Dates: 17/06/2017 - 11/03/2018

Venue: Parc de Can Dragó and Fabra i Coats

La ferida d'Hipercor

15.12.2017 – 11.03.2018

The Hurt of Hipercor. Barcelona 1987 is an exhibition-memorial which is part of the programme for remembering and commemorating the thirtieth anniversary of the Hipercor attack that began in June 2017 with a community event which expressed Barcelona City Council’s respect for and solidarity with the victims. On 19 June 1987, at eight minutes past four in the afternoon, a car bomb went off on the first floor of the Hipercor department store car park in Sant Andreu. 21 people were killed and 46 injured in what was the most lethal attack by ETA. It is now 30 years since that indiscriminate terrorist action which hurt Barcelona.

This exhibition-memorial is sponsored by Barcelona City Council’s Memory Programmes Commissioner and organised by the Barcelona History Museum (MUHBA).

Opening times:

From Tuesday to Friday, from 12 p.m. to 8 p.m.
Saturdays, from 12 p.m. to 8 p.m.
Sundays, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Mondays, closed

27th, 28th, 29th and 30th December 2017 and 2nd, 3rd and 4th January 2018 the exhibition will close at 9 p.m.

Price: Free entrance

Informació i reserves:
Telephone: 93 256 21 22
reservesmuhba@bcn.cat
Office hours: from Monday to Friday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m.

To mark the thirtieth anniversary of the terrorist attack committed by ETA at the Hipercor department store in the Sant Andreu district, as a result of which 21 people and 45 were injured, we are embarking on a commemorative city project as we consider the attack was aimed at all the city’s residents.

Before the programme went on, the Commissioner met up with the families of the victims murdered in the attack, to apologise to each one on behalf of the City Council, as an institution, for having failed to hold any commemorative event or even offer any follow-up or monitor their progress over these last thirty years. He then explained the content of the commemorative programme and invited the families to take part. It is worth noting that all the families accepted.

The commemorative programme started with a three-minute videoclip summarising what had happened and in which the families of the victims took part in. This brief audiovisual summary was played every fifteen minutes on all Transports Metropolitans de Barcelona screens, within vehicles and at stations for the week leading up to the central commemorative event.  The reason behind this initiative stems from a desire to know more about the attack and for its memory to permeate the city permanently and act as information on the central commemorative event.

The event acknowledging the victims began at 12 noon, on 17 June 2017, at the Parc de Can Dragó. Presided over by the Mayor Ada Colau, the event included an artistic contribution conceived and managed by Àngels Aymar; victims played an active part in the memorial initiative.

The second commemorative element consisted of two memorial sign-postings. The first, a clear and explicit indication of the Can Dragó Monument, with a plaque explaining the commemorative meaning of the monument with the following text:

“This work entitled Tall irregular progression, by the sculptor Sol LeWitt, dedicated to the victims of terrorism and officially unveiled on 26 June 2003, is a memorial to the large-scale terrorist attack of 19 June 1987 at the Hipercor department store.”

The second memorial consisted of the installation of an information stand, located opposite the Hipercor department store, which describes the attack and commemorative initiative with the following text:

“On 19 June 1987, at 4.08 pm, a car bomb exploded in the Hipercor department store, located here along Barcelona’s Av. Meridiana. Twenty-one people died and 45 were injured from the explosion planned and triggered by an ETA terrorist cell in Barcelona. Tens of thousands of people held a demonstration in Barcelona to protest against the terrorist organisation’s deadliest attack and one of the bloodiest in Catalonia’s recent history.

In 2017, during the 30th anniversary of that attack, Barcelona City Council wished to mark this site as a public memorial.

The last element in the programme was an exhibition on the attack and its consequences, to be officially opened on 11 December 2017 at the Fabra i Coats, curated by the journalist Francesc Valls. A wide-ranging programme on the terrorist attack was held to mark the exhibition, which closed on 14 March, including discussions, debates and talks.

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