The construction of family memory through activist engagement: The case of relatives of the disappeared in Spain

Data and method

Data for this research were collected in Catalonia, the Madrid region, and Andalusia during in-depth and repeated biographical interviews (2011–2015; 2019–2020) with approximately 40 “relatives of the disappeared” involved in victims’ associations from the 2000s on.

My investigation focused on the public involvement of actors who defend the cause of the “victims of Francoism.” The actors were therefore selected on the basis of their active and daily involvement. Contrary to what one might expect, the individuals who became involved had initially a very diverse relation to violent events: while some had knowledge, others admitted their ignorance. By observing their activities over a long period of time, I was able to measure the effects that memorial socializations had on individuals with a very diverse political awareness of events. Regardless of their heterogeneity, they each benefited from learnings, integrated codes of conduct, and new perspectives on the violent events. The long-term commitment to the cause aligned the behaviors of all these individuals, underscoring the strength of memorial socializations. Moreover, as a resident of Spain during the investigation, I often interacted with other Spanish citizens whose families had been repressed. Although they were aware of their families’ tragedies, they spoke from a position somewhat distant to the cause, which only emphasized, by contrast, the transformative dimension of memorial commitment.

My sample consisted of grandchildren and grandnephews. Four informants were second generation (two sons, one daughter, one nephew). These older actors were in fact actively assisted by third-generation children who were mobilizing for their cause. This article therefore deals with actors from the third generation, the most sociologically active in Spanish memorial processes (Aguilar Fernández and Ramírez-Barat, 2019).

I analyze their life stories following the methods of the sociology of memory (Gensburger, 2016). According to this approach which refuses to “reify” memory (Fine and Beim, 2007; Olick, 2007), memories are evoked and reconstructed interactively within “social frameworks” (Halbwachs, 1997 [1950]). Thus, two questions guided the analysis of these life stories: (1) What social experiences have made individuals aware of the memory of past violence? (2) How did the militant socialization they experienced following their engagement transform their relationship to this memory?

While it is acknowledged that the memory of violence can be passed on to subsequent generations “so deeply and affectively as to seem to constitute memories in their own right” (Hirsch, 2012: 5), I argue that this “living connection” with the pain of victims is also constructed outside the family sphere. This implies to demonstrate that individual memories of Francoism were shaped by chains of socialization (family, professional, militant, etc.) that individuals experience over the long run. To this end, I combined the analysis of “social frameworks” with the notion of biographical “career” (Becker, 1966; Fillieule, 2019). According to this approach, an individual’s given social behavior is continuously modulated by a succession of socializing experiences. In the present case, this implied reconstructing the successive biographical stages through which individuals progressively developed a sensitivity to memory. Here, I describe social regularities that emerge from the collected biographical material.

In this article, I also draw on another approximately 50 interviews with actors at the forefront of the cause of the disappeared (associative leaders, jurists, psychologists, forensic specialists, and academics).

Awareness of the family history: a protracted process

Working on the engagement of mobilized individuals to elucidate the destiny of a “disappeared” relative immediately leads to envisioning the transmission of “family memory” as a determinant in their struggle. Indeed, when facing individuals publicly bearing witness to the violence their relatives suffered, and who brandish the portrait of a grandparent whom they never knew, the hypothesis of strong family socialization establishes itself from the outset: it is easy to imagine these individuals were raised with some knowledge and clear awareness of the repression to which their relatives were subject. This hypothesis is all the more obvious to researchers as in Spain the terms used to designate the “victims” draw upon a familial lexical field. “Families” (familias), “descendants” (descendientes), and “relatives of the repressed” (familiares de represaliados): conveyed in legislative texts, political discourse, and the media, these notions contributed to characterizing the mobilized citizens according to strictly genealogical criteria. One should also mention a very common expression referring to the promoters of memorial debates: the “generation of grandchildren” (generación de los nietos). The figure of the “nieto/nieta” (grandson/granddaughter), homogenized (Aguilar Fernández and Ramírez-Barat, 2019), essentialized, and erected as a driver of mobilization, imposed the family relationship as the variable explaining memorial engagement. Finally, this variable also appears as a major factor in engagement when the actors first meet the investigator. Presenting themselves as “republicans,” “grandchildren of the repressed,” or “relatives of the disappeared,” they always invoke a family “tradition” and tragic “history” to justify their current involvement. Furthermore, faced with individuals with intimate stories, the sincerity of which is obvious during the interviews (tears, sadness and a serious tone), the researcher is entirely inclined to take them at their word.

