One of the aspects that memorial legislation has tried to regularize over the last two decades is the relationship between citizenship and the collective spaces of remembrance. The multiple meanings and features of these spaces are subject to changing processes that reveal political struggles for cultural hegemony: which memory should prevail over the others?
This website developed by the EUROM and the project Public Art and Memory is a contribution to debates on these issues through comparative analysis and practical proposals on the so-called dissonant or uncomfortable heritage. In its first phase, the project highlights the cases of the monument to the Battle of the Ebro in Tortosa, the mausoleum of the brotherhood of the Tercio de Requetés of the Virgin of Montserrat, Mussolini’s mausoleum and the Fascio’s House in Predappio, and the monument dedicated to the women’s prison of Les Corts in Barcelona.
The European continent is full of examples of uncomfortable heritage that move between contemplative pilgrimage, commemoration, and tourism. However, doubts arise about their role in today’s society based on the weight that citizens have had (or have) in the process of creating these spaces and the counterpoint that this represents to the political leadership of the State in all its variants. The transversality of these approaches requires comparative studies that distinguish common patterns and particular idiosyncrasies between different cases that affect Spain and Europe.
The mini-site Uncomfortable Heritage (Patrimonios Incómodos) is a proposal by the European Observatory of Memories of the Solidarity Foundation of the University of Barcelona that proposes as a work axis the comparative study of certain mausoleums, spaces of mourning and repression, distributed throughout Europe, sites of public commemoration and pilgrimage, their process of conversion into places of memory and the analysis of how the growing cultural tourism affects them.
The investigations of the first phase concluded in October 2021 and were carried out by Andrea Sierra (Trotosa), Cinta Domingo (Montserrat), Elena Bignami (Predappio) and Núria Ricart (Les Corts). The content is complemented by short audiovisual pieces by the video artist Paulina Calfuqueo with interviews with people linked to these spaces. Furthermore, as a result of research and fieldwork, Núria Ricart and Jordi Guixé have directed and designed the proposal “Memory Bridge”, a memorial intervention on the monument of the Battle of the Ebro in Tortosa.