Espanol Battalion
20th June 2008, 10:03
From today's The Guardian
Spanish archive sheds light on Franco's dark days
A wig used to disguise a communist leader, censored poems written by the current culture minister and a list of prisoners facing the firing squad are just a few of the treasures within 157,000 boxes of archives highlighting both the dark and ridiculous sides of the Spanish civil war and Franco's dictatorship.
Now the documents, which stretch 109 miles back to back, are to be sent from an archive in Madrid to a new Centre for Historical Memory in Salamanca, the wartime headquarters of Franco, to go on view when the centre opens in two years after refurbishment.
Among the artefacts will be the wig used by Santiago Carrillo when he secretly returned to Spain after Franco's death in 1975. Visitors will also be able to pore over lists of dates of the executions by firing squad of enemies of Franco's regime. The proceedings of kangaroo courts, which condemned opponents on trumped-up charges, also form part of this testament to one of Spain's darkest chapters.
The archives reveal that about a million people were imprisoned between the end of the civil war in 1939 and the latter days of the Franco regime in 1973. Crosses next to prisoners' names meant they were executed.
The archive was saved by civil servants who ignored orders to destroy them, putting themselves at risk.
The scale of the surveillance and censorship of Spanish society over 44 years is laid bare by the documents. Half a million reports by the censors, who went line by line through every book, play and poem published, are contained within the archive. "It was a state within a state," said Alfonso Dávila, director general of the General Archive in Madrid.
César Antonio Molina, the culture minister, revealed that one of his youthful poems failed to get past the censors. "I had this honour," he said.
Meanwhile, more than 3,000 photographs of the civil war have gone on display online for the first time. Striking images from the Archivo Rojo - named after Vicente Rojo, a Republican general who led the defence of Madrid - show images of bombed-out buildings, soldiers and civilians in the midst of the bombardment of Madrid by Franco's forces.
The archive was created during the early stages of the war by the Republican authorities to detail the damage to the capital. But after it was captured, Franco's forces censored the images. Most images are poorly labelled so the culture ministry has asked the public to fill in the gaps.
Spanish archive sheds light on Franco's dark days
A wig used to disguise a communist leader, censored poems written by the current culture minister and a list of prisoners facing the firing squad are just a few of the treasures within 157,000 boxes of archives highlighting both the dark and ridiculous sides of the Spanish civil war and Franco's dictatorship.
Now the documents, which stretch 109 miles back to back, are to be sent from an archive in Madrid to a new Centre for Historical Memory in Salamanca, the wartime headquarters of Franco, to go on view when the centre opens in two years after refurbishment.
Among the artefacts will be the wig used by Santiago Carrillo when he secretly returned to Spain after Franco's death in 1975. Visitors will also be able to pore over lists of dates of the executions by firing squad of enemies of Franco's regime. The proceedings of kangaroo courts, which condemned opponents on trumped-up charges, also form part of this testament to one of Spain's darkest chapters.
The archives reveal that about a million people were imprisoned between the end of the civil war in 1939 and the latter days of the Franco regime in 1973. Crosses next to prisoners' names meant they were executed.
The archive was saved by civil servants who ignored orders to destroy them, putting themselves at risk.
The scale of the surveillance and censorship of Spanish society over 44 years is laid bare by the documents. Half a million reports by the censors, who went line by line through every book, play and poem published, are contained within the archive. "It was a state within a state," said Alfonso Dávila, director general of the General Archive in Madrid.
César Antonio Molina, the culture minister, revealed that one of his youthful poems failed to get past the censors. "I had this honour," he said.
Meanwhile, more than 3,000 photographs of the civil war have gone on display online for the first time. Striking images from the Archivo Rojo - named after Vicente Rojo, a Republican general who led the defence of Madrid - show images of bombed-out buildings, soldiers and civilians in the midst of the bombardment of Madrid by Franco's forces.
The archive was created during the early stages of the war by the Republican authorities to detail the damage to the capital. But after it was captured, Franco's forces censored the images. Most images are poorly labelled so the culture ministry has asked the public to fill in the gaps.