• Asociación para la Recuperación de la Memoria Histórica (ARMH) •
Spain’s Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory (Asociación para la Recuperación de la Memoria Histórica, or ARMH) is a non-governmental organisation founded in 2000 that collects oral and written testimonies and excavates and identifies the bodies of victims from the military uprising of July 1936, the subsequent Spanish Civil War and the 37-year dictatorship under Gen. Francisco Franco that followed.
As part of its work, the organisation coordinates the work of some 50 Spanish archaeologists, anthropologists and forensic scientists who rely on available records and interviews with local people to help them identify the places where executions of victims occurred, whether by military forces participating in the 1936 uprising and during the civil war or by paramilitaries belonging to the Spanish Falange movement.
With the enactment of Spain’s 2007 Historical Memory Law, the ARMH efforts to locate victims were sanctioned by the law’s mandate calling for the recovery and recognition of all victims of the Civil War and the Franco dictatorship through the location and exhumation of mass graves.
After enactment of the 2007 law, the ARMH began receiving annual funding for its work in the amount of 45,000 euros from the Spanish federal government, but in 2013 the funding was eliminated from the federal budget along with all funding for historical memory initiatives by the conservative Partido Popular government under Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy. Since that time, the ARMH has been funded through stipends and awards from organisations such as the Norwegian electricians trade union and the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in the United States, as well as through individual contributions and sales from items in the online store at the organisation’s website.
► Learn more about the ARMH at the following links online:
► Read Progressive Spain news coverage of Historical Memory in Spain, here …
Updated as of 11/2016
