Qué hacer con un pasado sucio

José Álvarez Junco reflects in this book on the weight of traumatic pasts in human societies (civil wars, genocides, dictatorships), their possible political use and their manipulation in the service of current objectives. Although his focus is the Spanish civil war and the first Franco regime, he compares them with Nazi Germany, Pinochet's Chile, the Colombia of guerrillas and paramilitaries or apartheid South Africa, among other cases. The book is developed on three levels: the construction of the collective image, the historical narration and the tracing of what remains of that trauma. From the first perspective, he recalls the complacent and self-pitying image that the Spaniards had constructed of themselves in previous decades or centuries and how those brutal events were integrated into it, especially in the interpretations elaborated by their most prestigious intellectuals. From the second, narrates what happened in Spain, the origin of the political crisis of the thirties, the development of events during it, the harsh repression of the forties, the subsequent evolution of the dictatorship and its overcoming during the Transition. The third aspect deals with what to do after that trauma, what policies have been adopted in relation to the victims, and what could be implemented to overcome it once and for all, if such a thing is possible. The debate on the convenience of remembering or forgetting is inexhaustible and the author does not defend a definitive answer here. From his long experience as a historian and always adopting a distant look and an international perspective, he considers its complexity and the convenience of avoiding simple and Manichaean explanations to favor social coexistence.