Curator: Jacobo Bermejo
In collaboration with: Foundation Andreu Nin, 10 de Marzo Foundation
Project funded by Ministerio de Política Territorial y Memoria Democrática
5 – 29 november
Didactic Room
Historical memory is not restricted to the opening of graves, where relatives want to recover loved ones whom they were unable to say goodbye to in a dignified way. It covers such a dark period of our history as the Civil War, and the subsequent repression of the Franco Dictatorship, in order not to forget and to be able to draw lessons that do not lead us to the same mistakes.
This exhibition aims to bring together a small but significant history of militants of the Galician heterodox left, whom we can rightly describe as “doubly forgotten.”
They suffered Francoist repression as left-wing militants and many of them paid with their lives. At the same time, Stalinism was just as cruel, or even more so, than the dictatorship; because in addition to imprisonment or murder, they suffered a campaign of slander and accusations of being Hitler’s agents.
This brief history of these men is based on the great work of the historian Dionisio Pereira. With this exhibition, we seek to rescue from oblivion a group of experienced militants who were the ones who raised their voices against the power of the all-powerful Stalin, while offering a model for a democratic socialist party.
It is now 90 years since the founding of the POUM and, for this reason, the Eugenio Granell Foundation, the Andreu Nin Foundation and the 10 de Marzo Foundation want to take advantage of this anniversary to explain how this party was formed and what its political legacy was.
Far from being past history, the writings of its main leaders, Andreu Nin and Joaquín Maurín, continue to be published and studied. Their great political legacy was, without a doubt, the “Workers’ Alliances” developed during the Black Biennium of the Republic, consolidating the unity of leftist forces against the fascist winds that were blowing strongly at that time. Unfortunately, today these winds are blowing again, as they did in the past, replacing Jews with immigrants and anything resembling diversity.
We will be satisfied if this exhibition manages to bring these two great themes out of oblivion and contributes to the reflection on the meaning of Stalinism and the disaster that division in the face of fascism brought to the entire European left.
Jacobo Bermejo Barrera
Member of the Andreu Nin Foundation Trust
Exhibition Curator
