REVIEW
BOOKS
Making Monuments from Mass
Graves in Contemporary Spain .
Resistance through Remembrance .
Daniel Palacios González , 2024 ( AHM ). International First Book Award of the Memory Studies Association ( MSA ) in 2023 .
Yayo Aznar Art Historian , National University of Distance Education ( UNED )
The Skin of Memorials
We never quite know what to do with memorials . Sometimes we debate whether to tear them down or not , or even consider turning them into outdated memory centres which have proven useless time and time again , beyond allowing the government of the day to draw a line under the matter . Other times , we debate - laden with guilt - whether to build them at all , even launching open competitions for artist proposals , which we usually close with no real conclusion , again to move on from the issue without causing too much pain . Art always has something to say about these matters . In any case , it is clear that all the politics surrounding memorials is a sanctified form of exaltation carried out by current leaders or community figures , as part of a narrative that is useful for power structures or their immediate political interests ( Álvarez Junco ). So , any debate in this context may seem entirely pointless .
But the fact is , Nietzsche was right : monuments must be of use to humankind , though perhaps not only in the way he explained , and which the 20th-century dictators understood so well . Daniel Palacios ’ book focuses on “ other memorials ” that we do not debate , at least not officially , but that enter the academic world with full merit thanks to this book . These are memorials built through civic initiative , though not always entirely separate from political groups , ones that are created because those involved feel the urge , “ as their bodies demand it ”. From the first visits by families of those executed to the mass graves during Francoism , to the more “ ambitious ” memorials after the Transition , the author highlights the creation of small , humble , everyday constructions , often with no aesthetic pretensions whatsoever . The author believes that memory resides more in the actions of the living than in the bodies of the victims , though that memory would not exist without the presence of
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Observing Memories Issue 8