4. Group photo from the Youth and Memory Engagement meeting at the University of Barcelona
calls for knowledge and for spaces where dialogue and reflection can flourish.
For all these reasons, our goals are threefold. Firstly, to understand and bring to light Spain’ s recent past, particularly the years of dictatorship and the transition to democracy. Secondly, to celebrate the progress that our country has made over the last five decades and to honour the countless anonymous citizens who made it possible. And thirdly, to foster dialogue and create spaces for reflection and discussion— spaces to learn and to debate, to nurture critical thinking at a time when simplistic slogans, provocative ideas, and even hatred too often dominate.
Achieving this objective requires the advancement of Public History, that is, the practice of applying historical research, methods, and interpretation beyond the academic setting, engaging diverse publics in the understanding, preservation, and use of the past. We must bring the university into the streets and the streets into the classroom: open archives, organize walks through sites of memory, debate with documents and with art, listen to testimonies without turning pain into spectacle. Public History is not an academic trend; it is a democratic necessity.
And it is along these lines that we have been working over the past few months. We have four strategic areas of work:
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Observing Memories ISSUE 9