page_title: Revisionism (Spain)
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Revisionism (Spain) / History
caption_attribution_description: Español: Alberto Reig Tapia
context_page_description: Revisionism is a term which emerged in the late 1990s and is applied to a group of historiographic theories related to the recent history of Spain. They are supposedly held together by posing a challenge to what is presented as a generally accepted, orthodox view on the history of the Second Republic and the Civil War. The term is used as stigmatization or abuse, and in usage it is paired with charges of incompetence at best or ill will at worst. Historians named revisionists reject the label and claim that no orthodox, canonical view of the recent past exists. Both groups blame each other for pursuing a hidden political agenda; those dubbed revisionists are branded conservatives or post-Francoists, their opponents are branded "progressists" and far-left and left-wingers.
context_section_description: Until the late 1990s in Spain the term "revisionismo histórico" was applied to various historiographic debates abroad, often though not always related to Nazism. It was seldom used against the local background and its denotation could have varied, e.g. in 1988 the expression was employed to stand for ideology-driven, zealous, Manichean and militant anti-Francoist historiography. According to scholars who later confronted perceived revisionism, this general setting changed in the mid-1990s; the new government of José María Aznar allegedly launched a bid to revise the dominant historiographic view of the recent past. In administrative terms the scheme was reportedly embodied e.g. in Plan de Mejora de la Enseñanza, a scheme aimed at re-design of the school curriculum, in 1997 proposed to the Cortes and eventually rejected. In parallel the Right-wing administration allegedly mounted a public-discourse counter-offensive, which climaxed in "Operación Moa". Its supposed result was commercial success of 3 books which appeared on the market between 1999 and 2003; written by an amateur historian Pio Moa, they focused on the Second Republic and the Civil War.
  Moa's books triggered adverse response. It was first embodied in a 1999 manifesto titled Combate por la historia; signed by historians, writers and public figures, it was the first to apply the term "revisionistas" to a group of unnamed Spanish historians, charged with distortions and falsifications. In the early 21st century the name filtered into newspapers and the phenomenon became a widely discussed topic, especially that also other books charged with revisionism were selling very well. According to some scholars, the second term of the Aznar government reinforced the revisionist efforts, expressed e.g. as another education plan advanced by Real Academia de Historia. The anti-revisionist backlash climaxed in 2005-2006 as 3 books produced by professional historians and edited by Alberto Reig Tapia and Francisco Espinosa Maestre; the volumes supposedly definitely dismantled the revisionist Moa narrative and at the time they were thought to have terminated the debate.
  Instead of dying out, after 2005 the debate on revisionism flamed on and was brought to another level. To some extent sustained by adoption of Ley de la Memoria Historica in 2007, the discussion transformed when a group of professional historians challenged the anti-revisionists; from that moment onwards the conflict was no longer between amateurs and scholars, but between the scholars themselves. It reached another milestone in 2010-2011, the years when Manuel Álvarez Tardío and Roberto Villa García published a general work on the Second Republic and when RAH-edited Diccionario Biográfico Español published a biography of Francisco Franco. The latter caused heated controversy mostly in popular discourse; according to many, the biography was revisionist and scandalous. The former had a low-profile but more lasting effect, and became a negative point of reference for many works confronting perceived revisionist historiography. The discussion on revisionism kept escalating and assumed increasingly militant tone. The next milestone was reached when in 2014 Stanley G. Payne published his biography of Franco (co-authored by Jesús Palacios Tapias); at that point some concluded that revisionism was embraced by the world's most distinguished Hispanists. Since then the debate has reached an unprecedented level and spilled over to global historiography. It is also reflected in 2018 debates related to proposal of a new Ley de Memoria Histórica.
caption: Alberto Reig Tapia
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