A ‘European Memory of the Jewish Extermination’? Spain as a Methodological Challenge

This article seeks to question academic assertions of a European memory of the Jewish extermination by using the Spanish case. Peculiar links between Spain and the Jewish genocide indicate that a common European story about the Jewish extermination cannot be taken for granted. On the contrary, I propose an alternative model focused on the transmission process and the actors that control it, namely national narratives, anti-Semitic rhetoric and, over the past few decades, ‘Holocaust mass media products’. Such an approach will not only provide useful insights about the perception of the Jewish extermination in countries outside the traditional academic spectrum on Holocaust studies, but will also portray Spain's self-image in a European perspective.