Intellectuals and the past: public uses of anti-Francoism culture

Abstract

The article analyzes the intellectuals’ perception of their own past, as well as the public uses of anti-Franco culture today. It concludes that the public memory of exile, understood as a cultural unit, prevailed over the culture of the internal opposition, and that the debate on intellectuals coming from the Franco regime was central. In the early moments of the current democracy anti-Franco culture was remembered in positive terms, but its institutional commemoration continued to be seen as a cause of division; the Transition, in contrast, became a consensual «site of memory».