Forgotten Pilots, Airfields and Aircraft: A Transdisciplinary Approach to the Memory of the Republican Air Force During the Spanish Civil War (1936–39)

Abstract

As the adage goes, "History is written by the winners" and the Spanish Civil War (1936War ( -1939 is a example of how difficult it is to revert this process. Franco's regime developed a range of narratives focused on a) the justification of the military rebellion against the democratically elected Second Republic government, b) the "damnatio memoriae" of the Republican armed forces and c) the development of a collective guilt about the war. The transition from fascist dictatorship to democracy did not contest Francoist official discourse and forged a "pact of oblivion" based on the idea that Spanish society should look into the future and forget about the conflict at all levels: from personal memories to cultural heritage. One of the victims of this process of targeted forgetfulness was the Republican Air Force because it was an uncomfortable thorn on Francoist narratives. If the Republic was immersed in chaos and its army non-existent then how did it manage to contest the skies against the most modern German and Italian aircraft? This work describes the activities developed by a long-term public archaeology project designed to rediscover the memory of the people that formed the Republican Air Force. This multifaceted initiative explored the materiality of air warfare through a combination of battlefield archaeology, educational research, museum exhibitions and community engagement. The results presented here are an example of how community-based archaeology projects can promote new critical narratives and rediscover silenced voices even after decades of heavily-biased official history.

Social Museography and Sustainable Historical Heritage

“…The remains of the aerodrome were very limited as follows: a large anti-aircraft shelter and the remains of some trenches near the runways. The DIDPATRI group had investigated the site through various archaeological prospecting campaigns (with geophysical means), and by studying reports and photographs of aerial investigations of the Italian and German aviation (responsible for the attacks on the aerodrome between 1938 and 1939) [28]. Existing remains and documents did not sustain a classical object-based exhibition.…”

Illustration, Re-Enactment, Citizenship and Heritage of Contemporary Conflict: The Case of the Ebro (1938)

“…The archaeological survey and excavation of the Republican aviation airfields that intervened in the Battle of the Ebro (1938), involved in the museum design of the Republican Aviation Interpretation Center in Els Monjos, and the implementation of a memory space dedicated to the air forces of the Spanish Republic [74,75].…”

A Spatial Connectivity Approach to Landscapes of Conflict: Julius Caesar and the Assault to Puig Ciutat (NE Iberian Peninsula)

“…Conflict archaeology studies the origin, development and consequences of warfare with a particular focus on direct engagements such as pitched battles and sieges (Foard et al, 2003;Scott & McFeaters, 2011). Recent works are widening the perspective of the field by integrating additional conflict-related sites and activities like logistical infrastructures (Tunwell et al, 2015), heritage and memory (Hernández-Cardona et al, 2019), aerial bombings (Moshenska, 2009) or repression events (Jerez Farrán & Amago, 2010). At the same time, the field is also diversifying the periods under study which currently include all chronologies from Bronze Age battlefields (Lidke et al, 2017) to recent conflicts (Schofield, 2009).…”