The Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) marked a key turning point in both European and Spanish national history, and still casts a shadow over contemporary Spain because of the brutal nature of the violence. The defeated Republicans were erased from Spanish history and society during General Francisco Franco’s dictatorship—killed, imprisoned or exiled. Silvia Mistral’s Éxodo. Diario de una refugiada española, republished in 2009, documents La Retirada, the fourth phase of the Republican journey into exile, from its inception in January 1939 to her arrival in Mexico in July 1939. The protagonist chronicles her own journey in relation to the experience of others through the means of a diary, in an attempt to represent the collectivity of the female exilic experience and the multiplicity of female identity at this specific historical juncture. Through close textual analysis, the thesis explores the representations of the Self, the Journey and the Other through their gendered construction, with the aim of demonstrating the power inscribed into women’s autobiographical acts and their contemporary relevance to Spain as it begins to reverse the process of invisibilisation of Republican voices and memories
