Spanish transition to democracy, a myth created by an for television?

Abstract

This article deals with the representations of Spanish transition to democracy shown by television in Spain from 1995 to nowadays. Without claiming to be exhaustive, it analyses the recycling as well as the re-creating of scenes and figures which already belong to History although they are still present in collective memory. The analysis of a few fictional and informative programmes will enable us to sketch out a cartography of the representations of the transition on television. We will see how they get organized around TV formats and genres (series and mini-series, biopics and political thrillers), how they are related to other previous programmes or, on the contrary, how they attempt to deconstruct the television myth of the transition built up with its innumerable television representations. We will also wonder to which extent such a myth, drawn up from the amazing archives collection of TV pictures of the transition, comes to hide historical reality rather than disclose it. All these mechanisms are far from concerning only the small screen and its specific schedule and modes of production, creation and broadcasting. They enable us to perceive the persistence of conflicting memories, of taboo subjects and the lack of a consensual, dispassionate collective imagination over this period, more than 40 years after the beginning of this process. The pictures from (or about) the past, if they do not bring great revelations to us about the past, turn out to be meaningful about the present and its complicated relationship with recent History.