ABSTRACT
For a long time, Spain was known for its successful transition from dictatorship to democracy. Moreover, it had served as a model case for how, within a short period of time, a society can move from authoritarianism to freedom, integrate into Europe, and modernize – all without processes of revenge and retribution against those responsible for the crimes of the period before. This seemed to change in the year 2000, when civil society organizations started to exhume mass graves of the republican victims of the Civil War, mostly related to executions behind the front lines, and repressive violence against civilians during the ensuing Francisco Franco dictatorship. 2 These exhumations and the emergence of a strong social movement around the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory (ARMH) also opened up intense debates about the way Spain has dealt with the dictatorship and its victims, which has exposed confl icting political cultures, both from an ideological and a generational standpoint.
