Three silent memories

Abstract

Personal memory weaves together memories and forgetfulness, giving rise to the construction of testimonies and silences that fight for what happened in the past and have a real influence in the present. In light of the force of verbalised language, silence is also an effective communicative medium which hides an infinity of reasons and messages. In the same way, there are different kinds of silences constructed around traumatic and conflictive experiences. This article seeks to focus on the different ways of constructing these silent memories by means of the study of the community silence around what happened to the Sagardia-Goñi family, the silence that divided the Z.E. family and the personal and voluntary silent memory built by the former member of ETA, P.T.