Resistance through Remembrance: a book talk by Daniel Palacios González

The book Making Monuments from Mass Graves in Contemporary Spain Resistance through Remembrance narrates how, beginning in 1936, bodies buried in mass graves during the Spanish War and subsequent dictatorship were turned into monuments. It presents the idea that the monument, as a material object, became an expression of the historical consciousness of its producers, illustrating how different actors communicated their memories through meaningful gestures while being limited by the material reality. Finally, it also contends that the people creating these monuments did not just bury their dead according to a funerary tradition but also sought to influence society. Allen Feldman, from the New York University said about the book: “This text is a cutting-edge contribution to Spanish heritage and landscape and memory studies. It is a seminal contribution to the visual and material culture analysis of post-jus bello, i.e., postwar reparative and transitional justice. […] In the context of the current resurgence of proto-fascist and overtly fascist movements in Europe and elsewhere, this project will be a major contribution to the cultural history of Fascism and post-Fascism that is urgently needed today in European public culture.”

Daniel Palacios González holds a PhD in Art History from the Universität zu Köln, where he was an MSCA Fellow. He is currently a Postdoctoral Researcher at UNED. Previously he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Birkbeck, University of London, and a member of the research project NECROPOL at the Universitat de Barcelona. He is the author of Making Monuments from Mass Graves in Contemporary Spain (AUP, 2024) and De fosas comunes a lugares de memoria(CEPC, 2022), which received the Memory Studies Association First Book Award in 2023. He is also publishing two new books this year: Redefining Monuments (Palgrave, 2025) and ¿Quién tiene derecho al monumento? (Kakrak, 2025) with José María Durán Medraño.