SIGHTSEEING
The building of the Aljube (Arabic “al-jubb” - a draw-well without water, cistern,
dungeon or prison) dates back to the Roman and Islamic period, and have been
almost always a prison: ecclesiastical jail, women prison and political prison
from 1928 to 1965 | All pictures by EUROM and Museu do Aljube
Aljube Museum -
Resistance and Freedom
Musealization of a
«difficult heritage»
Luís Farinha
Director of the Aljube
Museum Resistance and
Freedom
T
he Aljube Museum appeared four decades after the fall of the New State, as a result
of an awakening from an apparent amnesia of an authoritarian regime that imposed
censorship on the thought and creativity of millions of Portuguese people, that
deported them and arrested them en masse and that sentenced them in apparently legal
courts, founded on the most unacceptable precepts of a State, based on thousands of laws
and diplomas, but which was never a Rule of Law. And which especially imposed on them,
through the fear that stems from oppression, a silence and political indifference that tended
to persist over time.
Without the combative attitude of groups of “memory-joggers”, perhaps we
would not have the Aljube Museum, as we can well understand today from
the circumstances accompanying the possible conversion of the Peniche Fort
Museum (to the north of Lisbon), into the National Museum of Resistance.
Why then this “silencing” of the memory of the resistance and, perhaps, of
the Aljube Museum itself? Because this is a “Historic Museum” with strong
political implications. The memories it awakens are a difficult and traumatic
heritage that, even today, cause social, cultural and ideological tensions. In a
certain sense, the object of the Museum is also the portrayal/reconstitution
of an unfinished historical process. But also memories that generate silence
because they prolong the “silence” imposed (and complied with) during the
previous regime: the “New State”, long and drab, had created an enormous
national “political consensus”, along with some international support,
especially after World War II. Except for more unstable and dynamic historic
Observing Memories
ISSUE 1
44
Observing Memories
ISSUE 1
45