Televisionary Memories of the Spanish Transition

Whether or not television is a proper medium for the transmission of historical knowledge (a matter of lively and intense debate in cultural studies), the fact is that in the contemporary world for most of us the understanding of the past is mediated by visual media. As Gary R.Edgerton has argued, "Television is the principal means by which most people learn about history today."

Narratives of recovery and transmission of the historical past play a prominent role in Spanish contemporary television and film, and both the experience of the Spanish transition from dictatorship to democracy and the construction of a collective imaginary associated to that historical process have been mediated by the intervention of media of mass communication.

The emergence and significance of the press during the transition has been widely recognized and the subject of numerous studies, but equally important in this regard were radio and TV, which played a fundamental role in shaping not only the way in which Spaniards lived through the death of Franco in 1975 and the subsequent process of political change but also served to frame and consolidate (through the frequent and selective iteration of images of the period) the ulterior interpretation and memory of that experience for future generations.

This presentation analyzes some of the prominent features of two of the most popular fictional television series about the past of the Spanish dictatorship, "Temps de silenci" (Televisió de Catalunya, 2001-02) and "Cuéntame cómo pasó" (Televisión Española, 2001-present), in order to explain the interest in and popularity of these narratives and, in particular, the role of nostalgia in the reconstruction and consumption of the recent past.