American Historical Association

131st Annual Meeting (January 5-8, 2017)

January 05 - 08, 2017

This panel will examine political violence and its consequences in twentieth century Spain. General Mola, a commander in Franco’s Nationalist Army during the Civil War, wrote in April 1936, months before the outbreak of war, that “action has to be violent in the extreme.” Scholars in the past twenty years have work tirelessly to document the extent of violence, and especially violence against civilians that occurred in the Civil War. However, such work has not only been concerned with acts of violence themselves, but also in the impact of violence on Spanish society both during and after their execution. This panel will illuminate three aspects of violence during the Spanish Civil War, dealing with the use of official organizations such as the Civil Guard in violence against opponents even before the outbreak of war, the propaganda of the German Nazi Regime in Spain and the role of anti-Semitism in creating a discourse of violence, and the impact of violence against civilians (especially with regards to the memory of violence and war in contemporary Spain). In all each of these aspects, we can see that war alone was not enough to contain violence in Spain, but it flourished there before, after, and long after the conflict. These papers seek to trace the historical reality and the memory of a society dominated by violence and the ideas that contributed to its continuation in multiple forms.