Survival Songs: Conchita Piquer's 'Coplas' and Franco's Regime of Terror

“Survival Songs is an ambitious book based on a vast amount of research in several fields – Spanish popular culture, Spanish history, psychoanalytic theory, and musicology. All of the information from these fields is deftly woven into a compelling narrative about the importance of the popular music genre, the copla, in helping to heal the psychological wounds suffered especially by those on the losing side of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939).” Roberta Johnson, Emerita, Department of Spanish and Portuguese, University of Kansas

“A voice, a song, a story – incarnating, as well as articulating, emotional resistance to the existential and psychological threats of trauma, mourning, and terror. Sieburth’s compelling and moving exploration, through the multiple lenses of close reading, history, politics, and psychotherapy, allows the defeated once more to break into song, and eloquently restores for us today the muted voices of Franco’s ‘time of silence.’” Linda Hutcheon, University Professor Emerita of English and Comparative Literature, University of Toronto