The television of the past: History, remembrance and representation of Franco's Spain

The potential of television to provide explanatory accounts of the past is the road less travelled in research into social and cultural history in Spain. This article analyses the characteristics that defined televised entertainment in the latter years of Franco's regime and a key fiction work that historically evokes this period, Cuentame como paso/Tell me how it happened (TVE, 2001-present). The aim is to study the function of television in two distinct political, social and cultural periods, first in terms of its historical socialization role and second, in terms of its representation of shared experiences and its creation of historical memory. The ultimate aim is to understand the nature of television as the mediatizing context of public history.