La Comuna de los presosMemorias de la resistencia en el tardofranquismo

Resumen

The aim of the present doctoral dissertation is to rebuild the experiences and conditions of life of former political prisoners in late francoism (1968-1977), through the recollection, analysis and study of their present-day discourses and practices. Memories of resistance in prison work as a link between the past and present experiences of political and collective militancy that share a common name: “la Comuna”. La Comuna is a community of material resources, collective attitudes and initiatives, and political and symbolic values with a definite goal: to resist and combat against Franco´s dictatorship. In the past, through political secrecy and militancy, also in prison; in the present, through a legal complaint against the Spanish regime´s crimes against human rights. Using more than 50 interviews to former political prisoners, plus the observations of their activities taken in the fieldwork, and a broad compilation of documents from archives, this dissertation offers a broad view of the historic context of their struggle as communist activists, and connects it with the development of historical memory in Spain until our days. This historical travel tries to find an explanation to the survival of remembering and the remembering of resistance in the 21st century, and focuses on the process of transition from dictatorship to democracy. The narratives of the prisoners not only give us information about their historical experience, but also about the present sense and signification they give to this experience, which describes a whole process of political subjectivation, from their beginnings as activists to their last battle against impunity. This subjetcivation includes their desires, affects, beliefs, expectations and political values, which are described as a multiplicity inside the singularity of the group and of each individual trajectory. And this political and collective subjetictivation is linked to sociological and anthropological problems about power relations, time and memory, and present-day/contemporary practice and signification, where the meaning of the past (and in consequence, the action in the present) is at stake. The work is divided in eight sections. First, the introduction explains the “anthropology of experience” (based on post-structuralist philosophy and authors like Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze) as a theoretical and methodological approach that allows the study of prisoner´s memories. The second section refers to the historical context of late francoism, and the singularities of prison at this stage of the dictatorship. The third describes the historical memory process in Spain, until the emergency of the association “La Comuna” and its collaboration with a legal complaint in Argentina. The fourth section traces some examples of trajectories of militancy, and describes the relations of secrecy and repression between activists and the State. The fifth and sixth sections address the conditions of life of political prisoners in jail, and describe their struggles to defend their position and gain a recognition from the Regime. The seventh section offers many examples of their present-day processes of meaning about their former experience. And the dissertation is closed with a brief conclusion. The research reveals the importance of memory for collective action and their reciprocal relation, and also shows memory of resistance as a matter of dignity. In the memories of the ex-prisoners the past is acting in the present as the present acts on the past, in a social and political context where public memory plays a key role. The anthropology of experience gives enough tools to explain the whole process, and to understand the complex dimension of pasts marked by political violence and repression.