Resumen de Aparecidos, or How to Make the Ghosts Haunting You Disappear by Seeing Others
While the crimes of the Francoist dic- tatorship are being investigated by Argentina, the Spanish state maintains a policy of impunity and blindness when it comes to its 114,000 desaparecidos, in spite of the Law of Historical Memory passed in 2007. Released while that law was being debated in congress, Aparecidos demonstrates that it is easier to see the ghosts of others than the ghosts haunting Spain. In the case of Aparecidos, written and directed by Paco Cabezas (Sevilla, 1978), those ghosts are located precisely in Argentina. This study considers the film as an example of cultural displacement that serves to avoid a traumatic encounter with the historical trauma of genocide related to the Spanish Civil War and the Francoist dictatorship.
