A Return to Monuments: Overcoming the “Forensic Turn” in Contemporary Spain

Abstract

In the year 2000 thirteen people were exhumed from a mass grave in Priaranza del Bierzo. This event has been established as the founding act of the movement called “Historical Memory” in the Kingdom of Spain. A movement which, despite claiming the recovery of the past within the framework of Human Rights rhetoric, has been marked by the exhumations of mass graves as its primary and most visible activity. These exhumations have always been portrayed positively by the media. This is framed within the so-called “forensic turn,” as a process in which scientists have been incorporated into the investigation of mass violence.
However, this account has not addressed a number of issues, one of which is fundamental and relates to the fate of the bodies after exhumation. Another omission is the question of what to do when the graves are not found where they were believed to be. In this sense, the subject has been approached from an interdisciplinary perspective, starting from the history of art, making use of ethnographic techniques and taking samples from a qualitative-quantitative study which has been carried out over the last 4 years throughout the country. Therefore, the materials used to address the problem are organized into the following three parts. Firstly, the limitations of the forensic model and exhumations are discussed in detail. Secondly, monuments built after the exhumation of mass graves are examined. Thirdly, monuments constructed when the grave remained undiscovered, and the bodies could not be exhumed are also considered.
In this regard, the experiences analysed have firstly clarified the limitations and dissatisfactions that have arisen around the “forensic turn.” The low rate of identifications, the lack of symbolic mediators and the lack of social recognition, lead to the fact that exhumations in themselves do not offer answers and that, on the contrary, they do not necessarily modify the meaning of the graves as tools of terror. Therefore, in the second section, some initiatives have been employed to illustrate the need to bury the bodies after exhumations, both for pragmatic and symbolic reasons. These monuments could also be the solution for those unable to locate the mass graves, as explained in the third section. The conclusion focuses on the origins of these “memorial monument solutions,” which have transcended the “forensic” model. Therefore, it is suggested that it would be relevant to continue researching these practices in the future, and not to see them as mere solutions to a technical problem, but as a new stage of memorial practices.