Funes The Memorious Borges

Introduction
From Shakespeare to Christina Rossetti, the word ‘Remember’ is a ghostly verb. The act of remembrance resurrects people, places and events that have long passed. In the opening lines of Funes the Memorious Borges refers to it as a ‘sacred verb’. To remember someone is an act of devotion to them. In the normal healing process after the trauma caused by war there is an intense period of remembrance which takes place after the pain of that trauma has diminished enough for comprehension and understanding to develop. However, in the case of civil war where family member fights against family member, allegiances are tested, communities broken down, cities destroyed by the people who once inhabited them, remembrance and healing are hard tasks to establish, especially when the winning side is a Fascistic violent and controlling one. Until the
Labanyi refers to the sentiment expressed as ‘recuperación de la memoria histörica’ (recovery of historical memory) that has, since the creation of the ARMH (Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory) in 2000, “become obligatory when referring to the need for present-day Spaniards to engage with the unresolved legacy of the civil war and ensuing repression.” In 2007 the Ley de Memória Historica (Historical Memory Law) was passed by the Congress of Deputies. The provisions of the law include: the recognition of political, religious and ideological violence on both sides of the Spanish civil war; condemnation of the Francoist regime; state help in tracing, identification and eventual exhumation of victims of Francoist repression whose corpses are still missing, often buried in mass graves; temporary change to Spanish nationality law granting the right of return and de origen citizenship to those who left Spain under Franco. This essay will explore how through his exhumation of the past filmmaker Guilhermo del Toro provides a conduit for the very primal need of the Spanish people to release and deal