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The University of Southampton
Languages, Cultures and LinguisticsPart of Humanities

Perez de Ayala Annual Lecture 2010 Event

Giles Tremlett
Time:
17:30
Date:
7 June 2010
Venue:
Avenue Campus, University of Southampton

For more information regarding this event, please email Diane Taylor at dst@southampton.ac.uk .

Event details

Ghosts of Spain: Travels through a country’s hidden past by Giles Tremlett

This year, Humanities at Southampton is delighted to introduce Giles Tremlett, current correspondent for The Guardian and The Economist in Madrid. His book Ghosts of Spain: Travels through a country’s hidden past (2007) has been translated into five languages and sold over 11,000 copies in the UK and over 5,000 abroad. It addresses a fundamental and challenging question that needs to be asked in order to fully understand contemporary Spanish politics and society: Why have the Spanish kept silent about the terrors of the Spanish Civil War and the rule of dictator Generalísimo Francisco Franco?

The appearance - 60 years after that war ended - of mass graves containing victims of Franco’s death squads has finally broken what Spaniards call ‘the pact of forgetting’. This is the starting point of Tremlett’s book, and of his journey around and through some of the most difficult issues of Spain’s recent history. In his lecture, Tremlett will bring the subject up to date in light of the most recent developments in the country’s efforts to recuperate a still painful and highly controversial historical memory.

The lecture will address the following questions: To what extent have the wounds healed? Has Spain done enough to confront the past? Does justice have a role to play? What does all this tell us about the nature of the Spanish democratic transition?

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