DEEP VIEW
Online Memories :
The battle over online memory on Europe Day
Celeste Muñoz PhD . Lecturer in History . University of Barcelona . Collaborator of EUROM .
The Online Memories project and new social media narratives
On 26 March 2019 , the Barcelona city government installed an upright historical
marker in front of the local headquarters of the National Police in the centrally located thoroughfare of Via Laietana . The gesture was all but a symbolic act of remembrance that might have gone unnoticed except for the media firestorm that it touched off on social media . The reason : it was a troubling reminder of torture . The standing marker was installed by the Barcelona city government as a way to restore society ’ s remembrance of the Francoist dictatorship , pinpointing and identifying a place that is recalled even today for the brutality inflicted on myriad citizens by the regime ’ s political police . Of course , the reactions were varied and conflicting . Broadly speaking , studies of the collective public memory of our past may well focus on the processes of contestation surrounding the historical marker , which has suffered a slew of attacks while the police look on passively , almost in complicity . Such an analysis is doubtless very relevant . What interests us here , however , is to analyse and chart the spontaneous remembrance emerging on social media , which undoubtedly offers a genuine example of the conflict over memory . The “ casus belli ” of the conflict was a controversial tweet posted by then city councillor Carina Mejías , who criticised the marker as an “ offense ” against the police . Her statements were quickly met with responses from others on the platform . Soon more than 7,000 tweets had been posted with the hashtag # CuentaseloAMejias ( Tell it to Mejías ), reflecting hundreds of personal accounts of torture suffered at first hand or by family members during and after the Francoist dictatorship .
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Observing Memories ISSUE 4