In short, “the private family link to the victim became the basic justification and legitimacy for public action” (Jelin, 2008: 183), providing every reason to postulate strong family socialization to the memory of violence. However, the argument that family socialization was a vector for the internalization of referents and narratives that were suddenly made relevant by the subsequent context of mobilizations should be nuanced. An initial category of informants immediately requires nuance for the simple reason that they were never told the family history. Throughout their youth, it was deliberately distorted, if not hidden. This was the case for informants raised in families who had overplayed their loyalty to the Franco regime in order to protect their children from the regime’s stigmatization of the “defeated” (Cenarro, 2002). As such, the case of these actors, who only belatedly discovered their “true” family history and are now claiming the very family political genealogy their relatives had carefully hidden from them (“I come from a family of republicans”), notably downplays the weight of the family transmission of memory in analyzing the process of engagement.

In turn, the case of informants claiming family transmission, whether occasional or forthright, raises other methodological problems. First, if there was transmission, one should still wonder what was received, since “the objective presence of family cultural capital only has meaning if this is placed under conditions which render its ‘transmission’ possible” (Lahire, 1995: 229). Thus, informants revealed themselves to be nuanced when asked about the concrete conditions under which they received the transmitted content. At a young age, family narrative had never appeared to them as a block of coherent knowledge and homogeneous references. Stressing their lack of knowledge and of awareness of historical landmarks from the time, they recognized that, upon hearing these stories, they knew little of the scope (political, activist, tragic, etc.) of the content transmitted, no more than they associated it with a general history (that of “victims,” “defeated,” and “republicans”). Scattered, anecdotal, and decontextualized, their stories were very often mediated by interactions in situ. They were associated, above all, with shared complicity with a relative:

I was told things like a child, they didn’t tell me with anger, blood and rage! For me, it was a story that my grandmother told me. ²

In my family, I was taught subversive songs, the song of the barricades, the International . . . My grandfather taught us that with my sister, and there was my grandmother who came running in saying “don’t tell all that to the children, they’ll put us in prison again!.” For us it was our secret game with our grandfather. ³

Alternatively, this occurred in daily shared activities: “My father had me read the republican poets but, in reality, I read a lot; it was one set of reading materials among others.” ⁴ In other words, these accounts amounted to affective experiences that gave substance to family life, and not to narratives that linked individuals to their ancestors’ deeds and actions. Moreover, most appeared as isolated and circumscribed events in daily family life, which were not sanctioned and discussed simultaneously in other social situations (peer groups, school, etc.). In other words, the effective family memory to which they refer today amounts more to affective, localized memories, rather than to discourse embedded in their family’s awareness and collective history—as in the Chilean case. ⁵

It is only in the light of subsequent social experiences that these disparate, compartmentalized accounts will be reinterpreted and acquire greater significance (Halbwachs, 1992 [1941]). Nonetheless, this reinterpretation of meaning is far from automatic, as the meaning of “what was received” must be reconfigured through experiences of relevant (student, activist, or professional) socialization. Now, a narrative legacy may remain latent and “unavailable” (Lahire, 2011) if the actor has not lived through other social experiences that resonate. To take just one example, the very contrasting awareness of family memory that one observes among siblings is suggestive. In some of the families studied, indeed, the memorial cause could generate one brother’s or sister’s indifference, even disdain. In addition to underscoring the heterogeneity of appropriations of family narratives, this propensity of brothers and sisters exposed to the same history “to not draw on the same part of this common instrument” (Halbwachs, 1992 [1941]: 48) is not surprising and indicates that a family predisposition to memorial questions may remain unexpressed; indeed, siblings may clash on this, if this is not fostered in other social milieus.

On balance, and with the exception of actors from families where complete silence reigned, the family certainly transmitted some narratives relative to the repression. Yet, diachronically, above all, this inheritance seems similar to a rich pool of experiences—of values, anecdotes, piecemeal references—which were continually reinterpreted and reconstructed according to individuals’ subsequent social experiences.

