Download pdf
Madrid's Arco de la Victoria: Cultural Symbols and Social Negotiations in Contemporary Spain
- 1 Manchester University
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Abstract
This paper examines Madrid's Arco de la Victoria as a cultural symbol and its role in the social negotiations of contemporary Spain. Anchored in the framework of cultural sociology, the study traces the monument's origins to Franco's regime, where it was intended as a symbol of authoritarian triumph. As Spain transitioned to democracy, the Arco's significance shifted, reflecting the changing narratives and collective memory of Spanish society. Through analysis of academic literature and historical records, the study explores the monument's contested semantics over time and public discourses that surround it. The findings reveal that the Arco de la Victoria, much like other Francoist monuments, has evolved from a representation of unified national identity to a site of contestation and re-negotiation in democratic Spain. The paper contributes to the understanding of how historical symbols are re-evaluated as societies progress and how they continue to shape and reflect collective identities and memories.
Keywords
Collective Memory, Monumental Symbolism, Cultural Negotiation, Francoist Legacy
[1]. Preston, Paul. The Spanish Holocaust: Inquisition and Extermination in Twentieth-Century Spain. HarperPress, 2012.
[2]. Casanova, Julián. The Franco Regime, 1936–1975. University of Wisconsin Press, 1997.
[3]. Aguilar, Paloma. Memory and Amnesia: The Role of the Spanish Civil War in the Transition to Democracy. Berghahn Books, 2002.
[4]. Tuan, Yi-Fu. Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience. University of Minnesota Press, 1977.
[5]. Hobsbawm, Eric, and Terence Ranger, editors. The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge University Press, 1983.
[6]. Smith, Angel. Historical Dictionary of Spain. Scarecrow Press, 2012.
[7]. Payne, Stanley G. The Franco Regime: 1936–1975. University of Wisconsin Press, 1987.
[8]. Seidman, Michael. The Victorious Counterrevolution: The Nationalist Effort in the Spanish Civil War. University of Wisconsin Press, 2005.
[9]. Nora, Pierre. "Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire." Representations, no. 26, 1989, pp. 7-24.
[10]. Halbwachs, Maurice. On Collective Memory. University of Chicago Press, 1992.
[11]. Reading, Anna. "Identity, Memory and Cosmopolitanism: The Otherness of the Past and a Right to Memory?" European Journal of Cultural Studies, vol. 14, no. 4, 2011, pp. 379-394. https://doi.org/10.1177/1367549411411607
[12]. Faber, Sebastiaan. Memory Battles of the Spanish Civil War: History, Fiction, Photography. Vanderbilt University Press, 2018. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv16759c1
[13]. Rousso, Henry. The Vichy Syndrome: History and Memory in France since 1944. Harvard University Press, 2016.
[14]. Soto-Carmona, Álvaro. Memory Battles of the Spanish Civil War: History, Fiction, Photography. Vanderbilt University Press, 2017.
[15]. Hepworth, Andrea. "Site of Memory and Dismemory: The Valley of the Fallen in Spain." The Memorialization of Genocide. Routledge, 2017, pp. 43-64.
[16]. Todorova, Maria. Remembering Communism: Private and Public Recollections of Lived Experience in Southeast Europe. Central European University Press, 2019.
[17]. Linz, Juan J. Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes. Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2010.
[18]. Crumbaugh, Justin. "Afterlife and Bare Life: The Valley of the Fallen as a Paradigm of Government." Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies, vol. 12, no. 4, 2011, pp. 419-438.
[19]. Malkowski, Alison C. "Franco Alive: An Analysis of Arco de la Victoria and Valle de los Caídos in the Context of Post-Franco Memory in Contemporary Spain." 2014.
[20]. Sterken, Sven. "Architecture and the Ideology of Productivity. Four Public Housing Projects by Groupe Structures in Brussels (1950-1965)." Footprint, vol. 5, no. 2, 2012, pp. 25–40.
[21]. Delso, Rodrigo, Atxu Amann, and Federico Soriano. "Time, Architecture and Domination: the Valley of the Fallen." Heritage & Society, vol. 11, no. 2, 2018, pp. 126-150.
