Democratic Memory

The City Council’s Commissioner for Memory Programmes has been working in collaboration with the city’s districts to organise a series of events to commemorate the eightieth anniversary of war and revolution in Barcelona. The aim behind this sombre but highly meaningful programme is to remember and pay homage to the men and women who defended a communal and egalitarian Barcelona, the social and national rights achieved and the universal values of peace, democracy and freedom. This homage is open to everyone and stems from the desire to reach out to all the city’s nooks and crannies, as each one has memories for the people who fought for peace and freedom in the country.

This global initiative has organised the main commemorative event, which is planned for 18 July, to take place simultaneously in all the city’s districts, coinciding with the institutional event being held at the Palau de la Música Catalana. It will start at 7.30 pm, with the reading of the poem Oda a Barcelona, composed by Pere Quart (Joan Oliver) towards the end of 1936, a veritable exaltation of revolutionary Barcelona, plunged into war, in verses packed with epic and hope, as required in those historic times.

It will be followed by a performance comprising eleven scenes that will be distributed through the city, Ode to Joy, by Ludwig van Beethoven, which Pau Casals was unable to play because of the outbreak of the war. The performance of this work by several quartets and orchestras is also intended as a tribute to the great musician. In 18 July 1936, in view of the ban on playing at the official opening of the foiled People’s Olympiad, Casals asked his musicians to perform this work one last time, at a rehearsal, at the Palau de la Música Catalana, where he expressed his hope of “performing it again once peace had returned”. But he never played it again in his country.

Ten years have now passed, since 19 July 2006, seventy years after the event, that the Festival Grec invited the Jeunesses Musicales World Orchestra, the Càrmina Choir and the Orfeó Gracienc Choir itself, conducted by the Israeli maestro Yaron Traub, to play the fourth movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, known as the Ode to Joy.

The Catalan regional government is also taking part in the commemoration of the events of 1936, set on proclaiming Catalonia once again as a land of peace, at events put together in coordination with and to supplement the ones organised by the City Council. The programme will start on 18 July, at 7.30 pm, with an institutional event at the Palau de la Música which will represent a huge gesture of democratic memory packed with a symbolism.

“I want peace but not to forget”, hanging from each of the ten districts’ headquarters

Another of the initiatives planned by the City Council to mark the eightieth anniversary of the war and revolution in Barcelona is to hang up fourteen tarpaulins, on 19 July, from several buildings and municipal headquarters distributed throughout the districts. These large-size tarpaulins will display the text “Barcelona in memoriam 19.07.1936 – 19.07.2016”, and a verse from a poem by Màrius Torres written in 1942: “Jo vull la pau, però no vull l’oblit.” [I want peace but not to forget]. These banners will be hanging on display until 29 July, in memory of events that are part of our city’s identity.

The star feature of these tarpaulins, as with the other communication elements this initiative is being promoted through, is Marina Ginestà i Coloma’s triumphant and yet peaceful and serene pose. This young activist, journalist and translator was photographed by Hans Gutmann (Juan Guzmán) on 21 July 1936, with Barcelona in the background; the image became an icon in its day.