EDITORIAL
T
his issue of Observing Memories represents the consolidation of a high quality multidisciplinary
journal which explores the past from a permanent trans-European and international
perspective. With each issue published, the Observatory’s reputation has grown and we are
delighted to present our latest edition, published just after the exhumation of the dictator Francisco
Franco from the mausoleum of the Valley of the Fallen. The removal of Franco’s remains is an important
step for democracy both in Spain and in Europe. It means that we can now begin to consider this
place of terror from the perspective of heritage and culture – perhaps even as a tourist destination,
once tribute has been paid to the memory of the thousands of victims buried there illicitly by the
dictatorship.
The use of sites of memory today is one of the main themes discussed in this issue of the
journal. Places of memory are analysed from many points of view and presented in various ways:
recontextualized, as sources of conflict, or simply reinterpreted in the present. These spaces and the
discourses that derive from them, activated by either public or private projects, can help us to assess
the extent to which the memory of the past can be transmitted and understood in the present. In
this way, analytical approaches are combined with examples of places that “resist and reside” among
us today, making use of the policies for the management of the past (if in fact they exist). As the
reader will see, the nature of the sites varies widely. We have chosen sites, museums, monuments,
mausoleums, ruins, and memorials that evoke episodes of resistance to barbarism and violence over
the course of the twentieth century; and also other sites that imply a symbolic resistance in the sense
that, in different ways, they refuse to be swept under the carpet or manipulated by the powers that
oppress them.
Today, the emergence of new agents, new discourses and new public uses of memory
encourages us to ask about its redeployment in Europe and further afield. This redeployment applied
to a contemporary event modifies the memory of heroism or mourning, and gains strength as
the expression of a “citizen’s right” in a new form. In this situation, the new challenges include the
continuous study of history and memorialization at local, national and international levels. New forms
of memory emerge in a model that combines the transmission of history, public debate, and social
education.
The experiences described in this issue help us to analyse transnational memories and discuss
and compare their public uses, the development of museum design, social initiatives, reflection and
experiences. Our understanding of places of memory and of recent history is based on two premises:
first, the public’s social and cultural engagement and their involvement in memory, and second, the
ongoing analysis based on comparative and transnational models. In this issue, several authors provide
theoretical and practical essays on how and where to activate these memories. We propose concepts
such as cultural tourism and heritage for discussion with regard to these sites, through an assessment
of the physical traces of memory of recent conflicts and of their capacity for transmission through
different channels.
This transmission is analysed through a set of examples in a permanent debate on the uses that
visitors, the general public, and the tourism industry make of historical memory. We explore spaces
of memory and monuments of wars, resistance, genocides, and the perpetrators. The geographer
Anne Hertzog offers us a theoretical introduction to the treatment of places of memory as tourist
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