Many believe – wrongly, as it turns out – that under Franco’s dictatorship, nothing truthful or imaginatively worthwhile could be said or written. And this myth reinforces another: that there is a national pact to forget what really happened. In the four decades since Franco’s death foreign narratives still have greater credibility than Spanish ones. In an investigation of collective memory, Jeremy Treglown talks to the descendants of men and women killed during the civil war and ensuing dictatorship and stands on a hillside with them as remains are excavated; he attends a Sunday service in the basilica dedicated to Franco’s memory, examines monuments, paintings, novels, films, computer games and finds that despite state censorship, creativity under Franco was burgeoning and events of the time were in fact vividly recorded.

Author Jeremy Treglown Published by Vintage ISBN 9781784701154 EAN 9781784701154 Bic Code Cover Paperback