Screening history: television, memory, and the nostalgia of national community in Cuéntame and Temps de silenci

^*Lecture given at the Centre for Catalan Studies at Queen Mary University of London, on 20 March 2014. This lecture is part of the research project “Functions of the Past in Contemporary Catalan Culture: Institutionalisation, Representations, and Identity,” carried out by the research group IdentiCat (Llengua, cultura i identitat en l’era global) at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, and funded by the Spanish Ministry of the Economy and Competitiveness (FFI2011-24751).

Abstract

Fictional narratives devoted to the recent past have become increasingly popular in the last two decades, not only in the field of literary production but also – and perhaps more surprisingly – on television. Series like Temps de silenci (Televisió de Catalunya, 2001–2002) and Cuéntame (Televisión Española, since 2001) have proved that there is a significant audience for the recovery and transmission of stories associated with the Spanish Civil War, the Franco dictatorship, and the Transition to democracy. This essay explores the interest in historical memory and analyzes some of the prominent features of those two television series, and argues that the allure of the past in contemporary Spanish culture is linked to the crisis of national identities (in both Catalonia and Spain) and expresses a nostalgia for forms and experiences of political community, imagined as grounded on models of kinship and family.

Keywords:

• Historical memory
• nationalism
• nostalgia
• television
• Temps de silenci
• Cuéntame

Notes

^* Lecture given at the Centre for Catalan Studies at Queen Mary University of London, on 20 March 2014. This lecture is part of the research project “Functions of the Past in Contemporary Catalan Culture: Institutionalisation, Representations, and Identity,” carried out by the research group IdentiCat (Llengua, cultura i identitat en l’era global) at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, and funded by the Spanish Ministry of the Economy and Competitiveness (FFI2011-24751).

1. See, among many others, the books by Resina (2000), Luengo (2004), Colmeiro (2005), Gómez López-Quiñones (2006), Winter (2006), Ferrán (2007), Aguado (2010), and Hansen and Cruz Suárez (2012).

2. The Turia Prize was created in 1992 by the Valencian publication Cartelera Turia; Accessed 11 December 2013. http://www.carteleraturia.com/

3. [The high quality of a work that has been able to visually reconstruct our most recent memory, and transmit to the younger generations, both present and future, the values of coexistence and dialogue that constitute the best legacy of the Transition.]

4. In this case, the prize for the two-part miniseries – which had an average audience of 6,718,000 viewers (33.6% of share) – was given by the jury because of “la gran calidad de la obra de ficción, capaz de recrear acontecimientos históricos con alto nivel de exigencia y amplia aceptación de la audiencia” [the high quality of a work of fiction that has recreated historical events with a high level of discernment and broad audience approval]. The 2010 National Prize for Television was also given to TV producer Narciso Ibáñez Serrador for his lifetime professional achievements. The National Prizes for Television were officially announced in the Boletín Oficial del Estado (BOE) on January 2, 2010, and January 4, 2011, respectively.

5. La chica de ayer was the title of a pop song by Antonio Vega that was recorded by Nacha Pop and became a hit in Spain in 1980.

6. For the views of producers and scriptwriters of these two series, see Borrell et al. (2003).

7. [The summer of 1935 was the last time when we could enjoy the holidays without fright, without fear. I close my eyes and remember… I see myself by the car, with my mother and my little brother. A girl with a head full of fantasies… […] / I loved the summer and all the pleasures it offered to me: to read in the shade, play tennis, pick cherries… But that summer was not like the others, and no summer after that would ever be the same. Because a most intense and, until then, unknown feeling disrupted my life, turned it completely upside down – love, an emotion that took root inside me like a tree.]

8. To understand the significance of these figures, it is important to note that, since the legalization of private commercial television in 1988, TV3 had to compete for viewers with a number of other channels both public and private. In 2001, TV3 led all other channels in Catalonia with an audience share of 21.8%, followed by Telecinco (19.6%), Antena3 (19.2%), and TVE (19%); see Baget i Herms (2003, 72).

9. The whole series is available online: http://www.tv3.cat/programa/207842320/Temps-de-silenci

10. The series can be watched online: http://www.rtve.es/television/cuentame/capitulos-completos/

11. [In 1968 I was eight years old. Now they say that 1968 was a revolutionary year – and indeed it was, at least for me. The truth is that in 1968 I was not in the mood for any revolutions, as I had other things to worry about. For instance, it worried me that the poor fugitive [the protagonist of the American series The Fugitive, at the time being shown on Spanish television] was always running away, when we all knew that he had not killed anyone. It also worried me that the television set my father had just bought would not arrive in time for the Eurovision Song Contest.]

