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List of Figures, Tables and Text Boxes
Acknowledgements
Author’s Preface
Series Editor’s Preface, Paul Preston
1 Cultural Heritage and Post-Conflict Reconstruction
Purpose, Theory, and Method
Deconstructing the reconstruction process
Locating the field
Reconstructing cultural heritage: meaning and memory
From landscape to heritage-scape
The politics of space and performance
Research Methods
Structure of the Volume
2 Spain: Background and Context
Cultural Heritage, Conflict, and Identity in Spain in the
Run up to 1936
The idea of Spain: Las dos Españas
The Spanish Civil War and its Symbols
The cultural front and the “Two Spains”
The visual front and the propaganda war
Destruction and protection of cultural heritage during the war
The war and the production of heritage
3 Reconstructing Spain, 1938–1957
Administering the Rebuilding
Scope of action
Ideology behind the rebuilding
Propaganda and public communication
Reconstructing the Nation – History, Memory and Meaning
Constructing a selective past
‘Restoring’ the past: Preserving (some) heritage
and traditions
Constructing memory: memorials, martyrs and ruins
Codifying space: inscribing meaning
Contradictions, Responses, and Consequences
Heritage and memory in exile and resistance movements
Evolution of the reconstruction project
4 Reconstructing Gernika
Gernika: Symbolism and Significance up to 1936
Gernika during the Civil War
The bombing
The Regime’s Reconstruction of Gernika
Regiones Devastadas and the rebuilding
Constructing place: Basque architectural styles and Regiones
Devastadas
Constructing space: social dimensions and realities
Reconstructing Gernika’s heritage-scape
The ‘Other’ Reconstruction of Gernika
Guernica as a twentieth-century icon
Exile, resistance and the construction of another memory
Gernika and Guernica, 1945–1975
What Gernika’s destruction and reconstruction reveals
5 Reconstruction Continued: Transition and recovery
Reconstruction Continued
The 1960’s: a new formulation of Spain on the horizon
La Transición
The Restless Past, 2004–2007
Reconstructing Guernica and Gernika in the Transition
Guernica and Gernika in Transition
Gernika: breaking the silence and recovering memory
Gernika and Guernica: evolution of a relationship
Gernika in 2007
Gernika’s heritage-scape 70 years later
6 Deconstructing the Reconstruction Process
Physical, Symbolic, Social
On materiality and physicality (or the place in space)
The symbolic plane: meaning and memory of the imagined community
Function and social impact
From Common Trends towards an Analytic Framework
Resilience, recovery, reconciliation, and the “consequences
of peace”
Conclusion: “The Minds of Men”
Notes
Bibliography
Appendices
A – Key people of the Reconstruction
B – The Alcázar of Toledo: Building as Martyr
C – Sagrado Corazón de Jesús Monument
D – Re-codifying Space in Madrid
E – Accounts, Reactions and Interpretations of the Bombing
F – Gernika and Guernica as Inspiration
G – Evolution of Gernika’s Monument-scape
H – Statement by German President Roman Herzog
I – The Tree of Gernika’s Timeline
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“Viejo-Rose (Jesus College, Cambridge)
asserts that studying the efforts of Spaniards to appropriate
and reconstruct history and cultural heritage after their
civil war (1936–1939) and during the Franco dictatorship
(1939–1975) is helpful for the study of aftermaths of
other recent international civil conflicts. Spain is a useful
case study because the more than 70 years since the civil
war gives scholars the opportunity to examine both short-term
and ‘midterm’ projects and the effects of reconstructing
cultural heritage. That process involves the forging of a
new version of the nation and its visual landscapes; rewriting
history to retell the national past in light of conflict;
constructing new memory with monuments and commemoration;
and recodifying politics of space and place, or the ‘symbolscape.’
The book features an analysis of the destruction of the Basque
village of Gernika in April 1937, the regime’s attempts to
physically and discursively reconstruct Gernika, and, finally,
a deconstruction of those reconstruction projects. Over 200
images, tables, and text boxes pepper 200 pages of text, making
for an often choppy, frustrating read. Despite this, the book
is of significant value to both Hispanists and students of
civil wars, memory, and reconstruction. Highly recommended.”