The development of an awareness of the family’s past was, consequently, an extended process over time, significantly guided by extrafamilial social influences. In this respect, it should be noted from the outset that in the absence of memory policies such as those adopted at the end of the 2000s in Spain, the actors were not made aware of past violence via dedicated public initiatives (museum policies, public homages, etc.). ⁶ Similarly, school had a minimal impact (Serrano-Moreno, 2013). Although the Civil War was covered in secondary school and the content of the material taught had been reformed (Falaize and Koreta, 2010), informants bore witness to the fact that since the period was placed at the end of the school year, “there was never enough time to devote to teaching this.” The subject was, at most, treated in an ad hoc manner (dates of battles, facts about the fighters, and the conquest of territories), without any social or “human” history of the events. In sum, before the appearance of fora dedicated to remembering during the 2000s (see above), the informants had never been in social spaces explicitly devoted to remembering the repression, which would have prompted them to raise questions about their family history.

Interest in family history was, in fact, developed little by little by fortuitous events in their adult lives and, above all, in a roundabout fashion. Informants were not suddenly made aware through the intrinsically suggestive power of an explicit “family story.” Far from being received in abstracto, family history accounts were perceived and interpreted under the influences of these individuals’ immediate social contexts.

Alberto’s case illustrates this process. Raised in a “conservative family,” by a father who supported the Franco regime, this informant was highly exposed to leftist activism at university, during student mobilizations at the end of the dictatorship. Subsequently, in his 20s, he had serious political disagreements with his father. For years, their discussions were tense and short-lived. Yet, for Alberto, who was immersed on a daily basis in “progressive” milieus, his father’s political orientation remained mysterious. He wanted to know more and, regularly, asked him questions. His father’s answers were laconic. But at times, Alberto detected inconsistencies that even made him doubt his father’s “original” political identity:

I wanted to understand why he was a fascist. There were a number of crazy things, questions with no answers . . . Who educated you? Why did you send me to the German school? At one point, this didn’t fit. When I asked him “how did you come to (the name of the city)?,” he told me “with the Red Aid.” And then I said “why with the Red Aid? Before, you were red, and then you became a fascist?” ⁷

In his 40s, Alberto wanted to know more and to confirm the hypothesis that his father was “leftist” in the past. He was also no longer satisfied with his father’s elliptical answers when he asked him what happened to his grandfather—he would always reply “he died” without any further details. Alberto went one day to his family’s village to question an aunt who had lived through these events. He learned that his father was indeed an activist in the Socialist Youth, before being placed in a re-education center by the regime, but also that his grandfather was shot by Franco supporters. For several years, Alberto would not go beyond this initial incursion into family history, motivated by the marked discrepancy he felt between his activist sensitivities and his father’s values: he had only looked to explain his father’s enigma.

A dozen years later, at the start of the 2000s, his grandfather’s fate resurfaced. Media coverage of the first exhumations of mass graves and the viral circulation of the category of the “disappeared” fed Alberto’s interest. Furthermore, a professional archeologist, he was familiar with his Latin American colleagues’ commitment to the cause of the “disappeared,” especially given that he was asserting an engaged practice of his discipline. Adhering to a “Marxist archeology” which, far from “fetishist” collectionism, endeavors to understand what recovered objects tell us about past economic and social inequalities, Alberto had been trying hard, for 30 years, to have archeology serve the struggles for emancipation.

While the memorial debates gave new relevance to the fate of his grandfather who was shot, it is as a committed archeologist that he perceived and engaged in the cause: Alberto mobilized colleagues and students in his department to convince them to become involved in the memorial field, exhumed mass graves on a voluntary basis to find other families’ “disappeared,” chose to collaborate with a Marxist association which “recovered values, not bones,” and, on the contrary, was critical of those who “fetishized the vestiges.”

Thus, while awareness of his grandfather’s fate was behind his commitment, this emotional history was, above all, apprehended at the intersection of activist and professional considerations which reconfigured its importance. The memorial issue assumed biographical significance for Alberto because it triggered a rearrangement of his role as a Marxist archeologist and, consequently, became intertwined with a passion that had profound meaning for him.

As in Alberto’s case, the paths studied offer a twofold lesson. First, awareness of a violent family past develops progressively. Whether it began from contact with the family (questioning a relative out of curiosity) or on its margins (re-evaluating a memory or a family fact in light of an event experienced), these initial accounts were later revived by an incidental discovery, re-examined following an encounter, set in motion by a confession, resuscitated by a reading, completed again by an event, and so on. Far from stemming from a sudden realization, awareness of the family history was the result of discoveries, appropriations, and cumulative interpretations over a lengthy period.