12. The website for the series has undergone several changes over the years, and the initial version (www.cuentamecomopaso.net, which seems to have been created around 2003, according to the traces found through the Internet Archive) appears to have been more encouraging of fans’ participation than the current one, which was established in 2008 within the official and more institutionalized website of RTVE (www.rtve.es/television/cuentame). A section in the original website, known as “Punto de encuentro” (still available on the Internet Archive at http://web.archive.org/web/20031006100500/http://www.cuentamecomopaso.net/Encuentro.aspx), facilitated the search for lost friends and personal memories. Another example of this sort of communal interaction can be seen in “Los seguidores de Cuéntame comparten sus recuerdos del verano de 1976” (see http://web.archive.org/web/20090413172908/http://www.rtve.es/television/20080901/los-seguidores-cuentame-comparten-sus-recuerdos-del-verano-del/148717.shtml).

13. For contrasting critical perspectives on television and memory, see Mellencamp (1990) and Edgerton and Rollins (2001). Holdsworth’s “Televisual Memory” puts into question the understanding of television as amnesiac by focusing on “the potential patterns and similarities between the textualities of memory and television” (2010, 131).

14. Francisca López offers a convincing defense of this perspective in her introduction to Historias de la pequeña pantalla (2009).

15. See, for instance, Sánchez Gijón (1987), Pascual (1995), Fernández and Santana (2000), Seoane and Sueiro (2003), and Iturriaga Barco (2005).

16. Isabel Estrada contrasts the benevolent perspective in Cuéntame with the negative judgment of Francoism “already implicit” in the title of Temps de silenci (2004, 549). On the minimal representation of violence in Cuéntame, see Cueto Asín (2009, 140–1).

17. In the case of Cuéntame, the team of documentalists who had access to the extensive archive of Spanish national television (RTVE) were particularly concerned with finding materials that would help produce the impression of an accurate and faithful reproduction of the past (see López 2007, 140). According to a survey conducted by Ana Corbalán (2009, 352), the recreation of material details is one of the most attractive features of the series.

18. As mentioned earlier, popular music plays an essential role in promoting collective nostalgia, as it serves to provide not only the soundtrack for the series, but also – and more importantly – that of the audience’s life. In the case of the title theme for the series, however, it is rarely noted that the lyrics differ significantly from those of the original 1969 hit by Fórmula V (written by José Luis Armenteros). The original Cuéntame, where a spurned but forgiving lover finds vindication in the fact that the woman who once looked upon him with disdain, after failing to find happiness, has returned (“¿Cómo estás, sin un amigo? / ¿Te has convencido que yo tenía razón? / Es igual, vente conmigo / […] / Cuéntame cómo te ha ido, / no has conocido la felicidad”), offers a darker perspective on the story to be recounted.

19. “Al oír a ese Carlos Alcántara ya adulto, en realidad estamos oyéndonos a nosotros mismos” [In listening to Carlos Alcántara, we are in fact listening to ourselves] claimed the series’ website (quoted in Corbalán 2009, 349).

20. [The marriage of the Catholic Monarchs achieved the unification of Spain. […] The unity has to be maintained and defended if we want Spain to move forward on its path to progress.]

21. [Carlos– Dad. / Antonio– What? / Carlos– We Spaniards are all equal? / Antonio– What? / Carlos– I mean, is a Basque the same as an Andalusian. / Antonio– No, of course not! The Basques and the Andalusians are very different, my son. […] / Carlos– But… we are all Spaniards, aren’t we? / Antonio– Of course we are, son. One is a Spaniard even if one has been born a Basque or an Andalusian. What difference does it make? / Carlos– That’s why we are a unity of destiny, right?]

