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The Spanish Past in Transnational Films. The ‘Otherlands’ of Memory

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2014

Adriana J. Bergero
Adriana J. Bergero*
Affiliation:
Department of Spanish and Portuguese, University of California Los Angeles, 5310 Rolfe Hall, Box 951532, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1532, USA. E-mail: bergero@humnet.ucla.edu
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Abstract

Translated by Chase Raymond

Based on the work of theoreticians prevalent in the field of Memory Studies (Rothberg, Nora, Radstone, Aguilar, Faber, de Diego, Gómez López-Quiñones and Labanyi), this article analyses the films The Devil Backbone and Pan’s Labyrinth by the Mexican director Guillermo Del Toro as examples of a memory-formation that is deeply entrenched within Spain’s current political, legal and cultural debates on the Spanish Civil War, the Francoist dictatorship and the political immunity institutionalised by the Transition’s pact of silence. At the same time, as emerging from ‘otherlands’ of memory, Del Toro’s films are good examples of how multidirectional memories react to universal/transnational concerns about traumatic pasts and violations of human rights.

Type
Focus: Transnational Memory in the Hispanic World
Information
European Review , Volume 22 , Issue 4 , October 2014 , pp. 632 - 641
Copyright
© Academia Europaea 2014 

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