Choice
“Reconstructing Spain underlines
the importance of rescuing the truth through collective memory
as an analytical tool. Dacia Viejo-Rose has conducted meticulous
research using visual and documentary evidence including architecture,
monuments, the built landscape, cartoons, newsreels, museums
and museum archives, written materials, and political party
documents, especially the Basque National Party (PNV) in the
case of Gernika. She also uses participant observation, acts
of remembrance, and informal interviews. This kind of analysis
is especially apposite in contemporary Spain, where at last,
almost 40 years after the end of dictatorship, there are attempts
to confront truths about the darkest decades of the twentieth
century.
… Reconstructing Spain is an excellent book,
strongly recommended to those with a general or scholarly
interest or anyone wanting to know more about the role of
heritage as a propaganda tool, and the risks in reconstructing
heritage in postconflict situations. The book offers a fascinating
insight into a less reported aspect of the Franco regime.
It further enables a better understanding of the current debate
about the recovery of lost memories a couple of generations
after the end of the Civil War. Perhaps even more importantly,
the book contains significant lessons in how the international
community should respond to nation building and post-conflict
reconciliation.” International Journal of Heritage Studies
“Cultural heritage in its many
different expressions and manifestations, from sites and monuments,
through museums and collections to the intangible and oral
heritage, has become an increasingly important part of contested
identities over recent decades, and in many countries is now
seen as a key element of national and regional identities.
… This book is an important and original contribution
to a field that is of considerable importance and continuing
present-day relevance.” Patrick Boylan, Professor
Emeritus of Heritage Policy and Management, City University
of London
“Reconstructing Spain examines, through the
example of the Spanish Civil War and its aftermath, the role
played by cultural heritage in post-conflict reconstruction,
either as the justification of the prolongation of violence
or as a contribution to the construction of reconciliation.
This is done convincingly through a sophisticated and nuanced
examination of various elements of the reconstruction pursued
by the Franco dictatorship whether in physical, architectural
terms or through ‘cultural’ devices, the rewriting
of history, the demonization of the defeated and so on.”
Paul Preston, Series Editor, London School of Economics
Following is a joint review of Reconstructing Spain
and Olivia Muñoz-Rojas’ Ashes and Granite: Destruction
and Reconstruction after the Spanish Civil War and its Aftermath
“What
happens in the aftermath of war? Reconstruction is a term
often thought of in a physical sense, but using Spain after
1939 as case studies, both of these works challenge us to
delve deeper into the meaning of the term and examine its
implications for propagandistic, cultural and symbolic meanings.
They seek to have us look at landscapes in an entirely new
way and to contextualize and complicate our own interpretations
of various sites by understanding their design, purpose and
use in the effort to rebuild Spain after the civil conflict
of 1936–1939.
… Recounting the extensive aerial bombing
that occurred across during the Civil War, Olivia Muñoz-Rojas
argues that after the fighting, the regime of General Francisco
Franco had “an unparalleled opportunity of rebuilding the
country” and doing so in a manner that reflected “the values
the Nationalists had purportedly fought to reinstate: unity,
discipline, honor, hierarchy” (2). Similarly, Dacia Viejo-Rose
begins her study of post-Civil War Spain by asking “What role
cultural heritage plays in post-conflict reconstruction, whether
as a motor for the prolongation of violence or as a resource
for building reconciliation” (1). Both authors draw extensively
on photographs and other visual images, such as architectural
plans, while also grounding themselves in the archives of
various municipalities, regions and central administrative
organs like those of the Ministerio de Gobernacíon’s Direccíon
General Regiones Devastadas. The result is two important studies
not only for Spanish historians of the immediate post-Civil
War era but for anyone interested in the uses of historical
memory and places and the revision of such sites that come
about as a result of the need for physical reconstruction
after conflict.
… Muñoz-Rojas focuses on three case studies
in Madrid, Bilbao and Barcelona in order to assess the plans
and achievements of the Franco regime in the field of reconstruction
during the immediate years after the war. In Madrid, early
initiatives by the Falange to build a new headquarters influenced
by Nazi and Fascist architecture as part of an effort to recast
the capital as a center of administrative and imperial power
fell short. In Bilbao, the need for quickly rebuilding the
city’s river bridges destroyed by retreating Republican troops
gave the Franco regime both a propagandistic opportunity to
rally against “red barbarism” and a chance to put forth new
structures that evoked modernism and the promise of a ‘New
Spain’. Meanwhile, in Barcelona, the bombing damage in the
city center allowed the construction of what is now called
Avengeda de la Catedral and fulfill longer term visions of
a central avenue into old Barcelona. It also gave the regime
the chance to reveal Roman ruins in the old quarter and exploit
them for the purpose of linking the new regime to the glories
of a Roman past. Muñoz-Riojas details each case well while
drawing out the significant gaps between plans and reality,
between national visions and local needs, and the effort to
change cities within a regime that celebrated the rural.
