Renaming the Past: Identity, Memory, and Electoral Backlash in Spain

Public spaces are increasingly becoming battlegrounds over collective identity, as societies revisit which figures deserve commemoration. The removal of statues and street names has become a powerful symbolic act, as for those attached to these legacies, such changes may be seen as denying their group identity. This paper examines the political consequences of such symbolic changes in the context of Spain, focusing on the recent renaming of streets honoring figures from the dictatorship. Using three complementary empirical strategies and drawing on both observational and survey evidence, I find that removing Francoist streets leads to a significant increase in support for far right parties in the affected areas, particularly when the names held high salience. I further implement a novel individual level survey and show that this response is driven by identity-based concerns rather than practical objections, shedding light on the political consequences of contested memory in democratic societies.