The Pact of Forgetting

"Recently I stood with a Spanish friend looking out across the Andalusian village where he lives from a vantage point high above the houses.

'I can tell you which side every family was on in the war,' he said, pointing out the rooftops, 'though we never talk about it now.' ~ Javier Marias

That silence, a breeding ground for villainy in Thus Bad Begins, is the product of an agreement made in 1970s Spain to prevent any prosecutions for abuses carried out after the Civil War.

The consequences of the 'Pact of Forgetting' are a source of unease in modern Spain though Marias..."