternatives to
capitalism. Shifting of aspirations and ideals to foreign governments.
- Members of lesser beligerant organizations: evaluate the transition and
recognize gigantic expectations, vindicate their political struggle compared
to the current general demobilization.

DG 7 – Melilla IT 3 - Official / Mediated / Politicized


Military men - Regime change equalled to mentality change, considered as a generational
(same discussion issue that naturalizes the regime change.
group as in - Ideology dissolution: “franquismo” understood as something far in the
DG1) past, but its legacy assumed without shame.

DG 2a – Sevilla IT 4 - Opposition / Mediated / Politicized


Youngsters - Judgmental with democracy by family socialization (opposition views).
Criticize the current democracy, produced by a transition without rupture.
DG 2b – - Opposition memories produced aside or against the media, which do no
Pamplona attend the anti-“franquistas” memories, stereotyped and anecdotal. The ones
Youngsters from Basque and Navarra challenge the terrorist stigma.
Far-left - Political and media control of memory by the right wing: it delegitimizes
or illegalizes the criticism to the territorial model and to the monarchy. The
vindications and justifications of the “franquismo” are normalized.
- Political control of the dictatorship equalled to the one achieved nowadays
regarding the labor market frailty.
- Active feminism opposed to the male-dominant society inherited from the
dictatorship.
- Idealized past of the political opposition roles played by their parents and
total disillusion towards democracy.

DG 3 – Madrid IT 5 - Official / Lived / Non Politicized


Grown ups - Self-positioning into a left-center identity, non-politicized, assertively non-
ideological and uncritical towards the “franquismo”: consider valuable the
current level of economic prosperity and the development plan and the
public order during the dictatorship.
- Social class and gender play important roles. Criticism towards the TV
show for its idealized daily routines in the urban middle classes. Criticism
towards the “franquismo” only for the daily life: severe “pedagogical”
punishments at school, the Church’s power. Female criticism of the male
dominance during the dictatorship, only for the lived experience, with no
traces of feminism.
- The depoliticized criticism towards the dictatorship crystallizes to all

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political scenarios: democracy and current politicians are inefficient.

DG 5 – Sevilla IT 6 - Opposition / Lived / Non Politicized


Grown ups - Memories that refer to their own distance regarding the anti-“franquist”
struggle and remember the elitist agreement as political demobilizing.
- Fear: key feeling of the dictatorship, the transition and the coup of
February, 23. They give some value to the illusion and hope during the
transition.
- Resignation and generational disillusionment with those who promoted the
regime change.

DG 6 – Calzada IT 7 – Official / Mediated / Non Politicized


de Calatrava - Apology for a dictatorial past: a better time
(Ciudad Real) - Women’s memories show dissatisfaction with the female role during the
Youngsters “franquismo”. Daughters use their mothers as reference. Several men show
indifference.
- Dictatorship as a distant time. They do not vindicate the regime nor its
central characters, but its national model, a united, big and free Spain.
1) United – Catholicism and administrative centralism. 2) Big – Economic
development. 3) Free – As a fulfilled political project, accomplished by the
two prior traits, not by civic liberties.

DG 4 – Huelva TI 8 - Opposition / Mediated / Non Politicized


Youngsters - Disinterest for the past: absence of familiar conversations (lower classes),
little formal education (school failure or abandon), exclusive consumption of
media fiction and a similar peer group.
- Without memory: the past assumed as a remote era, change of regime as a
time continuum, naturalizing the dictatorship as much as the democracy.
- Democratic liberties: absolutism of the sexual libido.

Re-evaluating the memory frameworks in Spain

This analysis has proven the substance of the first degree frameworks mentioned by Halbwachs:
family, religion and social class influences made themselves noticeable within the discussion
groups. To make them gain actual meaning it was necessary to look to the second degree social
frameworks here proposed: socio-political context, political participation and generation
belonging.

Religion is seldom mentioned, except in those groups typified with official memories and
“franquist” orientation, under a culturalist interpretation that considers Catholicism as a
distinctive character of the Spanish identity. Family and social class became relevant combined
with stronger and weaker political participation and whether their socialization environments
were of official or opposition inclination.

Whether it was the older or the younger generation expressing in each group there are significant
differences in the interpretations, giving readings more or less distant to the audiovisual narrative,
according to whether the experience was lived or mediated. The lived experiences of the past
made the subjects more secluded from the television series storyline, and although lacking

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political content, the lived experiences allowed certain opposition interpretations, very
constrained to the daily life realm and were totally short of political coherence.

The political participation level allowed distinguishing the bias introduced by government control
over the public network and generated interpretations that connected the show with substantial
historical questions. The script was perceived as incomplete, simplified and stereotyped,
accordingly to the ideological inclination of the discussion group. The socio-political
environment, whether leaning towards the official or the opposition discourse, brought
fundamental differences. The ones carrying official memories considered the show presented a
distant past, exaggerated in its more negative aspects and with no relevance whatsoever to
interpret the present. The subjects with opposition memories found out and draw attention to a
still present authoritarian inheritance in the storyline.

Stronger official political identities faced the episode as a closed telling, confined to past times.
Opposition identities, on the contrary, called attention to silences and absences: Silences about the
cruelty of the “franquismo” and the limits of the transition; absence of characters that represented
the price of the political struggle. The only groups that seems to go on remembering are the ones
who do not feel themselves as represented in the show, the ones with opposition memories. It
makes sense that «keeping on remembering refers to an evaluation of the recent past which makes
one question the real achievements of the transitions to democracy» (Jelin and Sempol, 2006: 15).

The ways of remembering, since the Civil War until today, are carved by «four ways to remember
a conflictive past» (Kalyvas, 2006: 17). They articulate over four distinct phases of the Spanish
contemporary history:

1) During the “franquist” dictatorship, after the republican defeat in 1936, a unilateral version was
created, an object of indoctrination all over the time the regime held up. The regime got under
way the basic mechanism of excluding those who lost the war and the official interpretation was
imprinted in a society profoundly depoliticized.
2) In a first moment during the transition a “silence regime” was predominant, perhaps
indispensable then to forget the fractures opened by the armed civil conflict.
3) Later, the transition established an “inclusion regime”, an artificial consensus that, forgoing the
memories, could be valid for everyone.
4) It was only recently, in the democratic regime, that opposite versions confronted each other,
denying a consensus by now considered unnatural. It is a “conflict regime”. This issue arrives at
the political agenda as part of the leftist parties’ electoral programs and the debate of the
Historical Memory Act brought to light a problem that was kept latent since 1975.

Notwithstanding, political parties disputes and its audiovisual counterpart in Cuéntame… keep
hiding essential elements from the past. There is not one single reference to the “republic” in the
whole text of the Historical Memory Act.

The democratic pluralism “poisons” the official vision of the Spanish history, it seems to affirm
the harder revisionist historian, according to «new concepts developed by elite or political and
cultural activists» (Payne, 2008: 6). He might be within reason, but acknowledging that some
facts and leading characters have been poorly lit (if not erased) in and by the major media.

13
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