Second, these anecdotes and narrative fragments accumulated while being continually adjusted to the individuals’ immediate social experiences. They were perceived from a set of intertwining arrangements that modulated their significance and were interpreted according to practical circumstances. In other words, they are the object of biographical attempts to ensure consistency (Voegtli, 2004). The actors had indeed assimilated facts and accounts according to interests forged in other domains of affiliation (professional focus, intellectual inputs, activist values, etc.) and as they engaged in issues allowing for the preservation of a consistent identity (Broqua, 2020). Thus, by adjusting to individuals’ immediate tastes, concerns, and social activities, these family narratives took root in their consciousness and acquired great subjective significance.

Overall, far from having been transmitted and received coherently within the family, “family memory” is similar to a “reflexive memory” (Muxel, 1996): it is a breeding ground of family stories that actors discover and revisit to adapt them to their current lives and to maintain consistency with activities and values which make sense and guide their daily lives.

Seeking the “disappeared”: mobilization, socializations, and reconstruction of the family memory

For a long time, this reflexive relationship that individuals have developed with their family history had no particular implications. However, it took a new turn when they became actively involved in memorial activism.

Indeed, each informant eventually began to research what had become of the “disappeared.” This decision usually occurred after a recurrent family event: the death of a family member (father, mother, uncle, etc.). The context of grieving and shared suffering was propitious for this decision. In families open about the suffered repression, for example, mourning always assumed a political tone: it was the occasion to evoke the memory of the repression and to regret the ignorance in which the deceased passed away. (“Poor Antonio, he died without knowing where his father was buried. He would have so much liked to know . . ..”) In silent families, the social context of funerals and vigils allowed for discoveries (some clues about the deceased’s affairs, tongues loosened with emotion, sudden revelations from a distant uncle, etc.). Beyond specific cases, this context of reactivation of the family’s past spurred by mourning prompted a feeling of obligation among the informants: promising (themselves or relatives) to find the “disappeared.”

The context of mourning stimulated the actors’ inclination to question their family history. But while this context has actualized such a predisposition (Lahire, 2011), it has in turn prompted new behaviors. In deciding to elucidate the fate of the “disappeared,” actors progressively partook in practical activities (investigating or becoming involved) and forms of social interaction (familial, activist, and expert) that profoundly reconfigured their relationship to their family history.

In taking the initiative to find the “disappeared,” individuals started investigating on their own. Initially conducted in a confidential manner, individual research was greatly facilitated by the context of emerging memorial mobilizations, as a large amount of data related to past violence appeared on the web (Ferrándiz, 2014). For instance, associative websites gave access to a set of resources (database of victims, recommendations, list of academic references, relevant people to contact, etc.) on which individuals relied. According to discoveries and combinations of clues, each one became aware of facts completing, correcting, or sometimes entirely reconstructing the family version:

On the site Todos los nombres, ⁸ I discovered that they shot my maternal grandfather whereas they had just told me that he was “dead.” Then, at the library, I find a book with a list of this region’s victims. I find his name and it’s said that he belonged to a Masonic lodge. In the military documents suggested by a historian, I find that it’s explicitly said that Masons must be eliminated. I told my mother all this, but she didn’t even know what a Mason was! ⁹

The investigation then becomes a means of appropriation of a new family history, because it spurs a dialogue between sources with varied knowledge. Angel’s example attests to this. His mother’s testimony long constituted the sole existing path to acquire information about his grandfather. When he started to make inquiries, his grandfather’s fate ceased to be confined to the maternal memory. He enriched his mother’s reminiscences by thoroughly exploring administrative archives, then matched his discoveries by consulting documents and his mother’s old photographs, submitted clues he found were “hidden in the attic” to the judgment of specialists (historians or people involved), consulted recommended works in the library, and, in corroborating his findings, discovered unpublished facts (that his grandfather had been interned in a concentration camp before being shot).

By moving back and forth between family archives and data made visible by memorial mobilizations, Angel becomes the investigator who opens up the family memory (by confronting it with other sources of knowledge) and corrects it (by highlighting previously unknown facts). Like other informants, the dynamics of the inquiry lead him to reconstruct the family memory on a factual basis and, in so doing, to become its sole custodian.

