Is Spain Recovering its Memory? Breaking the Pacto del Olvido

This article considers the ongoing effort by campaigners in Spain to gain official recognition of the human rights crimes of the Franco dictatorship. Despite estimates placing the number of Republican supporters summarily executed and buried in unmarked graves during and after the civil war at 30,000, demand for an official investigation has only surfaced in the past five years. The article offers an explanation both for the longevity of Spain's unspoken pacto del olvido (pact of forgetting) and for its recent unraveling, in the context of contemporary debates involving issues of transitional justice and memory politics.