The Moral Imperative of Reburying the Missing, Objective Science, and Reframing Spain’s Violent Past

• In Event: 1449 - Comparative Historical Sociology and Human Rights (Co-sponsored with the Section on Comparative-Historical Sociology)

Abstract

In this paper, I use a case study analysis of on a homage and reburial ceremony put on by the Spanish Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory (ARMH) in 2016 for two victims of the Franco regime. Specifically, I explore how homage and reburial events are framed around the moral rights of victims’ families to bury their kin and how they are able to do this through ‘objective science.’ Furthermore, this paper illustrates how homage and reburial events provide the ARMH an additional platform to put forth their reframed ‘truth’ of Spain’s violent past, provide families the opportunity to publicly mourn, and how these events function as a form of transitional justice long denied to the victims’ families and their communities.

Author

• Nicole Iturriaga, Max Planck Institute