The Virtual Museum of the Spanish Civil War – Adrian Shubert

Adrian Shubert shared … The Spanish Civil War ended more than 85 years ago, but the conflict and the way it is remembered are still controversial questions in Spain. One of the outcomes of this is the absence of a meaningful museum devoted to the most important event in the country’s modern history. It was this situation that prompted a small group of colleagues and me to create the Virtual Museum of the Spanish Civil War

Since it opened in September 2002, the museum has been visited by more than 141,000 people from around the world. The museum initially had 130 objects in five galleries with texts in English and Spanish. At the moment, it has 480 objects in ten galleries, with all texts in French as well as the two original languages, and some in Basque, Catalan, and Galician, Spain’s co-official languages. The original entries were done by five people. We now have contributions from more than 100 people. Additional new galleries are under construction and new objects are being added all the time.

Readers of Steven’s Balagan will likely be most interested in the gallery on the Outbreak and Course of the War, but I want to draw your attention to a different one, the Open Gallery.

The Spanish Civil War was a conflict among armies, states, ideologies, and interests. It was also, and perhaps above all else, a war of people for whom it was something intimate. The more than 25 million Spaniards who were affected by the war and the many foreigners who participated or felt they had a stake in it were its real protagonists. They are also the first custodians of its history. Very few of them remain alive, but their families and friends and their descendants have objects, the material remnants of their experiences.

The purpose of the Open Gallery is to gather the diversity of objects and stories that lie behind the Spanish Civil War. It is by far the most personal, human, and subtle part of the Virtual Museum. And because it shows how the memory of the conflict has been transmitted, continuously but almost always quietly, through innumerable experiences, it is the one that best connects our reality to the past. All the objects and accompanying stories that appear in the gallery have been volunteered by private individuals across Spain and beyond. The content has been professionally curated, but in a way that respects the intention of the donors. We believe that in this way, visitors will be able to better understand what the Spanish Civil War – with all its many complexities and implications – was and what it means to the descendants of those who experienced it.

The most recent contribution to the gallery is from a reader of this blog: Joseph Luque. I came across Joseph while searching for an object to illustrate a new entry on Spaniards fighting in Allied armed forces during WWII. My search turned up a photograph on Steven’s Balagan of Joseph’s father, José Luque, at the Battle of Narvik. I wrote to Steven Thomas, asking him to put me in contact with Joseph so I could ask his permission to use the photograph in the museum. Steven did, and Joseph gave his permission. I then asked him if he would contribute some photos and a text for the Open Gallery, which he did.

I have seen other wonderful material about Spaniards during WWII on this blog. If you have photographs or other objects and would like to contribute to the Open Gallery, please write to me at adriansh@yorku.ca