When memory activism spreads across time, space and struggles. The appropriation of the escrache in Spain

The escrache is a form of protest created by Argentine activists in the mid-1990s to denounce impunity and demand justice for the crimes of the Argentine dictatorship. It is a carnivalesque demonstration that seeks to make the past and its implications visible in present-day Argentina (Druliolle, 2012). The escrache was adopted by memory activists in other countries in Latin America. Owing to Spain’s reluctance to deal with its dictatorial past and the links between memory activists in Argentina and Spain, the escrache may have been appropriated by the movement for the recovery of historical memory when in 2000 it started unearthing Franco’s legacy and challenging the pact of silence that characterised the Spanish transition to democracy. Instead, the escraches grabbed the headlines in 2011 when it was adopted by the anti-eviction movement in the context of the financial and housing crisis. The paper analyses how this form of protest was appropriated and adapted for a different struggle in a different context by activists in Spain. By drawing on interviews with key actors, it goes beyond the question of how Spanish society perceived the moral reframing of the struggle for the Right to Decent Housing (Flesher Fominaya and Montañés Jimenéz, 2014). Indeed, activists were perfectly aware that the escrache had been particularly controversial in Argentina, which generated a reflection about how it should be re-appropriated and implemented. The paper thus seeks to shed new light on the debates surrounding the adoption of the escrache in Spain in the first place and to highlight what the literature about the diffusion of social movements might learn from them.