The Politics of Memory
by Stanley G. Payne, First Things, May 2021
In January 2020, the Socialist government of Spain, led by Pedro Sánchez, proposed a bill of profound cultural and political significance: a “Law of Historical and Democratic Memory.” If adopted, this law will bring to completion a twenty-year effort on the part of the Spanish left to limit speech and reshape civic life. It would establish a national “Council of Memory,” an organ of state comprising public officials as well as professional “experts” and representatives of nongovernmental but politically reliable organizations. It would elaborate a comprehensive state policy to promote a left view of Spain’s early and mid-twentieth century. The bill mandates a search for the remains of a number of the “disappeared” on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War of 1936–39 and the creation of a “National DNA Bank” to help identify them. It prescribes the placement of “memory plaques” thro