A memory boom can be observed in Spain since 1996 in which film and TV productions serve to assimilate but also to update historical master narratives of recent history. Popular cinema and television productions with a historical subject matter actively construct the past starting off present beliefs, thus producing visions of reality which are characteristic of the very context they arose from. This study therefore focuses on the question what version of the Second Republic, the Spanish Civil War and Franco's dictatorship was represented in Spanish film and TV productions between 1996 and 2011. The sense such productions convey via specific modes of representations and narrative techniques is analysed considering their relationship to and their potential function in Spanish memory cultures. In so doing, Caroline Rothauge demonstrates that it is indispensable to consider popular media in order to understand the plurality, processual quality and the dynamics of today's memory cultures.

Dr. Caroline Rothauge ist derzeit Akademische Rätin auf Zeit an der Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg.