Unveiling the monument to Yugoslav volunteers in the Spanish Civil War in the Rijeka barracks in 1977 | Archive of Bosnia and Herzegovina , Čedo Kapor collection .
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once been located on the site of the former barracks , but the building of the campus had completely changed the landscape and all my efforts to track down information on the possible existence of a monument were fruitless . For some years I had been discussing putting together an exhibition on Yugoslav monuments to the Spanish Civil War with Oriol López Badell , from the European Observatory on Memories , and the inability to find reliable information on the Rijeka monument had frustrated me even as the preparations for the exhibition moved forward for 2020 when Rijeka was to be the European Capital of Culture . But spotting that single image in a box of photographs brought my search of nearly a decade to an end and gave the final impetus for completing the exhibition .
The story of this one monument is an apt anecdote for describing the relationship of contemporary Croatia and the memory of volunteers who fought in the Spanish Civil War : we can say that there is more collective amnesia than collective remembrance . The exhibition “ Cultural Memory and the Spanish Civil War ” ( Kultura sjećanja i Španjolski građanski rat ), 3 organized as part of the Rijeka 2020 : European Capital of Culture programme , sought to break through the fog of forgetfulness and engage the public in a dialogue about this important part of not only the history of Rijeka , but the history of Croatia , the former Yugoslavia , and above all , Europe . According to the meticulous research by French historian Hervé Lemesle , 1,910 volunteers from the former Yugoslavia had fought on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War , with approximately half coming from Croatia . While many were communists or were recruited by communist parties in Europe and North America , around half had no political affiliation and fought in Spain because
3 https :// www . youtube . com / watch ? v = 1F1MA _ yGjss . The exhibition was held on the University of Rijeka campus in January 2020 and in the pedestrian street Korzo in the centre of Rijeka in March 2020 . It is scheduled to be displayed in Pula and Sarajevo ( Bosnia - Herzegovina ) later in 2020 . overview
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