Mourning, Memory Associations, and Activism: A Case Study of San Fernando, La Isla (Cádiz)

The final chapter is a case study of one of the most active memory associations in Cádiz province, the Asociación por la Recuperación de la Memoria Democrática, Social y Política de San Fernando, (AMEDE). Inaugurated in 2016 by co-founder Juan Manuel Fernández Roldán—grandson of the Republican mayor and beloved San Fernando physician, Cayetano Roldán, murdered in 1936 along with his three young adult sons—AMEDE’s membership is comprised of families as well as volunteers who have assisted in the four-year exhumation of the town’s mass graves. The group’s objectives are not limited to the successful recovery and identification of the victims’ remains but include educating the public about the democratic legacy of the defenders of the II Spanish Republic and the crimes perpetrated that toppled that constitutional government. Primary texts for analysis include not only oral and written testimonies, but also ongoing exchanges among members on the group’s WhatsApp platform. What emerges in their social media postings—photos from the 1930s and the 2020s; posters; memes; newspaper articles; vigorous debates via text—is a kind of community “family” album, a portfolio of popular memory and shared perspectives that illuminate socio-political bonds between the generation that lost the Spanish Civil War, and their ideological and/or biological descendants in today’s Spain.