… Dacia Viejo-Rose offers a more theoretical
work, grounding her study within the framework of post-conflict
studies and memory studies to examine how symbolic landscapes
are built in a way that possibly “prolongs the violence of
the war into the post-conflict period, planting antagonistic
symbols of difference that continue to provoke fear and hatred
and operate against reconciliation” (3–4). Drawing on
ideas about history, monuments, cultural resources, space
and lieux de mémoire, Viejo-Rose defines reconstruction as
being a complex phenomenon that revisions place, rewrites
history, remembers selective events and myths and recodifies
space (199). The result is a new ‘heritage-scape’ that is
meant to “structure spaces and their meanings” (202). While
she, like Muñoz-Rojas, points out gaps between ambitions and
reality (211), Viejo-Rose argues that the transformation of
space desired by the Franco regime was more successful than
not, at least in the short and medium-term. The book does
this in two ways, first through a general examination of policies
associated with reconstruction and the central government’s
DG Regiones Devastadas, and second, through a case study of
Gernika.
… In her examination of the nation as a whole,
Viejo-Rose outlines important propagandistic themes such as
the celebration of historical figures like the Catholic Kings
and El Cid, and the comparison between them and Nationalist
heroes of the Civil War. Looking at how these themes revealed
themselves in particular places and at particular sites, the
author examines the rebuilding of the small towns of Belchite
and Brunete, both of which changed hands numerous times in
the conflicts and which were extensively destroyed. In Brunete,
the entire town was re-planned and new housing and street-building
projects were propagandized as heralding the modern Spain
(60–61). In Belchite, the original town was left in
ruins and a new town was built 500 meters away; new modern
planning stood alongside ruins and memorials to fallen martyrs
(88–90). Practical reality invaded this planned symbolic
landscape, because reconstruction took so long, most residents
lived amongst the ruins for over 15 years (90). Nonetheless,
the ambitions that the Belchite case demonstrated allow Viejo-Rose
to define reconstruction of cultural heritage as physical,
symbolic and social (198).
… Using a case study of Gernika, Viejo-Rose
notes how any trace of the town’s destruction by bombing on
April 27, 1937 was removed and a new, modern market opened
in 1943 alongside a town hall that used some Basque elements
while also incorporating more typical Spanish designs in terms
of roads and space leading to the plaza. All of this was not
only about removing signs of the bombing, but also was an
effort to downplay the town’s history as a center of Basque
rights and Basque culture (122–127).
… One of the most important contributions
in Viejo-Rose’s work is the decision to extend her analysis
beyond the short- and medium-term of the 1940s and 1950s.
From the moment of the Gernika bombing onwards, she analyzes
the other ‘reconstruction’ of Gernika outside of Spain, amongst
Republicans and their supporters. She also moves forward to
examine the memory of the site in the immediate period of
Transition, 1975/6–82, and since 2004 with the efforts
of the Zapatero government to incorporate historical memory
into the culture and politics of Spain. The extensive construction
of monuments and the holding of public events in Gernika,
and the transformation of the town as a symbol of victimhood
into a symbol for peace-building, reflect her argument that
reconstruction is constant, and that it is necessary to understand
the stages involved (195). In the case of Gernika, Franco’s
vision of a suppressed victimhood had to be followed by commemoration
of victims, typified by the mausoleum erected in the town’s
cemetery in 1994, before the town could become a site for
peace-building conferences and other related activities.
… The replication of images and plans necessary for
the arguments of both authors is extensive in both books,
and Sussex Academic Press should be congratulated for the
efforts made in this respect. Dacia Viejo-Rose’s Reconstructing
Spain also includes a number of insets that develop the
history and critical analysis of specific sites like Brunete,
Belchite and Valle de los Caídos as well as issues provoked
by the Law on Historical Memory like the excavation of the
supposed grave of Federico García Lorca (164).
