Introduction: Legislation, the Banality of Evil, and the Moral Imperative of Memory

The injustices of Franco’s justice system reflect the strategized manipulation of the law. Memory bears a moral imperative to vindicate, seek justice through remembrance, and re-member dis-membered traumatized lives and bodies. Memory is a phenomenon with political and ethical implications (Erll). Hence, remembering is a purposeful act of belonging (J. Assmann) that resists assimilatory forgetting (A. Assmann). This study analyzes the ways in which contemporary films and novels combat the assimilatory forgetting mandated by the victors and implemented through slaughter, fear, and shame. The works studied not only narrativize the enduring effects of legalized killing, incarceration, child removal, and legislated impunity, but also write the individual, collective, and symbolic victims—targeted for erasure by Francoism—into the narrative of cultural memory.