The Memory of Southern European Dictatorships in Popular TV Shows

Ever since the ground-breaking historical mini-series Holocaust (1978), television has proven to play a major role in structuring the collective memory about the past.1 This medium has, moreover, displayed a capacity to trigger a collective rendering of, and coming to terms with, painful, hidden or forgotten aspects of the past. Media specialist Garry R. Edgerton has even argued that ‘television is the principal means by which most people learn about history’.2 Even though such assertions might be tempered by today's predominance of social media – especially in generational terms – an inquiry into the politics of memory in popular television is still relevant for the field of public history, as well as for memory studies. This is particularly pertinent when representing dictatorship in the European South. Alongside public history projects of all kinds (including museums, memorials, commemorative plaques and practices), filmic representations (be it for cinematic or television use) structure the collective imaginary about the recent past. This essay briefly discusses TV shows that deal with and shape public understandings of the dictatorships in Spain (the final phase of Francoism, post-1968), Greece (the Colonels’ dictatorship, post-1969) and Portugal (the final phase of the Estado Novo (New State), post-1968).