The Wolf's Lairs

Memories of authoritarian Europe, 1945-2020.

What to do with the legacy of a dictator after his death or fall? This problematic memory also includes a material inheritance, ranging from the autocrat's tomb to the specific places linked to his victims, as well as public spaces represented by names or monuments. The Wolf's Lairs reviews how contemporary Europe has confronted its own ghosts, how it has redefined in a particular way the spaces closely linked to the biography and memory of the tyrant, and how it has integrated -not without contradictions- this uncomfortable past into its own national narrative. Spain has been no stranger to this problematic (in)digestion of the places of (dis)memory. Through the comparative study of cases as diverse as Germany, Portugal, Albania, Romania, France, Italy and Slovakia, Xosé M. Núñez Seixas shows the shared difficulties in facing recent traumatic pasts.