… Reading these two books together is a worthwhile
exercise, and leaves many questions to explore. Olivia Muñoz-Rojas
emphasizes the gap between rhetoric and reality, and she underlines
that the Franco regime was not only “repressive” but also
“lethargic” and that the visions of a new Spain fell short
given these attitudes (67). Viejo-Rose, on the other hand,
believes Spain serves as an excellent case to study the transformation
of landscapes through reconstruction and that it allows one
to draw out the symbolic narratives inherent in the process
of “re-visioning the nation” (197). Moreover, by moving beyond
the Franco era, Viejo-Rose also seeks to demonstrate that
one re-visioning effort, even carried out over 30-plus years,
did not eliminate the other heritage of the civil war, that
of the Republicans, which continues to shape and re-shape
the Spanish landscape. All three conclusions strike this reader
as true, and thus there remains a need to continue to examine
and deconstruct the myths, symbols and narratives of the Civil
War as they appear in Spanish and diasporic places.”
David A. Messenger, University
of Wyoming, Bulletin for Spanish and Portuguese Historical
Studies
“In this study, Dacia Viejo-Rose,
a Research Associate at Jesus College, Cambridge, assesses
the motives and consequences of reconstructing a country post-civil
war – in this case, Spain – and the role that heritage plays
post-conflict, examining the relationship between cultural
heritage, power and society.
…The post-civil war reconstruction of Spain was a powerful
way of exerting control, reminding people who won the war
and conditioning behaviour. Viejo-Rose demonstrates how this
was done, through various stages of the reconstruction by
using an overwhelming array of references and resources. Although
a study on Spain, we can see parallels with Cyprus, Iraq and
Afghanistan, which Viejo-Rose references. She concludes with
a chapter presenting the risk that reconstruction itself can
destroy heritage and contribute to events that will lead to
the recurrence of war: ‘If truth is the first casualty
of war, it certainly takes a long time to be resuscitated,
as myths born during the war takes years to be dispelled and
can be reinforced in the reconstruction’.” Sophia Sophocleous,
www.tribunemagazine.co.uk
“What Viejo-Rose’s examples from within
and beyond the Peninsula do undeniably provide are a series
of compelling illustrations of Foucault’s dictums on how
ostensibly hegemonic discourses of power not only allow,
but also sometimes create, the possibility for dissidence.
There is, for example, a fascinating discussion on how memorials
to Nationalist martyrs in Francoist Spain became psychic
and physical loci of resistance as the memory of those who
died on the Republican side were paradoxically kept alive
by their (in)conspicuous absence from the regime’s official
‘history’. The opposition to deterministic imposition from
above is, in this case, framed in a positive light but, the
author argues, it can also beset more progressive measures.
… Predisposed
to accept the need for historical memory – she is critical
of the PSOE for not making better use of an absolute majority
‘to acknowledge the previously
ignored and disregarded victims of the regime’ during their second mandate of
the 1980s (155) – Viejo-Rose retains a critical distance from the processes by
which it is often enacted. This makes a refreshing change from the Manichean
discourse which still proliferates in much Spanish historiography; it also allows
the author to make potentially controversial parallels not only between Francoism
and the ‘à la carte version of the past’ fostered by the first Socialist administration
(154), but also to efforts made elsewhere by the international community (202),
without ever succumbing to moral relativism. Nevertheless, the general conclusion
drawn from the Spanish case is underwhelming: ‘the reconstruction of cultural
heritage in the aftermath of war is not inherently a peace-building activity’
(214).
… This
may be a useful reminder and/or caveat, but it hardly constitutes a radical intervention
in wider debates. I was not, therefore, convinced by the publisher’s
blurb which speaks of how the ‘insights are pertinent to other cases such as
Cambodia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Afghanistan and Iraq’; the end product is seemingly
less than the sum of its parts. Viejo-Rose’s self-consciously broad scope nevertheless
gives rise to the book’s principal strengths and limitations; any scepticism
I felt over its general applicability was more than compensated for by individual
components which are of sufficient merit to warrant our attention and praise.
The engaging prose style, academic rigour, non-parochial approach and keen eye
for the human dimension make this essential and enjoyable reading for anyone
interested in the politics and culture of contemporary Spain.” Duncan Wheeler,
Bulletin of Spanish Studies, University of Glasgow
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