ABSTRACT
The city of Barcelona fell to rebel troops on 26 January 1939. In February, the minister of the interior, Ramón Serrano Súñer, announced in the press the ‘military incorporation’ of Catalonia into Spain. Its ‘moral incorporation’, he assured readers, would follow in due course. Serrano would be proved correct. The Francoist authorities would impose a new memory of the ‘Crusade’ and the recent past on the region, which demanded that earlier memories, be they Republican or Catalanist, be forgotten. As well as changing street names and launching other memory initiatives in urban public space, the regime would construct a monument to ‘Victory’ in the civil war at the intersection of the Paseo de Gracia and the Diagonal Avenue. 1 The monument symbolised the new era. Inside Spain at least, victory in the civil war had given the Franco regime power over what could be said about the past, and in turn a monopoly over memory. 2 Forgetting would certainly not be allowed after the war was over. The heroes and martyrs had to be kept present in post-war life, transforming them into a crucial instrument in the construction of the ‘war culture’ still prevailing after 1939. 3 The ‘Crusade’ was the object of perpetual commemoration. It was presented as a purifying and seminal moment in the (capital ‘H’) History of Spain. At the same time, it was presented as a traumatic, catastrophic event, which must never be allowed to recur. 4 The Franco regime justified itself and built itself around this memory, constantly returning to a distorted reading of what had happened, in order to explain the past, the present, and the future. The regime would continually seek to rekindle the ‘spirit of the Crusade’ and affirm the existence of ‘two Spains’. It was a vision built upon the division between victors and vanquished, and one which made reconciliation or forgiveness impossible. 5
