Réhabiliter leur mémoire? Représentations des victimes de la Guerre Civile et du franquisme dans les musées d'Espagne

Abstract

History museums are places for the mediation of memory discourses they present to the public. The narratives of the past they exhibit result from the different – public or more implicit – intentions of those who create the exhibitions. Similarly, the victims of the past are interpreted and represented differently from one institution to another. In Spain, in a context in which the public memory of the Civil War and of the Francoist dictatorship is still problematic, the different approaches to represent recent history in museums are representative of the general debate. After a theoretical introduction around the museological and museographical representations of history and the mediation of memory discourses in museums, this article explores the role of the notion of victim in three museums of Spain (the Museum of the History of Catalonia in Barcelona, the Museum of the Army in Toledo, and the Peace Museum of Gernika), thanks to the textual and visual analysis of the historical narrative they exhibit.

Keywords

• memory
• Spain
• victims
• Civil War
• museums