22. [Antonio– Well, it cannot be that difficult, it probably has to do with what I was just saying. That it does not matter where you are born, whether you are Basque or Andalusian or whatever. What are you to the rest of the world? A Spaniard, for heaven’s sake! / Toni– Yes, yes… That’s exactly what the Fascists say. / Antonio– Let’s see, Toni, you are starting to piss me off. What the hell does the Fascist Falange have to do with what I am saying? Damn it! / Toni– Dad, what I am telling you is that there is an increasing number of people who have been born in Spain but do not feel they are Spanish. / Antonio– That’s great, son! And what the hell do they feel they are? Japanese? / Toni– No, dad, not Japanese. They see themselves as Galicians, or Basques, or Catalans… What they want is to have their own government, their own culture, and their own language. / Antonio– For fuck’s sake! That’s wonderful! With all the difficulties we Spaniards have understanding each other, and now on top of that we are going to have different governments and languages. Let’s see – what do you want this to be: a madhouse or a country? / Toni– Not a madhouse, a Federal Republic. / Antonio– A Repub…! Look, Toni… / Carlos– But then, are all Spaniards the same or not? / Antonio– Son, shut up and eat. A fucking Republic! // Shut up and eat – that was my destiny. While my family debated the future of the country, I was besieged by uncertainty. I was searching for an identity and could not yet find it. I didn’t know whether I was Castilian, or Spanish, or universal. The only certainty I had left was my unshakable loyalty towards the Atlético de Madrid football team.]

23. [My father grew up in a Spain that declared itself One, Great, and Free. A Spain in which there could only exist one single faith and one single culture. That’s why it was so hard for him to understand the diversity of his own country. And the yearning of the peoples that, in 1970, were restarting the long fight to reclaim their identity.]

24. Francisca López has observed how in Cuéntame references to the past are often constructed to give the impression that the problems and difficulties of the dictatorship have been finally overcome in the present (2007, 140). This is consistent with the generalized view, promoted as hegemonic by the Spanish media, that “el franquismo pasó definitivamente a la historia” [“Francoism has definitely become a thing of the past,” Winter 2005, 31].

25. [I loved Ramon so much… And what remains of our love? What remains after all these years of everything we have loved, everything we have suffered, of our joys and sorrows? They are only a shadow, a faint memory that will die with us and nobody will ever know. The history books will only tell you about the coming of the Republic, the Civil War, the 40 years of Franco, the recovery of democracy… But what will happen with the emotions of those who lived those events? Who will remember each and every one of us?]

26. For a detailed analysis of the role of television in the formation of a Catalan national imaginary, see Castelló (2007). The same applies to other national communities: “la experiencia social de ver televisión y el acervo histórico de recuerdos televisivos son elementos de lo más reconocible en la autoidentidad de las comunidades: lo que nos unifica frente a los ‘otros’ que no han visto los mismos programas que nosotros” [the social experience of watching television and historical accumulation of memories linked to that medium are among the most recognisable elements in a community’s self-image: they bind us vis-à-vis those ‘others’ who have not watched the same programs] (Palacio 2008, 11).

27. [The most important difference […] is that Latin American television serials are not concerned with something that is at the origin of the Catalan ones: the vindication of a national identity within a different country. […] They aim to bear witness to the existence of a people that is different from the others which share the territory that is internationally recognized as Spain.]

28. [During the first months after the death of my mother I tried to carry on with her diaries. But I often wondered whether it made any sense to prolong this story with my notes. And the birth of my daughter, the political changes, the crisis of the party to which I dedicated so much energy – all that led me to abandon the diaries for almost four years. Now I have decided to take them up again, perhaps because I need to find myself. And I’m convinced that I have to do it above all for my daughter, Isabel. I want her to know the history of her family, which is also the history of this country, our country, Catalonia.]

29. Even in the miniseries 23-F: el día más difícil del rey, about the failed coup d’état of February 23, 1981, the use of the family-as-nation trope is critical: most of the narrative is centered around the Spanish royal family, and at one point the coup is described as aimed against King Juan Carlos I, rather than against the democratic system. The Bourbon family takes the place of the Spanish nation, as if one and the other were the same thing.

30. [The death of uncle Joaquim marked the end of a world, and the end of the story of my family, the Dalmaus. That house where we had all lived would always hold the memory of lives that now belonged to the past, a time full of silences that my mother had described for me in her writings, a time that was gone forever but that would always stay with me. […] When Francesc Xavier and I decided to sell the house, I was glad to learn that the buyers were not planning to tear it down but wanted to transform it into a hotel. That sale made me realize that we had arrived at the last page of a great story, the history of the Dalmaus, and then I understood that they were only present in my memory, and that when I am gone they will also disappear, just as the time they lived has slipped away, too. And I decided that I needed to save their memory, and that we all needed to work together to preserve it.]