[22]. De-Miguel-Molina, María, and José Luis Barrera-Gabaldón. "Controversial Heritage: The Valley of the Fallen." International Journal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research, vol. 13, no. 1, 2019, pp. 128-143.
[23]. Richards, Michael. A Time of Silence: Civil War and the Culture of Repression in Franco's Spain, 1936-1945. Cambridge University Press, 2016.
[24]. Mar del Pozo Andrés, María del, and J. F. A. Braster. "The Reinvention of the New Education Movement in the Franco Dictatorship (Spain, 1936–1976)." Paedagogica Historica, vol. 42, nos. 1-2, 2006, pp. 109-126.
[25]. López, Pedro, and Ángela Cenarro. "The Memory of the Civil War in the Transition to Democracy: The Peculiarity of the Basque Case." History & Memory, vol. 29, no. 1, 2017, pp. 124-149.
[26]. Moreno-Luzón, Javier. Modernizing the Nation: Spain during the Reign of Alfonso XIII, 1902–1931. Sussex Academic Press, 2018.
[27]. Brescó de Luna, Ignacio, and Brady Wagoner. "Memorials from the Perspective of Experience: A Comparison of Spain’s Valley of the Fallen to Contemporary Counter-Memorials." Memory Studies, 2022, pp. 17506980221126943.
[28]. Liang, Xiaoxu, Yanjun Lu, and John Martin. "A Review of the Role of Social Media for the Cultural Heritage Sustainability." Sustainability, vol. 13, no. 1055, 2021, doi:10.3390/su13031055.
[29]. Barros García, José Manuel. "Political Artefacts, Aesthetics and Heritage: The Valley of the Fallen." International Journal of Heritage Studies, vol. 26, no. 3, 2020, pp. 253-266.
[30]. Por Beatriz Roda Castellanos. “El futuro incierto de la cesión del Arco de la Victoria. ” https://www.madridiario.es/cesion-arco-victoria-madrid-futuro-debate. Accessed 10 Oct 2023.
[31]. Aguilar, Paloma, and Carsten Humlebæk. "Collective Memory and National Identity in the Spanish Democracy: The Legacies of Francoism and the Civil War." History and Memory, vol. 14, no. 1–2, 2002, pp. 121–164. https://doi.org/10.2979/his.2002.14.1-2.121
[32]. Tremlett, Annabel. Making Spaniards: Primo de Rivera and the Nationalization of the Masses, 1923-30. Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.
[33]. Aguilar, Paloma. Memory and Amnesia: The Role of the Spanish Civil War in the Transition to Democracy. Berghahn Books, 2017.
[34]. Berger, Peter L., and Thomas Luckmann. The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. Doubleday, 1966.
[35]. Schwartz, Barry. "The Social Context of Commemoration: A Study in Collective Memory." Social Forces, vol. 61, no. 2, 1982, pp. 374-402.
[36]. Wagner-Pacifici, Robin, and Barry Schwartz. "The Vietnam Veterans Memorial: Commemorating a Difficult Past." American Journal of Sociology, vol. 97, no. 2, 1991, pp. 376-420.
[37]. Encarnación, Omar G. "Reconciliation after Democratization: Coping with the Past in Spain." Political Science Quarterly, vol. 129, no. 3, 2014, pp. 435-458.
Cite this article
Li,J. (2024). Madrid's Arco de la Victoria: Cultural Symbols and Social Negotiations in Contemporary Spain. Communications in Humanities Research,26,272-280.
Data availability
The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study will be available from the authors upon reasonable request.
Disclaimer/Publisher's Note
The statements, opinions and data contained in all publications are solely those of the individual author(s) and contributor(s) and not of EWA Publishing and/or the editor(s). EWA Publishing and/or the editor(s) disclaim responsibility for any injury to people or property resulting from any ideas, methods, instructions or products referred to in the content.
About volume
Volume title: Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Interdisciplinary Humanities and Communication Studies
© 2024 by the author(s). Licensee EWA Publishing, Oxford, UK. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and
conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license. Authors who
publish this series agree to the following terms:
1. Authors retain copyright and grant the series right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of the work's authorship and initial publication in this
series.
2. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the series's published
version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgment of its initial
publication in this series.
3. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and
during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See
Open access policy for details).