Peculiar but Not Unique: Spanish Memory Politics in Comparative Perspective

This paper challenges the view of Spain as at odds or in defiance of the international consensus of how nations should handle a difficult and painful past.  It ensues primarily from the absence of political trials and truth commissions since the democratic transition in 1977, and the embrace of what has been termed “the politics of forgetting.”  But placing the Spanish experience in a broad comparative perspective reveals that while the Spanish experience is peculiar, it is hardly outside of the mainstream.  A broad historical look at how nations over the course of the years have coped with an anguished past reveals that Spain is hardly the first nation to have attempted to forget a painful history as it underwent a process of democratization.  There is, in fact, a long history in the West of nations relying upon forgetting and/or reimagining history for the purpose of facilitating the consolidation of democratic institutions.  On the other hand, despite influence of the “transitional justice movement,” there is, in fact, no universal consensus for how nations should tackle the political crimes of a departed authoritarian regime.  If there is an established norm or pattern, it has been is to seek pragmatic solutions that respond largely to political rather than legal or ethical imperatives.