Magdalena Gorrell Jaen

Damnatio Memoriae Magdalena Gorrell Jaen

Toward the Retrieval of the Historic Memory of Spain In Ancient Rome, the senate would impose a dishonour known as the damnatio memoriae (obliteration of memory) as a form of punishment inflicted upon traitors or anyone who was not in the Roman emperors good books. In Francos Spain, this punishment provided the framework for the new states genocidal policy to exterminate all those opposed to the Fascist regime, that is, half of the Spanish population. The military coup that overthrew the legal Republican government with a bloody civil war that began July 18, 1936, inflicted a totalitarian regime under General Franco that remained in power until the Caudillos death in 1975. More than three-quarters of a century later, supporters of the movement to restore the Historic Memory of Spain strive to unearth and publish the stories of the hundreds of thousands of loyal men and women whose memory the Francoists have endeavoured to consign to oblivion and to damn for eternity. They shall not be forgotten.