This paper investigates how political actors mobilize social representations and collective memory when drafting legislation dealing with the past, focusing on Spain and its contentious legacy of Francoism. The legacy of the dictatorship has long been marked by silence and legal constraints. A survey published this year shows that around 20% of the population evaluates the Franco era positively, reflecting the enduring societal and political divisions rooted in this unresolved past.

The study analyzes Spain’s memory laws from the creation of the democratic state to the present, examining how historical interpretations have been debated and institutionalized over time. Its goal is to identify the representations that Spaniards have of their past and how these have evolved, in order to observe how identities and political opinions have been constructed over time. The research builds on the premise that lawmaking not only regulates social life but also reshapes how societies interpret their own histories; resistance to new legislation can therefore be understood through the social representations held by its opponents.

Methodologically, the project combines two approaches. A lexicometric analysis using IRaMuTeQ identifies the vocabulary that structures parliamentary debates and maps the associated semantic fields. A complementary qualitative dialogical analysis then pinpoints zones of tension within the legislative texts and uncovers the underlying social representations that produce these disagreements.

Through this study, we not only observe how collective memory shapes society and its political elites, but, more importantly, how politicians’ perceptions of social divisions decisively influence the formulation and negotiation of memory laws.