While investigating, Angel and the other interviewees were guided toward the space of memorial mobilization. Whatever the path—contacting an association for research purposes, attending a lecture on “memory,” and so on—they prolonged their private inquiry in penetrating the public world of “historical memory.” By participating in demonstrations, conferences, commemorations, and so on, the actors were caught by unprecedented and captivating spaces of social interaction. My ethnographic immersion among the informants suggested that attendance in these spaces was a very ingrained habit. Regardless of their activities, these spaces represented a continuum of equivalent memorial events structuring the actors’ weekly schedule: “Today, there is a debate on the memory of the Union X’s headquarters, and tomorrow I’m going to Cinema Y to see the documentary on the mass graves.” Furthermore, for them, going there constituted an activist act. Before the 2000s, places where “one talked” openly about the fate of “victims of the Franco regime” did not exist: going there also aimed to support the memorial momentum’s historic character.

In these spaces that they have strongly invested, actors have learned to gradually merge into a community of “victims of Francoism.” There, they had their first experience of socialization of their family cause. In accepting the codes of social interaction at play, giving a preponderant role to their own story, the actors internalized new ways of self-presentation. In these spaces, where it is the status of the victim’s relative which justifies being present and guarantees integration, one presents oneself according to kinship (“I’m the granddaughter of a disappeared” or “the son of a disappeared”) and inserts one’s story into narrative form (“in my family . . .,” or “in our village . . .”). Over the long term, one’s genealogical narrative constructs and maintains a narrative identity by which one is designated within the group (“This is Maria; she is looking for her grandfather, she. . .”; “He’s Agustín; we think that his father was shot around . . .”).

The self-narrative also derives from the place accorded to testimony. Regardless of their purpose (protest sit-ins, commemorations, academic lectures, etc.), organized events are always arranged to solicit a word from participants (with open mics, cameras, stages, and rostrums). While testimony is usually valued by memorial activists, the ethos of democratic inclusivity to which Spanish associative actors adhere ensures it is predominant. The “historical memory” being a “democratic memory” of all those “defeated” in the Civil War and the dictatorship, the memory of a mythical political figure must be celebrated to the same degree as that of an anonymous citizen.

Within these spaces of social interaction, the narratives are given equal respect, and the actors’ family stories are greatly appreciated. From this, they learn to recognize and define themselves through others’ narratives. The actors immerse themselves in each other’s stories and engage in interactions, gradually merging their accounts in shared narratives. For example, presenting oneself as a relative of a “disappeared,” a recent concept in Spain that associative leaders had coined to establish a symbolic parallel between those shot during the Franco regime (Gatti, 2011) and Latin American victims of forced disappearances (Silva and Macías, 2003), is, in itself, an effect of these social interactions. Yet the assimilation is not purely semantic; it is also cognitive. In their early stages of memorial activism, newcomers build on other family testimonies. Comparing stories allows them to lift the curtain on dark zones (on the repressive modus operandi) and obtain new factual data, in sum, to find themselves again in narrative recurrences—even when the related facts occurred in regions far from their own.

Similarly, in contact with others, actors learn to view their own family experience differently. The systematic manner in which informants introduced their family history during interviews speaks volumes: “My family was one of those where we talked about the repression, where there was remembrance”; “For me, like in many families in Spain, it was silence and fear.” Under the effect of this social interaction, actors learned to position themselves vis-à-vis other family experiences (“I come from a family where we talked about it/where we didn’t talk about it”) and internalized categories which re-characterized the attitudes prevalent in their own family (“silence,” “oblivion,” “fear,” “denial,” “remembrance,” etc.). This generalization of family history reframes the intimate family experience as a collective experience, according to a set of values produced by memorial idiosyncrasy (virtuous memory or pathological forgetfulness). It indicates that family trajectories with which individuals come to align themselves constitute a normative discourse, retrospectively shaped by associative socialization.

In addition, relatives of the disappeared are in contact with other categories of victims. Aside from “families of the disappeared,” historical memory spaces also bring together former political prisoners, forced laborers, families of stolen children, or victims of exile. The coalitions incorporating diverse victims’ associations also constitute places permeated with multiple memories (of families, workers, partisans, union activists, villagers, prisoners, etc.). Due to the presence of activists against the Franco regime (exiles, former prisoners, etc.), there is also a sharing of political imaginary (nostalgia for the “Republic”) and symbols (flags, chants, literature, etc.) which build and nourish emotional allegiance to a group culture. Thus, one learns to subsume one’s history within a common condition of “victims of the Franco regime.”

