Parallel Stories, Differentiated Histories. Exploring Fiction and Memory in Spanish and Portuguese Television

Abstract

Integrated into an international project on the characteristics of historical fiction on TV in Spain and Portugal during 2001–2012, the study traces the main aspects of these productions as entertainment products and memory strategies.

Historical fiction on Iberian television channels express qualitative problems of interpretation. Its development must be related to issues such practices, meanings and forms of recognition, and connected with specific memory systems.

The article explores a set of key–points: uses and topics of historical fiction; its visions through similarly proposals; polarization in several historical times, and its convergent perspectives about Franco and Oliveira Salazar as Iberian contemporary dictators.