The sea is the great grave into which most of those who suffered reprisals from the Franco regime ended up after the outbreak of the Civil War in the Canary Islands, and more specifically in Tenerife. One of the points that has been associated on the Island with this terrible practice, as stated in the Canary Islands Government’s Historical Memory portal, is the coast of the town of San Andrés, in Santa Cruz. Oral testimonies, but also various research papers, indicate this as a zone of disappearance of prisoners throughout and after the Civil War. In San Andrés, the memory of that time is still alive among many of its neighbors, witnesses of the arbitrary arrests, the beatings in Paso Alto or in the halls of what was once the banana packing company. fyffes. It is precisely these testimonies that the documentary La represión en San Andrés intends to collect thanks to the project promoted by the Department of Culture of the Santa Cruz City Halldirected by Gladis de León.
This project is one of those selected by the Cabildo de Tenerife in the call for the granting of subsidies for the island’s town halls to carry out projects to recover historical memory. The amount obtained by the City Council is 10,000 euros, with which part of the cost of this documentary will be covered, which will be the last link in a chain that is made up of film workshops, in which students learn about the entire production process of this kind of film work.
The filmmaker Raúl Jiménez heads the team that also includes the production manager, Guacimara Rodríguez, and the film director, Manuel González. As detailed in the memory of this project, “in the town of San Andrés there is a generation that still bitterly remembers the Franco regime, so the start-up of a film workshop with neighbors of the region will allow numerous testimonies to be recorded in this regard, in order to create a cinematographic work of the documentary genre”.
workshops
The actions to be carried out are specified in the delivery of a documentary film workshop, which would take place in the El Pescador Neighborhood Association, located in the town of San Andrés itself. In this workshop, a film script will be prepared, and a filming team will be formed with the students, in order to carry out a work on the recovery of historical memory. Various aspects of film production will be touched on: photography direction, lighting, sound recording, art direction, etc. The experience of the activity will focus mainly on pre-production and production, carrying out writing exercises and working on the elaboration of the rundown, a previous tool for the documentary, to allow students to organize themselves in the production of this genre.
The experience also includes an interpretation section, in the case of carrying out recreation sequences, in order to complement previously filmed testimonies. Once the film was finished, it would be exhibited in the town of San Andrés.
The project also explains how its content is adjusted to the various Historical Memory laws that are currently in force, including the Canary Islands, the last to be approved, recalling that among its purposes is to “promote the search , location and identification of the disappeared persons during the period of time from the beginning of the Civil War, in 1936, until the approval of the constitutional text of 1978, in collaboration with both the public administrations of the Canary Islands and with memory organizations and associations history, as well as to satisfy the legitimate interest of the next of kin of the persons who died or disappeared during the aforementioned period and, in particular, with regard to the identification of the victims, the location and exhumation of their human remains, and the preparation of a registration of victims; as well as facilitating the reunion between separated relatives”.
Divulgation
Those responsible for the documentary point out that the objective most related to the purpose of the project is the disclosure of the events that occurred in the Canary Islands from the military pronouncement and its background to the end of the Franco dictatorship. “With the disclosure of this future documentary, it is intended to make the population aware of the reality lived in the Canary Islands, more specifically in Tenerife, during the aforementioned period, adjusting to the provisions of the Historical Memory laws.”
One of the outstanding aspects is the gender perspective with which they will approach the work. Those responsible explain that “given the existing lack of historical records related to the presence of Canarian women in the Franco regime, it is important that projects be promoted that help to reconstruct the history of the Islands and their inhabitants, not only for the purpose of to have more information about our past, but also to reconstruct our identity”.
They recall that “at that time, women not only had to fight against stigmas, the prohibition of multiple freedoms and rights, but also to raise their families and protect themselves without guarantees. This situation, where the woman occupied a space in the public sphere and in the workplace, confronts the reality that in the regime was understood as the norm, where the woman was relegated to the private and domestic space. Pressure, ideology, and patriarchal and religious education combined with the idea of women as being submissive. To the systematic violation of the labor rights of Canarian women during the Franco regime, an aggravating circumstance was added for gender reasons, and that is that the different types of violence, including harassment, sexual harassment, rape, “derecho de pernada”, etc., were part of any given day at work”.
“Many of them -they continue- were forced to work as children, being denied the right to schooling and teaching. In the documentary presented, it is intended to give a voice to all those women from the town of San Andrés, who want to share their memories and past experiences, so that the viewer is aware of that reality that, unfortunately, is part of our history, and compares in how many fundamental aspects has our society changed and how women are perceived”.
