EXPERT’S VIEW
Mausoleum of terror.
Fallen in Pamplona
and Cuelgamuros
Jordi Guixé i Coromines
European Observatory
on Memories, University
of Barcelona’s Solidaity
Foundation
T
he memorials to wars, heroes and victories are symbols that seek to perpetuate the
past in our lives. An iconic imposition of the connection between past and present.
These types of monuments wanted to implant a kind of memory, a “permanent
Napoleon” that evokes the heroism of history as the fruit of our origins.
On the other hand, there is another way to commemorate the past in the present and one’s
own present: the work of memory. A work that combines the everyday practice with the
critical, theoretical and historical analysis of the past that continues among us. It is an
interdisciplinary and systematic work that allows us to change the “monumental” and
“old-fashioned” visits for a critical and analytical approach to historical journeys.
Instead of commemorating heroic deaths,
battles, triumphs of bloody victories of
recent/modern wars or obscene and violent
dictatorships, we must give a voice to the
testimony of the combat in favour of the
democratic memory, the abolition of wars,
totalitarianisms and conflicts.
At the same time, when the public policy acts in places of memory, this place must
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Observing Memories
ISSUE 2