Narrating War in Peace

"Through case studies of four prominent cultural products, this book takes a longitudinal approach to the influence and conceptualization of the Civil War in democratic Spain. Stafford uses Agustí Centelles' photographs; Jaime Camino's documentary films La vieja memoria (1977) and Los niños de Rusia (2001); Antonio Munoz Molina's fiction, especially La noche de los tiempos (2009); and Picasso's Guernica (1937) to explore the questions: What sort of stories were told about the war in cultural production during the transition to democracy? How have these narratives morphed in the twenty-first century in light of the polemics about historical memory? The cultural memory of the Spanish Civil War has shifted from representations of hero to victim, from ideology to affect, and finally, from trauma to identification through connection with the past"--