Postmemory and autofiction in recent Spanish documentary about the Civil War and Francoism

Abstract

In recent years the Spanish documentary related to the civil war and the subsequent Franco dictatorship has experienced a verifiable boom. At the same time that interest in the past grew, it was possible to see, in the words of Enzo Traverso, how the "I" burst into the writing of history. These new discursive practices, described by some authors as hybrids between fiction and history, have also been adopted by some Spanish documentary filmmakers belonging, for the most part, to the so-called «post-memory generation». The objective of this essay is to analyze this trend from a theoretical perspective while focusing attention on three especially relevant documentary films: Mi tío Ramón (Ignacio Lasierra, 2015), Canción a una dama en la sombra (Carolina Astudillo Muñoz, 2021) and Apuntes para una herencia (Federico Robles, 2018). We will analyze the use that these products make of that "I" introduced and conceptualized as a problematic element within the writing of history, and that originates from avant-garde products and related to family cinema and found footage, the case of the film by Astudillo, to others closer to the strategies of autofiction, as is the case of the work of Federico Robles.