Overall, social interaction in these spaces has transformed these actors’ ways of thinking about themselves. Treating these narratives and fates as equivalent has contributed to “de-singularizing” (Boltanski, 2012) individual stories and to incorporating them altogether in a single community of suffering, with which informants learned to align themselves socially (as “relatives of the disappeared” and “victims of the Franco regime”).

Moreover, as places of circulation of categories and practices promoted by the international human rights milieu, these spaces of “Historical Memory” also encouraged actors to re-read past violence. This reinterpretation occurred under a threefold influence. First, actors were sensitized to the interpretative frameworks of mental health specialists. The memorial engagement of psychologists with Latin American human rights movements, or that of foreign colleagues who had been involved in “post-conflict” policies, contributed to the local spreading of new ways of evaluating the effects of violence, in particular with the category of “trauma” (Bevernage and Colaert, 2014). Promoted by therapists accompanying victims within associations, this “new language of the event” (Fassin and Rechtman, 2009) updated the legacy of past violence. The propagation of diagnoses of inter-generational transmission of traumas (Miñarro and Morandi, 2012), a therapeutic justification for the memory work deemed to treat the aftereffects from which some families still suffer today, conveyed the same findings in social interaction circles: the effects of the Franco regime’s repression remain visible in the psyches of victims’ relatives, and they must, as a consequence, receive compensation as soon as possible.

Individuals were also introduced to the lexicon of international law. Supported by committed jurists and associations making “extra-legal” use of the law (Ferrándiz, 2014: 208), victims’ relatives were attracted to social interactions that judicialized the prejudices experienced, as well as their claims. The spread to victims of norms allowing them to define some responsibilities, in addition to the terms of possible reparation, equally contributed to giving renewed relevance to the effects of past violence. Here again, the notion of “forced disappearance” played a role. In international law, in a case of forced disappearance, the argument of time lapsed is not relevant. Whether a person disappeared the day before or 60 years ago is insignificant; they remain victims of forced disappearance as long as authorities have not provided information on their fate. This legal fiction, which is central to defining the imprescriptibility of this crime against humanity and so attests to continuing impunity, has also revealed the relevance of the family cause.

Finally, forensic experts (forensic doctors, archeologists, and anthropologists) involved in the search for the “disappeared” have introduced individuals to new ways of establishing the “truth” about the deeds perpetrated. Since the early 2000s, these actors have continually exhumed mass graves, attested to less publicized acts of violence, and re-evaluated the enumeration of victims. By locally redeploying knowledge acquired from the “forensic turn” of investigations into mass crimes (Anstett and Dreyfus, 2015) and with internationalized scientific expertise (Rosenblatt, 2015) for producing “truth” based on material evidence (Weizman, 2011), these actors reshaped the view of the past. Media coverage of their practices, their associative collaboration, and their participation in memorial activities (lectures and debates) has allowed for strong interactions with victims’ relatives. In contact with scientists whose science-based social authority further strengthened their own convictions and who continued to produce fresh data on the deeds perpetrated, individuals learned that the truth about the past was a never-ending project.

The knowledge conveyed by these three forms of expertise (health, law, and forensics), which prove the persistence of traumas, attest to persistent impunity and enhance the understanding of massacres, updates the effects of past violence. In absorbing this legitimate knowledge, the actors have been socialized to patterns of analysis stressing the lasting consequences of past violence, which have kept the family cause politically relevant today.

In internalizing new interpretive criteria for past violence, the actors have complied with new standards of conduct. In contact with others, they were tacitly encouraged to adopt certain attitudes and conform with certain practices through which they performed their status of “relatives of the disappeared” on a daily basis. These dynamics can be observed in a number of domains to which they belong. In the domestic sphere, actors develop a new rapport with their family. Insofar as they are engaged in memorial milieus, the family appears to them as a group to “educate” or to “emancipate.” Daily encounters (with combative people in “open” discourse, seniors who are finally coming out of “oblivion,” or psychologists stressing the pathological nature of family silences) and the practices involved in this activism (deliberation, bearing witness, and convincing the reluctant) have led them to liberate their relatives’ words. Asking “questions which anger” relatives, “grilling them” regularly to “draw it out of them,” letting an aunt “who had never talked about it” speak in a recorded “testimonial session,” and so on—these initiatives to which the informants refer to introduce the moral imperatives at play in the memorial milieus within their families (recovering their memories and freeing them to speak about them).

