1) Official ceremonies and commemorations to remember, to repair— as far as possible— and to celebrate. To remember the deprivation of rights under Francoism and the struggle of so many anonymous individuals for freedom and democracy; to repair the harm done to the victims of the Franco dictatorship; and to celebrate how far we have come as a country over the past five decades. Commemorations, tributes, acts of remembrance and reparation, the initiation of proceedings to declare Sites of Democratic Memory, celebrations … Spaces, ultimately, for remembrance and education, for dignity and encounter.
2) Youth and democracy, to open spaces for dialogue with new generations— with those born in democracy, with the youngest among us. To speak about the past, the present, and the future, and above all, to use this commemoration as an opportunity to strengthen and reaffirm democratic values, respect for others, and peaceful coexistence.
3) Unsettling pasts, possible futures; to share with the wider public many of the findings from scholars and experts on Spain’ s recent past, particularly concerning the Franco dictatorship and the Transition. We aim to learn from international experiences, to reinterpret spaces associated with the dictatorship through collective reflection, to analyze the past as a site of trauma, and to reflect on the role of art as a tool of resistance and transformation.
And 4) Popular memory / memories, to make popular memory visible beyond official narratives, and to recognize both collective and individual memory as part of a plural perspective on memory. Within the framework of Public History’ s standards of rigour, we seek to highlight collective memory as a tool to open a dialogue with the events that led to democracy between 1975 and 2025, to analyze the current context and to imagine the new problems and dilemmas that will shape democracy in the next fifty years.
We have programmed the film season Images for a Country in Freedom at the Filmoteca Española, launched the roundtable series The Conquest of Freedom of Expression( Club Siglo XXI), inaugurated exhibitions such as Of choruses, dances and oblivion( National Anthropology Museum), Eroding Franco and Inquietud. Libertad y Democracia, and advanced in the recognition of Places of Democratic Memory— from Madrid’ s El abrazo monument and Vitoria’ s San Francisco de Asís church to sites of exile like Argelès-sur-Mer and the tombs of Antonio Machado and Manuel Azaña in France. We have taken part in international commemorations at Auschwitz and Mauthausen, supported the youth summer camp Route to Exile with youth institutions, and curated homages, concerts, and debates from León and Seville to Salamanca, Córdoba, and Barcelona. The events that followed— from the Festival du Cinéma Espagnol in Nantes to the SSIFF program, from Europalia season in Brussels to civic routes and neighbourhood archives— gave this commemoration reach and European context. overview SPAIN IN FREEDOM: 50 YEARS
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