Memory, Transnational Justice, and Recession in Contemporary Spain

The 2007 Law of Historical Memory, which aimed to excise the spatial remnants of Francoism from the Spanish landscape, and to recognise Republican victimhood, was blatantly inadequate, and left victims in the same legal position as before.1 In the immediate aftermath of the law, the Spanish state institutionally divorced itself from the recuperation of Republican memory by closing down the Office for Victims of the War and Dictatorship, and reducing the funding devoted to historical memory from 6.5 to 2.5 million in 2011. This article will examine the subsequent transnationalisation of Republican memory, in the form of its Argentinisation, and economic protest movements’ appropriation of the memory of the Second Republic. Relatedly, it seeks
to answer overarching questions concerning the reach and scope of global memory edicts in national memory debates.