Over the long term, this renewal of memorial idiosyncrasy in the family sphere translates into a pedagogical role. In relaying other families’ testimonies, as well as learnings from experts (historians, archeologists, jurists, etc.) encountered, actors share knowledge of which their elders were unaware, teaching them to take a broader view of the drama they experienced and to reframe it using human rights vocabulary. Informants from families silent about the past experience this transmission as very emotional. Having learned from historians that apoliticism or the dressing up of political identities derived from an imperative to protect themselves from dictatorial repression, informants perceive in their relatives’ “silence” or “lies” a persistent “fear” which is no longer justified. In actively sharing their discoveries, they seek to deliver their elders from such fear, to have them appropriate political values that have long been held on their behalf, and to feel the moral pride of having been “on the right side of the barricade.”

In addition to encouraging actors to sensitize their relatives in private, memorial social interaction and expertise spread moral principles stressing specific forms of public engagement, starting with the publicization of family violence. Writing a grandfather’s biography, making a documentary about the family village, creating a blog dedicated to memory, and so on, they employ their skills and dedicate much private time to publicly spreading “their (new) story.” Above all, they feel justified in doing so due to a shared memorial morality:

You know I’m a programmer; I never thought I’d write a book in my life! And since I’ve been involved in memory projects, I’ve written three history books. ¹⁰

For this programmer, as for other actors, the feeling of lacking the necessary university degree to write a “history book” is dismissed by the group’s values. The strong moral and psychological recognition of testimonies—like the resources available through public grants ¹¹ —empowers these actors. This authorizes them to devote themselves to activities that had previously been socially remote or symbolically forbidden.

Furthermore, memorial social interaction produces “moral evidence,” thus the imperative of exhuming the bodies of the disappeared. In contact with associative actors and international experts (psychologists and forensics) who stress the necessity of doing so, actors learn to take the exhumations of the “disappeared” for granted. The recovery of bodies even becomes synonymous with memory work; its absence, a sign of forgetting (desmemoria):

For seventy years the grave’s been there and no one in the village has exhumed it! The oblivion and the fear in the villages is terrible! ¹²

The normalization of this practice leads to very concrete searching for the bodies of the disappeared; their exhumation and their reburial in a “dignified” tomb (Robin Azevedo, 2016) become central objectives for the actors. Elsewhere, it is now common for them to participate in other families’ exhumations. These “rituals of reappearance” (Ferrándiz, 2014: 237), indeed, attract individuals who come to exhume other “disappeared” and who identify emotionally, claiming no distinction between biological and community connections:

I exhumed many grandfathers. They had other names but they were also mine”; ¹³ “I have the impression of exhuming my uncles again. ¹⁴

Finally, the judicialization of the family cause constitutes another practice which is encouraged. Indeed, in their involvement, actors realize that the historic “memory loss” of the “victims of the Franco regime” constitutes a “denial of justice.” Let us remember that, in Spain, the cause of the Franco regime’s victims cannot be resolved legally due to the Amnesty Law of 1977. While this legal constraint was, by definition, inscribed in law, it did not spark any kind of collective awareness before the 2010s. At that point, the indictment of Judge Baltasar Garzón, accused of prevarication after having launched a legal procedure with respect to crimes of the Franco regime, constituted an event that revealed to all the reality of the Amnesty Law. This context of polarized debates and major demonstrations of support spurred memorial activists to re-examine the law, ¹⁵ now seen as an instrument guaranteeing the impunity of the Franco regime. This reinterpretation of the legal order had the effect of inciting relatives of the disappeared to file complaints in foreign jurisdictions—such as the court of Buenos Aires, with universal jurisdiction to judge crimes against humanity (Montoto Ugarte, 2019). This reveals that acting as a “relative of the disappeared” also entails learning to play off one normative order against another: the actors resort to foreign legal arenas to denounce a local lawless situation and legitimize their cause according to external normative principles which they consider morally superior.

Through these practices incited by activist social interaction, individuals perform their roles of “relatives of the disappeared,” and they do so while experiencing a transformation in the meaning of their family memory, which comes to be supported by new moral principles. Re-educating one’s relatives, publicizing the history of one’s grandmother, finding and reburying the disappeared with dignity, lodging complaints, and so on—indeed, each practice constitutes a normative framework by which family memory must be re-examined: far from being reduced to brutal accounts, family memory becomes a breeding ground for pedagogical principles to transmit, a source of knowledge to be shared, a traumatic story to be tended and dignified, and a series of abuses which must be institutionally repaired.