Galizan Civil War novels: Recuperating historical memory for (re)building democracy in the present and forging a national identity

In this study I analyze four novels that deal with the Spanish Civil War written by Galizan authors in the Galizan language: Pensa nao (1999) by Anxo Angueira, Scorpio (1987) by Ricardo Carvalho Calero, Amor de tango (1992) by Maria Xose Queizan and O lapis do carpinteiro (1998) by Manuel Rivas. My analyses shed light on the role these novels play as transmitters of historical memory, and as discourses of national identity construction, primarily within three historical-political problematics. The first is the growing general movement in Spain to recover the memory of the crimes of the Civil War. Serving as counter discourses to the official version of "todos tuvimos la culpa," these novels strive to counteract the effects of the pact of oblivion imposed by the political elites during and after the democratic transition. The second problematic derives from Galiza's relative invisibility in the historiography of the Spanish Civil War. Though a plethora of scholarly work (both Spanish and foreign) has been produced on this event, very little has been dedicated to Galiza, despite the political leadership of this community during the Republic, and its fundamental part in Franco's winning the war. The Galizan Civil War novels address this neglect by foregrounding the community's role in the war. The negative effects that the war and dictatorship continue to have on society constitute the third historical-political problematic. While some of the Civil War novels depict only the war and the horrors of fascism (mostly within Galiza but sometimes in other parts of Spain as well), some of them---such as those I examine in this dissertation---also portray the democratic achievements of the Republic and implicitly invite the reader to compare this lost democracy with the current political status. Many of the Civil War novels try to lay bare, as it were, the continuing political struggles that hide under an apparently functional political system.