The EUROM analyzes the last ten years of memory laws and policies in Spain and Catalonia in an international congress
From the 28th to the 30th of November, the European Observatory on Memories (EUROM) of the Solidarity Foundation of the University of Barcelona, is organizing the international congress “The Frog Hibernation. 10 years of Memory Laws and Policies in Spain and Catalonia (2007-2017)". The conferences, free for all attendants, will take place at the Aula Magna of the University of Barcelona and will be developed in ten sessions dedicated to the analysis of the uses, abuses, process, successes, omissions and gaps of this period. The opening session of the congress, on November 28 at 7 p.m., will be given by the writer Manuel Rivas, presented by the filmmaker Rosa Vergés. The institutional ceremony will have the participation of the vice-rector for Equal Opportunities and Social Action of the UB, Maite Vilalta; the director of the UB Solidarity Foundation, Xavier López, and the director of EUROM, Jordi Guixé.
From the 28th to the 30th of November, the European Observatory on Memories (EUROM) of the Solidarity Foundation of the University of Barcelona, is organizing the international congress “The Frog Hibernation. 10 years of Memory Laws and Policies in Spain and Catalonia (2007-2017)". The conferences, free for all attendants, will take place at the Aula Magna of the University of Barcelona and will be developed in ten sessions dedicated to the analysis of the uses, abuses, process, successes, omissions and gaps of this period. The opening session of the congress, on November 28 at 7 p.m., will be given by the writer Manuel Rivas, presented by the filmmaker Rosa Vergés. The institutional ceremony will have the participation of the vice-rector for Equal Opportunities and Social Action of the UB, Maite Vilalta; the director of the UB Solidarity Foundation, Xavier López, and the director of EUROM, Jordi Guixé.
The title of this seminar refers to the memory latent period that followed the approval of the remembrance laws in Spain and Catalonia. “It is a reasonable period to make a first evaluation with historical perspective on the role these first laws had in the development of memory policies in Spain”, says Jordi Guixé, director of EUROM. In this sense, they will also aim to set comparison points with what other European countries have been carrying out with the participation of experts such as Georges Mink, research director at the Institute of Social and Political Sciences (ISP-CNRS); Uladzislau Belavusau, senior researcher at the Asser Institute of the University of Amsterdam, and Maria Mälskoo, from the Brussels School of International Studies of the University of Kent.
Experts from different fields of knowledge will debate on the practical effects of this legislation in society. The historical remembrance laws will be analyzed by José Antonio Martín Pallín and Josefina Cuesta, while Josep Cruanyes and Montserrat Duch will debate on the Democratic Memory Law. Management of memory through heritage, especially with monuments and museums, will be debated on by the lecturer of Fine Arts of the University of Barcelona Núria Ricart and the director of the Museu Memorial de lʼExili (exile memorial museum), Jordi Font. The anthropologist Ángel del Río will talk about the state of common graves, while the situation of archives will be the topic for the president of ASF-International, Ramon Alberch, and the director of the Center for Historical Memory in Salamanca, Manuel Melgar. The evolution of different channels through which memory is transmitted will also have some attention. Professor Jordi Gràcia (University of Barcelona) will talk about transfer of memory through literature; the cinema will be analyzed by the lecturer Magí Crusells (University of Barcelona); new technologies will be explained by the lecturer Matilde Eiroa (Charles III University of Madrid), and performativity in public spaces will be analyzed by Inma Prieto (ERAM - University of Girona).
Apart from the experts, other participants in the conferences will be representatives from memorial associations to value memory policies from the last decade. Some of these participants are Emilio Silva, from ARMH; Rosa Toran, from Mauthausen Amical; Carles Vallejo, from the Catalan Association of Former Political Prisoners; Daniel Canales, from Amnistia Internacional, and Juan Carlos Garcia, from AMESDE.
Moreover, the results from the most current researchers in the field of memory will be presented in the session Emerging Approaches, coordinated by Memorias en Red, in which several researchers will debate on the conferences presented in the congress. This selection of researches aims to cover not only legal aspects of memory laws that were approved of in several areas of Spain and other countries from the European Union, but also its social and political effects and the real impact of its transmission through literature, audiovisual productions and information and communication technologies.
On November 30 at 5.50 p.m., the last two sessions will debate on the actions that are being carried out in the regions of Navarra, Balearic Islands, Andalusia, Basque Country or Catalonia, and in cities such as Madrid and Barcelona. Several heads of the memory programs from different autonomous communities and from those two cities will take part in the sessions.
The congress will have a simultaneous translation service. Registration is free and attendance certificates will be provided.
The complete program can be downloaded from the website.